WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT PAPER - 6

Department of English,M. K. Bhavnagar University     

Name :-  Niyati Vyas

Roll No :- 14

Department :-M. A.English department

Submitted to :-  Dr. Prof. Dilip Barad

Semester :-  2

Paper No :-  6 20th CENTURY  LITERATURE - 1

UNIT - 1  THE WASTE LAND

ASSIGNMENT TOPIC -  Significance of the ending line – ‘Shantih, Shantih, Shantih’ – of the poem.

Answer - 

                                  The Waste Land is a poem by T.S.Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry.Published in 1922, the 434-line.poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih".

                                    Eliot's poem combines the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon such as Dante's Divine Comedy and Shakespeare, Buddhism, and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker,  location, and time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.

                                     The poem is divided into five sections. The first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, "A Game of Chess", employs alternating narrations, in which vignettes of several characters address those themes experientially. "The Fire Sermon", the third section, offers a philosophical meditation in relation to the imagery of death and views of self-denial in juxtaposition influenced by Augustine of Hippo and eastern religions. After a fourth section, "Death by Water", which includes a brief lyrical petition, the culminating fifth section, "What the Thunder Said", concludes with an image of judgement.

                                   The final section of The Waste Land is dramatic in both its imagery and its events. The first half of the section builds to an apocalyptic climax, as suffering people become “hooded hordes swarming” and the “unreal” cities of Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, and London are destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again. A decaying chapel is described, which suggests the chapel in the legend of the Holy Grail. Atop the chapel, a cock crows, and the rains come, relieving the drought and bringing life back to the land. Curiously, no heroic figure has appeared to claim the Grail; the renewal has come seemingly at random, gratuitously.

                               The scene then shifts to the Ganges, half a world away from Europe, where thunder rumbles. Eliot draws on the traditional interpretation of “what the thunder says,” as taken from the Upanishads (Hindu fables). According to these fables, the thunder “gives,” “sympathizes,” and “controls” through its “speech”; Eliot launches into a meditation on each of these aspects of the thunder’s power. The meditations seem to bring about some sort of reconciliation, as a Fisher King-type figure is shown sitting on the shore preparing to put his lands in order, a sign of his imminent death or at least abdication. The poem ends with a series of disparate fragments from a children’s song, from Dante, and from Elizabethan drama, leading up to a final chant of “Shantih shantih shantih”—the traditional ending to an Upanishad. Eliot, in his notes to the poem, translates this chant as “the peace which passeth understanding,” the expression of ultimate resignation.

                                      The intensifying perception reaches the state of crescendo and merges with the word "Shantih" (Eliot 433).'Shanti' is another key concept in Hinduism.

A Study of Unresolvable Meaning in The Waste Land

                                      Eliot re-invents the meaning of the modern through myths and covers up the meaning of the system of wage-labor by the layered codes of 'Datta, Dayadhva, Damyata,' diverting attention away from the imperialist wars over the labor of the subaltern by chanting from the Upanishad: 'Shantih shantih shantih.'

The poverty of (post)humanities

                                         No less than five languages (English, Italian, Latin, French, and Sanskrit) are used in the last eleven lines to end on "Shantih, shantih, shantih," a phrase which in Sanskrit means "the peace that passeth understanding"--in which we may hear a form of hope for some sort of spiritual healing--but which may also be heard as the more ominous echo of the English "shanty town." Obviously, what is "falling down, falling down, falling down" is less London bridge, as in the well-known nursery rhyme, than the "tour abolie" of Gerard de Nerval's "Desdichado" ("The Unlucky") sonnet in The Chimeres:

Will in the "Waste Land" Shakespeare and Eliot Revisited

                                           In the end, it says: Shantih shantih shantih (line 434)

An analysis of dialogue inbEliot's The Waste Land from the view point of Gadamer's hermeneutics

                                 Mental boundaries and bifurcations are lifted one after another, or so one can conclude, in view of an endorsement of a reconciliation of opposites observed in most of his works, in particular, The Waste Land whose first low notes concretized in an April that fails to bear the tidings of rejuvenating spring reach full circle upon hitting the high notes of exaltation in the "shantih, shantih, shantih" that finalize the poem.

Eliot's The Waste Land and surging nationalisms.

How Indian thought influenced T.S. Eliot

                                    One among the many western scholars, who were influenced by Indian philosophy, T.S. Eliot let his understanding become a key factor in his magnum opus, The Waste Land. The dominant poetic voice of the 1920s, Eliot used an essential, allusive and elliptical technique to put across the view that modern western urban civilisation was sterile and unsatisfying. He avoided personal emotion in contrast to the more romantic effusions of the Georgian poets. His distaste for romanticism, a desire to treat the poem in isolation from the poet and the cult of traditional classical values went hand in hand with a dislike of the modern world.

                                           The Waste Land appeared in 1922. The poem, which won Eliot the Nobel Prize in 1948, follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. He employs literary and cultural allusions from the western canon, Buddhism and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.

            Five sections

                               The Waste Land is divided into five sections. The “Burial of the Dead” introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second is “A Game of Chess” and the third, “The Fire Sermon,” shows the influence of Augustine and Eastern religions. The fourth is “Death by Water” and the fifth and final section is “What the Thunder said,” which features the influence of Indian thought on the Poet Laureate.

                               Eliot became a prominent poet in the aftermath of the chaos and convulsions of the First World War. Europe was home to existential philosophy owing its origin to Kierkegaard. This was a reaction against German idealism and the complacency of established Christianity. (We can find an echo of the existential philosophy in our own Charuvakas and Jabalis.)

                           Dr. Radhakrishnan records how T.S. Eliot, when asked about the future of our Civilization said, “Internecine fighting, people killing one another in the streets.” Civilization to him appeared a crumbling edifice destined to perish in the flames of war. The tragedy of the human condition imposes an obligation on us to give meaning and significance to life. Eliot’s prescription for a new dawn is given in Part V — “What the Thunder Said.”

“Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

DA

Datta: what have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms

DA

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

DA

Damyata: The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon — O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih”

                              The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad alludes to Prajapathi, the Creator, talking to his three offspring — Devatas, Demons and Men. In the first Brahmana Chapter V, all the virtues are brought together under the three Da’s which are heard in the voice of the thunder namely Dama or self-restraint for the Devas, Danas or self-sacrifice for the humans and Daya or compassion for the Demons. Eliot was greatly influenced by the Bhagavad Gita. See Chapter XVI, Verse 21.

                             Part V of The Waste Land indicates a turning point. ‘The Word of the Thunder’ offers a ray of hope penetrating the despair that hangs over the rest of the poem. In a letter to Bertrand Russell, Eliot described it as “not only the best part but the part that justifies the whole.” Eliot uses concepts from Sanskrit texts as a framework to give shape to and support the many ideas that constitute the human psyche on a spiritual journey.

                                  What sparked his interest in Vedic thought is not recorded but it is known that he was occupied with Sanskrit, Pali and the metaphysics of Patanjali. The Waste Land reiterates the three cardinal virtues of Damyatha (Restraint), Datta (Charity) and Dayadhvam (Compassion) and the state of mind that follows obedience to the commands as indicated by the blessing Shanti, Shanti, Shanti — the peace that passes understanding.

                                 The Waste Land ends in Sanskrit: “Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. / Shantih shantih shantih” (WL 433–44). “Datta.Dayadhvam. Damyata” reprises the legend of the thunder and its splitting of “DA” into “Give sympathise, control” (CP 75), while, as Eliot explains in his note on the poem’s final line, “Repeated as here, [shantih is] a formal ending to an Upanishad” (CP 76). “Shantih” is also used to close many mantras, which means that The Waste Land ends not just with words written on the page but with a sacred chant. In her elegant analysis of the end of the poem, Kearns observes:

As mantra, shantih conveys …

 the peace inherent in its inner sound….

As a closing prayer, shantih makes of

 what comes before it a communal as 

well as a private utterance….

And as the “formal ending of an Upanishad” it revises

the whole poem from a statement of 

modern malaise into a sacred and prophetic discourse. (228).

                            This retroactive revision of the poem into “sacred and prophetic discourse” is not, of course, the only moment when Eliot suggests a way to read the whole.

                              He began The Waste Land, after all, with an invitation to read it as the script for an interment: the Part I title, “The Burial of the Dead,” is taken from the section in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer that supplies the liturgy for ushering a corpse from churchyard to graveyard. Nearly every literary source Eliot cites in the poem may be understood as suggesting a possible recasting of the whole poem: burial rite, revenge play, river song, fertility ritual, prophecy, and prayer are just a few of the available reconstructions.

WORDS - 2000