CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN INDIA (ISSN 2231-2137): VOL. 5: ISSUE: 2
LITERARY GUERNICA : T.S ELIOT’S THE WASTE LAND
Nirmal.A.R, Kamal, Kannamba, Varkala PO Trivandrum, Kerala
Abstract: The Waste Land of T.S Eliot, published in 1922 is one of the most celebrated poems of 20th century. Considered as
an important text in modern poetry, it captures the collective consciousness and disillusionment of the post world war age. Poet
runs a scavenger hunt among the ruins of the war frantically searching for a source of salvation. It is a heap of broken images
deliberately devoid of a plot or conscious development of an idea. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) on the other hand is a painting
that depicts the terrors of the Spanish civil war. It is artist’s response to the bombing of Guernica, a village in northern spain by
German and Italian War Planes. Though it is inspired by a specific event any obvious reference to it is avoided thereby making it
a statement against war and oppression in general.
These two masterpieces remain cultural icons which keeps reminding us about the violence we are capable of inflicting
ourselves. This essay traces the similarity in theme and treatment of these two great artistic accomplishments under different heads
while discussing how they transcend the limitations of time and space though they are very much the product of their times.
Key words: Modernist poetry, Spanish Civil War, Guernica, Broken images, Collective human consciousness, Modern Art.
obvious reference to it is avoided thereby making it a
statement against war and oppression in general.
These two masterpieces remain cultural icons
which keeps reminding us about the violence we are
capable of inflicting ourselves. This essay traces the
similarity in theme and treatment of these two great
artistic accomplishments under different heads while
discussing how they transcend the limitations of time
and space though they are very much the product of
their times.
Landscape
The action of the poem happens in
wasteland-a rocky barren infertile land devoid of
vegetation or hope of a rain.It is to this land you are
invited to experience ‘fear in a handful of dust’.
Waste land is not the fictional representation of a
specific geographic area. It extends to accommodate
the whole globe which is turned into a sterile
landscape by the devastating war. The war-just like
the politicians who started it- promised the world a
better life but left behind only ruins and scars,
sapping our ideals that glued this world together.
Different nations who fought against each other in
the war, winners and loosers alike, shared this
T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land-The Literary Guernica
The Waste Land of T.S Eliot, published in
1922 is one of the most celebrated poems of 20th
century. Considered as an important text in modern
poetry, it captures the collective consciousness and
disillusionment of the post world war age. Poet runs
a scavenger hunt among the ruins of the war
frantically searching for a source of salvation. It is a
heap of broken images deliberately devoid of a plot
or conscious development of an idea.Taking cue
from the technique of films the poet captures various
scenes from different part of the globe depicting the
spiritual barrenness and the inertia that has engulfed
the era.Each image dissolve into another like in a
film screen creating an experience of a disturbing
juxtaposition in the reader. Thus in content and
treatment it reminds us of the gloomy and divided
world it sprang from.
Pablo Picasso’s Gurnica (1937) is a painting
that depicts the terrors of the Spanish civil war. It is
artist’s response to the bombing of Guernica, a
village in northern spain by German and Italian War
Planes. Though it is inspired by a specific event any
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CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN INDIA (ISSN 2231-2137): VOL. 5: ISSUE: 2
despair. They lost their soul and became hollow men
who inhabited this dead land covered in forgetful
snow.Waste land is also the valley of drybones of
Ezekiel, Baudlelire’s Unreal city, Limbo of Dante and
the London covered in brown fog as described by
Dickens. Waste land stretches to encompass
different countries and shifts effortlessly into the
past and comes to stand for the spiritual barrenness
and hopelessness of humanity irrespective of time
and space.Action in Guernica takes place inside a
three dimensional room. It has got a naked bulb in
the top towards the centre, much like the bulb in the
torturers room. The constrains of the room
maximizes the effect of terror reminding us of the
concentration camps. The bulb in the centre looks
very much like the sun, there by contracting the
whole world to fit inside the room.
The wasteland and the room give a structure
to the suffering of the humanity arranging it as an
observable phenomena occurring in a definable
premise.
Spectator
In The Waste Land the character Tiresias is
depicted as the spectator of this panorama of great
human suffering.He is only a passive observer,not an
active contributor. He sits on the banks of Thames
fishing among the ruins singing a bawdy song.He is
blind but claims to possess an eye which could look
into the future.Presented as an old man with female
breasts he transcends the boundaries of gender and
time to symbolize the collective human
consciousness. All the characters melt into him.So he
can be called an observer of his own experience.For
a poem with the scope of The Waste Land such a
protagonist is needed who cuts across all kinds of
boundaries to become a uniting factor of it.The
presence of a spectator enables us to see the action in
the poem in relation to the collective human
consciousness.In a way he is also the representative
of the poet and his craft.Poet observes the scenes of
suffering around him residing determinedly away
from it fishing for the best images to convey the
terror to the readers.In Guernica we find a terrorized
spectator on the top.She seems to have floated into
the room through the window. This ghost like quality
literally keeps her aloof from the suffering which she
observes below her.She holds a lamp against the
terrorizing single bulb and reveals the terrors of the
room to us.She stands for Picasso and the lamp she
holds symbolizes his craft.
Imagery
On the left corner of Guernica we find a lady
with the dead body of her chid on her lap. Looking
over her is a bull, a symbol of the Spanish spirit.A
horse whose belly is a pierced by a sharp object and a
dead soldier under it is drawn towards the middle of
the picture.On the hand of the soldier is a broken
sword with a flower coming out of it. A panic
stricken woman takes measured steps towards the
center eyeing the hanging bulb on the top anxiously.
The bulb is at once the a symbol of oppression and
hope. It looks like the single bulb of a torture room
while radiating rays like the sun.The brilliance of the
bulb is pictured in close proximity of the hand held
lamp of the observing lady.She floats into the room
signaling hope and the possibility of a new world.
This juxtaposition of fragmented images is presented
within the premise of a three dimensional room
which is symbolic of the world that we live in. While
Guernica deals with images that show the violence
and bloodshed associated with war in close
proximity, wasteland selects and presents images
from different parts of the world depicting the
gloom and hopelessness of the world the war has left
behind. The images in waste land denote not a
positive selection of evil but a general lethargy that
has enveloped this world like a fog. Several images
and sometimes whole scenes are taken from the
everyday lives of people depicting the hollowness of
their existence in relation with the vegetation myth of
Holy Grail legend. The central image used is an
infertile waste land which corresponds to the
spiritual barrenness of the age. The image of
blossoming lilacs out of the dead land is as painful as
the flower that sprouted from the broken sword of
the banished soldier.Even the memories of the good
old days are unbearable in the divided world. Many
art critics have found a certain rebelliousness against
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oppression in the body postures depicted in
Guernica.Unlike it Waste land depicts lost souls who
are reconciled to their gloomy fate. The live a death
in life from which death proper would be an escape.
Structure
The treatment of the theme by Guernica and
The Waste Land mark a radical change from
convention.
Both of them present disturbing broken
images which restrict the smooth flow of an idea.As
artists Pablo Picasso and T.S Eliot believe that war
has undone the glue of ideals that held this world
together and we are left with a divided world in
which things fall apart. They argue that this world
can be only understood as a heap of broken images
.The world they have to present is not symmetrical
or even aesthetical. The artist must therefore become
more comprehensive,more allusive and more indirect
inorder to represent it through his art. Waste land
true to this idea, does not conform to any particular
rhyme scheme or uniform structure. It employes only
partial rhyme schemes and occasional burst of
structure. The inclusion of foreign languages
complicates the matters further. The first part of the
poem employs dramatic monologues of no less than
four persons.In the second section the beginning
part is mostly in blank verse and with out warning
blank verse is thrown out to depict the bar room
chat of cockney ladies. T.S Eliot here challenges the
notion that spoken English resembles blank
verse.Conrad Aiken has commented that The Waste
Land must be taken as a brilliant kaleidoscopic
confusion,a series of sharp, discrete, slightly related
perceptions and feelings dramatically and lyrically
presented and violently juxtaposed, so as to give us
an impression of an intensively modern literary
consciousness. In this way the two artists uses a
radically different structure for their masterpieces
which is realistically ugly and truthful to the emotion
that triggered its creation.
Salvation
T.S Eliot presents a dark infertile barren land
inhabited by hollow men sapped of ideals. The Waste
Land pictures post war Europe and gives expression
to the disillusionment of the generation.They took
part in the war thinking it would bring about peace
and justice. War left only ruins and shattered
hopes.In one way it corresponds to a historical
situation while seen on the other it stands for the
eternal problems that torment the human soul. Being
a philosopher at heart Eliot believes the path to
salvation ultimately lies in the only centre that still
exists- scriptures and philosophy along with the
myths that spring from it.
The central myth used in The Waste Land is
that of the vegetation myth of Holy Grail
legend.Waste Land is depicted as an infertile land for
which a down pour would be the only hope of
salvation.The thunder sound in the final section
foresee a coming rain while the Sanskrit chant of
‘Shantih Shantih Shantih’ is seen by some as the
sound of the dripping rain.This myth is developed in
association with the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ.These myths are questioned by the poet
himself.The vegetation myth is contrasted with the
story of Queen Elizabeth whose suppression of
sexuality contributed to the peace of the land.The
concept of resurrection is also questioned in the
section of death by water. Here sea have picked the
body of Phlebas the Phoenician offering no hope for
resurrection or transfiguration.Poet finally sees a
possibility of salvation in the ideals of Datta,
Dayadhvam, Damya-to give,to sympathize and be
controlled. T.S Eliot is here proposing certain ideals
humankind must adhere to if there should be any
hope of rescue.He points to the need of believing in
and striving for certain ideals that are timeless in
order to dig us out of this predicament. Guernica,
however violent the painting may be, also encloses
certain provisions for salvation with in it. Behind the
bull on the left side we can see a dove with olive
leaves engraved on the stone.Dove with the olive leaf
is the universal symbol of peace and it acts as an ideal
we should work for.
The room proposes a possibility of the outer
world outside this violence. The rays of that outer
world enter the terror scene through the lone
window and the crack on the wall. Guernica
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promises a peacefull world,however distant it might
seen if only as a race we could adhere to certain
timeless principles.
The Waste land by T.S Eliot and Guernica by
Pablo Picasso are artistic responses to the violence
that humans are capable of inflicting themselves.
They have gone beyond conventions to present the
fragmented world the violence has left using a
juxtaposition of images that consciously rule out any
interpretation. They not only depict the real world in
all its ugliness but also offer a way out-adherence to
certain timeless principles. In this way they extend
their scope well beyond the historical context they
are depicting and comes to portray the eternal
struggle of human soul.
Works cited:
1. Moody, David.The Cambridge Companion to T.S Eliot. London: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Print.
2. Smith Jr, Grover.T.S Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A study in sources and meaning. New York: The University
of Chicago Press, 1958.Print.
3. Rampal, D.K. Eliot at 100 Years. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2003.Print.
4. Sarkar, Sunil Kumar.T.S Eliot : Poetry Plays and Prose. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2000.Print
5. Sylvester, David. About Modern Art. London: Chatto and Windus, 1996.Print.
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