The regeneration in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”
I. The burial of the dead
1. April is the cruellest month, breeding
2. Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
3. Memory and desire, stirring
4. Dull roots with spring rain.
5. Winter kept us warm, covering
6. Earth in forgetful snow. feeding
7. A little life with dried tubers.
[...]
8. Unreal City,
9. Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
10. A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
11. I had not thought death had undone so many.
12. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
13. And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
14. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
15. To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
16. With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
17. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying: Stetson!
18. 'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
19. 'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
20. 'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
21. 'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
22. 'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
23. 'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
24. 'You! hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frère!'
The whole passage is characterized by examples of nature that is coming back to life due to the incoming spring. Here we find a subverted description of spring and winter. In fact “April is the cruellest month” while “Winter kept us warm”. This is due to the fact that in the life-style of modern society for anyone it is much better to forget all the delusions and the exploitations, pains and suffering. This forgetting is only allowed in winter when reality is covered by “forgetful snow”. But in this way of being man it is unable to live properly. Life is in fact is characterized by incommunicability, the only partial messages that we can communicate each other are just “Sights, short and infrequent”. Everyone just fixes “his eyes before his feet” completely entrapped in his thoughts. We need to die, we need to kill this old way of being and be reborn, and this new meaning of life and death is also the central theme of the whole poem. In this way man can get out of his paralysis taking possess of his relationships, but there is a problem: this change implies suffering. But, following the example of the Sybil, we can easily understand that it is much better to accept a little pain than live forever in forgetfulness. The title recalls both the death and resurrection of Jesus and ancient rituals, such as the Egyptian ritual of Osiris in spring, also remembered in line 22 (“the Dog”). According to this last ritual any year Sirius the dog star, that appears at dawn during summer soltice when Nile begins to rise, represents Osiris’ lover Isis, who come to wake up Osiris from the dead, and their sexual union ensured the fertility of the land. In line 22 the dog, symbol of regeneration, needs to be kept “far hence”. Because it is as dangerous as april which breedes “Lilacs out of the dead land”. Eiot takes the Osiris’ myth from J. Frazer’s “The Golden Bought” (1890). Frazer’s work consists in a comparative study in folklore and magic, rites,superstition, early rituals by one side and religion, belief, taboos and Christian rituals on the other side. He referred about the myths of Adonis of Babylon, Attis of the Roman Empire, Osiris of the Ancient Egypt and their goddess lovers Ishtar, Cybele and Isis. All of the first three are fertility gods, but all of them are mortal. For various reasons they all get killed and descend into the underworld. Any goddess has to go down to rescue his lover, and this explains winter, before bringing him back, which explains spring. Any of these cultures performed ceremonies which acted out the death and resurrection of the god. Followers of Adonis, for example, made an effigy of him, dressed it as a corpse, held a funeral and threw it in the sea: but next day it was rediscovered and resurrected. In the other religions a similar effigy was buried in the earth, then brought out again, or hung from a tree and then revived. All these myths have great points in common with Jesus Christ’s story: an angry god who needs to be propitiated, a man who is also a god, who is sacrificed, buried but comes back from the dead. Eliot refers to another book too: it’s J.L. Weston’s “From Ritual to Romance” (1920). In this book she explores the origins of the Grail legend, arguing that it dates back to a primitive vegetation cult and only later has been shaped by Celtic and Christian lore. To prove her thesis, Ms Weston unifies folkloric and Christian elements by using documents to prove the parallels existing between each and every feature of the legend. In particular she underlines the meaning of the symbols of the cult: the cup, that was the female symbol now represents the grail, and the grail means coming back to life for the sexual maimed king, as woman has the gift to give life; the sword that in the primitive cult was the male symbol, now is the instrument of the knight to reach his aim that is the regeneration of his king and consequeltly of his land; the fisher king contains the word “fish” that is strictly linked with the early Christian church and with some important miracles. So Eliot has taken much from Frazer’s and Weston’s work, but he has charged their studies and theories with a more deep meaning: the need of solidariety (“mon semblable, - mon frère!”) and the need of courage to “drink life to the lees” and overcome death throught interior regeneration.