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| Dr. Brian Mendonca presents his paper on T.S. Eliot. |
The value of a work of art or literature is its endurance over time. T.S. Eliot’s epic poem The Waste Land (1922) no doubt mirrored various themes unique to its day. However, the mystique of the work lies in its baffling allusions and twists of subject matter. This aporia enables us to enter the text at will, destabilize it, dismantle it, and ‘rearrange’ the images to articulate a different narrative in time and space.
In so doing this inquiry tries to wrest the text from its European moorings and instead argues that it is the Ur-narrative of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the referencing of 22 churches in London, one hastens to say in 2022 that the churches may be seen as cyphers in a landscape, where anyone can substitute the icons with others which they are more familiar with.
The structure of the poem and its division into five parts may be read as different phases of the pandemic. ‘Burial of the Dead’ could refer to the burial of the dead during COVID; ‘A Game of Chess’ may be seen as the many indoor games we played during lockdown or quarantine; ‘The Fire Sermon’ dwells on the youthfulness and energy which people struggled to retain during the pandemic; ‘Death by Water’ is a reflection on age and youth; ‘What the Thunder Said’ is India’s message to the world not only in time of COVID but in all circumstances.
Keywords: Aporia, Death, Fredric Jameson, Pandemic, T.S. Eliot
22nd International Conference of the Society for the study of Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World (MELOW) on ‘One Hundred Years of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.’ ICG, Dona Paula, Goa. 23-25 September 2022. Pic taken on 24/9/22.
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