Rebirth

In Eliot's "The Waste Land," he sets the whole mood for his collection by opening with "April is the cruellest month . . . ." It is very evident that Eliot sees the corruption and brokenness in the world. I like it. As he progresses through, I find it harder to follow his thoughts. They seem broken; maybe that is his point, too.

Death (the state and not the process) is certainly a recurring idea in Eliot's writing. As he nears the fifth section, he speaks of the thunder. I cannot quite figure out his meaning here, but the sterility of the thunder may refer to the silence of the gods or a deity. He may be referring to either a post-violence silence void of life due to warring, or a slow, agonizing death brought on by a lack of life from a silent god. Either way, the lack of water symbolizes a lack of life.

He also begins on a mountain that reminds me of a hopeless version of Dante's Purgatorio: a lack of relief, slowly dying with merely a little patience, a mysterious figure up the road.

Also, I wonder whether or not Eliot liked Poe's writing. They remind me of one another, although merely in content and not form.

Ad augusta per angusta,

Will

Commented on Cheyenne's "Secularized Biblical faith"