I'm in the waste land again. I use this blog during paper writing to help me sort through how I really feel. Sometimes it just doesn't come out in a formal paper until it has come out right here.
I've always loved Elliot, always found it to be some of the most beautiful and comforting writing i could read. If you know me then you've heard me give this speech before. Elliot speaks to me in a number of ways. The first was the way in which he freed up my perception of poetry. Before I read him I read a great deal of Tennyson and was more used to the idea of a poem having structure and almost a sing-song rhyme. Elliot's poetry slapped me in the face because i FELT the words exactly as he said them. The would dip and dive and stop just at the right moments, paying no attention whatsoever to what i thought a poem should do.
The second thing is the feeling of absolutely loneliness and separation Elliot's poems have. Particularly Prufrock and the Waste Land. I think this loneliness and separation from the world is always there. We have a difficult time acknowledging it sometimes, but there's great freedom in it. For me it is like the last lines in the musical Les Miserables (yes, i know it's a book but these lines are from the Musical)
do you hear the people sing?
lost in the valley of the night
it is the music of a people
who are climbing to the light
for the wretched of the earth
there is a flame that never dies
even the darkest night will end
and the sun will rise.
they will live again in freedom
in the garden of the LORD
they will walk behind the ploughshare
they will put away the sword
the chain will be broken and all men will have their reward.
It is a blessed thing to have the freedom of seeing that we are all Les Miserables. That on this earth, peace may not come, the right may not ever prevail and despite our best efforts the innocent will die. But for the "wretched of the earth" this suffering is not the end, there is no meaning in it, other than the meaning that this world cannot possibly be what life is really about. that we are pilgrims in this waste land, we do not belong to it.
I've always loved Elliot, always found it to be some of the most beautiful and comforting writing i could read. If you know me then you've heard me give this speech before. Elliot speaks to me in a number of ways. The first was the way in which he freed up my perception of poetry. Before I read him I read a great deal of Tennyson and was more used to the idea of a poem having structure and almost a sing-song rhyme. Elliot's poetry slapped me in the face because i FELT the words exactly as he said them. The would dip and dive and stop just at the right moments, paying no attention whatsoever to what i thought a poem should do.
The second thing is the feeling of absolutely loneliness and separation Elliot's poems have. Particularly Prufrock and the Waste Land. I think this loneliness and separation from the world is always there. We have a difficult time acknowledging it sometimes, but there's great freedom in it. For me it is like the last lines in the musical Les Miserables (yes, i know it's a book but these lines are from the Musical)
do you hear the people sing?
lost in the valley of the night
it is the music of a people
who are climbing to the light
for the wretched of the earth
there is a flame that never dies
even the darkest night will end
and the sun will rise.
they will live again in freedom
in the garden of the LORD
they will walk behind the ploughshare
they will put away the sword
the chain will be broken and all men will have their reward.
It is a blessed thing to have the freedom of seeing that we are all Les Miserables. That on this earth, peace may not come, the right may not ever prevail and despite our best efforts the innocent will die. But for the "wretched of the earth" this suffering is not the end, there is no meaning in it, other than the meaning that this world cannot possibly be what life is really about. that we are pilgrims in this waste land, we do not belong to it.
I posted on samantha's:)
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