i, tiresias

(Feat. Lia Williams, Ted Hughes, Thomas Stearns Eliot)

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objective correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. ― T.S. Eliot (Ft. J.W.Goethe, Mr. J. M. Robertson', Professor Stoll, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Kyd & William Shakespeare) – Hamlet and His Problems How does  The Waste Land embody an objective correlate? Or, put another way, what set(s) of objects within the poem effect emotions from a reader? Half the intrigue of the work seems to stem from the ambiguity behind such an answer.

(French, for the many-sided madnesses) "You could say that here and elsewhere Shakespeare and literary tradition in general stand in for sacred texts that would offer some kind of guide to action and some source of meaning."

The relevance of this quoted epistolary excerpt to the overall criticism (and meta-criticism) of The Waste Land  is marginal at best, and the young future president doesn't mention Tiresias even once.

william james' ingersoll lecture from 1898

I collect throughout this site annotations and creative inspirations from a variety of sources that treat directly with Eliot's annotations of his own work, not to mention a myriad of outside annotations as well. Below, find the complete breakdown of works I've drawn from in creating this resource, if not explicitly linked in specific posts elsewhere. Anderson, Tyler E. "Examining Early and Recent Criticism of The Waste Land: A Reassessment." (2010). University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Danis, George. “The World of Eliot’s Waste Land”. WR: Journal of the Arts & Sciences Writing Program, Issue 4 (2011-2012). Boston University Press. Frank, Joseph. “Spatial Form in Modern Literature: An Essay in Two Parts”. The Sewanee Review, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Spring, 1945), pp. 221-240. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.  Kaiser, Jo Ellen Green. “Disciplining The Waste Land, or How to Lead Critics into Temptation.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 44, no. 1, 1998, pp. 82...

Eliot sets out in this poem an epic journey of self-inquiry for a modern reader. The modern writer is the modern reader, of course; the expectations that Eliot as a standard-bearer puts forth for his audience is not only to understand a literary work, but to delve deep into the hydra of sources that rhizomatically compose the work, and take those factors into account when reading the poem. He breaches the ostensible threshold between inspiration and expression by placing the protagonist in the poet’s body, or otherwise merging their consciousnesses, then, turducken-esque, wrapping the whole package in the voice of Tiresias.