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I would like to take the opportunity here to briefly divulge some of the rich Catholic symbolism and the drastic significance of one of the most important works of poetic literature to come out of the 20th Century. While of course being vastly critiqued, studied, recited, and appreciated, T.S. Eliot’s seminal poem, “The Waste Land” remains drastically disregarded and misunderstood by so many. Whether because of its many highbrow references to a nearly forgotten literary tradition, its fragmented confusing structure, its rampant nonsense words and foreign-language phrases, or simply its overall modernist character, the poem is so often read (or not) in college and quickly forgotten by students who wish never to have to stomach it again and who wonder why it could possibly be considered so good.
“The Waste Land” certainly embraces modernist norms mostly in its form, however, the controlling idea of the poem is anything but modernist, for Eliot conveys a message that is not only traditional and rooted in the moral and religious norms of the past, but which also projects hope amid the depravity and hollowness of his wasteland. I would like to explore a particular motif, that of water, which Eliot employs beautifully to this effect in three particular contexts: Fertility, Death, and Rebirth.
Fertility and the Fisher King
Early in the poem, Eliot makes clear the age-old connection between fertility and water through his description of his arid waste land:
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water.
Without water in the wasteland, clearly there’s not a whole lot growing. Eliot’s treatment of water in connection to fertility does not end there, however, for it is also specifically linked to the crucial presence of the Fisher King throughout the poem.
Legends of the Fisher King, one of the central characters in the narrative of “The Waste Land”, date back to the late twelfth century, particularly in Chrétien de Troyes’ work Perceval. In this classic, as well as in others—Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, to name another—the Fisher King is the keeper of the Holy Grail and has suffered an incapacitating wound to the groin, which directly causes the destruction of his kingdom, making all the lands barren, essentially creating a wasteland. The unfortunate king spends his days seated, fishing in infertile waters. To restore life-giving waters and fertility to the land, a hero is needed to heal the Fisher King. Not only does Eliot’s title for his poem recall the wasteland of the Fisher King’s kingdom, but he also incorporates several allusions to the king, and at the end of the poem the Fisher King becomes the narrator, saying:
I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order?
The Fisher King inhabits a world similar to Eliot’s wasteland, where nothing grows and there is little hope for any saving waters, except for the possibility of some noble hero to come to his rescue.
Death
Death pervades the majority of “The Waste Land”, and it is directly tied to the motif of water. Firstly, water in Eliot’s wasteland is unsurprisingly capable of causing men to drown. As a sort of memento mori, Eliot urges the listener to “consider Phlebus” the Phoenician whose drowned body has been floating in the sea for a fortnight:
Phlebus the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and the loss. A current under the sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
Not only is water a direct cause of death, but Eliot also incorporates several instances where death occurs due to a lack of water. Eliot’s wasteland is not only infertile but is also a “dead land,” for things which ought to have vitality, such as trees and other vegetation, are dead, because of a lack of life-giving water. Eliot makes it clear that water is a principle of vegetative life, and without it, all is dead. On a symbolic level, this connection is particularly profound, for Eliot suggests that the people who inhabit his wasteland, representative of inter-war Europe, are likewise spiritually dead, unfulfilled, and purposeless. One of Eliot’s narrators says:
I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
The living dead of Eliot’s wasteland live hollow lives and they do not have any chance of redemption except in the hopes of some sort of saving waters, which will only come through Jesus Christ and the life-giving waters of baptism.
Rebirth into New Life
Now this is where things get really cool. The last element of Eliot’s rich water symbolism consists in its positive representative of life, specifically new life, or rebirth after death. Eliot pronounces the dire yearning for saving water in the wasteland:
If there were water And no rock If there were rock And also water And water A spring A pool among rock If there the sound of water only… But there is no water.
The speaker here yearns for water, but the source of this substance cannot be safely found in the world of the wasteland. It must come from outside. This outside source is Jesus Christ, who by virtue of his passion, death, and resurrection, lets forth the saving sacramental waters of baptism. Baptism gives mankind new life after being spiritually dead. Thus, Eliot’s references to the death of Phlebas takes on an entirely new level of meaning. When Eliot encourages the reader to “consider Phlebas,” he means this not only as a memento mori, but also as encouragement to die to oneself and to the world and succumb to the overpowering sacramental waters of baptism. Just as a hero is needed to heal the Fisher King and restore fertility to the wasteland, so too is Christ, the hero of mankind, needed to sacrifice himself for man’s spiritual regeneration. Without Christ’s redemptive sacrifice and the consequential flowing of the waters of baptism, the wasteland persists, and mankind remains in a state of hollowness, living as if dead.
The waters of baptism are the waters yearned for throughout all of history, even in ancient pagan cultures who esteemed water for its distinct role in the fertility of lands. For Eliot, the inter-war wasteland is particularly devoid of religious consciousness and faith, and he professes the need for a real spiritual rebirth in society through Christ’s saving waters.