Modern times

 Charles Chaplin (writer and director) Modern Times / 1936

This blog is part of our thinking activity. Here I write this blog frame study of the films screened in the class.

So much has been written about Charles Chaplin’s great 1936 film, Modern Times, that I should perhaps just express my admiration for this movie, which I revisited again the other day on the occasion of his birthday, and close my mouth to let the record stand. Anyone who knows me well, however, will understand that such a response would be impossible, seeming to me like an abandonment of my somewhat autobiographical representation of the cultural events of my lifetime. So, please forgive me if I repeat long repeated observations about Chaplin’s comic masterpiece. I might, however, have one insight that can help further appreciate the little tramp’s encounter with modern life.

     Let me begin where Chaplin’s film does: immediately after his inter-title statement somewhat ironically, it appears to me, declaring this film to represent a “story of individual enterprise, crusading in the pursuit of happiness”— before the director represents the factory workers on their way to work, through a rather obvious metaphor, as a group of sheep, in the centre of which is a single “black” one. The tramp is, obviously, the “black sheep,” as the Belgium directors Luc and Jean Pierre Dardennes pointed out in their commentary screened after the TCM showing. Yet, the first few scenes of Chaplin’s movie portray the tramp as a hard worker, mechanically tightening the bolts which move quickly along a conveyor belt in a mad attempt to keep up with the demands of the factory owner, not dissimilar to Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, Metropolis. Bravely, the tramp moves up and down the line, deflected, as usual, by his fellow workers and nature (in the forms of a bee, an itch) along with the intrusions of the foreman. Even during a few seconds of break, in which the tramp, completely caught up in his mechanistic task, literally spins off into space, he is rebuked by the factory owner, whose image is suddenly projected across a bathroom wall, to return to work. In Modern Times big brother has clearly made an early appearance, long before George Orwell’s 1949 book. There is no room for personal behaviour. The tramp as “factory worker” must suffer not only the abuse of his endlessly repetitive tasks, but the testing of a new feeding machine for factory employees, where he is literally spoon fed while entrapped with the machine’s embrace soup, diced cuts of meat (and, by accident, actual bolts), and, most ridiculously, cobs of corn on a never-ending rotisserie of insistent grinding across his mouth! Soon after, the “factory worker” must suffer the gigantic roulettes of the clogs and links of the machine which conveys the meaningless tools up to him.

      Is it any wonder that this well-intentioned, but tortured worker has, what Chaplin’s inter-titles describe as a “nervous breakdown,” a ridiculously funny series of balletic events in which he faces off with his fellow workers, using the machine that has tortured him, in turn, to torture them as well, alternating, well in advance of Harpo Marx’s antics, with chasing after any woman with buttons upon her dress in an attempt to “screw” them into place. In a sense, the innocent tramp has suddenly become, through the repetitiousness of his conveyor-belt acts, a kind of sexual maniac. Since his fellow employers have allowed themselves to become mere functionaries in the factory machine, the tramp, oil can in hand, deservedly treats them just as he might mechanical elements of the whole. His arrest represents a breakdown of the whole inhuman enterprise, which during his imprisonment, is completely closed down due to the Depression and worker strikes.

     These early scenes are among the most famous of the film, and seem to indicate that Chaplin’s work is primarily a statement of the inhumanity of new industrial usage as humans are transformed from individual artisans into mere mechanical robots much like the workers in the new Ford automobile plants. But Chaplin, one must always remember, is at heart a romantic, and despite his early statements about worker abuse issues Chaplin had explored and written about in the year just before the making of this film, as he travelled about Europe and met with legendary figures such as Mahatma Gandhi he presents the rest of his film very much in the context of the cultural romanticism of his earlier works.

      The Tramp may be an outsider, but he is, Chaplin reminds us, time and again, a citizen of the community who might, given a chance, be committed to the most bourgeois aspects of society if only given a chance. Although incarcerated in prison, the Tramp, as we know, is a complete innocent, even though he consumes a large salt-shaker full of cocaine, he ultimately saves the prison guards and officers from a group of escaping fellow-prisoners. His award for his acts, a lovely decorated prison cell, along with a radio and regular visitors, represents perhaps the most normative world in which he has ever existed. In a time of complete unemployment and brutal attacks on poverty-stricken individuals portrayed so vividly through the experiences of the homeless gamin, Paulette Godard the Tramp is protected, given special privileges he might never find on the outside. Despite his constant outsider designation, Charlie is happiest on the insides of society. He would be a perfectly moral and upright member of society, as I previously argued, if he was only allowed.

      In the deepest sense, this is the problem, always, with Chaplin’s works. The hero, finally, is less a rebel than a conservative figure who is simply projected often quite literally through accidental movements through space into outsider positions. The moment he is given pardon and freed from jail, an accidental drop of a red flag from a rig, the Tramp’s attempt to return it, and a group of radical strikers which, without even comprehending, he leads into action results in another arrest, this time for his being a radical!

     Freed again, and after a disastrously short-lived job as a ship-builder’s assistant, the Tramp is literally felled by the young gamin, who has stolen a loaf of bread. As always, the Romantic Chaplin figure attempts to protect her by claiming he is the thief, but societal forces, brutally un-Romantic, foil him, as they re-arrest the nearly starved girl. It is finally at this point that the Tramp seems to realise that his problem lies in his good intentions, as he determines to taste nearly every dish a nearby café offers, without paying. It is important, it seems to me, that so much of this film is centred simply upon the possibility of being unable to eat, as the Dardennes brothers clearly described it. If the Tramp is often impervious to the unpredictable events with which society throws at him, he is, almost always, hungry, desperate to fulfil a hunger that is not only of the stomach but involves his needs of love and societal fulfilment!    

      Hoping to be re-arrested for his unpaid gluttony, he is again foiled by the reappearance in the police van of the beautiful Gamin. Again, quite by accident, they van is overturned, with the couple escaping. He insists that she go on without him, that she run from the imprisonment which he has sought. But again, another first in the Tramp’s life, everything changes, as she motions him to escape with her. Suddenly, the loner, the black sheep, is no longer alone.

      The rest of the film, for the first time in Chaplin’s work, tells the tale of two outsider individuals, not merely one. Together, they even dream together about a bourgeoisie life: imagining themselves intertwined in what later might be described as The American Dream, in a small suburban house. If the Tramp’s vision is highly paradisiacal a tree of knowledge at his doorstep, a cow hobbling alongside the house to provide fresh milk it is also an absurdly preposterous world, realised in reality by a shanty town house, where floorboards break under broken-down chairs and tables, and where the roof is held up by a utensil the might have been used to help clean it. Whatever this couple might aspire to is represented through the Tramp’s and the Gamin’s night in the apotheosis of any consumer’s delight where they are locked in a large metropolitan Department Store where the Tramp works briefly as a night watchman. There, once more, they can eat, play another of Chaplin’s major tropes in the toy department, and sleep wondrously in the bedroom display, if only temporarily. A group of unemployed workers, one having been a torturous partner of the Tramp’s factory working days, attempt to rob the store, admitting, finally, that they are not thieves but simply hungry men.

      Again arrested, Charlie is released once more to find that the Gamin has obtained a job as a dancer in a local café. She helps him get a job as a waiter and singer. We know in advance how it will end. The tramp is an absolutely resolute waiter, but given his needed entries in and out of the kitchen and the dancing activities of the joint, he can never deliver up anything that he has promised, including a much requested duck.

     So, once more, he fails. Except here a kind of miracle happens. Completely unable to remember the lyrics to the song he is supposed to sing, the Tramp is helped out by his faithful friend, the Gamin, as she writes them out upon his cuffs. The comic figure is once more foiled as in his marvellously manic dance preceding his song. The cuffs go flying off his coat. But here, suddenly, a miracle happens: encouraged by his “lover” (Chaplin secretly married Godard the very same year) as he sings out, for the first time allowing his audience to hear his voice French composer Léo Daniderff’s comic song, Je cherche après Titine performed, however, in complete gibberish, nonsensical words from Italian and French that, nonetheless, convey its sexual themes. Here Chaplin is absolutely brilliant, both in his mime-like performance, his absurd singing, and his absolutely brilliant dance-like movements! For the first time in this film, as the Dardennes stated, he is in control; he has found his true home: the theatre the world of the film that has previously defined the Tramp’s existence.

      As fate would have it, however, the police catch up with the vagabond Gamin, and the Tramp, finally committed to a new world, must suddenly attempt to protect her, sending the two on another run from societal order away from the police who represent that order. In another on-the-road sequence, the two sit side by side, in dismay, the Gamin finally admitting despite her previously energised resistance of all authority complete despair. What’s the use of going on, she proclaims. But the “black sheep,” a member of the herd nonetheless, speaks out from the cultural refrains of the period: “Buck up, put on a smile,” as the two go trudging down the highway the Tramp, for the first time engaged with another into the sunset, a conformist unable to find a society to which he can conform!

       It is quite obviously the end of the Tramp, a man who has found conformity outside of the very society in which he seeks to be part of, an outsider who has, nevertheless, found an inner contentment with those who have kept him so isolated. Sadly, it is a bit like a heavily bullied man finding peace with those who have perversely attacked him again and again, somewhat like a beaten wife coming home to her husband’s drunken fists. I now think Chaplin meant the first words of his film seriously, even if I can never comprehend how his trek down the California highway represents anything near to “the pursuit of happiness.”

    Chaplin’s later paternity suits with actress Joan Barry, and the final attacks by US authorities for his supposed Communist involvement, forced him to leave the US, suggesting what his perceptive 1936 film had already predicted. Smile as you might, there was still a white line dividing that highway, which symbolised the strict divides of American society.

Traditional and Individual Talent

 “TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT”

T.s.Eliot’s “tradition and individual talent” was published in 1919 in the egoist – the times literary supplement. Later, the essay was published in the sacred wood: essays on poetry and criticism in 1920/2. This essay is described by David lodge as the most celebrated critical essay in English of the 20th century. The essay is divided into three main sections:

 (1) The first gives us Eliot’s concept of tradition.

(2) The second exemplifies his theory of depersonalization and poetry.

(3) The third part concludes the debate by saying that the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things.

(Part-1)

·        IN ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM “TRADITION” IS USED AS A PHRASE OF CENSURE:-

In English literature and criticism we rarely come across passages illustrative of the right use due emphasis on the term “tradition”, from time to time we apply the word in expressing our grief for its absence. We cannot make a reference to “the tradition” or to “a tradition”; at most, we use the adjective in saying that the poetry of so and so is “tradition” or even “too traditional”. The word appears rarely and when it does appear, it is used as a phrase of censure.

In English criticism, according to Eliot, we have a deplorable lack of that critical insight which views a particular literary work or a writer in the context of a wider literary tradition. The English literary critic does not give due weight and consideration to tradition in evaluating the writers of the past and in appreciating the poets of the present. He uses “tradition” in a derogatory sense.

·         CRITICISM IS INDISPENSABLE FOR CREATIVE ACTIVITY:-

The critical activity paves the way for, sustains and guides the creative activity. Just as the creative genius of each nation possesses some distinguishing. Traits, certain aptitudes and inclinations, being the expression of that nation’s life: in the same way each nation, each race has certain distinguishing habits of mind reflected in critical activity. And just as it is not easy for a nation to acquire a self-awareness of the defects and limitations of its creative habits of mind, in the same way it is difficult for a nation to cultivate a consciousness of the shortcomings of its critical habits of mind. The English nation in Eliot’s opinion suffers from a similar unawareness of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical genius. The English are familiar with the critical writing in French often leads an Englishman to believe that the French people are more critical, and consequently less spontaneous. Eliot strives to dispel this fallacy by emphasising the importance of criticism which, according to him, is as indispensable to creative activity as breathing is to life. Criticism expresses our responses to a particular work of art: it expresses the feelings and emotions and intellectual reaction of a reader in relation to the book he reads.  

·        THE IMPORTANCE OF TRADITION TO INDIVIDUAL TALENT:-

Eliot says that the Englishmen have a tendency to insist, when they praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects of his work they try to find out what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of that man. They try to find out the difference of the port with his contemporaries and predecessors, especially with his immediate predecessors. They try to find something that can be separated in order to be enjoyed. But if we study the poet without bias or prejudice, we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead ports, his ancestors, assert their immortality forcefully and vigorously. We find the dead notes in the present poets not in their impressionable period of adolescence. But in the period of their full maturity. According to Eliot tradition and individual talent go together.

·        “TRADITION” DEFINED:-

Tradition is not the handling down or following the ways of the ancients blindly. It cannot be inherited. It can only be obtained with great labour. It involves a historical sense. Which enables a poet to perceive not only the pastness of the past but of its presentness . A creative artist, though he lives in a particular milieu, does not work merely with his own generation in view.

He does not take his own age, or the literature of that period only as a separate identity. But acts with the conviction that in general the whole literature of the continent from the classical age of the Greeks onwards and in particular the literature of his own country. Is to be taken as a harmonious whole. His own creative efforts are not    apart from it. But a part of it.

·         THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIP AND INTERDEPENDENCE OF THE PAST AND PRESENT:-

No poet or artist of any kind has his full meaning and significance alone. His importance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his kinship with the poets and artists of the past generations, you cannot value him alone; you must set him for contrast and comparison, among the poets and writers of the past. This, to Eliot, is a principle of aesthetic, and not merely of historical criticism. The necessity for the individual talent to conform to the tradition is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. “The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives for order to persist after the supervention  of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order in the form of European of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present it directed by the past.”

·         THE RELATIONSHIP OF A POET’S WORK TO THE GREAT WORKS OF THE PAST:-

The poet, who understands the presentness of the past, also understands his responsibilities and difficulties as an artist. Such an artist will fully realise that he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. In saying that an artist is finally to be judged by the standards of the past. Eliot does not imply that he is to be pronounced better or worse than the previous poets or that the standards prescribed by the previous critics are to be applied in judging their works.

·         LITERATURE AS A CONTINUITY:-

Eliot points out a significant difference between the past and the present. The difference is that “the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show” Eliot covers the possible objection that his doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition and that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. He says that there is a distinction between knowledge and pedantry. “Some can absorb knowledge; the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career”. He believes that it is the awareness of tradition that sharpens the sensibility. Which has a vital part to play in the process of poetic creation.

(Part-2)

He starts the second part of his essay with: “honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry”.

The artist or the poet adopts the process of depersonalization, which is “a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality,” there still remain to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to sense of tradition.

·        THE PROCESS OF DEPERSONALISATION :-

Eliot explains this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition by comparing it to a chemical process – the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide. The analogy is that of the catalyst. He sys: “when the two gases previously mentioned (oxygen and sulphur dioxide) are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum they form sulphurous if the platinum is present: nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum. And the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.

·         EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS:-

The elements of the experience of the poet are of two kinds-emotions and feelings. They are the element which entering the presence of the poet’s mind and acting as a catalyst, go to the making of a work of art, the final effect produced by a work of art may be formed out of several emotions into one, it may be formed out of a singly emotion or out of the feeling invoked in the poet by various words and images. It is also possible that it may be composed of feeling alone, without using any emotions. Thus the poet’s mind is a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feeling, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

“……as one of those

Who o’er Verona’s champion try their speed

For the green mantle; and of them he seems,

Not he who loses, but who gains the prize.”

It is in this image, according to Eliot, that Dante gives the feeling attached to it. It cannot be said that the poet arrived at it all of a sudden. No can be regarded as simply developing out of the preceding lines. This “feeling” remained in suspension in Dante’s mind till the preceding complex details of the canto prepared an apt combination for this feeling to appear.

·         THE INTENSITY OF THE ARTISTIC PROCESS:-

Eliot believes that the greatness of a poem does not depend on the greatness or the intensity of the emotions but on the intensity of the artistic process e.g. in Agamemnon the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist himself. “But the difference between art and the event is always absolute”, “the ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly perhaps because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring together.”

Eliot says that “the poet has not a “personality” to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.”

(PART – 3)

In the last section of “tradition and the individual talent” Eliot says that the poet’s sense of tradition and the impersonality of poetry are complementary things. He tries to divert the interest from the poet to the poetry for it would lead to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good or bad. He says that “very few know when there is an expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. and he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living” a constant and continual awareness of tradition is very necessary for the port.

·         ELIOT AND NEW CRITICISM:-

Eliot inspired and informed the movement of new criticism. This is somewhat ironic, since he later criticised their excruciatingly detailed analysis of texts. Yet, he does share with them the same focus on the aesthetic and stylistic qualities of poetry, rather than on its ideological content. The new critics resemble Eliot in their close analysis of particular passages and poems.

·         CRITICISM OF ELIOT :-

Eliot’s theory of literary tradition has been criticised for its limited definition of what constitutes the canon of that tradition. He assumes the authority to choose what represents great poetry, and his choices have been criticised on several fronts, for examples, Harold bloom disagrees with Eliot’s condescension of romantic poetry, which, in the metaphysical poets (1921) he criticised for its “dissociation of sensibility.” Moreover, many believe Eliot’s discussion of the literary tradition as the “mind of Europe '' reeks of euro-centrism. He does not account for a non-masculine tradition. As such, his notion of tradition stands at odds with feminist, postcolonial and minority theories. Kenyan author James Ngugi advocated a commitment to nation works. Which speaks to one’s own culture, as compared to deferring to an arbitrary notion of literary excellence. As such, he implicitly attacks Eliot’s subjective criterion in choosing an elite body of literary works. Post-colonial critic chinua achebe also challenges Eliot, since he argues against deferring to those writers, including  Conrad, who have been deemed great, but only represent a specific cultural perspective.

Harold Bloom presents a conception of tradition that differs from that of Eliot. Whereas Eliot believes that the great poet is faithful to his predecessors and evolves in a concordant manner, Bloom envisions the “strong port”to engage in a much more aggressive and tumultuous rebellion against tradition.

In 1964, his last year, Eliot published in a reprint of the use of poetry and use of criticism, a series of lectures he gave at Harvard university in 1932 and 1933, a new preface in which he called “tradition and the individual talent” the most juvenile of his essays.

Existentialism

     Existentialism

This blog is part of my Academic activity on unit of Existentialism Task.

• What is Existentialism?

Existentialism – A Definition

Existentialism in the broader sense is a 20th century philosophy that is centred upon the analysis of existence and of the way humans find themselves existing in the world. The notion is that humans exist first and then each individual spends a lifetime changing their essence or nature.

In simpler terms, existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility. The belief is that people are searching to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook. And personal choices become unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth. An existentialist believes that a person should be forced to choose and be responsible without the help of laws, ethnic rules, or traditions. 

(1) Existentialism is focuses on individuality, passion and freedom. Views of Albert Camus on believing in God being a part of community.

 

(2) Idea of Absurd is connected with myth of Sisyphus. Uselessness of suffering and repetition of same is an absurd reasoning. Other thing is that there is truly serious problem and that is Philosophical suicide. An elegant suicide is the ultimate work of art and as Camus says, “Suicide is an individual act.”

(3) The notion of philosophical suicide is that by this method people escape from the absurd. Absurd man know there is no space for hope.

A total absence of Hope ≠ Despair

A continual rejection ≠ Renunciation

Conscious dissatisfaction ≠ Immature Unrest

In addition Camus view that, “I am taking the liberty at this point of calling the existential attitude philosophical suicide.”

Does not the failure reveal beyond any possible explanation and interpretation not the absence but the existence of transcendence?

Thus, absurd becomea God and that inability to understand becomes the existence that illuminates everything. Nothing logically prepares this reasoning.

Though, Reason is useless and there is ultimately nothing beyond reason.

Absurd +Faith = Escapism

Faith is the objective uncertainty with the repulsion of the absurd. For Existentialist negotiation is God.

    (4) Dadaism

1.Dadaism is quest for change. Every Dadaist question to every values. Creation is in the primary goal of Dadaism.

    (5) Existentialism a gloomy philosophy.

Despair, gloomy anxiety and absurd is life. What is meaning if life?

Search for truth or believing in God. It’s all that we are responsible for our choice, to our every decision.

   (6) What Existentialism is not ?

Not a philosophical system, is a best viewed as a philosophical movement. Origins of Existentialism is in 19th century Europe. Soren Kierkegaard(1813- 1855) Frederic Nietzsche( 1844 – 1900) Fyodor Dostoevsky (1021- 1881) are founding father of this movement.

- 20th century Existentialism became especially prominent in the mid 20th century, after world war 2.

- Existentialist are all concerned with the problem of living life as a human being.

- What is common about existentialism? Rejection of all encompassing system which propose to have definitive answers to the questions of meaning and purpose in life.

- What we need is Human Perspective  not a Divine perspective.

- Despair, anxiety and hopes is part of human life.

        Meaning of term .

- The essence of a substance can be seen as its necessary properties or characteristics which are required for the thing to be what it is.

- ‘Human existence precedes Essence’ – Jean Paul Sartre.

- Unlike inanimate matter and other animals, humans could choose whether or not to act in accordance with their nature.

- As an atheist Sartre did not believe humans were designed.

(6) Existentialism Vs. Nihilism

There is no meaning or purpose of life, no personal meaning(Nihilism)

One can create  their own personal/subjective meaning.

(7) Not believing in rule which made up. We can make up our rules by own.

(8) Two sides way of life, 1.Mind 2.Heart mind appeals to intelligent and heart has a widely evocative mytho-poetic side.

(9) What is life meaning? (This is central question) meaning is Religion, Artistic beauty or fighting for justice. Everything have essence including as certain set of core.

Which video I like most and why?

 Why I like existentialism & Everyday life.

In this video speaker talks about sides of life, honesty, holism, rebellious way of thinking and ten step existentialism, from that some of is really interesting like, 1.Inhabit the present moment

2. Learn to live with passion

3. Build responsible community

4. Remember that you’re born to a brilliant and terrifying universe.

5.You are human. Itself extraordinary thing.

• My Understanding of Existentialism.

• We are never no where

• We are always somewhere.

And consciousness of every moment itself good for personal morality and reason is that awakening makes our each act real. Make us to think about everything and one enjoy the life is in full after all Life is nothing until it is lived.

The Waste Land

 Introduction :-

This task was given by Dilip barad sir about 'The Waste Land'. 'The Waste Land' was written by Thomas Stearns Eliot OM. T. S. Eliot's landmark modernist poem The Waste Land was published in 1922. It was divided into five sections. 

 About the Author :-

                       

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, of an old New England family. He was educated at Harvard and did graduate work in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and Merton College, Oxford.

About the Poem :- 

                    

The Waste Land can be viewed as a poem about brokenness and loss, and Eliot's numerous allusions to the First World War suggest that the war played a significant part in bringing about this social, psychological, and emotional collapse.

Central Theme of Poem :-

Here are several themes, which can be observed;

· Death

· Rebirth

· Love

· Lust

· Water

· Spiritual degradation

So now let’s discuss these themes in detail.

Death :-

Death is the significant subject of this lyric as two segments of this poem 'The Burial of the dead' and 'demise by water' alludes or shows to this topic. What entangles matters is that demise can mean life so as it were one jars say that by passing on, a being can make ready for the new lives. Thusly the death is the focal subject of this poem.

Spiritual degradation :-

T.S Eliot has communicated what he felt about his territory in The Waste Land and how individuals step by step lost confidence in God and otherworldly rot is the primary topic of the lyric as in view of it just his property is squander arrive. In present day society there is a rot and otherworldly decline at whatever point the sexual capacity is avoided. So Spiritual Degradation can be taken as the fundamental thought of this poem.

Rebirth :-

Here Rebirth can be a major theme which is found in this poem. The Christ images in the poem, along with many other religious metaphors, causes rebirth and resurrection as the central theme of this poem.

Love :-

Love is the main theme of this poem. Here in the poem many references can be noticed such as Tristan and Isodle in ‘Burial of the Dead’ and Cleopatra in a ‘Game of Chess’ and to the story of Tereus and Philomela suggests that love in the waste land is often destructive.

Lust:-

Here T.S Eliot has very well depicted the theme of lust through this poem. T.S Eliot depicts the sin as something a akin to rape this chance sexual encounter carries with it mythological beggage.The violated Philomela, the blind Tiresias who lived for a time as a woman. Sexuality runs through the waste land taking centre stage as a cause of calamity in the ‘The Fire Sermon’.

Water :-

                 

“The waste land” lacks water and water also promises rebirth at the same time however water can bring about Death. T.S Eliot sees the card of the drowned Phoenician sailor and later titles the fourth section of this poem ‘Death By water’ when the rain finally arrives at the close of the poem it does suggest the cleansing of sin, the washing away of misdeeds and the start of a new future, however with comes thunder and therefore perhaps lightening.

1) What are your views on the following image after reading 'The Waste Land'? Do you think that Eliot is regressive as compared to Nietzche's views? or Has Eliot achieved universality of thought by recalling mytho-historical answer to the contemporary malaise?

                   

Frederic Nietzsche was a German philosopher who gave the term ' Übermensch', which means superhuman, a human being with remarkable abilities. Say for example Mahavira swami who was born in royal family and then left his home in pursuit of knowledge. He lived in the 5th-century BC contemporaneously with the Buddha. Both were normal human being and both have practiced intense meditation. Though they were not gods but were having super human quality as compared to other humans. one become leader in Jainism and another become leader in Buddhism but with passing of time they were considered as god. Eliot is regressive as compared to Nietzsche, he have used many myth in his poem waste land, there is nothing wrong in being regressive because people learns from past. If people have done something wrong in past they can recover or learns not to repeat same thing in present. Eliot gave example of myth in the context of present.

2 ) Prior to the speech, Gustaf Hellström of the Swedish Academy made these remarks:

Frued and Nietzsche both are contemporaries but their background and field of working is different. Frued believed in individuality and talked about "primitive instinct" whereas Eliot believed in preservation of cultural traditions which means all together. 

Frued wrote that for progress any individual primitive instinct was needed but in order to preserve tradition Eliot says that there is need for them to grew together, for that example of Buddha was perhaps suitable.

There is an image or central theme of the poem : death in life is eastern philosophy in the westland, rebirth and the continuation of an endless cycle of suffering in a world, and many other references are there...

1.The Fire sermon 

The fire and sermon is name of sermon given by Buddha. Gayasisa is the place where buddha prech the fire sermon about achieving libration from suffering through detachment from the five senses and mind, by that Eliot also wants to convey a message tp stay detached from all body and sense's desire.

2.What the Thunder sermon

There is refrence pf Upanishad in this Prajapati 

Spoken in thunder 'aakashvani' to devotees are pointed out the way of salvation. Eliot shows the way of spiritual rebirth on the basis of wisdom of India. 

"Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains"

 Climbing a painful mountain pass through pain and agony and after that you reach your destination the feeling of Air is Shantih.

3.River Ganga and Himalaya 

Eliot refers to Wisdom of India for spiritual salvation of modern humanity. Holly river Ganga known for its purity and also for purification , and Himalaya is known for spirituality and peace.

"Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant".

4.Three Da

Datta.. Give

Dayadhvam... Sympathise

Damyata...control

Da..Da..Da.. As a reminder to practise self control, giving and compassion.

5.Shanti MantraMantra

Path of knowledge is always painful and peace comes after knowing something that is the real Shantih. Thus Eliot ends Wasteland with hope.