are you ready to read what is known as one of the most complicated and one of the best poems of the 20th century or should I say one of the greatest masterpieces of literature ever written you have studied with me Milton's Paradise Lost Samuel becket's waiting for godo and C riches Kubla Khan so why not what should make us think that we are not ready trust me on this you are never ready for the Wasteland unless you actually read it I feel like reading the Wasteland makes you ready for it it's like an initiation and I don't know how much Justice I'm going to do to this but I definitely look forward to read through those lines which have captivated me all my liter lary life all my student life and I'm sure while reading this with you I'm going to discover something new in these lines something which I must have missed even when I Was preparing this lesson for you and while doing this I'm going to share with you all the stories all the references which we will need as weapons to fight this scary poem or should I say the most beautiful poem that I'm going to ever read to you so don't skip any part of this video because this is going to be the first part of this five-part [Music] poem just like we always do a little bit about the poet is important before we begin something however with TS elit the whole thing gets a bit complicated first of all he was the one who proposed the idea that to understand the real meaning of any poem or any piece of literature it's not important to know about the biography of the poet he was of this idea that appreciation of any literary piece does not require historical background context all these things which students hate to study about right but with iiot we need to understand just a little bit he was born an American and he died as a British person his change in citizenship uh is not that important to our understanding of this poem but we have to understand that he was a man who had a grand exposure not just to different Nations or ways of living but he was also a polymath because he knew so many languages and this poem The Wasteland is like this modern epic which is a meeting point of not just multiple languages will come across five six languages in this poem but this is also the meeting point the melting point of different kinds of culture different kinds of Religion different kinds of spirituality and different kinds of approaching that one question what's the point of living what's the point of this world understanding the context of the Wasteland is also important because this was written at a time when this whole world was shaken by the first world war back then it was called the Great War because that there was no second world war yet when Eliot first published this book most of the people couldn't even make out what he was trying to say because he had not provided any annotation so when he republished it he brought with it a set of annotations or notes where he gives us some hints as to what should be our point of view when we are looking at the lines many people say that those are of not much help also because they are just simple uh directives pointing out the text from which he took those quotations but we will stick to those notes and we will try to understand why he put in all these references at all in Tradition and individual Talent ilot said this and I I repeatedly talk about this line in so many poems that no poet no author writes on his own when he's writing an entire generation writes with him his previous generations write with him so when you are creating any literary Masterpiece or anything at all your memories of all the things that you have studied that gets into play we have seen this happening in Milton's Paradise Lost right similarly this is going to be the case with the Wasteland only in this case this is more deliberate which some poets they do it subconsciously they don't know that they are borrowing from a tradition with ilott he is going to deliberately borrow from a tradition and not just borrow sometimes and most of the times he's going to change them distort them to suit the new world that he was seeing around himself the world where countries were clashing with each other the world where everything was going to waste now when he begins to uh write his annotations he mentions two books so before starting this uh Journey let me give you some little idea without making things much complicated about these two books these two books were vital or at the back of his mind when he was creating this poem one of them was Miss Jesse Weston's book and it was on the gra Legend I'll come to the gra Legend what it is about but let me talk to you about this book first this book by Weston was called from ritual to romance here ritual means mostly the Pagan rituals the vegetation rituals and sometimes rituals found in Christianity that means rituals all across the world and what this author tries to do is she connects all these rituals and tries to place them in accordance to the Grail Legend now what is the Grail legend about Grail is basically believed to be like a cup in some cases it's believed to be a vessel It is believed that Christ in his last supper drank from this holy cup and then after he was crucified his blood was collected in that cup and then this Grail is mysteriously uh gone you know it has disappeared now in the aruan legends that is the legends of King Arthur there is this constant urge to look for this Grail which is called The Grail Quest it's also sometimes called the holy chalice and in one of those Arian Legends there was this fisher king this fisher king was having a little bit of a problem his health was declining and because his health was declining and because the king's health is often related to uh the prosperity of the land the entire land was going to waste so many different writers wrote about different kinds of Adventures that the knights undertook um to recover that Grail because it was believed that if the king drank from that Holy cup he would be restored to health now there was this story about uh s okay which uh many of you are familiar with but I'm not going into those details it's going to take a lot of time it is belied that night called peral he managed to recover that Grail and give it to the fisher king who then got restored to his health and his waste land got rejuvenated so this is basically the gra Legend what Weston did in her book she showed that all around the world there there were these fertility rituals and in these fertility rituals that means rituals where nature was woried in some way and that was connected to uh Rejuvenation rebirth reproduction all these things and this uh mostly uh was seen in case of uh religions which believed in a different kind of pagan rituals nature worship rituals if you have read parad is lost you know about thas and his annual wound uh you also might know about Adonis the other name of tamus here The God Who is linked to vegetation is believed to die every year by a boore okay he is hunted by a boore and he bleeds and he dies and women whale for him and then he is recovered and then vegetation uh spreads again and that happens during the time of the spring so spring is a time of renewal so all these things are connected to the gr Legend where we also see a kind of death followed by a renewal a kind of spring a kind of new beginning this was Western's book the other book which influenced ilot and he himself admits about it was Sir James friser the golden bow it was also uh a book on religion comparative religion where he talks about different kinds of deities different kind of motives you know the hanged God and um Adonis Aus Iris oaris all these duties and how they are inherently connected to this idea of a quest a quest for finding a source of Rejuvenation somebody is dying somebody is wasted and how that can be recovered so what these two books do for ilot is they provide a mythological background on which he is creating a modernday epic so when an epic is created what is the first thing that we have we have a heroic figure a towering figure of an epic hero right in Paradise Lost That figure is subverted in a way but we still have Satan so who do we have in the Wasteland who is the central character in The Wasteland that is the tricky part there is no Single Character towering over others in the Wasteland ilot does say somewhere in his notes about a figure called tyia yes so this is the other story which I'm going to tell you to make some sense about the real theme of the poem who is tyus now according to the Greek legend there was this person called tyus who was once walking across a path and he came across two snakes who were uh culating they were in an intimate moment and tyral Disturbed them with his stick and that infuriated the duties and they punished him and what was the punishment the punishment was that he would spend a few years as a woman and then switch to the role of a man so his gender became fluid now that became a liability after this something strange happened Juno and her Mighty husband Jupiter they were having a fight as to who has the most enjoyment out of sex out of physical intimacy Juno was saying that men have all the fun and Jupiter was saying that women have all the fun and they were fighting hard and then tyus was brought in because he had the experience of being both a man and a woman so he could confirm to them as to who enjoys the sexual games more tyus simply said well women women enjoy it more so Juno thought that okay I have lost my point my argument she got very angry and she cursed tyus and he became blind that made Jupiter feel bad about tyus oh poor he kind of supported me and he has turned blind so let's do something for him so he gave him a blessing okay he said that okay now that you have turned blind you don't have to worry you won't be able to see what's going on around you but you will be able to see the past and the future so he became a kind of a prophet and we see this figure of tyus recurring like the Hindu Dy narad and ilot grabs on this figure of tyus and he actually says that what tyus is the content of this poem so is Tyrus is the central figure well he is an important character but he is just a gazer he's looking at it a prophet is not able to change the future a prophet can only see so what tyresius sees is the content of the poem but that does not make him the hero of this poem so who is the a central figure in this modern world what makes the modern world different from all other worlds that came before it is the fact that there is no possibility of any towering Central character anymore human beings have become kind of belittled by the circumstances we have become so isolated from the person sitting next to us that there is no possibility of any Grand narrative anymore any Grand stature anymore what tyes here sees is the past the future and how the modern world is kind of connecting these two and how this modern world has become a wasteland where all the grand narratives all the grand stories of the past have become nothing ilot divides his poem into five parts not equal nothing is symmetrical nothing is falling into any rhyming pattern any metrical scheme because the essence of the Wasteland is the essence of the world which is broken down into fragments if I can borrow tor's words by narrow domestic walls the title of each part gives a hint as to what we're going to expect from there the recurent themes are the wasted nature of the modern world and a quest how to get back to that feeling of fullness the feeling of fertility and this constant urge to go for that holy water where is that water where is that cup holding that water the first part the the burial of the dead but before that one final character we need to understand which iiot mentions in the epigraph num cilum quum cumus ego EP Oculus etc etc etc So the faster you encounter in this poem is a set of non-english lines and you're taken aback it's like a warning if you are not ready to learn a new language learn a about a new culture learn about new mythologies stay away this is not for you but I'm going to make this for you let's see what this epigraph actually means now Cil of Kum she was a prophetes just like our tyus now she was in service to Apollo Apollo you know the sun god Apollo really liked this lady and he wanted to be close to her and and he said that what should I give you to make you consent to this Cil said give me eternal life and she actually said that give me as many years as there are grains in a handful of dust remember this okay this going to be useful later so she wanted practically innumerable number of years because when you hold a handful of dust there are so many grains in them right Apollo said fine but still Cil did not agree to become his lover so she didn't keep her word right so there has to be a punishment and the punishment was very logical when she asked for this almost eternal life she forgot to ask for youth as well now what happens when we grow old our bodies begin to shrink and shrivel we lose our youthfulness we lose our vitality and when it's the right time you simply die but now that cibil was in a condition which our Satan was in when he was in hell she couldn't die but she was going on getting older and older and she went to a position where she became as shriveled as a raisin and so ugly and then she was thinking what's the point and she became an object of curiosity for everybody like a specimen where people looked at her and said what's wrong with this woman and that is exactly what forms the epigraph now this epigraph is technically from gas petronius uh saton and ilot gives us this translation in his notes I'm reading from there I saw with my own eyes the cibil at hanging in a cage so this narrator is talking about cibil who was hanging in a cage now she is all shriveled up and when the boy said to her cibil what do you want she answered I want to die ilot begins his poem with a woman who is shriveled up and who is desperately waiting to die remember our Hollow woman and then the next line for isra pound isra pound was the person who practically reduced this poem into half so what you are having now is half the size of the original poem which ilot had sent to Ezra pound for editing and he ruthlessly got through most Ezra pound according to Elliot was a better Craftsman than himself and he actually says this this word IL M Le ofro means the greater crafts man and indot actually dedicates this poem to Ezra pound they were very close friends and Ezra pound had a remarkable influence on Eliot now this expression the better Craftsman this is also again taken from another text he's talking about isra pound but this reference this particular set of words the better Craftsman or IL Mig or febro it's referenced to Kanto 26 of purgatorio uh Dante sporo where Dante refers to the poet Arnold Daniel as better Craftsman than himself all right so from the very beginning ilot gives us this feeling that we are going to encounter not just one text but almost all the kinds of texts that we were ever written in any language that ilot knew first part the burial of the Dead straightforward title when a person dies that person is buried but is burial always a sign of death we will explore this theme with him in the first part and that is going to be the content of today's video April is the cruel's month breeding lilacs out of the Dead Land mixing memory and desire stirring dull roots with spring rain winter kept us warm covering Earth in forgetful snow feeding a little life with dried tubers April is the cruelest month what's wrong with April when we read Cher's Canterbury Tales there's this famous spring opening where Chara says how the spring Delights everybody because it's the time of buing is a time of New Life emerging out of the soil April has traditionally been considered as a time of happy Rejuvenation so the very first thing that ilot does takes the month of April and takes away the happiness from it calling it cruel but why does he call April the cruelest month it is cruel for whom suppose you are a seed who is lying buried in the soil and all through winter as in Shell's poem the West Wind we have seen that the seed is protected by the Earth and it has almost forgotten that it has life in it and then during April what happens spring renews life in those seeds it's kind of disturbed so from the point of view of the seed and if you are a lazy seed and if you are happily sleeping then you're disturbed because you have to bloom again and fall into the trap of that cycle of birth and death again now if you know about the Buddhist idea of Nana you would know that the ideal end of this life is not getting into that trap of rebirth but getting into Nirvana or a moment where you are out of this cycle of life and death and life and death because life despite being so so beautiful is also full of suffering so April is cruel because it makes that seed stir up again and fall into that trap of being born again and how does he say this April is the cruelest month breeding lilacs out of the Dead Land you would notice that he's not ending the line where the sentence ends he is using this technique of enjambment where the line flows into the next line so it's not like April is the cruess month breeding lilx out of the Dead Land mixing but April is the Cruis month breathing Lila that is going to be the flow of the line mixing memory and desire when a seed is buried it has genetic memory of a life which had gone before it and it has desired to erupt so at the time of birth it's all about memory and desire forget about the seeds think about a fetus in a mother's womb where it feels that it's most protected and at one point it has to come out and I'm sure that moment of birth was a painful one it was a moment when your lungs first swallowed air the flattened lungs blowing up must have felt very very painful as painful as if you are drowning that's why the baby cries so that first moment of birth that rejuvenating point is the point where memory is mixed with desire memory not just of one single individual but of an entire generation and desire to create new memories so the Trap of the cycle of life and death that is the function of April studing dull roots with spring rain winter kept us warm covering Earth in forgetful snow feeding a little life with dry tubers basic sustenance that is what winter provides winter does not lavish us with gifts of fruitfulness winter is a time when the trees wait patiently for spring to come and while waiting they almost begin to forget that there is something called life so writing in 1920s why did ilot glamorize glorify for forgetfulness so much what memory was so Dreadful what memory 1914 to 1919 look up your history books and you would know what Memories I'm talking about and desire 1920 was just again a beginning point for new desire new political clashes new selfishness brewing in humans which will culminate in those bombs dropping on those Hess cities summer surprised us so somebody is speaking to us right tyus now he's not going to talk about all these things he's going to talk about mythological figures this person is talking about just you and me and random cities and places so who is the speaker why do we always feel that there is one single speaker this was the time when bak's dialogism bak's idea of polyvocality was coming up that a novel he was talking about fiction in general achieves a certain kind of greatness when you just don't see one kind of voice one kind of perspective in it but multiple voices which is polyvocality all right this poem is an attempt at polyvocality sometimes the poet doesn't give you any idea about the real identity of the speaker why should I say sometimes most of the times you don't know who exactly is the speaker you can only guess it's as if we are looking at a set of Instagram reals uh of people whom we don't know and we are capturing little moments so what iiot is doing he's giving us a set of reals that's why I feel that it's easier for you people now to understand Wasteland then the readers in 1920 trust me you know exactly who who are speaking here think about your Facebook feed think about your insta feed do you know those people all of them whom you see in those feeds no but you look at their lives and what part of their lives little small little Parts when it's a big post you don't read that you don't put that push that read more button anymore you only scroll up and you you can only keep your heads why you me same here trust me we are only capable of focusing for 30 seconds or maybe 45 seconds and then it's very easy for us to Simply switch to a different life looking at a different life so readers are expected to be like those gazers at real here you will have chunks of conversations chunks of incidents and in between something Sparky from the poet and in those connecting lines between two random incidents in those connecting lines we will try to figure out what the message of the poet is so this is our first Speaker who is talking to us summer surprised us coming over the strandberg jersey with a shower of rain we stopped in the colonade and went on in sunlight into the H garden and drank coffee and talked for an hour B gar rushin staming of Lan ex douche not English but I'll translate it for you the last line I read actually reads like this I am not Russian I come from Lithuania a real German so somebody is trying to convince another person about that person's identity that that person is not Russian is German and uh what are these two people doing they they simply had a day out they went to the colonade and they went to have some fun into the Hof Garden had some coffee talk for an hour nothing substantial so we we are looking at vaguely looking at possibly two people who are talking about uh very insignificant things which they feel are very important and then we go on to some more conversation and when we were children staying at the arch Dukes now something begins to stir in our mind that there has to be some specific reference which are du is this about I'll read on and when we were children staying at the arch Dukes my cousins he took me out on a sled so this is a woman talking about her childhood when she used to stay at some Arch Duke's Palace and there she had a cousin and they used to go on a sled sled is those carts you ride on snow and I was frightened he said man Mary Mary Hold On Tight ah we have the name of our speaker here the speaker is Mary so Mary is talking to us about her childhood and she's talking to us about her cousin who took her on this ride and she was feeling scared all those very very uh nostalgic Sweet Emotions of childhood which most of us have and down we went in the mountains there where you feel free I read much of the night and go south in the winter so this woman suddenly while talking about her youthful or her uh joyful childhood she Now talks about her present so she gives a glimpse into her past so if tyresius is looking at Mary what would he see he would see that scene from her young days from her child childhood and then tiia sees what she's doing now or rather what she's going to do later she is spending her time in a lonely way now she is reading much into the night and she goes south in the winter that mean she has become old now and she doesn't enjoy those cold mountains anymore and she goes to warmer places during the winter so this can be any person right but this specifically is about one particular Mary apparently Countess Mary larish of Bavaria now she had a cousin whose name was Rudolph Rudolph had a mistress he also had a wife but he had a mistress whose name was also Mary now it was believ that something went really wrong and Rudolph and his mistress Mary they went into the the suicide p and our Mary she was somehow connected to all this that incident in history books is called the mying incident and after the death of Rudolph things started to get worse and worse so far as the political climate was concerned Rudolph was supposed to be the next Arch duuk he was now dead and somebody else became Ferdinand and this Ferd and was assassinated and that was somehow connected to the world world one so ilot is talking about a random character who is Not So Random in a context where the world was shattered by a war was Mary responsible for the first world war h no she wasn't but wasn't there some responsibility something she could have done to avoid that suicide that could have probably if not stopped at least delayed the crisis does tyus know we don't know that but just as I said tesus is a powerless gazer and he is simply making us see what actually happened and when Mary is talking about her life she is not talking about what we would call the most important thing in her life about that suicide P she's talking about her childhood about her memory and she's talking about her present situation because that is what human beings have become we are only a combination of our nostalgic childhood memories and some distant dreams of what we're going to become and in doing that we don't focus on how we're going to behave now what we're going to do now to make sure something good comes out of it all right so this was Mary for us now suddenly suddenly the voice changes what are the roots that clutch what branches grow out of the ston rubbish just when we were beginning to have some grip on the story that okay this is going to be the story of Mary her memory or maybe some more random characters like this suddenly this is voice calling everything rubbish Stony rubbish what is Stony rubbish Mary's memory these random characters their life experiences son of man you cannot say your 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 only there is shadow under this Red Rock come in under the shadow of this Red Rock and I will show you something different from either your Shadow at morning striding behind you or your Shadow at evening rising to meet you I will show you fear in a handful of dust ah we know about the handful of dust don't we okay let's read once more this time more slowly the speaker here is talking about a situation where everything is Stone rabish and he is mentioning the son of man this expression son of man it is found in Ezekiel it's a book uh in the Old Testament uh where there is this expression son of man stand on your feet and I will speak with you so son of man is an archaic biblical expression which he uses here so he's actually or the speaker is actually referring to all of us we are all Sons and Daughters of men okay what do we know what do you know what do I know he's saying you know only a heap of broken images okay those little tabs on your phone which you scroll up those are the heaps of broken images not connected to each other life is about connecting okay and here we have a heap of broken images where the Sun beats and the dead tree gives no shelter the cricet no relief there is no water uh usually the sound of cricket is associated with rain but there is no rain here it's only dryness and the dry Stone no sound of water water from the very beginning is considered to be a vital source of life not just an OT in biology here there is no water only there is Shadow under this Red Rock now when you hear this expression Red Rock you somehow feel more dry when a rock is red it is because it is extremely dry now this whole idea of a heap of broken images this is again taken from ecclesiasticus so in ecclesiasticus uh the expression goes like this they are afraid also of what is high and Terrors are in the way the alond tree blossoms the grasshopper tracks itself along and desire fails because man is going to his eternal home so this is about the Journey of man to Eternal home that is after death and that is described there in ecclesiasticus and the mourners go about the streets so this whole scene is captured by ilot in these lines a heap of broken images where the Sun beats and what he does instead of writing uh in a straightforward sentence form he also is providing a heap of broken images to us or rather uh short little uh Clauses and phrases which are put at random but all these images Red Rock Sun beating Cricket giving no belief all these images individually they exud a certain kind of emotion and that emotion is one of Despair is one of dryness is one of lack of Vitality this is uh ot's idea of objective correlative in um his essay Hamlet and his problems he says that Shakespeare's Hamlet is an artistic failure why because uh the way Hamlet speaks the way Hamlet uh analyz a situation or the kind of emotion that is seen in him does not tally with the situation the way he reacts the way he becomes mad is not actually logically connected to the situation like he didn't have to be so mad about this so it's an artistic failure that's a different issue altoe there he mentions this word or this phrase objective correlative and he says that uh if you are a good poet or a good writer he doesn't say Shakespeare is a bad writer didn't say that but he just gives a prescription of good writing that you don't have to tell people that you're feeling despaired you feeling lonely you're feeling sad you're feeling happy you just have to give them objects okay and those objects by themselves will be interpreted um as exuding a certain kind of emotion in the readers so its objects will correlate and it's going to be objective it's not going to be subjective all right and that's why he was much against Wordsworth who was more subjective than he liked than OT liked anyway so he is giving us here in this whole poem a set of objects it depends on us how we interpret them how we interpret a red rock if we interpret it as something which is dried up then fine we are getting his emotion and then he asks us to go under the shadow of this Red Rock So under the shadow of this Red Rock Red Rock which is a symbol of dryness that has a shadow where we will be able to see something special what special we will be able to see some dust under the shadow of the Red Rock and in that dust we will know about the story of civil and that story will make us understand that just having a long life is not enough or rather it's not good at all unless you have what is called Vitality so come in under the shadow of this Red Rock and I will show you fear in this handful of dust and this word dust it has so much religious Association okay uh to from dust you are made and to dust you will return that is the idea in Christianity and why just Christianity in Hinduism we have have this idea that we are built out of the five elements and after death we simply diffuse into them so handful of dust means it contains somebody's life and it also means when you hold it like this and let it go it means the passage of time which creates fear in us there is no time there is no time and this fear that we are going to have an end very soon this fear will be seen in later Parts where a person actually says hurry up please it's time okay so handful of dust represents death number one number two passage of time which is out of human control and that is why it creates fear in US finally four lines there frish with their wind their Hu May Irish kind who will to this is from Tristan and isold beautiful beautiful Opera by Richard Wagner um there was this affair between this Knight Tristan and this lady I SOI it was a medieval romance again connected to these Arthurian Legends so there these lines appear uh in the very beginning the translation goes like this fresh blows the wind for home my Irish child where do you T so these four lines taken out of context taken out of Tristan and isol because that is what OT is doing right he's taking these lines out of these books and then he's placing them like jigsaw puzzles so what do these four lines exude if you consider them as objective correlatives if you don't know about the story of Tran is look at the words here winds from home my Irish child that means somebody is away from home sense of nostalgia sense of being away from where you belong and this idea of being away from where we belong that is the idea aidea of displacement that the modern life is about we don't fit in right we don't feel comfortable around people we don't feel comfortable in situations we feel like we are not cut for this and that idea is seen here and then suddenly another speaker comes in you gave me highin first a year ago they called me the highest syn girl this speaker is also a woman what what is it with ilot women speakers where are the men so this is a girl who is talking to possibly her lover who gave her some flowers and after that everybody called her the hin girl yet when we came back late from the highin garden your arms full and your hair wet I could not speak and my eyes failed I was neither living nor dead and I knew nothing suddenly uh we are a bit disturbed what had happened to this girl in the hn garden that she's not able to talk about has somebody assaulted her was there something violent happening to her she's not comfortable talking about it look at this word yet when she starts talking it's a happy thing she is saying that she used to get those lovely flowers and everybody used to to call her eyes in girl everything is very happy and nice then this word yet that means something contrary has happened something opposite has happened some disillusionment has happened has this lover done something harsh to her violent to her something against her consent look at this word late okay looking into the heart of light the silence oh again tristal and is but this time this is from uh third part verse 24 and there the line means empty and desolate is the sea Mir is sea so the sea is empty and desolate something must have gone wrong with this highin girl some disillusionment if you have read Hamlet I'm sure you must have guessed by now that there is somehow a connection at the back of our mind stirring that this is ailia ofilia was Hamlet's beloved when Hamlet came to know about his father's death or Murder by his uncle and he he got to know about this from the ghost of his father so that is complicated but that's the basic story that he came back and he came to know from the ghost of his father that his father was murdered by his uncle Claudius and his mother had married his uncle he became very enraged he had this girlfriend ofilia and now he was so mad um he didn't want to have anything to do with ailia he rudely rejected her in a way she got isolated uh Hamlet was plotting Revenge plotting Revenge plotting revenge and sometimes he's saying that I want to act mad to confuse people and sometimes we see he actually acting mad so anyway from the point of view of ailia she was pretty Disturbed now two things were happening here first ofilia was getting isolated from Hamlet he was not talking to her much because Hamlet had lost faith in women in general looking at his mother he thought that she was also a part of this with ailia what happened she became worse when uh incidentally Hamlet ends up killing her father Polonius well let's not go into those details Polonius was killed and ofilia was totally like shattered uh her brother was also away during this time she continuously uh was talking about flowers and was moving about in a lonely way and eventually she drowns herself okay she dies a disillusion which ailia faced a disillusionment which any random woman can face somebody who is as innocent as to call herself a highin girl and then we have another woman Madame srus so see we have already covered some clips now we are going to the clip where we are looking at a woman who is sitting with a pack of cards now not just ordinary gaming cards playing cards these are tarot cards okay now tarot cards are supposed to be fortune telling cards although originally tarot cards were uh again connected to different uh rituals and mythologies but now it is considered to be a fortune telling um object or device uh so you just just sit in front of the card reader and the cards are turned upside down you're supposed to pick one two three cards and based on the figures uh that you turn uh that fortune teller will tell something about your future like the Chinese cookies kind so Madam sress she was a famous Clairvoyant now here also iiot uh der this character from another character this is taken from ALU huxley's novel Chrome yellow in Chrome yellow there is this character called Mr skogan Mr skogan he dresses himself up as this sorceress uh Madame soris and he acts as a fortune teller at a fair so this is a man dressing up as a woman so the idea of cross stressing is very much here so Madame sress famous Clairvoyant had a bad cold nevertheless is known to be the wisest woman in Europe with a wicked pack of cards now why Wicked pair of cards because uh sometimes or most of the time fortune tellers they give us some kind of warning all right they scare us that something bad is going to happen to you and why do they do that uh so that we then ask for remedies and what should be done they give us some kind of stone some kind of harb uh so that is their usual uh strategy so this Madame sris was known to be a very famous Clairvoyant very famous uh fortune teller and she had this wicked pack of cards iiot in his notes specifically mentions that he was not very acquainted with the exact set of figurines on these cards and he kind of changed uh some of them to suit his purpose and he gives us a list all right so I'm first going to read the lines in the poem and then I'm going to read to you the lines in his notes Here said she is your card the drowned fortian sailor those are pearls that wear his eyes look here is Bell the lady of the Rocks the lady of situations here is the man with three stares and here the wheel and here is the oneeyed merchant and this C which is blank is something he carries on his back oh which I'm forbidden to see I do not find the hanged man fear death by water I see crows of people walking around in a ring so this was her prophecy her her interpretation of the cards which this person was picking up one by one in front of her let's read ot's notes to have some idea about what this is about the hanged man he writes a member of the traditional pack fits my purpose in two ways because he is associated in my mind with the hanged God of Fraser that is the writer of the golden bow he has his this chapter uh called the hanged God where Fraser gives an account of all those uh religions or all those uh groups of people who have this ritual where every year They Mourn the death of a God who is usually associated with vegetation associated with uh cultivation and then uh there is a Revival ritual okay this this is very common in case of tamas uh Adonis Otis oaris so this idea of death and renewal is very recurrent in all kinds of mythologies now this hanged man situation is like this that there is this tribe where the there is this uh tribe where the Effigy or figure made of straw is made and that Effigy is then hung from a tree a pine tree uh and it is believed that uh this person was uh in opposition to Apollo the Sun God and then all those rituals are connected now hanging of that Effigy or that figure means a kind of surrender to the forces of nature and recognition that death is necessary part of renewal and this hanging will bring forth new cultivation new new fruition new uh fruitfulness in the form of New Harvest all right so this is the whole idea of the hanged man so although the figure of the hanged man can in US create a sense that oh I have picked the hanged man that means I'm am going to be doomed you know it's a bad woman it's not always a bad woman the point is that the hanged man is also then the harbinger of Revival it is through death that you can reach renewal rebirth spring so the hanged man is not a bad woman from that point of view all right so this woman who is saying that uh she can't find the hanged man okay now the next thing that aliot says here is I associate him with the hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to OS in part five when we will read part five we will come back to this idea of the hanged man and the hooded figure okay so we will postpone that the fian Sailor and the merchant appear later so these figures are introduced to us in the form of tarot card figures and these figures will be later introduced to us as characters sometimes they are speaking to us sometimes uh the narrator is speaking about these characters so these are like introduction so just as in a drama the First Act is is like an exposition in that pyramid structure here also we will see uh an attempt at Exposition what are we going to deal with what are different kinds of characters situations and when talking about situations you exactly have this line here Lady of situations all right that is another card also the crowds of people so uh even in part one there is a a reference to a number of people walking together together and death by water is executed in part four in part four we will have a a detailed explanation about death by water the entire section is called that and it's about the fan sailor fans were these sea fairing people and this fian sailor he had drowned and when that is mentioned here there is one line just after that those are pearls that where his eyes look now this line is from Shakespeare's The Tempest in the Tempest ferdinant the central male figure uh other than Prospero ferdinan gets to know that his father has drowned and Ariel uh the spirit the wood Spirit of Prospero Ariel tells Ferdinand about how the body of the Dr man has now become and there some beautiful lines are given out of which ilot takes and picks this one line those are pearls that wear his eyes that means after drowning the eyes other the Pils they become like pearls they turn into stone lifeless and at the same time beautiful the man with three stubs an authentic member of the tarot pack I associate quite arbitrarily arbitrarily means he just randomly does this there is no precedence nobody has done it before him what he has Associates it with he Associates it with the fisher king himself why the fisher king fisher king was the person who was getting weakened who was getting sick and his sickness was causing the land to wither away the land around him okay because again as I told you the ill health of the king is reflected on the ill health of the kingdom and this fisher king needs to be revived just as the hanged man or the hanged God will lead to some Resurrection this fisher king who is now sick and old needs to be revived to save the Wasteland okay so all these cards when Madame s she interprets them she does it very casually but in the context of this poem these cards will have a lot of importance as we will come to know in later parts all right so don't worry if you don't understand everything now you will once we complete the whole poem now when she's reading about these cards she is talking about a blank card which she is forbidden to see so you see here there is a falling down from Grandeur madams or sisters was the famous Clairvoyant but this woman she is forbidden to see her own tarot card and she is not able to prophesize the whole thing you know somehow it kind of reminds me of um Ariel's prophecy to uh Belinda uh that uh he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen to her but he knows uh that by the end of today something disastrous is going to happen but he is forbidden to see more than that so this kind of limited power this is not something that tyresius possesses tyus is given like this power to see everything but this Madam srus is not able to see everything so she is limited in her ability to forell all right and then suddenly uh she is talking about something very mundane she was till now talking about her tent cards now she's talking about a random character who is called Mrs equitone so Mrs equitone is another of her clients okay and she was supposed to make a horoscope for Mrs equitone so she tells this client who is now sitting in front of her that you please go and tell Mrs equitone that I will bring her the horoscope myself because I'm I'm worried that if I give it through somebody else they might change it or it might be stolen because horoscopes are so important well she can't even see her own cards and she's saying she is a capable fortune teller if you see Dear Mrs equitone tell her I bring the horoscope myself one must be so careful these days unreal City one statement where the entirety of of Westland is considered unreal City now city is a very real physical thing city is a man-made thing isn't it Paradise may be unreal because we don't have any proof that it is real but city is something we see all around us it is the only reality we see and ilot is calling a city an unreal City but is ilot the only one who has said this no he is getting this idea from somebody else even here the seven old men it was written by Charles blier and buter had such a great influence on OT he he created practically created The Cult of imagism blier says that I'm going to read from there the translated part of course unreal city city full of Dreams where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passers by so this whole idea was already there iiot plucked that idea from blier and placed it here all right under the brown fog of a winter Dawn now winter was comfortable right April is Grill but here winter Dawn is described as brown depressing color a CR croud flowed over London Bridge so many I had not thought death had undone so many people who walk on Bridges they are pretty much alive so why is he saying that these people are undone by death he is talking about a generation of people who are undone destroyed by mass destruction Mass anihilation which the first great w brought and this line interestingly is again taken from Inferno Dante's Inferno uh I'm going to read them for for you it is James Finn cotter's translation it was in Kanto 3 Lines 55 to 57 and there behind it marched so long a file of people I would never have believed Dante was talking about Inferno hell where he's seeing this crowd of people walking listlessly ilot is talking about actual city which city city of London so he was talking about himself about people around him about those people who walk there look around you look around you at places where people gather together on busy Bridges and the is of the shopping malls what do you see people walking about what purpose do they have you will hardly find any purpose the walk is mostly aimless we aimlessly walk like zombies when I was reading to you uh about the Hollowman I use this reference because that came to my mind these zombied Consciousness which ilot could see ilot is becoming the tyus here he is not just able to see the past depicted by Dante but he is able to see the future the 21st century genzi zombified so crowd flowed over London breathe so many I had not thought death had undone so many size and people were not breathing in a happy way they were giving off size short and infrequent were exhaled so there's a anxiety in people they are stressed and each man fixed his eyes before his feet that means they were not looking at each other they were not communicating to each other they were looking at their feet we are looking at our smartphones right there is no communication float up the hill and down King William Street to where St Mary W notth kept the ARs it's a name of a famous Church in London with a dead found on the final stroke of nine so religion has become a deadened Force now it doesn't work anymore this was indicated back even in do Beach right I hope you have watched that video which we had shared long long back two years back in do Beach Arnold was talking about the Sea of faith that was once full and round earth Shore and now retreating to the breath of the night wind that that emotion that loss of Faith that's why the deadness of the church bell that's very important here so these people walking aimlessly they have no communication with each other the religious Bells the church bells do not resonate in their hearts anything anymore there I saw one I knew and stopped him crying ston who is this I again a random spe speaker a random narrator the poly vocality another Voice is coming up and probably this is a male voice now so In This Crowd someone recognizes someone and calls tson now again because I'm always over obsessed with magb Stetson reminds me of Satan uh mag's last companion who always provided him with armors and everything so anyway Stetson you who were with me in the ships at Miley maybe they were both sent to war on a ship you who were with me in the ships at Miley the corpse you planted last year in your garden has it begun to sprout crops don't sprout seeds sprout um but the idea of grave is both uh an idea that contains death and an idea that contains life because when in grave you put seeds you get Plants what will happen if you plant bodies will it grow bodies so this line is giving that kind of an idea that has it sprouted since but then it is a usual custom among people even today when they bury their beloved people there is a ritual sometimes that they sprinkle some seeds and those seeds sprout and sometimes bloom into flowers and then there's this feeling that okay the person whom I have buried has now turned into flowers okay so that gives a kind of a uh you can say aesthetic consolation okay so this idea that the dead body will Sprout will it Bloom this year it sounds so insensitive doesn't it or has the sudden Frost Disturbed its bed oh keep the dog far hence that's friend to men or with his nails he'll dig it up again now ilot is basically quoting from act 5 scene 4 of the white devil you might have that in your syllabus as well uh it's a Revenge tragedy I'm not going into the story here it's by Webster the speaker is Cornelia so Cornelia son Marcelo is killed he died in a quarrel and so he was refused A Proper Burial and she says that okay uh let these ants the moles the rats they come let call them uh they will provide uh the kind of burial he needs okay they will bring in the leaves and everything and then she says but keep the wolf far then that's four to Men Four means enemy so here OT is using the expression dog and friend so he is subverting the quotation all right and then she says for with his nails he'll dig them up again uh so the wolf will disturb the grave so here the idea is when this kind of a grave is there which is not sanctioned by the church here you find pagan rituals working up nature will itself form a safe cozy heaven or the opport protected place for the dead body but keep the dog away because the dog will dig the dead body up so what is it about it's a speaker talking to another speaker about a dead body which is probably there buried somewhere in some Garden but we know that this poem is about death it's about burial and it's about sprouting up after death all right you hypocrite lecture mon Blum M prer you hypocrite reader you are just like me you're my friend why is suddenly so much antagonism towards the readers what have we done we have chosen to remain silent we were feeling safe that this poem is about other people okay modern people we are postmodern this PO poem is about random characters from literature across the world and mythologies Across the Universe this is not about me I am sensitive are you are am I and then iiot wants us to consider what we are we are hypocrite people and we are just like him so he is not keeping himself out of this so you can't blame him he's not simply pointing the figure straight at us he's pointing four at himself this line is from bod's Fu zal and the line is there bod writes you hypocrite reader my fellow my brother so what does ilot expect us to do how to be less of a hypocrite possibly by attempting to really make an effort to understand what these Illusions really mean to us how this is actually relevant to us and how this can actually change Us Part Two following the idea of a drama five act structure is going to be rising action so till now we were giving some situations and some women and maybe a couple of men so we are exposed to a wasteland with red rocks and no water now there will be some action or perhaps some lack of action we will get to know that in the second part of this massive literary piece a game of chess but not today you'll have to wait a little bit for that for our next video I hope you have enjoyed today's class do tell me in the comment section if you have found any part difficult and don't forget to stay subscribe because then you will be notified immediately when the next part comes up and I promise you the next part is going to be very very soon so thank you for being with me this is Monami mukarji signing off stay happy stay safe [Music] by [Music]