The waste land

For many times I've been asked about the meaning of our group's title "The Waste Land".

It's supposed to be unquestionably known but I'm not wondering though, not only cos I've lost my ability of wondering and yelling (O la la) but also cos it was gradually borne upon me that people are no longer interested in poetry and liturature in general.

Anyways, the waste land , our group's title, is quoted from the title of the most famous poem in the 20th century which was written by T.S.Eliot.

But first of all, who is T.S.Eliot?!

Thomas Stearns Eliot...The poet who occupied the 1st rank in the English liturature in the period extending between the world war I and the world war II.

He was born in 1888 to an English family that used to live in the USA.By the year 1917, Eliot could publish his 1st collection of poems with its most notable one "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" which attracted sights towards him.

In the above-mentioned poem, Eliot tried to figure out how an intellectual felt after the spring of his lifetime had passed by.

And for "The waste land" ,the poem we are talking about and Eliot's chief literary work, it was published in 1922, but he had been thinking about it since 1918.Namely, soon after the world war I.

After he had finished writting the poem, he passed it on to Ezra Pound,who was his friend and teacher in the same time.Ezra Pound added some touches to the poem therefore it has become the way it is now.

I say Eliot wrote it immediately after the world war I to express the feeling of being lost and hollow which that generation ,and maybe all the world population, felt after the war.

Indeed, it is insignificant to say that it is horrible to experience those ages of such wars when millions of people get killed cos of no reason and for no purpose.

The poem is divided into five parts:

(1)THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD.

(2)A GAME OF CHESS.

(3)THE FIRE SERMON.

(4)DEATH BY WATER.

(5)WHAT THE THUNDER SAID.

and included different languages and cultures as quotations that's why it seems to be mysterious.

Well, eventually, as we are living in a similar age to that of Eliot, who was American by birth and British by nationality, as we are living in an alike age, I liked the title and thought that it has become more urgent to talk about the earth planet as a waste land than any time else it has ever passed through.