Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Eliot's 'The Waste Land' - a seriel

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Waste Land. 1922.

The Waste Land


I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD


APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Sorry, I messed up my first comment...

    I like that but you'll probably think me even more a philistine than you already do if I tell you that I never really appreciated Eliot all that much...

    So I won't tell you that!

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  3. it's probably b/c he has these massively long poems and they're in forty different languages (what is it in this section? German, Latin, Greek, and Italian?).

    don't worry, there's more where that came from...

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  4. 1 - yes
    2 - im sure

    ReplyDelete

Be kind. Rewind.