![]() ![]() Europe was a waste land, like the Logres of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (1485) and Wagner’s Parsifal (1882). Borders were collapsing and monarchs falling. Europe was emerging from that orgy of self-destruction we call the First World War. The Waste Land was not alone: Eliot was conscious of these other artistic experiments, of new poetry in other languages and of close friends similarly working to break the mould, outstandingly his friends James Joyce and Ezra Pound.Īll these writers and artists were touched by feelings of despair and the loss of a coherent and unified culture. One has only to think of Stravinsky and Picasso, or of the growing popularity of cinema and jazz. It was not only in poetry and fiction that art was being transformed. James Joyce’s novel Ulysses was published in the same year, which is often regarded as the high point of Modernism. One could think of it as resembling a work of music, touching the reader with its haunting sound and bringing together diverse motifs that carry contrasting charges of emotion. It is capable of moving readers very deeply, even when they claim not to understand it. The Waste Land is a monument of Modernism and the most famous poem of the 20th century. ![]()
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