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Thomas Sternes Eliot published * The Waste Land * in 1922 and owes its final shape to the collaboration of Ezra Pound who actually corrected it and insisted on the need of more conciseness .
The long poem consists of five parts of varying length and shows the crisis of modern men: lack of communication and degradation of human conditions .
The poem * The Waste Land * is an inclusive work in fact, Eliot, through the use of the mythical method, borrows legends; stories and myths from Dante, the Greek tradition and so on, to form the framework within which he may analyse present and past creating an effect of simultaneity of the temporal and spatial condition of the poem. The word * Waste *, referred to Land, means probably dry: arid landscapes are depicted throughout the poem conveying a sense of metaphysical desolation. With this background, the different characters speak or act almost automatically, like men spiritually dead, and life is reduced to a sterile routine of birth, sex and death without any hope of spiritual renewal. Eliot did not use a single myth but a series of myths and ancient stories such as those of the Tarots cards and the legend of the Holy Grail. Such stories have in common the pattern of death and resurrection, of a land condemned to sterility and rescued to its previous condition by the advent of the Hero. In the first section of poem * The Burial of the dead *, the gods of vegetation, who are ritually buried and resurrected, are compared to the corpses which are buried in the garden. There is an alteration of dialogues with landscapes, a chorus of characters from the pack of Tarot cards and an epic vision of London as an <*> .
In * A Game of Chess * there are different settings portraying the same situation: lack of communication, sterility in human relationships, even in marriage . * The fire sermon *, derived from buddhist tradition, is referred to lust or sex reduced to mere physical routine, which means waste in human relationships and in love. Eliot gives a complete description of this theme which is introduced through various love scenes, and then developed in the second part through the tales of different couples which are taken not only from contemporary life but also from the past such as: * Aeneas and Dido *, * Tereus and Philomela *. The presence of Tiresias, the Greek prophet, gives the passage a lyrical dimension. Tiresias, although a spectator and not a character, is the most important personage in the poem because the two sexes meet in him . * Death by water * is the story of a sailor, Phlebas the Phoenician, who drowned in the sea. Instead of sorrow, the poem convey a sense of relief: it is a symbol of renewal and resurrection. The last section of the poem * What Thunder said * is referred to the trial and death of Christ: the Chapel of the Holy Grail finally appears but it is in <*> .
Eliot's poem * The Waste Land * is a melting pot where past and present are mingled together creating any definite setting and time and * the mythical method * is the means through which, merging into one another, these myths are juxtaposed to themes of modern sterility and lack of renewal enphasizing the general paralysis of the modern man .
