Sanjna Plawat
Independent Researcher
E-mail: sanjnaplawat261@gmail.com
Special Issue on Diseases, Death and Disorder, 2020
Abstract
Corona pandemic has put a global halt on every human’s normal life. In this turbulent time of hopelessness, civilization is set to witness a test of humanity. The quarantine period is a meditating ground to rectify the faults and strengthen the bonds all over the planet. This research paper attempts to dig up the deep-rooted challenges of humanity in the wake of the pandemic with reference to T. S. Eliot’s modern poem “The Waste Land,” which lays bare the defects of the human psyche in a period of turmoil along with offering remedies to climb over the pile of fear, worry, and sorrow. I will sequentially analyse the five sections of the poem and relate the century-old Spanish flu testimony to the philosophy of present humanity during the pandemic.
Keywords: Corona, Pandemic, Hindu, Philosophy, Quarantine, Eliot, Waste Land
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain”
– T. S. Eliot, “The Burial of the Dead,” “The Waste Land”
Every pandemic is a trial of humanity in disguise. The challenges that these harsh times put in the face of civilization make the populace wonder about the fickleness of the material pleasures and the value of the existence itself. History repeats itself in various forms be it a war or contagion. The year 2020 is yet another echo of a pandemic that engulfed a huge population all over the world almost a century ago, the Spanish flu of 1918. The First World War and influenza virus affected human life at social, economic, and existential levels and thus, left an indelible imprint on the minds of the population, an agony that is captured by T. S. Eliot in his modern poem “The Waste Land,” which he wrote while recovering from the flu along with his wife Vivienne. In this paper, I will weave the present turbulent scenario the humanity all over the world is facing due to the corona crisis to “The Waste Land” written around Spanish flu to ponder upon the challenges that lay ahead in front of us as a global village and the aftermaths that such a tragedy may have if certain issues remain unaddressed.
The very first line of the very first section of T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” somehow sums up the human condition in corona pandemic where the month of April has turned out to be a catastrophic period as it has paused the usual pace of life, keeping people indoors, family members being unable to say the last goodbye to the loved ones: “April is the cruelest month.” The ironic condition of the current season was portrayed by Eliot a century ago as: “Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow, feeding / A little life with dried tubers.” In The Guardian article titled “Amid the Cruelty of the Pandemic, This Weekend offers a Glimmer of Hope,” Jonathan Freedland associates the optimistic quality of the season in a moment of despair as a ray of hope after a disaster, though there is an atmosphere of cynicism and disappointment:
If this virus complied with the rules of ancient literature, it would have struck in the depth of winter. We would have been surrounded by bleakness and death just as nature had shrivelled up and the trees were stripped bare. But this plague refused to conform to any pathetic fallacy of our making, choosing instead to arrive with the spring… Spring is about life and renewal, while all around is death and sorrow… The message of the Easter or Passover stories, and the signal sent by the arrival of spring, is that life will return, one way or another. (Freedland)
The first section of the poem, “The Burial of the Dead,” evokes the barrenness of the modern life that is devoid of any organic feeling. The world is just a pile of “stony rubbish” where everything finds its end in a “handful of dust.” In this time of lockdown where people are forcefully given a break from their professional and social life, nature in a way is urging her children to brood over the real essence of life. Necessities such as food, cloth, and shelter have become a priority, and luxury holidays, parties, and shopping are currently not on anyone’s to-do lists. The air is cleaner and wild animals are finally getting a room for themselves. People are ultimately realising their place in face of this ethereal superpower of nature that no one has any clue about:
Son of man,
You cannot say, or 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…
(“The Burial of the Dead,” “The Waste Land”)
The Sisyphean image of the man is evoked, who is just a flimsy shadow under a rock. Humans are portrayed as an anti-fertility figure who is just taking from nature and not giving anything in return. The burden of sins that a man “carries on his back” is what this stasis is yearning to make the humanity realise. It is a period of introspection, of past, present, and future. Martin Kettle wrote an article in 2018 to reminisce about the 100th anniversary of the Spanish flu in The Guardian titled “A Century on, Why are We Forgetting the Deaths of 100 Million,” prophesying that “there will be another Spanish flu pandemic one day… that scorned all human frontiers. It killed from Alaska to Zanzibar. Groucho Marx caught the flu in New York and Mahatma Gandhi in Ahmedabad.” Humanity is the one that needs to self-criticize and mend its mechanical ways to maintain harmony between the self and the other to evade apocalyptic occurrences. In a Time article titled “In the Battle Against Coronavirus, Humanity Lacks Leadership,” Yuval Noah Harari sums up the prevailing cataclysm as:
In this moment of crisis, the crucial struggle takes place within humanity itself. If this epidemic results in greater disunity and mistrust among humans, it will be the virus’s greatest victory. When humans squabble – viruses double. In contrast, if the epidemic results in closer global cooperation, it will be a victory not only against the coronavirus but against all future pathogens. (Harari)
Corona pandemic has put the whole world in quarantine and people feel as if they are living in a cellar, occupied with “nothing.” “Nothing,” this recurring word in Eliot’s modern poem sums up the hollowness of human existence. The capitalist society has trained the human psyche to seek pleasure externally, which is causing a lot of trouble to a majority of people who cannot find happiness inside four walls:
‘What shall I do now? What shall I do?’
‘I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
‘With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?
‘What shall we ever do?’…
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
(“A Game of Chess,” “The Waste Land”)
Since the inception of industrialization, the human has been running so fast that it has resulted in sidelining the essence of taking a pause. The incessant labour for bodily pleasures has taken humanity away from the inner core of being a human: “I think we are in rats’ alley / Where the dead men lost their bones.” The rat race of becoming a notch higher than the other in the competition has literally converted the humans into skeletal machines without any soul or emotions that are typical of a human. The global quarantine period is an enforced meditation by nature to pause and ponder on where we are heading and if the destination is worth it, if it exists at all! The human has forgotten to praise and cherish simple pleasures of life, the sky, the moon, the butterflies, the trees, and in turn, nature has shut itself down to its guests.
Sadly, humans have lost touch with nature and the “nymphs are departed” from the “Unreal City.” Coronavirus has emerged as an alter ego to the prevailing state of humanity, a mirror reflecting all the errors in the human lifestyle that need to be rectified. Eliot addresses the issue of a mechanical lifestyle; human continues to live each day without testing its essence, and the fickle human relationships devoid of deep sentiments and entirely based on lust in the section “The Fire Sermon”. The observations of the prophet Tiresias turn out to be as relevant in 2020 as they were in 1922:
The typist home at tea time, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins…
He, the young man carbuncular arrives…
Endeavors to engage her in caresses
Which are still unreproved, if undesired…
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand…
(“The Fire Sermon,” “The Waste Land”)
The phase of being restricted to our own during the corona pandemic is a thrust to make the human reconsider the gravity of the bonds we are forming and the tasks which interfere hugely with living a simple routine. The “automatic hand” suggests an existential crisis where life is put on a particular tape which keeps on rewinding itself again and again; a journey where you are just put on the driver seat but the automatic mode is driving the vehicle. The quarantine period is the moment to understand the real meaning of being alive: the difference between existing and living.
Eliot alerts the reader about the transience of life and how small the human body is in confrontation with the almighty nature. Irrespective of race and nationality, all humanity is flesh and bones and every one of us has one destination: death. The corona pandemic has put people of every class, nationality, and religion on a single pedestal by being indifferent to external demarcations of the individual in terms of contagion. The resultant social distancing from all professional and social obligations is a call to realise that all kinds of monetary and bodily accomplishments are null in face of the value of life and thus, material gains should not be followed by vanity, as death equals all, and the humanity should seek to discover its spiritual facet:
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss…
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
(“Death by Water,” “The Waste Land”)
Eliot’s unconventional usage of the imagery wakes up the human consciousness from the slumber of routine. As per the introduction given by S. S. Sharma in the book T. S. ELIOT: Selection of Poems:
The grimy side of life is conveyed through breathtaking imagery and through daring figures of speech. Eliot’s endeavour is to offer not just emotions but unusual combinations of emotions where feelings serve as a kind of texture for emotions. (7)
The recurrent references to water used by Eliot through the course of the poem denote the infertile and polluted ambience of the stunted humanity. The world has suddenly found itself adjusting to a life that they had never dreamt of and find the same uncomfortable to deal with as the prejudiced doctrines to lead a so-called normal life have been shattered. In an article titled “Why is April “the Cruelest Month”? T. S. Eliot’s Masterpiece of Pandemic Poetry,” Michael Austin explains the imagery of the revelatory composition:
Eliot’s Waste Land, then, is a poem that imagines what it would be like to be trapped in the wounded land-one incapable of growth, productivity, or renewal. The young Eliot saw this as a metaphor for the Modern malaise-with the demythologization of the symbols and narratives that humans had used for centuries to make meaning in their lives, humans faced something like a “wounded mythos.” (Austin)
In the article titled ““Wood for the Coffins Ran Out”: Modernism and the Shadowed Afterlife of the Influenza Pandemic,” Elizabeth Outka’s words become coherent with existing postmodern agony where the humanity is dealing with “the physical and emotional sense that the living were only the walking dead… a kind of modernist mourning/ anti-mourning… the desire to push the dead away, to bury grief and move on, and at the same time he insists that the memory of these bodies will always return (955-56). The fear of losing life instilled by COVID-19 has resulted in humanity appreciating life more than temporary pleasures, which generally one neglects running the race for worldly desires. The thought of death humbles and brings feelings of kindness and empathy for humanity. In a haphazard existence of digital life, people do not take out time to stop and sit back and reflect on the body that has to vanish one day, which is the reason why a large section of civilization is full of hollow narcissism.
In The New Yorker article titled “Finding Connection and Resilience During the Coronavirus Pandemic,” Robin Wright states that “the impact of the novel coronavirus may be so sweeping that it alters human rituals and behaviors that have evolved over millennia.” The last section of “The Waste Land,” “What the ThunderSaid,” finds a shift from the Western to Eastern philosophy, with references to Ganga and Hindu Upanishads and Vedas. In the current situation where Western methods of greeting such as handshaking are red signals amid the pandemic, joining hands in greeting and doing namaste,[1] an ancient Hindu custom of greeting, has become a common salutation all over the world. So, Eliot asserts a harmonious combination of East and West, nature and human, to help humanity lead a peaceful existence. The month of April is the month of Christ’s resurrection and the trope of dead and rebirth prevalent throughout the poem is synonymous with the present condition: “He who was living is now dead / We who were living are now dying / With a little patience.” The undeniable demise of the fact of the annihilation of the body is offered as a warning to mend our ways to the road of salvation, a hope, represented by Easter Sunday in April. In this tumultuous hour when we are physically distanced from prayer places with temples, churches, and other religious shrines being shut, the humanity is led to find hope within her/himself and find God in each one of us:
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
(“What the Thunder Said,” “The Waste Land”)
Eliot uses the voice of thunder as the voice of wisdom to answer the sorrows that burden the humanity. This notion has been taken from the philosophy of Hindu Upanishads. With civilization currently in a state of collapse, Eliot’s use of nursery rhyme seems apt to the present upheaval: “London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down.” Eliot looks for a peaceful existence of humanity and finds answer in Upanishads thus: “Datta. Dayadvham. Damyata. / Shantih shantih shantih.” The didactic approach to peace is preached through self-introspection in a tripartite structure by being an alms-giver (Datta), being compassionate (Dayadvham), and practicing self-control (Damyata).[2]
To sum up, each pandemic puts up challenges at the face of humanity at multiple levels, and thus defeating such a threat includes a collective response from the side of the human race. Eliot has propounded charity, compassion, and self-control as the triumvirate weapon that every single individual must practice to overcome the troubled hour. Eliot’s account is a lived experience through this trauma and his enunciation is a motivational tool for the current and future generations to tackle any kind of corruption in any age irrespective of its appearance in form of a pandemic or war. Amidst the corona crisis, April may seem cruel for now as it is stuffed with challenges, but it is a hope for the humanity to vanquish enemy through patience, composure, mutual solidarity, and a rejuvenated spirit.
Works Cited
Austin, Michael. “Why is April “the Cruelest Month”? T. S. Eliot’s Masterpiece of Pandemic Poetry.” Medium, 1 Apr. 2020. https://medium.com/@michaelaustin_47141/why-is-april-the-cruelest-month-t-s-eliots-masterpiece-of-pandemic-poetry-13300db19466. Accessed 13 Apr. 2020.
Eliot, T. S. “The Waste Land.” poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/waste-land. Accessed 13 Apr. 2020.
Freedland, Jonathan. “Amid the Cruelty of the Pandemic, This Weekend offers a Glimmer of Hope,” The Guardian, 10 Apr. 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/pandemic-easter-passover-renewal-death-hope. Accessed 13 Apr. 2020.
Harari, Yuval Noah. “In the Battle Against Coronavirus, Humanity Lacks Leadership.” Time, 15 Mar. 2020.https://time.com/5803225/yuval-noah-harari-coronavirus-humanity-leadership/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2020.
Kettle, Martin. “A Century on, Why are We Forgetting the Deaths of 100 Million.”The Guardian, 25 May 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/25/spanish-flu-pandemic-1918-forgetting-100-million-deaths. Accessed 13 Apr. 2020.
Outka, Elizabeth. ““Wood for the Coffins Ran Out”: Modernism and the Shadowed Afterlife of the Influenza Pandemic.”Modernism/ modernity,vol. 21, no. 4, 2014, pp. 937-960. https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1120&context=english-faculty-publications. Accessed 13 Apr. 2020.
Sharma, S. S. “Introduction.” T. S. ELIOT: Selection of Poems, edited by S. S. Sharma, Doaba Publications, 2003, pp. 1-9. Print.
Wright, Robin. “Finding Connection and Resilience During the Coronavirus Pandemic.” The New Yorker, 12 Mar. 2020.https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/coping-camaraderie-and-human-evolution-amid-the-coronavirus-crisis. Accessed 13 Apr. 2020.
Endnotes
[1]Namaste is the traditional Hindu greeting which involves joining the palms of both hands in benediction to the other human. It represents one soul greeting the other soul.
[2] To read the fable of the Thunder, please refer to the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 5, 1.
Sanjna Plawat holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from Gargi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India. Besides being a Junior Research Fellowship awardee, she is an ardent scholar. Her research interests include Individual & Society, Popular Culture, Gender, and Cultural Studies, Psychoanalysis, Children’s Literature, Modern Cinema, and Video Games Narratives, and Transhumanism.