III. THE FIRE SERMON
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!
Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu
~~~
My chosen passage begins with the image of a rat, immediately establishing one of the poem’s recurring symbols. The rat is vile, degenerative and infamous for its ability to transmit disease and lurk in dirty places. This image is consolidated in the onomatopoeic “slimy belly”, which the rat “drags” along the bank — the word “slimy” evoking disgust, just as the rat’s slinking draws attention to its physical and figurative lowness.
The passage then shifts to describe the speaker as fishing in the “dull canal” — the assonance suggesting a lifelessness contradictory to the normal association of water as life-giving. The word “fish” introduces the allusion to “The Fisher King”, an Arthurian legend that refers to a “King” who, after being injured becomes impotent and turns the world barren. In order to restore the land to fertility, the knight Parsifal must endure various trials, reach the Perilous Chapel, and answer questions relating to the Holy Grail. While Parsifal’s quest speaks of hope, Eliot’s wasteland appears fixed in The Fisher King’s state of endless futility.
This idea of a cold, sterile world is continued in the following line beginning ‘on a winter evening’. Winter is the darkest season where growth is inhibited. Further, it is “evening”, a liminal time belonging to neither day nor night. Light lingers but the onset of darkness is imminent, thus invoking a portrait of a speaker, and perhaps a civilisation, on the brink of its demise.
The following line, beginning with “musing”, draws the reader into the internal thoughts of the speaker. Here the speaker is pondering ‘the king my brother’s wreck / And on the king my father’s death before him,’ — an allusion to Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” in which Prospero schemes revenge on his brother who cast him off to an island and usurped his role as Duke of Milan. This allusion is striking for two reasons. Firstly, the repetition in “king my brother” and “king my father” blurs familial distinctions thus confusing the nature of traditional, reliable institutional structures. Secondly, Eliot alludes to a story that hinges upon revenge – a theme reinforced through other allusions I will discuss later in my analysis.
Sex is another point of interest for Eliot in this excerpt. The line, ‘but at my back from time to time I hear’, is a reference to Marvell’s, To His Coy Mistress — its alliteration and repetition suggesting time creeps up from behind, ticking away to its ultimate conclusion. In Marvell’s poem his speaker acknowledges that if he had an infinite amount of time, he would woo the woman to whom he speaks. However, he argues that given the imminent ageing of their bodies, the woman should forego her coyness and sleep with him. Thus Eliot twists the meaning of the allusion in a manner that demeans traditional values of a woman’s chastity and a man’s chivalry.
The concept of sex equalling connectivity is similarly challenged in the following lines where Eliot introduces “Mrs Porter”, a character in an Australian drinking song sung by soldiers stationed in Egypt prior to being sent to the front. “Mrs Porter”, and her similarly mentioned daughter are prostitutes. The rhyming of “Porter”, “daughter” and “water” encourages a rhythmic meter of a soldier’s merry song — but in reality alludes to young men doomed to die, and mother and daughter prostitutes trying to scrub themselves clean. This allusion is used in conjunction with another — John Day’s, Parliament of Bees which recounts the Greek myth of Diana and Actaeon and, like The Tempest, is centred around revenge. In the poem, Actaeon comes upon Diana, the goddess of war, bathing unclothed. Noticing him, Diana turns him into a stag so that he may never speak of what he saw. Thus, in his allusion, Eliot reduces Diana to a common sex object — the belittling of such a revered figure furthered through the mocking tone evoked by the rhyming couplets.
In the final stanza, Eliot creates a sense of uneasiness by abandoning a more traditional verse for repetitive stressed syllables —“Twit” and “Jug” and iambs — ‘So rudely forc’d / Tereu’. Here he references Philomena, who, in Greek mythology, was raped by her brother-in-law Tereus, who later silenced her by slicing her tongue. Unable to speak, the Gods took pity on Philomena making her nightingale — but while Eliot’s reference could be seen as redemptive, in nature, it is the male, not the female nightingale that sings.
In The Waste Land, Eliot interweaves a variety of collective moods and personal experiences in order to cultivate a tone that is rooted in sterility and meaninglessness. Historically, Eliot uses a plethora of imagery – the scurrying rat which evokes images of soldiers in the trenches, the mention of bones and bodies – to capture a nihilistic post-WWI zeitgeist.
The poem is representative of a time where the war was over but ‘revenge’ brought only disenchantment. Thematically Eliot explores these concepts through his allusions to Shakespeare and John Day. In a world that has been irreversibly changed through suffering, the notion of “revenge” appears empty and any true solace unachievable.
A new era of industrialisation forced an end to romanticism and a confusion as to how society might reconfigure itself in this state of “in-between”. Urbanisation brought a lack of traditional guidance — in family, Elizabethan conventions and religion that failed to ease the deep post-war grief. Eliot’s experimentation with poetic construction can then perhaps be seen as a reflection of this uncertainty, as he shifts from traditional verse to jarring stressed syllables and iambs.
In light of this suffering, Eliot reveals how civilians sought meaning through connection, ultimately turning to sex (“Mrs Porter”, “His Coy Mistress”). However, through these allusions Eliot degrades the value of sex examining how individuals’ attempts to cultivate connectedness were only met with disappointment.
Finally, we can consider Eliot’s own disenchantment as a soon-to-be middle-aged poet grappling with a desire to write with authenticity. Hospitalised for depression in 1921, he perhaps looked to the authenticity of others, littering the poem with allusions. Through these constructs he explored the lingering repercussions of war, the torment of an inability to find meaning in intimacy, and a loss of hope for the future of society as a whole.
