Themes in T. S. Eliot’s Poetry || Major Ideas and Literary Analysis

Note on The Themes of Eliot's Poetry

Introduction

T. S. Eliot is a melancholic poet of the disillusioned period. He is a misunderstanding of the modern world by virtue of his education and heritage. He has always been traditionalist in his attitude towards life. His main occupation has been literature and philosophy before the scientific study of the esoteric teachings of Zoroaster, Buddha and Lao Tzu. He was dissatisfied with science or, as he called it, the 'ignorant knowledge' of his time: nevertheless, he has been very harmonious and even powerfully original within its limits, especially in terms of poetic technique. He thus came to appreciate and absorb the Imagist cult, the technique of the "inner monologue" and other sensational devices in order to awaken the idle consciousness of contemporary man. He uses symbols that... some vague associations, believing that the aggregate of these associations will produce some fundamental association.

 The subject of his poetry

Eliot had a keen sense of his age. He was concerned with urban life, especially the life of the great cities which are the centres of modern industrial activity. He calls London "The Unreal City", because despite its industrial development and physical comforts its environment is hideous and frightening. T.S. Peirce writes in this regard: This quality is the most striking, and it is the one that immediately distinguishes Eliot from previous English writers. His poetry is of streets, houses and people, not of forests, fields and flowers.

We are deeply moved by his characters and their selfishness and sexuality. The city people, like Prufrock, Sweeney and Gerontius, are representatives of corrupt, decayed and money-grubbing materialistic civilizations. Even the lovers in his poetry are deeply disappointed in The Waste Land. Love turns into lust. It is a mere animal passion. The setting of his scenes is the streets of the big city, with all their ugliness and sting. According to Elizabeth Drew, "the stench is above all, of steak in the passageways, of cocktails and cigarettes, of stale beer, of dusty paper flowers, of women in closed rooms".

The tragedy at the heart of city life lies in "the tormenting effects of the modern city on the solitary individual". Eliot points to his own experiences of London to demonstrate the lack of direction and purpose, "a sense of pretense and a heap of broken pictures". The tragedy of the typist girl in The Wasteland - waiting like a taxi - highlights the futility of modern life, yet this terrible picture is not without a silver lining. Eliot is not a pessimist. The wasteland can be transformed into a rose garden and hollow men into purposeful citizens. He is ready to offer a reward. The reward is faith rather than spiritual effort, a life of service and dedication to the common good. It has been said that The Wasteland is Eliot's Inferno, his Ash Wednesday his Purgatory and his Four Quartets his Paradiso.

Use of the Mythological Method in Eliot's Poetry

Eliot elaborates on the concept of the mythological method in his review of James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. He writes: “By using myth, by connecting a continuous harmony between modernity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is following a method that others should adopt after him... It is simply a way of controlling, ordering, giving shape and significance to the immense landscape of futility and anarchy, which we can use in contemporary history. Method

Using his historical sense. Eliot has shown that the problems of the present day are not so many. Man has faced such problems in the past. They have found some solutions for us that we can try today. If we profit by the experience and wisdom of the past, we can survive. The past shows that there have been periods of spiritual decline. A kingdom has been ruined either by the sins of the ruler or by the devastation caused by war. The land has returned to prosperity and health through the suffering and repentance of the rulers.

Eliot has used both pagan and Christian myths. From Egypt, he borrowed the myth of a fertility rite. The gods of plants The statue of a corn-stalked man, whose body was covered with a corn kernel, was buried under a coat. After a few days the kernels sprouted. It was said that God had been reborn. Sometimes the fertility god was drowned in the sea and when he floated up, it was said that God had been reborn. Christian mythology is about the suffering of Christ in the atonement for man's sin and his resurrection. The resurrection of Christ symbolizes the survival and prosperity of man.

The Contrastive Method

In this regard, Matheson argues that there is a fundamental similarity between the botanical myths of the year's rebirth, the fertility myths of the rebirth of man's power, the Christian story of the resurrection, and the Grail legend of purification. Through the device of contrast, Eliot highlights the ugliness and ugliness of the present in relation to the past.

Events of the past are brought into connection with events of the present. For example, the love of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester for the typist girl And a man is no different from the sex between the obvious. Eliot's 'London Baudelaires' is no different from the Paris and the long ones of Dante. The same vices and corruptions prevail in the regions. The idea is that despite the distance in time and space, there is a commonality in the problems.

Symbolism in T.S. Eliot's Poetry

Symbolism means an image with a host of associations. For example, the 'rose' is a symbol of beauty, but Eliot makes it represent the Virgin Mary, the Christian Church and divine grace. Coriolanus stands for a proud and selfish man. Eliot makes it represent a lost leader and loneliness and spiritual isolation. Symbols add to the completion of thought and expression while their suggestion "adds to the reader's pleasure, Edmund Wilson defines symbolism as a mixture of images, a deliberate mixture of metaphors, a combination of grand and refined manners, a bold combination of the material with the spiritual".

Types of Symbols

1. There are traditional symbols that have been used for a long time. They can be called stock symbols because everyone understands their importance. The 'dry bones' in the wasteland indicate spiritual decline and death. The ‘rats’ stand for the corruption and depravity of modern civilization.

2. The second type consists of personal symbols. Eliot uses a new type of symbols to describe the complex nature of modern city life. In The Love Song of Prufrock, a patient is depicted on the table. Where he lies conscious but unaware. This is Prufrock’s state of mind. Similarly, the movement of the fog is represented by the slow march of the cat. There are many other symbols like geraniums and dogs. Withered flowers stand for the fading of urban life.

3. Sometimes certain symbols are used in different and opposite meanings. Fire, for example, stands for destruction. It too, like purgate flame, is a means of purification. Similarly, water is of death as well as of generation. The meaning is to be sought in the light of the particular context in which the symbol is used.

Sometimes quotations and allusions are used as symbols. The failure of Stetson in My lac represents the spiritual defeat of man. The symbol of the journey in The Wasteland is a symbol of the upheaval of modern man. It should be noted that Eliot's later symbols are mainly derived from Christian traditions because they are already engaged in the spiritual development of man. This is the particular method of Ask Buddha and the Four Quartets.