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Tracking the Changes of The Waste Land from Manuscript to Masterpiece

Introduction T.S. Eliots The Waste Land is considered by many critics to be the poets masterpiece. Being regarded in such high esteem presents readers whom are first encountering the poem with a problem; as Rainey said, The poem is

preceded by its reputation, endowed with authority so monumental that a reader is tempted to overlook the poem itself,i It is my intention, in the course of this essay to make the poem itself the focal point, and in doing so closely detail the changes that occur between Eliots original draft manuscript and that which exists today, as well as stating my own opinions regarding Ezra pounds editing of the original manuscript. In order to formulate my own opinions on this matter it will be necessary, to an extent, to consider the finished poem in the context of its critical reception.

On the 22nd of January 1922 Thomas Stearns Eliot arrived in Paris. He had with him a collection of drafts and fragments for, what would eventually become, The Waste Land. Eliot had composed the pieces that made up this collection over, largely, the previous eleven months though some have been dated back to his days at Harvard, namely, After the turning, So through the evening and I am

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the Resurrection and the Life . Being uncertain of both the quality and worth of his collection, Eliot submitted it to long time friend and mentor Ezra Pound in order to gain his advice and suggestions for its improvement.ii After being entrusted with this collection Pound read and cut out a total of two hundred and fifty three lines from the entirety of the drafts, in what is widely recognised as one of the greatest acts of editorial intervention on record. Eliot and Pound first met in the September of 1914, the young Eliot having been persuaded by Conrad Aiken to introduce himself to Pound the established poet. Pound became both friend and mentor to Eliot, most notably at this time helping him get The Long Song of Alfred J. Prufrock into publication. Eliot said of Pound, my meeting with Ezra Pound changed my life. He was enthusiastic about my poems and gave me such praise as I had long since ceased to hope for. Pound urged me to stay [in London] and encouraged me to write verse again.iii

A Note on the Text The text of The Waste Land is split into five irregular parts, each of which is constructed from fragments which contain an assembly of multiple voices and characters; allusions to past literature and historical events; myth; legend; and surrealist imagery.iv Though split into five parts there is no apparent narrative form to the poem, the poem appears to be organised in relation to its continual

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allusions to seasonal death and rebirth. The parts of the poem are entitled thus: I. The Burial of the Dead, II. A Game of Chess, II. The Fire Sermon, IV. Death by Water and V. What the Thunder Said. In order to closely detail changes between the manuscript and finished poem I will be referencing two separate volumes: for the pre Pound manuscript I will be using T.S. Eliots, The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts v, Ed. Valerie Eliot (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1971) hereafter referred to as FT; for the post Pound manuscript I will be using T.S.Eliots The Annotated Waste Land with Eliots Contemporary Prose 2nd Editionvi, Ed. Lawrence Rainey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) hereafter referred to as AWL.

I. The Burial of the Dead In the FT manuscript this opening part of the poem commences, not with the familiar April is the cruellest month, breeding (AWL, page 57), but rather with the depiction of a drunken night out in Boston; which opens with the line,

First we had a couple of feelers down at Toms place (FT, page 5)

According to the editorial note of the FT Pounds annotations are printed in red, and Vivien Eliots [Eliots first wife] contributions are in black type with cancelled

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broken line. (FT, page xxxii ). The fifty four lines that which make up this episode have been cancelled out with a single black line, which suggests that Eliot omitted this section himself. The critic Gilbert Seldes wrote on publication of The Waste Land that: It is specifically concerned with the idea of the Waste Land that the land was fruitful and now is not, that life had been rich, beautiful, assured, organised, lofty and is now dragging itself out in a poverty stricken and disruptful and ugly tedium, without health and with no consolation in morality.vii

The section of Burial that Eliot omitted, though containing ideas in opposition to Seldes expressed opinion, namely that consolation could be found in immorality, implied by the visit to the brothel,

Get me a woman, I said: youre too drunk, she said (FT, page 5)

The rejection of the mans custom by the madam suggests that there is no consolation to be found in immoral behaviour after all; the rejection due to inebriation also signifies the temporary nature of the mans impotency. The final line of this rejected section So I go out to see the sunrise, and walked home. (FT, page 5) carries with it the perpetual metaphor of re-birth; the rising Sun.

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With each sunrise a new day is born, and, in the case of the speaker in this section, the previous nights drunken antics are in the past and its effects will wear off. One of the prevalent themes in The Waste Land is the idea of degeneration and rebirth, in having these to themes so fully encapsulated in this section it is my opinion that had it remained in the final draft of the poem it would have detracted from the effect of the poem as a whole. Given that he did not ask Eliot to reinstate this fragment into the poem, Pound was possibly of the same, or similar, opinion.

In turning to look at the more familiar start to Burial, April is the cruellest month, breeding (AWL, page 57)

it can be seen that Pound has made very few editorial changes and suggestions to this fragment. OF the changes he did suggest it is clear that Eliot was in disagreement with some; Pound in the FT highlights the word forgetful from line 60 ( FT, page 7 )and in a similar manner highlights there you feel free( FT, line 71 page 7). What can be inferred from the unchanged nature of these lines in the AWL text is that, not only was Eliot happy with them but that they contributed to the symbolism of the poem. Marie associates the snow with her childhood, saying that it covered the barren Winter ground, in essence causing her to forget what lay under the snow; alongside this she associates the feeling of freedom to

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snow due to having gone sledging. Her allusion to this incident form her childhood suggests that she feels trapped in her current life, and also projects a desire to forget herself. The snow links these lines together and to remove one would have caused the relationship and association they portray to have been lost. Another change Pound suggests for this section is the removal of the line (These are pears that were his eyes. Look!) (FT, line 101 page 7), Eliot again elects to keep this line as it was written; presumably because it foreshadows the Death by Water part of the poem.

Until now it would appear that Eliot has, for the greater part, not acted in accordance with Pounds suggestions, however, line 108 from the FT manuscript is written as Which I am forbidden to see, I look in vain (FT page 9) appears in the AWL as Which I am forbidden to see, I do not find (AWL, line 54 page 59 ). Pound had highlighted the end of this line in the FT and Eliot evidently saw fit to change it. With no notes detailing the reason for this change, I would suggest that it was largely for contextual reasons. This line relates to Madam Sosostris conducting a tarot card reading: the Tarot by definition is a set of seventy eight playing cards, from which the modern fifty two card deck was derived. The Tarot deck originated in fourteenth century Italy as a twenty two card deck containing twenty one numbered cards and one joker, these cards were representative of natural elements and virtues and vices; these were then combined with fifty six

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number cards broken down into four suits of fourteen, these represented the nobility, clergy, merchants and peasants. The cards, as the poem suggests, were, and still are used or fortune telling; and as such cards cannot be looked for as the FT draft suggests, but are either revealed by fate or not at all. Eliot himself admitted to taking liberties with regards to the tarot, I am not familiar with the exact constitution, form which I have departed to suit my own convenience.(AWL, page 71) With this admission in mind we can see that Pounds editing made the context and methodology of Tarot accurate, although the cards were not.

In considering the entirety of the poem it becomes evident that Pound did not appreciate much of the religious references that Eliot had weaved amongst the text, given that he suggested cutting the majority of it form the manuscript. The first of this religious excision can be seen in Burial. In this section Pound suggests that the line, (I John saw these things, and heard them) (FT, line 110 page 9). The editorial notes of the FT reveal that he John referred to in this line is St. John the Devine, apostle of Jesus Christ whom is credited with authorship of the fourth gospel (FT page 126). If this line had remained in the poem it would have served to strengthen the religious imagery already present, being that it was a direct reference to the New Testament. In his piece on The Waste Land manuscript Lyndall Gordon suggests that the removal of much of the religious

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aspects from the poem was not something that Eliot fully supported, Gordon states; During the twenties Eliots uneasiness was confirmed by misreadings of The Waste Land. He was irritated to be hailed as the spokesman for that generation, when it fastened so hungrily on his disillusion and erudition, it ignored the fact that they were subsidiary to a religious vision.viii

The last stanza of the The Burial of the Dead contains changes which illustrate how Pounds editing of The Waste Land was influenced by his own views on poetry. Here Pound alters the lines,

Unreal city, I have sometimes seen and see Under the brown fog of your winter dawn (FT, line 115 116, page 9)

These lines appear in the AWL as,

Unreal City Under the brown fog of a winter dawn (AWL, line 60-61, page 59)

In removing the last part of the original line Pound is removing words which are extraneous to the poems presentation. The removal of unnecessary words is one of the principles concerning poetry that Pound set forth in his critical essay A

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Retrospect; he wrote that the poet should [To] use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentationix. In removing the first person narrative I from the line it causes the poet to be distanced from the speaker, coupling this with the removal of your in the following line it serves to sharpen the image as it is depersonalised. In addition to this the removal of your from the line, and its subsequent replacement with the indefinite article, distances the City from the poem, allowing the poem to fluctuate between what the reader knows to be London as it stands and the London that has become waste land.

The Burial of the Dead is significant in the text of The Waste Land as a whole as it establishes the physical landscape in which the poem takes place, and introduces the themes that will link together the entirety of the poem.

II. A Game of Chess The second part of The Waste Land was originally entitled In the Cage (FT, page 11). This section of the poem is widely believed by critics to be a reflection of Eliots feelings towards his marriage to Vivien Haigh- Wood, Lyndall Gordon write that, She was bright and literate and enthusiastic about her husbands poetry, but her nervous hysteria and her physical frailty compounded by insomnia and a dependence on sedatives made her a frightening burden. Within a few months of their immediately unhappy marriage she fell seriously ill.x

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In this, the second part of the poem, the reader observes to women: the first the reader can infer from the description of luxurious surroundings, is wealthy; the second LIl is referred to indirectly but the locality of the reference, a public house, is suggestive of the fact that Lil is of a lower social class than the first lady, whom many consider to be the Mrs Equitone that Madam Sosotris refers to in The Burial of the Dead.

Pounds main editorial criticisms of this section of the poem suggest that he felt Eliot was wasting words and using the metre of iambic pentameter too frequently; one of the remarks he makes on the page is, 3 lines Too tum-pum at a stretch (FT, page 11) the three lines he refers to include the description of the chair that Mrs Equitone is sitting in, suggesting that the description was overlong. Similarly, lines 15 to 23 of the FT manuscript have been highlighted and any words that act to introduce, as it were, a new part of the room have been scored through by Pounds red ink: Upon the hearth, which were and but so lively, you had thought are all recommended to be discarded. Eliot clearly agreed with Pound as these lines do not appear in the text of the AWL. In cutting these suggested words Eliot also corrects the other main criticism Pound had of this fragment, namely that it was too penty. One must again wonder how much Pound is enforcing his own views on poetry on to Eliots work in light of these suggestions, given that the removal of unnecessary words is one of his key

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principles of poetry and that another is; regarding rhythm to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. xi Edmund Wilson wrote in 1922 that,

Mr Eliot is a poet that is, he feels intensely and with distinction and speaks naturally in beautiful verseHis verse is sometimes much too scrappy he does not dwell long enough on one idea to give it its proportionate value before passing on to the next but these drops, though they be wrung form flint, are none the less authentic crystals.xii

The description of Eliots verse as scrappy is in this case not derogatory, but rather a desire for more of it. In relation to the Mrs Equitone section of A Game of Chess the fuller description originally written by Eliot may have been more fitting than the edited version that was published. This section of the poem contains much of the same tone as Eliots unpublished poem The Death of The Duchess (FT page), this poem describes a couple who are no longer able to communicate; the husband wishes to escape through the door and the wife can only signify her desire for affection through the continual brushing of her hair. (Gordon, page In taking more time to describe the beauty of the womans setting in A Game of Chess Eliot would have provided a greater contrast

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between the setting and the awkward relationship between the woman and her visitor.

The second part of A Game of Chess concerning the story of Lil contains only one major editorial suggestion form Pound. From the text of the FT it is clear that Eliot was having trouble finding an appropriate ending to line 65, having originally written, coming out of the Transport Corps he then wrote above it Discharge out of the army?? (FT, page13) suggesting that though he was unhappy with the line he could think of no suitable alternative. Pound furnishes him with the necessary word, demobbed, here there is no need for elaborate description, the speaker is of a lower social class and in being so the colloquial demobbed is an appropriate choice.

This second part of The Waste Land is significant to the poem as it reveals more clearly the state of impotency that the waste land is in; marriages are failing and women are becoming as barren as the landscape.

III. The Fire Sermon Looking at the FT manuscript of The Fire Sermon in comparison with the AWL text it is immediately evident that this section of the poem underwent massive editorial changes. In the first draft of this part of the poem Eliot chose to begin

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with a seventy three line opening passage which expanded upon the first mention of Fresca in Eliots earlier poem Gerontion. Lines 1 70 (FT, page 13) of this passage were unpublished, the editorial notes to the FT contain a quote from Eliot regarding this passage; Pound induced me to destroy what I thought an excellent set of couplets; wrote Eliot of his pastiche, for said he[Pound] Pope has done this so well that you cannot do it better; and if you mean this as a burlesque, you had better suppress it, for you cannot parody Pope unless you can write better verse than Pope and you cant ( FT, page 127) Lines 71 and 72 of this passage were adapted and became lines 185 and 186 of the AWL (AWL, page 63)

On the reverse of the typescript for the Fresca passage Eliot drafted in pencil a fragment beginning, The rivers tent is broken (FT, page 25) this fragment then became the opening passage to The Fire Sermon. Lines 73 88 of the original draft were approved by Pound and he gave no suggestions for changes, they appear in the AWL text as lines 186 202 (AWL, page 63)

After suggesting the same editing should take place on lines 93 and 94 (FT, page 31) as took place in lines 114 and 115 of The Burial of the Dead (FT, page 9), the next major change to take place is the recommended removal of lines 101 120 (FT, page 31) . These lines do appear, on reading, to be unnecessary as

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they seem to describe the same feelings that Eliot has already portrayed in earlier parts of the poem, albeit more indirectly.

In the next part of The Fire Sermon there is vast evidence of Pound excising unnecessary words and recommendations on the form of the poem. In the FT manuscript Eliot had originally written out lines 121 188 as verse constructed of four line stanzas, in verse form this section amounts to a total of seventeen stanzas: Pound comments that this, verse [is] not interesting enough as verse to warrant so much of it (FT, page 45) The main focus in this section is Tiresiuss observations of the typist, and as such the stanzas which provide description of her lover are unnecessary, the description of her lover in the AWL text, though much shorter, is successful in portraying a man who is unattractive in both physical looks and manners: He, the young man carbuncular, arrives (AWL, line 231 page 64), carbuncles being a bacterial infection of the skin resulting in large pustules.

As well as cutting much of the descriptive stanzas from this fragment of The Fire Sermon Pound also cuts out lines 137 to 140 (FT, page 43-45) of the FT draft of this fragment, stating that the description of the typists home furnishings is at odds with her accommodation with the comment ?not in that lodging house? (FT page 45)

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A bright kimono wraps her as she sprawls In nerveless torpor on the window seat; A touch of art s given by the false Japanese print, purchased in Oxford Street. (FT, lines 137 140 page 45)

Further criticisms that Pound makes of this section are suggestive of the fact that Pound felt that Eliot wasnt being as decisive and certain in his writing as he should be; Pound highlights the word perhaps on page 45 of the FT,

Perhaps his inclinations touch the stage (FT, line 151 page 45)

And note in the margins regarding this that, Perhaps be damned. Similarly Pound highlights may from page 47 of the FT,

Across her brain one half formed thought may pass (FT, line183 page 47)

Pound writes of this word choice make up yr. mind you Tiresias if you know know damn well or else you dont (FT, page 47). Eliot responds to this criticism by cutting the first example of this uncertainty, and redrafting the second to stop it from being ambivalent. If these uncertainties had remained within the final text of The Waste Land it would have discredited Tiresius as a speaker, and given that

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he is representative of the character whom is moving through this waste land; Tiresius is a single entity, neither male nor female, caught between both sexes, this would greatly have affected critical readings of the poem. The last section of The Fire Sermon remains largely untouched by Pounds editorial pen, he does suggest that Eliot type out lines 1-11 of the Highbury bore me (FT page 51) fragment that he [Eliot] cut out. However, it is unlikely that Eliot did this as there is no typescript copy this fragment within the manuscript and it is not in the text of the AWL.

The Fire Sermon is a significant part of The Waste Land as it refers to The Fisher King of Miss Westons book From Ritual to Romance, a source that Eliot wrote was of great inspiration to him. In addition to this the title of this part of the poem also references the Buddhist religion, The Fire Sermon is a reference to a sermon by Siddhartha Gautama, called Buddha by his followers. In this sermon he addresses his priest saying; All things, O priests are on fire. And what, O priests are these tings which are on fire?...With the fire of passion, say I, with the fire of hatred, with the fire of infatuation; with old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery grief and despair are they on fire. (AWL, pages 99-100). This section of the poem is representative of much of the fires in the Buddhist sermon, further in this sermon Buddha states that in conceiving this aversion [to the senses], he becomes divested of passion, and in the absence of passion, he becomes aware

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that he is free; and he knows that rebirth is exhausted, (AWL, page 100). This sermon suggests that only with death can we be reborn: in relation to Eliots writing of The Waste Land he could be suggesting that only with the death of his own personal despair will he be reborn.

Death by Water and What the Thunder Said

I include these two sections of the poem together as, for the most part, the editorial changes that take place within them cannot be analysed in the same way that those previous to them. Death by Water in the FT appears to have largely fallen on Pounds cutting room floor, and the untitled fragment that would become What the Thunder Said contains only grammatical and typing corrections and is given the verdict OK OK from here on I think(FT, page 71) from Pound.

The introduction to the AWL does provide minor insight into the editing of Death by Water. In a letter to Scofield Thayer to offer him the first publication of the poem Eliot wrote of The Waste Land that it was a poem in four parts; he was intending to publish the poem without part IV. Pound wrote to Eliot on this matter stating his opinion that I do advise keeping Phlebas. In fact I moren advise. Phlebas is an integral part of the poem; the card pack introduces him, the

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drowned Phoen. Sailor, and he is needed absoloootly where he is. Must stay in. (AWL, page 25) The vehement insistence by Pound that these lines stay in with the argument that the card pack introduces him is suggestive of the fact that 040002667

Pound cut the 82 lines previous to the 10 that constitute 'Death by Water in the AWL because he felt them unnecessary as the character had already been introduced in an earlier part of the poem.

Eliot wrote in his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent that the writing of poetry requires the poet to

continual[ly] surrender himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist isxiii a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personalitythe more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which createsThe intensity of the poetry is something quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may give the impression ofxiv

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In asking Pound to edit The Waste Land it is my opinion that Eliot was subjecting himself to this self-sacrifice. Having read both the finished text of The Waste Land and the original nineteen page manuscript, I do have a preference towards the final text. However, this said, I am also of the opinion that Pound inflicted too much of is own style onto the poem and, though Pound would cut this word from this essay were he here, perhaps it would not have been clearer to the reader and less fragmented had some of the narrative tracts cut by Pound remained in the final draft.

Lawrence Rainey, Introduction, T.S. Eliot, The Annotated Waste Land 2nd Edition, Ed. Lawrence Rainey (Yale University Press, Pennsylvania United States of America,2006) page 2 ii Rainey, page 23 iii Rainey, page 7 iv The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 5th Edition, Volume , Ed. Julie Reidhead, (W.W. Norton & Company, New York United States of America,1998) page 1368 - 1369 v T.S.Eliot, The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts, Ed. Valerie Eliot (Faber and Faber Ltd., London, 1971) page numbers for quotations used in brackets after quotation. vi T.S. Eliot, The Annotated Waste Land 2nd Edition, Ed. Lawrence Rainey (Yale University Press, Pennsylvania United States of America,2006) page numbers for quotations used appear in brackets after the quotation vii Gilbert Seldes, T.S.Eliot Nation Vol. cxv pages 614-16 in T.S. Eliot The Critical Heritage Volume 1, Ed. Michael Grant, (Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd., London, 1981) page 144 viii Lyndall Gordon The Waste Land Manuscript, American Literature, Vol. 45, No. 4(Jan 1974) page569-70 ix Ezra Pound, A Retrospect, <http://www.poetspath.com/transmissions/messages/pound.html> viewed on 20th February 2009 x Gordon, page 559 xi Pound, A Retrospect xii Edmund Wilson, The Poetry of Drouth, Dial, Vol. lxxiii, pages 611-16 in T.S .Eliot The Critical Heritage Volume 1, Ed. Michael Grant, (Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd., London, 1981) page 143
i xiii xiv

T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent < http://articles.poetryx.com/51/> viewed on 27th February 2009

040002667 BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts, Ed. Valerie Eliot (Faber and Faber Ltd., London, 1971) Eliot, T.S. The Annotated Waste Land 2nd Edition, Ed. Lawrence Rainey (Yale University Press, Pennsylvania United States of America,2006) Secondary Sources Gordon, Lyndall The Waste Land Manuscript, American Literature, Vol. 45, No. 4(Jan 1974) Rainey Lawrence, Introduction, T.S. Eliot, The Annotated Waste Land 2nd Edition, Ed. Lawrence Rainey (Yale University Press, Pennsylvania United States of America,2006) Seldes, Gilbert T. S. Eliot Nation Vol. cxv pages 614-16 in T. S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage Volume 1, Ed. Michael Grant, (Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd., London, 1981)

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 5th Edition, Volume , Ed. Julie Reidhead, (W.W. Norton & Company, New York United States of America,1998) page 1368 - 1369 Wilson, Edmund, The Poetry of Drouth, Dial, Vol. lxxiii, pages 611-16 in T.S.Eliot The Critical Heritage Volume 1, Ed. Michael Grant, (Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd., London, 1981)

Eliot, T.S, Tradition and the Individual Talent < http://articles.poetryx.com/51/> viewed on 27th February 2009

040002667 Pound, Ezra, A Retrospect, <http://www.poetspath.com/transmissions/messages/pound.html> viewed on 20th February 2009