"Shantih" in The Waste Land

Abstract

THE last line of The Waste Land has the singular distinction of having baffled the best commentators on the poem. On the one hand, their bafflement results in absolute incomprehension as in George Williamson's equation of shantih with the mad raving of Hieronymo,1 or in such suspicion as A. D. Moody's the Sanskrit is meant not to be readily understood2 by Western readers. On the other hand, a commentator like David Ward wonders why a poem so little like the Upanishads in its moral and spiritual universe ends with the blessing or greeting of peace.3 Evidently, like the other cryptic allusions in The Waste Land, shantih makes us feel the inadequacy of annotations; we know and do not know. This is particularly true of Cleo M. Kearns's more recent attempt to read the last line of the poem in the twin contexts of the Hindu tradition and the modernist poem. Much as I value Kearns's interpretation for recognizing not only the mantric character of the word but its kinship with Om, I cannot accept her conclusion that the poet quibbles with shantih which at once becomes immediate experience and meditated knowledge.4 In this note therefore, I shall advert to the Upanishadic tradition of chanting the Santih mantra in order to comprehend shantih in the larger context of the Hindu tradition and the specific context of its use in The Waste Land. I shall further argue that, given this understanding, a reader might find nothing more devastatingly ironic in the whole poem than its last line.