T.S. Eliot’ın “The Waste Land” Eserinde Entropi

Abstract

T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” considered the most significant poem of the twentieth century, defines the literary period known as modernism and includes the reflections and fragments from modern period. Eliot reflects some of the significant concerns of the post-war period that witnessed the astonishing political, cultural, sociological and psychological and moral changes to the face of the modern world. He reckons with incalculable consequences of the First World War to the modern world, he is aware of Western civilization’s being under threat of destruction and the mortality of civilizations, that’s why, he is concerned with new ways of ordering. At the end of the poem, he installs power of renewal, cycles of creative destruction, he looks to the future of the western civilization with hope. This article explores Eliot’s engagement with the ruined, fragmented, disordered and aging western civilization and any future cultural, social and moral reconstruction by using the concept of entropy. The character, the Sibyl of Cumae in the epigraph of the poem reflects the concept of entropy, energy‘s turning into disorder and inertia, metaphorically. Sybil who is the embodiment of the western civilization represents the entropic movement of the western to disorder, loss of differentiating energy and degradation. Her withering and aging process represents the physical, spiritual and cultural aging of the western world without beauty, youth and energy. Her unbearable suspension in time represents the longevity of the western civilization that will end for a new beginning.