Traversing Boundaries: An Analysis of the Unremitting Psychic Unity in The Waste Land

Abstract

Known as ‘Pope of Russel Square’ in the history of English literature from the 20th century, T. S. Eliot’s, literary ingenuity augmented the modernist writings. ‘The Waste Land’ is one such eventuality that, retrospectively from the publication, permuted worldwide, giving boundless definitions and ceaseless critical appraisals. Contriving the idiom of modern poetry, his career as a part never went over the hill since it was chiselled out of the emotional and intellectual retaliation to a gest which was his life itself. The close-grained, fragmented study of his works, has seemingly been immense and comprehensive. Being portrayed as the literary arbiter, his personal life was lucid and full of drama. The oeuvre hence hollers the zeitgeist of his era. As a philosopher, his happy hunting ground was both religion and the emphasis on conforming to the basic moral values of life. His ethical involvement with life emanates from the underlying desolation and devastation regarding his personal life. When he assiduously carried his position in poetry, politics, and literature, he was tagged as heedless in his personal life. The childhood limitations sprouted out from the complications of inguinal hernia, later when he was at Harvard while studying Sanskrit and Indian philosophy, the commencement of WWI and the escape from Oxford after witnessing a society which was wartorn, a love affair with Emily Hale which closed out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and the hasty entry into wedlock with Vivienne Haigh-Wood whose alleged adultery with Bertrand Russel and her ailment that followed took a toll on his burgeoning literary career. The shuffling was wilfully implemented, as alluded to by many critics. But for a feeler who, exasperated by the atrocities of war, could not necessarily keep the word restrained to the end and the overscrupulous side of Eliot could not have missed the slightest of the change either.