Treatment of Time in The Waste Land
Time is an eternal phenomenon in The Waste Land. The Waste Land considers the relationship between life in time, a life of bondage and suffering, and life in eternity. Time is the expression of the timeless in the phenomenal world and eternity pervades every changing element of temporal existence.
At the very opening, Eliot has used the epigraph of the poem from Petronius,
"I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in her cage, and when the boys said, Sibyl, what do you want? she replied I want to die."
Sybil is a symbol of timeless time since she is suspended in jar and she can not die, still she is ageing. On the other hand she is captured in human’s time trap showing how time decays youth. Sybil is associated with the eternal cycle of birth, death and re-birth.
However, the Sibyl’s predicament mirrors what Eliot sees as his own: He lives in a culture that has decayed and withered but will not expire, and he is forced to live with reminders of its former glory.
To analyze further, Eliot’s selection of epigraph shows his treatment of time. Time moves in the epigraph from reader’s present to Eliot’s present. While Eliot is writing, it is his present but the reader’s past. Again while Petronius talks about Sybil, it is his present but Eliot’s past. In the same way Sybil’s present is Petronius’s past since Sybil’s myth is much anterior to his time. The shifting of time can be seen in the following diagram.
Sybil’s present—Petronius’s past
---- Petronius’s present ---------Eliot’s Past
Eliot’s Present------Readers’ past
Eliot's primary theme time- and the timeless is also presented in the Four Quartets' opening lines:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past . . .
all time is eternally present.
Eliot’s perception of time and eternity bears comparison with St. Augustine’s
“But in eternity nothing moves into the past: all is present.”
Eliot’s treatment of time is well understood if we analyze his use of myth. He has juxtaposed ancient myths and legends with the present. Eliot’s method of using myths in his poem underlines not only ‘the pastness of the past but also its presence’; it views the contemporary human problem as a repetition and continuation of a permanent problem of humanity, but shows a wide gulf between the two:
a myth is used as a norm of order and harmony in the human life in antiquity, to measure the extent of moral confusion and chaos in the post-war European society on which attention is focused. (Rai: 1970: 68)
Teiresias, according to Eliot, is the central figure in the poem who is historically associated with King Oedipus of Thebes which is clearly the classical legend of ‘wasteland’. The significance of Tiresias is complex and varied. Though a blind prophet, he can see and prophesize everything symbolizing the conscience of humanity. Eliot himself stated the significance of Teiresias, a bi-sexual,
“Tiresias although a mere spectator and not indeed a character, is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest… all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias”
Teiresias can not be bound by time and space; he merges through eternity:
He is at once a relic of the past and a scion of the agonizing drama in contemporary history and a participator and fellow sufferer. ((Rai: 1970: 76)
Treatment of time is also recurrent in Eliot’s portrayal of madam Sosostris. She is a a woman of present time , bearing an ancient name is telling the future with a wicked pack of cards . In this sense she unites the three:- Past –present – and future .
Again past time is seen as being continuously present in the example of the Unreal city in The Burial of the Dead . London is a version of hell, the example of all cities either of past or of present in periods of spiritual decline.
“Unreal city
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many .
Sighs, short and in frequent, were exhaled “
Time exists only in relationship to consciousness. Time cannot be said to exist until someone witnesses it or feels its effects. To the observer on earth, however, the event seems to be happening as it is being seen. In the section of A Game of Chess Eliot considers this illusion of time as "mere sequence":
What shall I do now? What shall I do
I shall rush out as i am , and walk the street
With my hair down, so what shall we do tomorrow?
What shall we ever do?
In The Waste Land time covers a single revelation that is to say, twelve hours like the classical drama.
‘Under the brown fog of winter dawn (61)
Under the brown fog of winter noon (208)
At the very opening, Eliot has used the epigraph of the poem from Petronius,
"I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in her cage, and when the boys said, Sibyl, what do you want? she replied I want to die."
Sybil is a symbol of timeless time since she is suspended in jar and she can not die, still she is ageing. On the other hand she is captured in human’s time trap showing how time decays youth. Sybil is associated with the eternal cycle of birth, death and re-birth.
However, the Sibyl’s predicament mirrors what Eliot sees as his own: He lives in a culture that has decayed and withered but will not expire, and he is forced to live with reminders of its former glory.
To analyze further, Eliot’s selection of epigraph shows his treatment of time. Time moves in the epigraph from reader’s present to Eliot’s present. While Eliot is writing, it is his present but the reader’s past. Again while Petronius talks about Sybil, it is his present but Eliot’s past. In the same way Sybil’s present is Petronius’s past since Sybil’s myth is much anterior to his time. The shifting of time can be seen in the following diagram.
Sybil’s present—Petronius’s past
---- Petronius’s present ---------Eliot’s Past
Eliot’s Present------Readers’ past
Eliot's primary theme time- and the timeless is also presented in the Four Quartets' opening lines:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past . . .
all time is eternally present.
Eliot’s perception of time and eternity bears comparison with St. Augustine’s
“But in eternity nothing moves into the past: all is present.”
Eliot’s treatment of time is well understood if we analyze his use of myth. He has juxtaposed ancient myths and legends with the present. Eliot’s method of using myths in his poem underlines not only ‘the pastness of the past but also its presence’; it views the contemporary human problem as a repetition and continuation of a permanent problem of humanity, but shows a wide gulf between the two:
a myth is used as a norm of order and harmony in the human life in antiquity, to measure the extent of moral confusion and chaos in the post-war European society on which attention is focused. (Rai: 1970: 68)
Teiresias, according to Eliot, is the central figure in the poem who is historically associated with King Oedipus of Thebes which is clearly the classical legend of ‘wasteland’. The significance of Tiresias is complex and varied. Though a blind prophet, he can see and prophesize everything symbolizing the conscience of humanity. Eliot himself stated the significance of Teiresias, a bi-sexual,
“Tiresias although a mere spectator and not indeed a character, is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest… all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias”
Teiresias can not be bound by time and space; he merges through eternity:
He is at once a relic of the past and a scion of the agonizing drama in contemporary history and a participator and fellow sufferer. ((Rai: 1970: 76)
Treatment of time is also recurrent in Eliot’s portrayal of madam Sosostris. She is a a woman of present time , bearing an ancient name is telling the future with a wicked pack of cards . In this sense she unites the three:- Past –present – and future .
Again past time is seen as being continuously present in the example of the Unreal city in The Burial of the Dead . London is a version of hell, the example of all cities either of past or of present in periods of spiritual decline.
“Unreal city
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many .
Sighs, short and in frequent, were exhaled “
Time exists only in relationship to consciousness. Time cannot be said to exist until someone witnesses it or feels its effects. To the observer on earth, however, the event seems to be happening as it is being seen. In the section of A Game of Chess Eliot considers this illusion of time as "mere sequence":
What shall I do now? What shall I do
I shall rush out as i am , and walk the street
With my hair down, so what shall we do tomorrow?
What shall we ever do?
In The Waste Land time covers a single revelation that is to say, twelve hours like the classical drama.
‘Under the brown fog of winter dawn (61)
Under the brown fog of winter noon (208)
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