One of the more profound pieces of literature that has frustrated many an English 101 student is T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland". Before addressing the poem, I have to say at times, it's hard to appreciate Eliot. Given his writing talent and impressive range of tone (from the dreary bleakness of "The Wasteland" to countless cheery and lighthearted poems about cats), his most prolific and well-known work lock him as an important voice of his generation. As a person outside the pages, he was an admitted racist and anti-Semitic, a bitter and pretentious man whose swollen ego was in contrast to his social inaptitude and maligned self-image. That being said, I re-read "The Wasteland" from time to time as it's one of the more brilliant pieces of writing from the Modernist era.
What I greatly enjoy in this poem is Eliot's notion that classic references and glorified history gets annihilated in the firestorm of World War One. Gone in the flames are the notions of nobility and monarchies, the image of the majestic soldier, the folly that man is capable of a higher state where conflict is conquered by reason and peaceful debate, and lofty references to great civilizations of the past merely serve as a crutch for explaining societies' chronically ill-advised idea of nationality. In other words, we built the systems of man on a powder keg. The inevitable lighting of the fuse reduced to the world to a stark, cold place where not only was the present destroyed but all instances of the past. The wasteland.
As a means of brilliant framing, Eliot uses material from earlier in the poem as a self-referencial metaphor. In other words, instead of using famous (or in the case of your more pretencious artists, obscure) alliterations from society as a whole, he uses his own untainted experience as symbolism. And you get it.
The point here is that we construct ourselves from so many faulty components that it becomes obvious we can only create the keystones of our lives from our own lessons, with that we begin to evolve from the wasteland. I believe firmly those higher passions need to be nurtured with our own definitions, our own values. We sing a song because it gives us joy, we climb a mountain and revel in the summit instead of lamenting our not being the first to do so. We write stories because our hearts overflow with so much emotion, we need to first eliminate the audience and please ourselves, in context of our own realities.
To simplify that without channeling the spirit of Ayn Rand in excess, our personal lives can reach a point where we see the weakness in adopted values and alien logic, we need to let that inevitable internal conflagration rage. This is not tabula-rasa inspired logic because we can never have a clean slate, but we can define our future philosophies on the experience of our own lives. And, perhaps most notably, in a watered down society, we can be our own wonderful metaphors.
All this boils down to how we're able to focus our days. It's always been easy for thinking men and women to be utterly amazed at the impact of pop culture. Indeed, culture is the curse of the thinking class. Worse still is when pop culture becomes the metaphor for OUR lives. Our days are long and dominated by our will, why would we ever let our view of ourselves rise from anything other than our own memories? I've faced a great many flaws in my personality in the past year and should I need a source for metaphoric conflict, I can simply unlock the troubled traits that had to be destroyed to create a new foundation. The metaphor is my own, the destruction and loss has occurred at my own hand, and no redemption is feasible in the confines of the past. Too many interpreted sources became internalized and the struggles cleansed.
If you didn't have the patience to read all this convoluted logic, the final conclusion is this: one can benefit greatly by creating a system of one's own vision. Shared visions in mass agreement only lead to pacification and inevitable break down. You must create your own reality and leave others to their own and only lend your heart when it befits your own peace.
The great writers of early epics and pre-medieval masterpieces had to create solely on the buzz of knowledge that crackled in between the white noise of their society. They were able to craft legends and allegories free of complicated alliterations. Think of it this way; Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings, had notions of previous legends but went ahead and sculpted his work without relying on them to be the "meat" of his ideas. The meat, as it is, was from his own heart. Had his books failed and not sold, it didn't matter in the larger scheme. His was a higher form of art and had the lucky course to get recognized by the masses. Of course, with that success he has defined a whole genre of imagination that is constantly stolen by others, such as the Harry Potter series, that brings nothing new to the table. Does that make it bad? Not necessarily, but it does negate the thrust of the author's own creativity. Her metaphors are those of others, she merely sculpts her world around what has already been established.
Again, is that wrong? Of course not. But when we allow our stories to be of our own flavor and of our own experience, we can strive for meaning in every action, notably when we designate our minds that keener awareness. And that is how I want to live my life. I wish I could start the process and maintain it. That's my challenge for the present to see that notion through to some inevitable end--be it the summit of a far away mountain or the completion of a book. In the end, that is all there is to give meaning to a man's name.
