[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
. The rest offor the New York Evening Post Literary Review in 1923 would see further treatments of The Wastemid-July.During the first week of August, a reader Land remain within the narrow critical confinessent a letter refuting Ransom s position.The reader already established.Regarding the theme of thewas Allen Tate, a former student of Ransom s and poem, there seemed to be no in-between.Whetherfuture fellow Fugitive. Ransom had essentially the reviewers praised The Waste Land or lambastedassaulted Eliot for distorting both reality and aes- it, nothing that passes for a thematic considerationthetic representations of reality.While Mr.Eliot s seemed capable of removing it from the boon-or-performance is the apotheosis of modernity, Ran- bane of its being social commentary and, in thatsom did not think much of that modernity if such context, an unequivocating, unequivocal statementa poem was its apex, for The Waste Land finally of absolute despair. seems to bring to a head all the specifically mod- Helen McAfee touched on the poem briefly inern errors, and to cry for critic s ink of a volume an Atlantic article, assessing what she called thequite disproportionate to its merits as a poem. literature of disillusion of the postwar era.Speak-Those errors, Ransom would have it, are largely ing of the disastrous psychic scars that the war haderrors of modes of perception.Art, he insisted left on the creative sensibilities of an entire genera-ought not to partake of the disunities of the sensi- tion of young writers, she noted that:bility that science has forced on the modern mind.the most striking example of this depth of confu-But for him The Waste Land exhibited an aestheticssion and bitterness is Mr.Eliot s The Waste Land.that did precisely that, as if he [Eliot] were namingAs if by lightning it reveals the wreck of thecosmos Chaos.His intention is evidently to presentstorm.For this effect it is clear that the authora wilderness in which both he and the reader arehas consciously striven indeed he refers to hisbewildered. works as my ruins..It is mood more thanRansom s position was that the poet ought toidea that gives the poem its unity.And thatbe an imaginative synthesizer who counteractsmood is black.It is as bitter as gall; not only withrather than contributes to the disruptiveness ofa personal bitterness, but also with the bitter-modern life, and it is that point that Tate s let-ness of a man facing a world devastated but for ater took up: Mr.Ransom.has offered only anwar by a peace without ideals.The humor forabstract restatement of superannuated theories ofit has humor is sordid and grotesque.consciousness.all to the end that a philosophyof discontinuity is not only lamentable but entirely It should come as no surprise that by Septemberwrong. For his part, Tate insisted that there is form 1923, readers would find the reviewer for the Times Waste Land, The 479Literary Supplement repeating the usual cant: From whether in praise or dispraise, modern science orthe opening part of The Waste Land to the final one industry. The poets have not risen to the offer :we seem to see a world, or a mind, in disaster andIndeed, the poets.have been more preoc-mocking its despair.We are aware of the topplingcupied with the negative than the positive side.of aspirations, the swift disintegration of acceptedI have spoken of Eliot s Waste Land, whichstability, the crash of an ideal. F.L.Lucas, review-gives a vivid suggestion of the whole vast mod-ing the poem for The New Statesman a month later,ern fabric crashing down in ruinous chaos; andwrapped the poem up in largely the same man-there are many other poems which present orner: The gist of the poem is apparently a wildimply or prophesy failure or spiritual disaster inrevolt from the abomination of desolation which isthe modern scheme.In other words, the poetshuman life, combined with a belief in salvation byhave preferred weakness to strength.the usual catchwords of renunciation [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]