The Waste Land, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T S Eliot
I must have heard Eliot’s poetry somewhere, or at least heard of it; for why else would I have tuned in to Sir Alec Guinness reading the poems on BBC Radio 4? Nevertheless, it is Sir Alec’s rendition that I remember. It was my introduction to Eliot’s poetry and to the art of reading aloud. It was an art I had been listening to as long as I could remember, perhaps beginning with BBC’s Jackanory in the early 60s, but had never fully appreciated until I heard Sir Alec Guinness reading ‘Prufrock’ and ‘The Waste Land’. What year I heard it escapes me, though I know I was in my flat in Shropshire which places it to the mid-80s to early 90s. The internet is no help on this, other that telling me Sir Alec recorded it in the 1950s and Eliot approved of his reading. Two facts I did not know until now.
“I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
J Alfred Prufrock’s was a style of clothing I knew from the male half of my grandparents. It was a style that permitted no change from one decade to the next, as though it had been poured over them at a young age, much like glaze is poured over a clay pot. Not for them a late middle-age discovery of cargo pants and renaissance style shirts with fancy (and, admittedly, pointless) lacing up the sleeves. They knew who they were (working class) and where they were from (Plaistow in East London) and they stuck with what they knew, good and bad, for a lifetime.
But enough of ‘Prufrock’ because it is Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ that haunts me with its overtones of Arthurian Myth, existential angst, apocalyptic visions, and Buddhism. If Prufrock is the narrative of one man’s neurosis and regrets (I have measured out my life with coffee spoons) then ‘The Waste Land’ is the narrative of a world gone, or going, to hell, and it speaks to the egoist writer in me: the writer who craves the big themes.
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Of course, the critic needs to know the context: 1922, economic depression, a society broken by the thousands of deaths in the Great War, the British Empire in decline, a society rapidly changing in rights, mores, and technology, becoming almost unrecognisable from that of a generation before. And, of course, a sense that the huge death toll of the Great War had been for nothing. Eliot described the world as he saw it: a pessimist’s view, admittedly, but he went big and going big is admirable.
You can listen to Sir Alec reading The Waste Land here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcj4G45F9pw and reading Prufrock here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUL4O4RTgh8
If I were you, I’d turn off the pictures and just listen.