Thomas Stearns Eliot is by no means an easy author to read. (I should get the
Cats book.) But he is undeniably brilliant. The content of
The Waste Land is exactly what is described by the title: the bleak vista of modernity. "The Hollow Men" furthers the themes of
The Waste Land, with its lines of the "dead land." "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" feels as if it were written by the great James Joyce, employing stream of consciousness to communicate a sense of lostness. A very moving piece is "The Journey of the Magi," an excerpt of which I include:
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
