Tough to teach T.S. Eliot's "modernist" epic, The Wasteland, to a class of today's young men and women.
And I won't even pare the class down to its (the other) class and demographic.
Nonetheless, I have started the process.
Day 1: The title and expectations raised by the title. A dumpster, a landfill, a death, a sterility...
From the previous Eliot poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, I borrow a line and would like to ask this to the learners as well: Do I dare disturb the universe?
Do I dare disturb the learner's "universe" by saying The Wasteland is indeed an anti-homage paid to post-war European culture. However, it is also produced during a time of acute personal distress for the poet.
Eliot wrote The Wasteland as a result of his terrible marriage with his terribly unsuitable wife Vivienne. It's his wasteland. He has externalized his interior garbage spewed by his nagging, bordering on the insane, Vivienne.
Nah, that would reduce the poet's gravitas and I'll be left with nothing to pad it with except biography.
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