Eliot and his Footnotes

Footnotes are an important part of reading The Waste Land for most people who don't have the works of Dante and Wagner memorized. While you can read through the poem and gain an important understanding just from the basic imagery and tone of the poem, the references to many of the most influential works of Western literature are key to understanding important parts of what Eliot was trying to convey about modern society. The importance of footnotes is even more notable because Eliot himself wrote many footnotes for the original publishing of the poem in book form, something that most poets would not do. Especially compared to earlier Romantic poets who would probably balk at the idea of annotating their spontaneous overflows of emotions with references to academic works, the inclusion of footnotes represents a fundamental shift in how Eliot felt poetry should be made and read.

This is made more interesting, however, by later commentary made by Eliot on his footnotes. In a 1956 essay "The Frontiers of Criticism," Eliot says:

"Here I must admit that I am, on one conspicuous occasion, not guiltless of having led critics into temptation. The notes to The Waste Land! I had at first intended only to put down all the references for my quotations, with a view to spiking the guns of critics of my earlier poems who had accused me of plagiarism. Then, when it came to print The Waste Land as a little book? for the poem on its first appearance in The Dial and in The Criterion had no notes whatever? it was discovered that the poem was inconveniently short, so I set to work to expand the notes, in order to provide a few more pages of printed matter, with the result that they became the remarkable exposition of bogus scholarship that is still on view today. I have sometimes thought of getting rid of these notes; but now they can never be unstuck. They have had almost greater popularity than the poem itself? anyone who bought my book of poems, and found that the notes to The Waste Land were not in it, would demand his money back. "

So basically he's saying the footnotes were added for publishing demands and shouldn't be artistically linked with the poem itself. This, however, has been disputed by academics who have found evidence that he included footnotes in earlier versions of the poem even before he began discussions with publishers. I think it's interesting that later on in life, he seemed to want to distance himself from the footnotes, which had perhaps come to represent a view of his work that he did not like. It's also remarkable just how inextricably linked The Waste Land and its footnotes would become, but maybe Eliot should have recognized that they might be necessary when he included quotes from 4 different foreign languages.

Here's a link to the JSTOR for Eliot's essay, "The Frontiers of Criticism," and another article discussing the essay and specifically his quotes about the footnotes:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27538564.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A0d39055d20bca73186b76db9384cb90f

https://books.google.com/books?id=tMHfQmqxEL0C&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236&dq=ts+eliot+bogus+scholarship&source=bl&ots=oqM3nJcXZw&sig=AwInFxn794vz50mGJlWnmEwISqA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtrIWfp8DZAhUQ24MKHWrhC5oQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=ts%20eliot%20bogus%20scholarship&f=false