Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Hinduism in The Wasteland
In Eliot's "Wasteland", he writes "shantih shantih shantih" at the end of his poem. Since Chrissy and I are currently studying Hinduism in religion, I thought I'd research this line a bit more. "Shanti" means peace, and is the basis of Shanti mantras found in the sacred text, the Upanishads. Reciting "shanti(h)" over and over again is supposed to calm the person and remove obstacles from the physical, divine, and internal. Shantih is associated with meditative and contemplative knowledge. Thus, I find it interesting that Eliot included this in his futile-feeling, work about emptiness and nothingness. Why do you guys think Eliot incorporated this sacred Hindu mantra in his poem?
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I think it's sort of ironic that Eliot included shanti in "The Wasteland." He continues to talk about how futile everything is in life. Although we have not fully analyzed this poem, it is clear from the first few lines we've studied and his previous works, such as "The Hollow Men" and "The Love Song J. Alfred Prufrock," that Eliot incorporates a theme of nothingness. Why would someone who finds meaningless in everything need to be calmed down from the "chaos" (which essentially is nothing) of life? It could possibly be that as "The Wasteland" was written, the reader is supposed to be just now realizing how futile life is. This realization of this emptiness is a profound feeling and one needs to calm down as they read this poem.
I feel that much of "The Waste Land" promotes death as a positive alternative to the suffering of live. It is possible that Eliot, or rather the speakers in "The Waste Land," come to a collective agreement that peace can be found during death.
I think it makes sense that Elliot ended his poem with peace. I believe one reason Elliot wrote this poem was that it was his reaction against the disillusionment of World War I. Elliot simply desires the world to becomes restored after World War I; one of the themes of the poem is restoration or rebirth. In The Wasteland, Elliot alludes that if modern society can end disillusionment, the world will be restored back to where it has meaning.
After doing a little more research, I discovered that the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, where the booming of thunder (DA) symbolizes "give, sympathize, and control," is one of the earliest written Upanishads. On the other hand, Eliot ends his poem by repeating "Shantih" (peace). The juxtaposition between early and ending times is a frequent theme of Eliot's, symbolizing the beginning of life and then death.
Perhaps this is a little bit too simple, but I considered "shantih" to be a sort of solution to the feeling of emptiness and disillusionment produced by war. The effect produced by the mantra is definitely meditative and soothing... It speaks of an inner calmness that can sort through the confusion of modern life.
Incidentally, the multitude of voices in the poem reminds me of the great variety of voices present in the Upanishads themselves (as they were written over literally thousands of years). Perhaps Eliot meant to reflect the diversity of Hindu beliefs in his poem as a metaphor for modern society.
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