Reading 'The Waste Land' through Pandemic Lens
Reading 'The Waste Land' through Pandemic Lens
This blog is written as a task assigned by the head of the Department of English (MKBU), Prof. and Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. Here is the link to the professor's blog for background reading: Click here.
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| Source: DALL·E 3 - Representational |
Part - 1
Video Lecture on Reading 'The Waste Land' through Pandemic Lens Part - 1 on YouTube/DoE-MKBU: Click here.
1. Introduction: Beyond War and Personal Turmoil
T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' stands as a towering monument of modernist literature, a complex and often perplexing poem that has captivated and challenged readers for a century. Traditionally, interpretations have focused on the poem's engagement with the trauma of the First World War, the disintegration of European culture, and Eliot’s own personal struggles, particularly his troubled marriage and sexuality. However, recent scholarship proposes a compelling new lens through which to understand the poem: the 1918 influenza pandemic. This devastating global health crisis, often overshadowed by the war, provides a crucial context for understanding the pervasive sense of unease, fragmentation, and decay that permeates 'The Waste Land.' This part of the post will explore this alternate perspective, drawing primarily on the YouTube video lecture of 'Reading 'The Waste Land' through Pandemic Lens Part 1,' which discusses Elizabeth Outka’s work 'Viral Modernism,' and further supported by her book excerpts, 'A Waste Land of Influenza.' This analysis reveals how the poem’s imagery, language, and structure are deeply informed by the lived experience of pandemic suffering and its lingering aftermath.
2. The Cultural Amnesia of Disease
One of the central questions raised by the pandemic lens is why the 1918 influenza pandemic has been so markedly absent from our cultural memory. As the YouTube video explains, diseases are recorded differently by our minds than something like a war. Wars, with their defined conflicts and visible casualties, lend themselves more readily to memorialization. Disease, in contrast, is “highly individual,” a personal battle fought within the confines of the body, even during widespread outbreaks, while—
“war is something else, there are few people who are fighting for everybody in war.”
This individualistic nature makes it more difficult to collectively process and memorialize.
Furthermore, disease makes people feel helpless and that is one of the reasons “it’s difficult to memorialize a pandemic.” There is often—
“very little we can do to make meaning from it,”
—especially when contrasted with the sacrificial narratives often constructed around war. The experience of disease, unlike war, offers—
“no sacrificial structure to build around a loss of this kind.”
It is “simply a tragedy,” often compounded by stigma and shame. This, the video suggests, contributes to the faintness of our cultural memory regarding pandemics and might explain why literary historians have not explored this aspect in 'The Waste Land.'
3. The Biographical Context: Eliot’s Personal Experience
To appreciate the pandemic reading of 'The Waste Land,' biographical context is essential. As the YouTube video points out, letters and diaries of authors provide crucial insights. The provided excerpts from Outka's article, 'A Waste Land of Influenza' confirm that Eliot and his wife, Vivien, were directly affected by the 1918 flu pandemic. They both contracted the virus in December 1918, during the pandemic’s second wave. Though Eliot’s case was mild, he admitted that it left him—
"very weak afterwards,"
—while Vivien's illness was more severe, impacting her nerves and causing insomnia. Eliot also wrote of a—
“long epidemic of domestic influenza”
—they weathered, using “influenza” to describe the physical illness as well as—
“the illness of his domestic arrangements.”
Furthermore, Eliot’s health remained fragile, experiencing a “sort of collapse,” and he noted a—
“new form of influenza…which leaves extreme dryness and a bitter taste in the mouth.”
These details confirm that the experience of the pandemic was a significant and constant presence in Eliot’s life at the time he was composing 'The Waste Land.'
4. Delirium and Fragmentation
The poem’s structure, characterized by its—
“well-known fragmentation, its multiple voices, and its constant leaps from topic to topic,”
—can be seen as a reflection of a “delirium logic.” This concept, introduced in the YouTube video, suggests a “comprehensive vision of reality from within a fever dream.” The poem's abrupt shifts in subject, time, and speaker create a disorienting effect, much like the experience of a high fever where thoughts and perceptions become disjointed. In "The Fire Sermon" section, for example, the repeated word "burning" along with fragmented lines, reflects a “delirious tossing back and forth.”
"O Lord Thou pluckest me outO Lord Thou pluckestburning"
This section, Outka suggests, is—
“a delirium brought on by a high fever.”
The "incomplete quality" of these lines further represents the "splintering of thought illness could produce." The poem’s broken language is not simply a stylistic choice, it is—
“an expression of the war's impact on consciousness” but also “suggesting the virus's impact on consciousness and the physical and spiritual costs of the pandemic.”
5. Sensory Overload and Bodily Distress
'The Waste Land' is full of striking sensory details that resonate with the experience of acute illness. The poem’s imagery often evokes a sense of physical distress, mirroring the bodily sensations associated with the flu. As the YouTube video notes,
“our bodies perceptions of the world depends on the health of the body.”
One such example is in the lines:
"A woman drew her long black hair out tightAnd fiddled whisper music on those stringsAnd bats with baby faces in the violet lightWhistled, and beat their wingsAnd crawled head downward down a blackened wall"
Here, hair morphs into fiddle strings, and sounds become distorted as “the sufferer’s world has turned upside down.” The YouTube video notes that,
"the sufferer's world has turned upside down and the ambient sounds have flown more ominous and distorted."
This disorientation and sensory confusion are reminiscent of the hallucinatory states that often accompany high fever. Additionally, the poem’s recurring motif of thirst points to—
“the burning thirst that accompanies high fevers.”
"If there were water we should stop and drinkAmongst the rock one cannot stop or thinkSweat is dry and feet are in the sand"
—reveal both a literal and metaphorical thirst, embodying a—
“pandemic perspective, manifesting confused thinking, bodily distortion, helplessness, and overwhelming thirst.”
This is further reinforced by lines describing—
"voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells"
—which suggest a "hallucinatory dryness." The speaker's fragmented thoughts, jumping back to a “sense of thirst” showcase a language that’s “broken by fever.” The poem serves as a "memorial to bodily states," not just psychological and spiritual struggles.
6. Drowning and the Pathogenic Atmosphere
Juxtaposed with the imagery of dryness and thirst is the “threat of drowning,” a paradoxical state reflective of how “fluid flooded the lungs” during the pandemic. As the text notes, “the body effectively drowned itself.” The phrase, "Fear death by water," and the image of "the drowned Phoenician Sailor," can be interpreted not only as fear of drowning in general but also a specific fear linked with a respiratory illness. The poem builds a—
“pathogenic atmosphere of wind, fog, and air,”
—where images like “brown fog” and the wind are not simply natural phenomena but rather “capture contagion and the power of the threat alongside its ineffability and diffuseness.” The YouTube video highlights the lines:
“The wind under the door”"What is the wind doing?"“Nothing again nothing”
These lines, along with a description of the wind as “unheard,” capture the “paranoia” surrounding the unseen and “dangerous” air during the pandemic. In a time when people were constantly at risk of contracting an airborne virus, the "wind" could represent a deadly threat. Additionally, the constant tolling of bells in the poem creates—
“an invisible force spreading through the atmosphere,”
—which can also be read as—
“a more literal echo of the bells that rang continuously for the pandemic dead,”
—further connecting the poem with the pandemic's atmosphere.
7. Aftermath: Death, Resurrection, and Silence
The poem also addresses the aftermath of the pandemic, exploring the themes of death, viral resurrection, and silence. The poem is full of dead bodies, bones, and rats. While these images are frequently attributed to the war, they also evoke the reality of—
“civilian corpses that had flooded cities and homes.”
The poem’s “insecure or disrupted burial” is also linked to the pandemic when, “mass graves, scarce coffins, and disrupted funerals” were common. The lines,
"bodies naked on the low damp ground,"“take on new resonance when set beside such images.”
These lines, and the recurring image of the unburied corpse in the “Stetson” passage, where the speaker asks—
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,Has it begun to sprout?”
—captures “the widespread anxiety about burial” and speaks to—
“the virus’s deathly fecundity, to its infectious quality, and to its repeated returns.”
Furthermore, the poem explores the concept of “viral resurrection,” which embodies the “perpetual living death” experienced by many during the pandemic. Eliot himself described this state as having made himself “into a machine” to survive. The poem’s epigraph, the “haunting story of the Cumaean Sibyl,” who “was given a wish by Apollo” but “forgot to ask for eternal youth,” perfectly embodies this state of living death. This—
“suspended death-in-life quality”
—is present throughout the poem, as the speaker declares,
"I could notSpeak, and my eyes failed, I was neitherLiving nor dead, and I knew nothing."
This state of “living death” and the failure to achieve true resurrection extends to the Christian models evoked in the poem, which are presented as "delirious illusions." This reinforces how the poem’s “failed tropes of classical and Christian models of resurrection” reflects the despair of “a post-pandemic moment.”
Finally, the poem grapples with the—
“silence, forgetting, and afterlife”
—that surrounded the pandemic. The poem's fragmented conversations, and broken speech reflect “the difficulties of communication,” which are “traced to the war” but also mirror—
“the silence that surrounded the pandemic and the ways it became unspeakable and forgotten.”
The poem begins with the “forgetful snow,” and the speaker declares, “I could not / Speak.” As the YouTube video notes,
“literature is always going to capture any pain that body suffers any pain that human suffers is always recorded by literature,”
—yet “the problem is with our reading.” Because of the individual nature of disease it is “difficult to memorize.”
8. Conclusion
By reading 'The Waste Land' through the lens of the 1918 influenza pandemic, we gain a new appreciation for the poem's complexity and its continued relevance. The poem is “a record of suffering and confusion translated into language” and captures not only the “spiritual or psychological” turmoil of the era, but also the physical and emotional impact of the pandemic on “ordinary experiences.” The poem's fragmented structure, unsettling imagery, and recurring motifs of thirst, drowning, and haunting sounds all resonate with the lived experience of a global health crisis. As Elizabeth Outka suggests, the—
“pandemic’s remnants have always been present here” but “they have hidden in full view.”
By acknowledging this “viral context,” we can move beyond traditional interpretations and recognize 'The Waste Land' not only as a response to war and personal anguish but also as a powerful and haunting memorial to the trauma of a forgotten pandemic, giving a voice to the "unmemorialized" and the experiences and—
"qualities of an illness that has reached pandemic levels."
The poem serves as a reminder of the lasting impact of disease on the body, mind, and cultural memory.
Part - 2
Video Lecture on Reading 'The Waste Land' through Pandemic Lens Part - 2 on YouTube/DoE-MKBU: Click here.
1. Introduction: Unmasking the Viral Undercurrents of Modernism
T.S. Eliot’s 'The Waste Land,' a cornerstone of modernist literature, has been subjected to diverse interpretations since its publication, often viewed through the lens of the First World War, socio-political disintegration, and personal struggles. However, a significant, yet often overlooked, context is the 1918 influenza pandemic, a cataclysmic event that profoundly shaped the lived experiences and consciousness of the era. This part of the post aims to delve into Elizabeth Outka's groundbreaking work, 'Viral Modernism,' to explore the pervasive influence of the pandemic on Eliot's masterpiece, drawing primarily from the second part of the YouTube video, 'Reading Waste Land Through a Pandemic Lens Part 2,' which discusses Outka's analysis. The goal is to illuminate how the pandemic experience – with its unique blend of individual suffering and collective trauma – permeates the poem's themes, imagery, and structure, offering a fresh and vital perspective on its enduring power.
2. Unveiling the Pandemic’s Presence
2.1. Death and Innervated Living Death: The Dual Legacy of the Outbreak
Outka argues that 'The Waste Land' is saturated with the dual outcomes of the pandemic: death and an "innervated living death." The poem teems with images of corpses, bones, and drowned figures, such as the "drowned Phoenician Sailor" and Phlebas, often interpreted as war casualties. However, Outka’s analysis prompts a reevaluation of these figures as reflections of the pandemic’s devastation, which occurred not only on battlefields but also in cities and homes.
2.1.1. Pervasive Imagery of Death:
The poem's opening lines, as discussed in the YouTube video, seem to speak from the point of view of a buried corpse, setting a tone of death from the outset. References to—
"scattered bones," "white bodies naked on the low damp ground," and "the rattle of the bones"
—evoke both the war's horrors and the pandemic's grim reality of bodies piling up in overwhelmed hospitals and cities.
2.1.2. "Innervated Living Death":
Beyond overt death, the poem captures a state of profound exhaustion and enervation. The video explains "innervated" as a state of feeling—
"weak physically, mentally, as well as morally,"
—reflecting the lack of vitality that survivors experienced. Eliot himself, as noted in 'A Waste Land of Influenza,' described a—
"long epidemic of domestic influenza"
—that left him "very tired." This experience of perpetual illness, recovery, and fatigue mirrors the poem's atmosphere of languid suffering and a sense of being trapped between life and death.
2.2. The Shifting Landscape of Death: War vs. Pandemic
The video highlights a critical distinction in how death is portrayed in war and pandemic contexts.
2.2.1. War as a National Event:
In war, death often serves a national narrative, with soldiers sacrificing their lives for the collective good, and becoming "war heroes."
2.2.2. Pandemic as a Personal Struggle:
In contrast, pandemic death is perceived as an individual battle, where the deceased are often seen as victims rather than heroes. As the video notes,
“if I die, it is not a sacrifice; in fact, I may infect other people."
This lack of heroism and the potential to spread disease contribute to the pandemic's lack of cultural memory.
2.2.3. Location of Death:
War deaths occur on battlefields, whereas pandemic deaths occur within cities and homes. The poem reflects this shift, with images of death appearing in domestic spaces and urban settings, signifying that the pandemic brought death closer to everyday life.
2.3. Visualizing the Unseen: The Art of Pandemic Representation
The blog post will examine how the pandemic’s influence on visual representation.
2.3.1. Alfred Kubin's "The Spanish Flu":
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| Alfred Kubin, The Spanish Flu (Die Spanische Krankheit), ink on paper, c. 1920 Source: Bridgeman Images |
The video discusses the Austrian artist Alfred Kubin's drawing 'The Spanish Flu,' which depicts a leering skeleton mowing down a heap of bodies, symbolizing the pandemic's overwhelming death toll. This visual representation echoes the descriptions of overwhelmed hospitals and mass graves, and offers a visual parallel to the poem’s pervasive imagery of death.
2.3.2. Mass Graves and Disrupted Burials:
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| Source: The Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia |
The text notes the "piling up of bodies" and disrupted burial practices due to contagion fears. The poem’s reference to a corpse—
"planted last year in your garden"
—which might sprout and bloom, reveals the anxieties of the time. This reflects how mass graves, scarce coffins, and disrupted funerals contributed to a feeling of insecure burial, as also mentioned in the video with reference to photographs of mass graves in Philadelphia.
2.4. Viral Resurrection: The Perpetual Cycle of Living Death
The video emphasizes the concept of "viral resurrection," where the pandemic’s effects are not limited to physical death, but extend to a cycle of living death.
2.4.1. Infection of Everything:
The poem portrays a world where the city, the landscape, and even language are infected by the virus. This contagion of living death reflects the pervasive and long-lasting impact of the pandemic, blurring the lines between life and death.
2.4.2. Personal Experience of Living Death:
Eliot's own experiences mirror the poem's atmosphere, as he felt—
"caught in a perpetual living death"
—during and after the pandemic.
"The seemingly endless cycles of illness, recovery, fatigue, and failure"
—that he and his wife, Vivien, experienced, contributed to his nervous collapse and informed the poem’s tone of exhaustion. He even wrote in 1925 that he had “deliberately killed my senses” to maintain the “outward form of living.”
2.4.3. The Sibyl as a Figure of Living Death:
The epigraph from Petronius' 'The Satyricon' features the Cumaean Sibyl, "hanging in a jar," a fitting symbol for the pandemic's state of living death. The Sibyl is—
"technically alive but blocked from any meaningful existence,"
—mirroring the enervated state of survivors and the culture as a whole.
2.5. Silence, Forgetting, and the Afterlife of the Pandemic
The analysis shifts to the silence and forgetting that surrounded the pandemic, and how 'The Waste Land' serves as a testament to its erasure.
2.5.1. The Inexpressibility of Trauma:
The video notes that modernism, especially Eliot’s poem, grapples with the inexpressibility of trauma, particularly the difficulties of representing the pandemic. This mirrors the war's inexpressibility, which overshadowed the pandemic’s impact.
2.5.2. Breakdown of Communication:
The poem is characterized by broken, one-sided conversations, and a general failure to see and hear, as the lines "I could not / Speak" and "Do you see nothing?" demonstrate. These instances, according to the text, reflect the communication breakdowns of the time, mirroring the pandemic's isolation and silence.
2.5.3. The Erasure of Pandemic Memory:
The text argues that the poem captures the cultural position of the pandemic—brooding just below the surface but struggling to be heard amid the noises of modern life and modern warfare. This erasure of memory is highlighted in the video with examples of death certificates not mentioning coronavirus deaths, and a general lack of documentation from that time.
2.5.4. Fragments and Voices:
The poem’s fragmented structure, often attributed to the war, should also be seen as a result of the “viral catastrophe,” which fragmented thoughts, memories, and communities. The poem's many voices capture both the individual experiences of suffering and the collective nature of the global outbreak, thus underscoring the tension between personal anguish and global tragedy.
3. Conclusion: The Enduring Resonance of a Pandemic Reading
'The Waste Land,' when viewed through the lens of the 1918 influenza pandemic, reveals new layers of meaning and complexity, and the text demonstrates this by using multiple examples throughout the discussion. Outka's analysis, highlighted in the YouTube video, provides a fresh understanding of the poem's themes of death, enervation, and fragmentation. By acknowledging the pandemic's profound influence, we gain a deeper appreciation for the poem’s enduring power and its ability to capture the trauma and anxieties of a world grappling with both visible and invisible threats. The pandemic lens also underscores the importance of proper documentation and memory in shaping our understanding of historical crises, as well as revealing that—
"To read 'The Waste Land' in its full context, we must hear what these voices tell us about the silencing of illness and the pandemic’s ghostly but widespread afterlife."
Finally, it can be concluded that reading 'The Waste Land' with the pandemic in mind allows us to understand better the "silencing of illness and the pandemic's ghostly but widespread afterlife."
Additional Resources:
Click here to watch the full playlist on 'The Waste Land' by T.S. Eliot on YouTube\Course Hero.
References
1. Barad, Dilip. “Presentations, Quiz and Points to Ponder on T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land.’” Dilip Barad | Teacher Blog, 28 Oct. 2014, blog.dilipbarad.com/2014/10/presentations-on-ts-eliots-waste-land.html. Accessed 10 Jan. 2025.
2. DoE-MKBU. “Reading ‘The Waste Land’ through Pandemic Lens Part 1 | Sem 2 Online Classes | 2021 07 21.” YouTube, 21 July 2021, youtu.be/4pLuqHTNscs. Accessed 10 Jan. 2025.
3. ---. “Reading Waste Land through Pandemic Lens - Part 2 | Sem 2 Online Classes | 2021 07 21.” YouTube, 21 July 2021, youtu.be/tWChnMGynp8. Accessed 10 Jan. 2025.
4. Eliot, T. S. “The Waste Land.” Poetry Foundation, 1922, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land.
5. Outka, Elizabeth. Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Interwar Literature. Columbia UP, 2019.
