A fractured, five-part modernist poem moves through a spiritually barren postwar landscape — tarot readings, a sterile Thames, a drowned sailor — toward a closing invocation of Hindu wisdom and peace.
Books mentioned in The Waste Land (28)
From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston: “Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan, Cambridge)”
The Golden Bough by James George Frazer: “To another work of anthropology I am indebted in general, one which has influenced our generation profoundly; I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris.”
Adonis, Attis, Osiris by James George Frazer: “I mean The Golden Bough; I have used especially the two volumes Adonis, Attis, Osiris.”
Inferno by Dante Alighieri: “63. Cf. Inferno, iii. 55-7.”
The White Devil by John Webster: “74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster’s White Devil.”
Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire: “76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.”
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare: “77. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii., l. 190.”
The Aeneid by Virgil: “92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I. 726:”
Paradise Lost by John Milton: “98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 140.”
Metamorphoses by Ovid: “99. V. Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi, Philomela.”
Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton: “138. Cf. the game of chess in Middleton’s Women beware Women.”
Prothalamion by Edmund Spenser: “176. V. Spenser, Prothalamion.”
The Tempest by William Shakespeare: “192. Cf. The Tempest, I. ii.”
To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell: “196. Cf. Marvell, To His Coy Mistress.”
Parsifal by Paul Verlaine: “202. V. Verlaine, Parsifal.”
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith: “253. V. Goldsmith, the song in The Vicar of Wakefield.”
Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri: “293. Cf. Purgatorio, v. 133:”
The Confessions by Augustine of Hippo: “307. V. St. Augustine’s Confessions: “to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears.””
Buddhism in Translations by Henry Clarke Warren: “The complete text of the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren’s Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series).”
Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America by Frank M. Chapman: “Chapman says (Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America) “it is most at home in secluded woodland and thickety retreats. . . .”
Blick ins Chaos by Hermann Hesse: “366-76. Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos:”
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: “The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka—Upanishad, 5, 1.”
Sechzig Upanishads des Veda by Paul Deussen: “A translation is found in Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.”
Appearance and Reality by F. H. Bradley: “Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346:”
Pervigilium Veneris: “428. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.”
El Desdichado by Gérard de Nerval: “429. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.”
The Secret History by Donna Tartt: “It was many years later ... when I came across this passage in The Waste-Land: Elizabeth and Leicester / Beating oars / The stern was formed / A gilded shell...”
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell: “Eliot's The Waste Land that you are describing, a sociological stagnation of inauthentic lives and living that has settled upon us.”
Among Others by Jo Walton: “Eliot worked in a bank when he was writing The Waste Land.”
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine: “Someone had to read Eliot's The Waste Land as ... Sabra burning”
Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens: “He had, indeed, given the young Auden his first copy of The Waste Land, and joined him in reading it aloud.”
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff: “...defined by my professors and the sophisticated friends I acquired in college, the ones who'd graduated from private schools that offered semester-long classes focused exclusively on The Waste Land or the works of Beckett.”
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: “I think it had something to do with the publication of The Waste Land which won the Major the Dial award”
Italo Calvino by Martin McLaughlin: “the intertextual allusion to Eliot's The Waste Land (lines 43-59) being made explicit by the reference to 'the distinguished Lloyds employee'”
On Literature by Umberto Eco: “discussed and dated relative to Heidegger's Being and Time”
The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth: “He carried The Waste Land with him on the El, reading away until Clark Street”
Babel by R. F. Kuang: “T. S. Eliot had supplied some of the more recent and detailed landscape descriptions on record, but The Waste Land was so self-referential”