Thinking Activity on The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Hello everyone, today I come with a different thing in my blog. We all read  poems, and easily get the idea of the poem but here i want to give an excuse that T. S. Eliot wrote a poem, very difficult and hard to understand. So my today's topic is the poem "The Waste Land" by Eliot. This task is given by our professor dr. Dilip Barad sir. So let's understand the poem.

We know that poets are also influenced by some events that took place in the past and poets include this type of event and the myth about that in their poem. So in this poem The Waste Land we also see that T. S. Eliot is a poet who gave many references and myths of different countries and their religion in his poem. In this poem we see the Indian myths. One among the many western scholars, who were influenced by Indian philosophy, T.S. Eliot let his understanding become a key factor in his magnum opus, The Waste Land. The dominant poetic voice of the 1920s, Eliot used an essential, allusive and elliptical technique to put across the view that modern western urban civilisation was sterile and unsatisfying. He avoided personal emotion in contrast to the more romantic effusions of the Georgian poets. His distaste for romanticism, a desire to treat the poem in isolation from the poet and the cult of traditional classical values went hand in hand with a dislike of the modern world. 

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on to settle, work, and marry there. He became a British citizen in 1927 at the age of 39, subsequently renouncing his American citizenship. Eliot first attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1915, which was received as a modernist masterpiece. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including 

• "The Waste Land" (1922), 

• "The Hollow Men" (1925), 

• "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and 

• Four Quartets (1943). 

The Waste Land appeared in 1922. The poem, which won Eliot the Nobel Prize in 1948, follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. He employs literary and cultural allusions from the western canon, Buddhism and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures. Let's see one video about the poem...

The Waste Land is divided into five sections. 

• The “Burial of the Dead” introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. 

• The second is “A Game of Chess” and 

• The third, “The Fire Sermon,” shows the influence of Augustine and Eastern religions. 

• The fourth is “Death by Water” and the fifth and 

• Final section is “What the Thunder Said,” which features the influence of Indian thought on the Poet Laureate. 

Eliot became a prominent poet in the aftermath of the chaos and convulsions of the First World War. Europe was home to existential philosophy owing its origin to Kierkegaard. This was a reaction against German idealism and the complacency of established Christianity. 

In his popular modernist poem "The Waste Land," Eliot makes various references to Greek mythology, Shakespeare, and many others, and even incorporates some Phoenician and Indian elements. He masterfully reconstructs all of them. 

T.S Eliot was highly influenced by Indian philosophy. He makes an incontrovertible appeal to the thunder of the ‘Brihdarankya Upanishad’ in the final portion of  The Waste Land.  The scene shifts to the Ganges, half a world away from Europe, where thunder rumbles. Eliot draws on the traditional interpretation of “what the thunder says,” as taken from the Upanishads. According to these fables, the thunder “gives,” “sympathizes,” and “controls” through its “speech”; Eliot launches into a meditation on each of these aspects of the thunder’s power. The meditations seem to bring about some sort of reconciliation, as a Fisher King-type figure is shown sitting on the shore preparing to put his lands in order, a sign of his imminent death or at least abdication. The poem ends with a series of disparate fragments from a children’s song, from Dante, and from Elizabethan drama, leading up to a final chant of “Shantih shantih shantih” the traditional ending to an Upanishad. Eliot, in his notes to the poem, translates this chant as “the peace which passeth understanding,” the expression of ultimate resignation.

Dr. Radhakrishnan records how T.S. Eliot, when asked about the future of our Civilization said, 

“Internecine fighting, people killing one another in the streets.” 

Civilization to him appeared a crumbling edifice destined to perish in the flames of war. The tragedy of the human condition imposes an obligation on us to give meaning and significance to life. Eliot’s prescription for a new dawn is given in Part V , 

“What the Thunder Said.” 

“Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

There are numerous examples of Hindu influences on the "Wasteland." Some of these allusions are obvious, such as the Hindu story footnoted in Part V. or the repetition of "shantih" at the poem's close. Others are only apparent if you know where to look. Illustrations of life-in-death are reminders of the Hindu concept of maya, or the ultimate unreality of what we consider life. Maya describes the veil of illusion that leads people to believe that the world is made up of things separate and distinct, and blinds them to the reality that life is in fact a unified whole. Hindu philosophy teaches that it is the ignorance of this unity which is at the root of all human misery and suffering. Illustrations of the other aspect of this motif, life-in-death, can also serve as reminders of Hindu philosophy, specifically the concept of reincarnation. According to this idea, reincarnation or rebirth is not something to be celebrated, but instead signifies that the person being reborn has not yet realized the unity of life. Those who fail to come to this realization are doomed to rebirth and the continuation of an endless cycle of suffering in a world of illusions. 

Thus, Eliot finishes the poem writing:

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih 

"Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata," refer to the concepts of "giving, compassion and control" of the ancient Indian religious and philosophical texts Upanishads, which are based on the ideas of Hinduism and Buddism. According to the texts, all people must follow these three concepts in order to achieve inner piece, and the Gods and nature can enable this. The word "Shantih" is actually the formal ending of the Upanishads, and literary means "inner peace."

There is story behind this. Three kinds of children of Praja-pati, Lord of Children, lived as Brahman-students with Praja-pati their father: 

• The gods, 

• Human beings, 

• The demons.

Living with him as Brahman students, the gods spake, 'Teach us, Exalted One. 'Unto them he spake this one syllable Da. 'Have ye understood?' 'We have understood', thus they spake, 'it was damyata, control yourselves, that thou saidest unto us.' 'Yes', spake he, 'ye have understood.' 

Then spake to him human beings, 'Teach us, Exalted One.'  Unto them he spake that selfsame syllable Da. 'Have ye understood?' 'We have understood', thus they spake, 'it was datta, give, that thou saidest unto us.' 'Yes', spake he, 'ye have

understood.' 

Then spake to him the demons, 'Teach us, Exalted One.' Unto them he spake that selfsame syllable Da. 'Have ye understood?' 'We have understood', thus they spake, 'it was dayadhvam, be compassionate, that thou saidest unto us.' 'Yes', spake he, 'ye have understood.' 

This it is which that voice of god repeats, the thunder, when it rolls 'Da Da Da,' that is damyata datta dayadhvam. Therefore these three must be learned, self-control, giving, compassion. Charles Rockwell Lanman, former Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and Eliot's teacher of Sanskrit and Buddhism. 

 

If Eliot alludes that the 'Waste Land' is, in fact, the modern world which was reshaped by the First World War, then, with the use of the sacred chant "Shantih," Eliot ends the poem with a hopeful and spiritual tone, implying that peace and harmony can, in fact, be achieved. This is how he breaks the traditional form of writing poetry and leaves his typical modernistic stamp. 

The Waste Land’ is modern poem by T.S Eliot which has deep  essence of Hindu religion. Last part of the poem speaks about the Indian philosophy and religion. It reflects the search for the self and it’s relation with the universe. It is the journey of getting the ultimate goal of human being “Salvation”. The word ‘Shantih’ has deep meaning of the Hindu thoughts and philosophy. Last section of the poem is full of Hind mythology.

1531 words  

Kanya bhrunhtya poem

   जन्म से पहले ।

उड़ना था मुझे भी इस खुले गगन में ,

पर  काट दिए पंख मेरे जन्म से पहले ।

करनी थी सेवा मुझे भी अपने देश की ,

पर छिनली वर्दी मेरी जन्म से पहले । 

करने थे सपने पूरे मुझे भी अपने ,

पर  दफनाया अपनोने ही जन्म से पहले।

बनना था मुझे भी माँ-बाबा कि लाड़ली ,

पर छिनली उम्मीदे सारी जन्म से पहले ।

बेटी तो होती हैं सौभाग्य का प्रतिक ,

पर बनी अभागन में जन्म से पहले ।

अगर बेटी होना गुनाह होता ,

तो शिकायत हैं हर माँ से मुझे ,

क्या वो किसी की बेटी नहीं थी ?

सोच कर ही भर आई आँखे मेरी ,

पर आँखे कहा खुली थी जन्म से पहले ।

• लत्ता बारैया

 Thank you .

【Based on કન્યા ભ્રુણહત્યા】

Thinking Activity:Frame study of Charlie Chaplin's movie

Hello readers,

We all are used to watching movies and web series as part of our entertainment. But all movies are not made only for entertainment, they have a deep message in their work. But this is for those people who understand the importance of reality. They can convey the message using laughter. We think that it's only comedy for entertainment. But the artist makes satire on society by using laughter and satire. Charlie Chaplin is one of the great artist among them. When we watch his movie we laugh a lot. But there is a deep message in his works, which can present the reality of people, society. In this blog I'm going to study frames of charlie Chaplin's movie. This task is assigned by our professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. So let's see some frames of the two movies, first is Modern Times, and second is The Great Dictator. 

In this frame we can see the significance of the clock and it's hands. The second hand moves faster, which represents the working class of society. Minutes hand can be seen as middle class society. And hour hand moves slower, it represents the rich class who move slowly with leisure activities such as giving the order to workers and paying attention to fashionable things. Because of richness, they govern many areas of society and they can create new norms and regulations which restrict the other lower class of people.

In this frame we can see that sheeps are converted into humans. It means that human beings are going to work like sheeps are going to find their food. In fact people don't have their own way, they follow the way of others, follow the way which is followed by others. 

The term of looking for workers is driven from a long time. In this frame we can see that the director was looking at the workers. After looking on he also used to have them command. If we think we can realize that in today's time when workers are doing their work, the owner and the manager also look at them. They keep on looking at workers and keep them alerting that if they don't do it well then they have been fired. 

In this frame we see that Charlie is making fun at the factory. He is just trying to make it all free for a few time, but his hitch makes trouble for every worker. So the director and all workers decided to fire him. All people are used to their work like machines, they are disturbed when someone calls them or doing some other activities during their work time. 

Charlie Chaplin going to return the flag but coincidencely he become a member of the group who doing rally for unity. Suddenly police come and drub them and arrest Charlie by saying "so you're the leader". Leaders are doing all for not only for themselves, but they have to tolerate more than others. Their efforts make good results for every member of their group. It seems like someone makes an effort and someone just takes benefits.  

We all know that when we see the danger we feel more trouble and nervous about the situation. But if we don't know what's going on we just enjoy the moment as it is. In this image we can see that Charlie is doing sketching with the blindfold. When he became aware of the situation it became more terrifying. 

The Great Dictator, American comedy film, released in 1940, that Charlie Chaplin both acted in and directed. 

In this frame we see that the war is going on. Two different countries are using machinery for their wars. It was time when world war began. Charlie includes the situation of soldiers at that time. 

In these two frames we can see that Chaplin portrayed a Jewish barber who is mistaken for a tyrannical dictator. He plays up the charade and ultimately gives a speech in which he calls for peace and compassion. Chaplin, in a dual role, also played the fascist dictator, modeled after Hitler. 

In this frame we can see that the servant is blind to praise his master. We can call it Andhbhakti, and it's also required in politics. To make their master happy the under workers are always trying to use different ideas. It's a sign of dictatorship. 

The system of doing salute to the high officer is shown in this frame. Who you are isn't important, you have to give respect to the officers. If they are making it difficult for you, you can't even tell them. In this frame we can see that the officer ruined the door of the barber's shop. Charlie stopped him. And he is behaving like the master of the people around him. 

Thank you !

Thinking Activity on Detective fictions of modern literature

Hello readers, I'm going to talk about detective fictions of twentieth century literature. So the first question that arrives in our mind is what is detective fiction ? Which type of work is called detective fiction ? So let's go through some interesting things about detective fiction. 

• Definition of Detective Fiction

"Detective fiction is a genre of writing where a detective works to solve a crime. The audience is challenged to solve the crime by the clues provided before the detective reveals the answer at the end of the novel"

The detective figure, literary and real, emerged in Siam between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to bring clarity to increasingly complex social and political situations. In the beginning of the novel, a crime is introduced. Oftentimes, it seems like the perfect crime. The detective works to gather clues and may, at times, seem like he or she is making mistakes or may even seem inept. In some novels, the wrong person is accused based on just a little evidence. Eventually, the detective begins to piece together the crime and, usually because of some unexpected event, the detective solves the crime and finds the guilty culprit. 

◆History of Detective Fiction

The first detective story is credited to Edgar Allan Poe and his short story "The Murders in Rue Morgue" written in 1841.

In this story, two women are murdered, and the police have a hard time solving the case. Detective Dupin leads his own investigation and solves the crime when the police cannot. Poe continued to use Detective Dupin in several other short stories.

Here is one video about Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

The genre grew somewhat popular throughout the 1800s. Victorian authors, such as Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens, wrote detective fiction. However, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, the genre grew. Doyle wrote over fifty short stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes with his sidekick Dr. Watson. Doyle's characters are still popular today.

In the 1900s, many new detectives were introduced, securing that the genre continued to grow. Some of the more popular detectives were Endeavor Morse and Gervaise Fen, a creation of Edmund Crispin. Crispin is credited with taking the detective genre into a more contemporary direction. 

◆Characteristics of Detective Fiction

Detective fiction is different from crime fiction and mystery fiction. It has some characteristics which makes it different from other.

•  Detective

• Investigation

• Crime

• Complexity

• A celebrated, skilled, professional investigator

• Bungling local constabulary

• Detective inquiries

• Large number of false suspects

• The "least likely suspect"

• A reconstruction of the crime

• A final twist in the plot 

◆Golden Age of detective novels 

The period between World War I and World War II (the 1920s and 1930s) is generally referred to as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. During this period, a number of very popular writers emerged, including mostly British but also a notable subset of American and New Zealand writers. Female writers constituted a major portion of notable Golden Age writers. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh were particularly famous female writers of this time. Apart from Ngaio Marsh (a New Zealander), they were all British.

Various conventions of the detective genre were standardized during the Golden Age, and in 1929, some of them were codified by the English Catholic priest and author of detective stories Ronald Knox in his 'Decalogue' of rules for detective fiction. One of his rules was to avoid supernatural elements so that the focus remained on the mystery itself. Knox has contended that a detective story "must have as its main interest the unravelling of a mystery, a mystery whose elements are clearly presented to the reader at an early stage in the proceedings, and whose nature is such as to arouse curiosity, a curiosity which is gratified at the end." According to scholars Carole Kismaric and Marvin Heiferman,

"The golden age of detective fiction began with high-class amateur detectives sniffing out murderers lurking in rose gardens, down country lanes, and in picturesque villages. Many conventions of the detective-fiction genre evolved in this era, as numerous writers from populist entertainers to respected poets  tried their hands at mystery stories."

◆Subgenres of Detective Fiction 

●Standard private eye, or "hardboiled":-

Martin Hewitt, created by British author Arthur Morrison in 1894, is one of the first examples of the modern style of fictional private detective. This character is described as an "'Everyman' detective meant to challenge the detective-as-superman that Holmes represented." Michael Collins, pseudonym of Dennis Lynds, is generally considered the author who led the form into the Modern Age. 

●Inverted detective:-

An inverted detective story, also known as a "howcatchem", is a murder mystery fiction structure in which the commission of the crime is shown or described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator. The story then describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery. There may also be subsidiary puzzles, such as why the crime was committed, and they are explained or resolved during the story. This format is the opposite of the more typical "whodunit", where all of the details of the perpetrator of the crime are not revealed until the story's climax. 

●Police procedural:-

   

Many detective stories have police officers as the main characters. These stories may take a variety of forms, but many authors try to realistically depict the routine activities of a group of police officers who are frequently working on more than one case simultaneously. Some of these stories are whodunits; in others, the criminal is well known, and it is a case of getting enough evidence. We see some images in their study rooms, like

●Historical mystery:-   

These works are set in a time period considered historical from the author's perspective, and the central plot involves the solving of a mystery or crime (usually murder). Though works combining these genres have existed since at least the early 20th century, many credit Ellis Peters's Cadfael Chronicles (1977–1994) for popularizing what would become known as the historical mystery. 

●Cozy mysteries:-

"Cozy mysteries" began in the late 20th century as a reinvention of the Golden Age whodunit, these novels generally shy away from violence and suspense and frequently feature female amateur detectives. Modern cozy mysteries are frequently, though not necessarily in either case, humorous and thematic (culinary mystery, animal mystery, quilting mystery, etc.)

This style features minimal violence, sex, and social relevance; a solution achieved by intellect or intuition rather than police procedure, with order restored in the end; honorable and well bred characters; and a setting in a closed community. Writers include Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Elizabeth Daly.

●Serial killer mystery:-

   

Another subgenre of detective fiction is the serial killer mystery, which might be thought of as an outcropping of the police procedural. There are early mystery novels in which a police force attempts to contend with the type of criminal known in the 1920s as a homicidal maniac, such as a few of the early novels of Philip Macdonald and Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails. However, this sort of story became much more popular after the coining of the phrase "serial killer" in the 1970s and the publication of The Silence of the Lambs in 1988. 

●Occult detective fiction:-   

Occult detective fiction is a subgenre of detective fiction that combines the tropes of detective fiction with those of supernatural horror fiction. Unlike the traditional detective, the occult detective is employed in cases involving ghosts, demons, curses, magic, monsters and other supernatural elements. Some occult detectives are portrayed as knowing magic or being themselves psychic or in possession of other paranormal powers.

◆Writers of detective fiction

Detective fiction became very famous during 20th century. Let us see some of the famous writers and their books: 

◆Agatha Christie:-

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan,  (15 September 1890  12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which was performed in the West End from 1952 to 2020, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame for her contributions to literature.

●Notable works●

1. Creation of characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple

2. Murder on the Orient Express

3. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

4. Death on the Nile

5. The Murder at the Vicarage

6. Partners in Crime

7. The A.B.C. Murders

8. And Then There Were None

9. The Mousetrap 

◆Margery Allinghom:-

Margery Louise Allingham(20 May 1904 – 30 June 1966) was an English writer of detective fiction, best remembered for her "golden age" stories featuring gentleman sleuth Albert Campion.

Her notable works are the crime at black Dudley, mystery mile, look to the lady, police at the funeral, sweet danger, death of a ghost, flowers for the judge etc. 

◆Dorothy Sayers:-

Dorothy Leigh Sayers (13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.

She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. She is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays. Sayers considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. Sayers' obituarist, writing in The New York Times in 1957, noted that many critics at the time regarded The Nine Tailors as her finest literary achievement. Sayers received a degree in medieval literature from the University of Oxford in 1915, she was one of the first women to graduate from that university. Her first major published work was Whose Body? (1923), a detective novel in which Lord Peter first appeared as a dashing gentleman-tscholar. The book was followed by one or two novels a year for about 15 years. Sayers wrote short stories that featured not only Lord Peter but also another detective creation, Montague Egg. She also published an anthology of the detective story, The Omnibus of Crime (1929). 

◆Arthur Morrison:-

Morrison, himself born in the East End, began his writing career in 1889 as subeditor of the journal of the People’s Palace, an institution designed to bring culture into the London slums. In 1890 he became a freelance journalist and in 1892 a regular contributor to William Ernest Henley’s National Observer, in which most of the stories in Morrison’s first major work, Tales of Mean Streets (1894), originally appeared. A Child of the Jago (1896) and To London Town (1899) completed this East End trilogy. Morrison published another powerful novel of slum life, The Hole in the Wall, in 1902. His realistic novels and stories are sober in tone, but the characters are portrayed with a Dickensian colourfulness. His attitude toward the people he described was paternalist, rather than radical, and he opposed socialism and the trades-union movement. He also wrote detective fiction that featured the lawyer-detective Martin Hewitt, published primarily in the Strand magazine (1894–96), it was the most successful rival to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. 

◆Arthur Conan Doyle:-

Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright and essayist in the 20th-century American theater. Sherlock Holmes is a fictional private detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science, and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard. 

Among his most popular plays are 

● All My Sons (1947), 

● Death of a Salesman (1949), 

● The Crucible (1953), 

● A View from the Bridge (1955, revised 1956). 

He wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman has been numbered on the short list of finest American plays in the 20th century. 

◆Raymond Chandler:-

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. He was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived in the US until he was seven, when his parents separated and his Anglo-Irish mother brought him to live near London; he was educated at Dulwich College from 1900. After working briefly for the British Civil Service, he became a part-time teacher at Dulwich, supplementing his income as a journalist and writer mostly for The Westminster Gazette and The Academy. His output consisting largely of poems and essays was not to his taste, and the critic Paul Bishop considers the work as "lifeless", while Contemporary Authors describes it as 

"lofty in subject and mawkish in tone".

◆His notable works◆

●The Big Sleep, Marlowe, 

●The Long Goodbye,

●Farewell, 

●My Lovely, more

●The Lady in the Lake,

●Trouble Is My Business, Blackmailers Don't Shoot. 

◆L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace:-

These two writers together created John Bell, a “ghost exposer” who uses Holmesian techniques to unmask fake ghosts; these stories were collected in A Master of Mysteries in 1898. The two authors, both together and separately, created a number of other detectives, a few of them women, like Detective Florence Cusack (Meade) in “Mr. Bovey’s Unexpected Will” in Harmsworth Magazine in 1899, and Detective Norman Head in the 1899 volume The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings(Meade and Eustace). They both often used the locked-room mystery format; for example, in The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings, the detective Norman Head solves “The Mystery of the Strong Room” when a diamond is stolen from a locked room by one of what was a new development, a villainous woman, Madame Koluchy, the head of an Italian criminal gang.

To wind up we can say that there were some of the authors of detective fiction during the time of early 20th century, which is considered as golden period of the detective fiction. So many writers tried this genre, many characters they created. From its born this genre has never died and today also film adaptation of these detective stories has been made. This genre is very popular in TV serials, newspaper stories, movies, comics and even in cartoons also. We can say that this genre has still great future.