The Waste Land as a Surrealist Poem

THE WASTE LAND AS A SURREALIST POEM Nancy D. Hargrove and Paul Grootkerk Over thirty years ago Jacob Korg in an article in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism pointed out that The Waste Land makes use of a number of modern art techniques, particularly those of Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. Subsequently, John Dixon Hunt in 1974, David Tomlinson in 1980, Korg himself in 1988, and Brooker and Bentley in 1990 further explored the influence of Cubism on the poem, while D'Ambrosio in 1990 examined that of Dada. However, no one has pursued Korg's comment in his 1960 essay that "The Waste Land is in some ways an unmistakably Surrealist poem" (461), despite what seems to be its clear validity. It is this aspect of the poem we explore, suggesting not that Eliot was influenced by specific Surrealist paintings or literary works (although he almost certainly knew some ofthe earliest pieces when he composed the poem) but, even more exciting and indicative ofhis innovative genius, that he was producing in England a Surrealist poem at the same time that painters and writers mainly in France were creating similar works, that he was at the very forefront (or, to use modern terminology, on the cutting edge) of a major movement in European art and literature. Tomlinson poses the question of why Eliot "almost alone of poets writing in English" incorporated new techniques from contemporary art into his poetry (66), the same question indirectly evoked by Wallace Fowlie's conclusion in his book Age ofSurrealism that, "[A]Il in all, when the accounting is made, surrealism is essentially French" (193). The answer is two-fold and is crucial to establishing the plausibility of our thesis: Eliot was knowledgeable about and involved with contemporary art and artists, and he had interests in French culture that were both intense and intensive. These interests combined with his inherently eclectic intellectual nature to produce a consciousness and imagination open to the most current vibrations in the world of the arts. Although as recently as 1990, Brooker and Bentley note cautiously before embarking on a discussion ofthe influence of Cubism on Eliot that "it is possible that he paid little attention to [modern art]" (28), a substantial amount of evidence establishes his knowledge ofcontemporary art, particularly that emanating from Paris and London in the teens and twenties. First, he was living in Paris in the spring of 1911 when the works of the Cubists were first displayed together at the controversial Salon des Indépendants from April 20 through June 13. It is difficult to imagine that Eliot would not have visited this exhibition, which was the talk ofParis. Not only was it reviewed in all the newspapers, but also his tutor and friend Alain-Fournier saw it on April 20 (Rivière and AlainFournier 383) and perhaps encouraged Eliot to go. Further, Eliot was attending at the Collège de France the lectures of Bergson, who was a Vol. 19 (1995): 4 THE COMPArZATIST great influence on the movement; indeed Eliot commented in his 1934 reminiscences of his Paris year that Bergson's "metaphysic was said to throw some light upon the new ways of painting, and discussion of Bergson was apt to be involved with discussion of Matisse and Picasso" ("Commentary" 451). Finally, Verdenal refers to Cubism in a letter to Eliot as ifit were a topic they had much discussed (Letters 33). Two years later, inApril and May 1913, the International section of the magnificentArmory Show was exhibited in Boston, where Eliot was working on his doctorate at Harvard, and he was no doubt among the 12,000 people who viewed it (Tomlinson 72). In the summer of 1914, although he did not go to Paris on his way to Marburg, Germany, it is likely that he heard or read about Arthur Cravan's sensational Dada show there on July 5, during which Cravan "fired a pistol, boxed, danced and delivered a lecture, punctuated by insults to the audience" (Alexandrian 28). After he moved to England in August 1914, among his closest friends were Ezra Pound, as great a champion ofcontemporary art as of contemporary literature, and Wyndham Lewis, "the...