His most famous kind of long poem is The Wasteland, which you can [with explanations of all the sections and footnotes] read here. It's a doozy. Brace yourself for many languages, and true erudition. The Modernists's work mostly came from hugely educated minds, so they loved to reference tons of different places, tongues, faiths, traditions, books, poets and cultures.
It opens with an epigram [opening quote] in Greek and Latin. It's a quote from the Roman novel The Satyricon by Petronius. The book is in Latin, and the quote is mentioned by Roman in the story. They're quoting a famous Greek story--when Apollo asked a prophetess of his temple what she wanted as a boon from him. She put her hands in the sand and picked up a cupped handful. She said she wanted to live forever--ie. for as long as there were grains of sand in her hands.
But then she spurned him when he made advances on her, so he made her lack of foresight ruinous--she had asked for immortal life, not health or youth or beauty. So she shriveled away into an old lady, shorter and tinier into nothing, until she was so little she lived in a little bottle. She was a sibly at the gallery [chamber] of Cumae [Cuma the city on the Amalfi coast or near it out by Naples, it's beautiful, just ruins now. Her stone hallway, called a 'gallery' is still there as is the ruins of a temple to Apollo].
Some versions of the myth do not include Apollo spurning her; it is just her poor words that damn her.
The epigram says:
Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse The Sibyl of Cumae I myself
oculis meis vidi in ampulle pendere, et cum saw with my own eyes hanging in a bottle, and when
illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; the boys asked her: Sibyl what do you want?
Sibulla ti theleis
respondebat illa: άποθανεΐν θέλω. she said: I want to die.
apothanein thelo
Now I wrote in how you roughly pronounce the Greek, and note that they used the semi-colon as a question mark. Now with this opening, you can only have a good time. I mean what a wild start to things!
And this is just the epigram. The poem opens with those famous lines:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land [...]
The poem ends famously too, with a three word repeat from Sanskrit शान्तिः śāntiḥ [or शम śam: 'be calm'], that means peace:
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
And here's an excerpt from the middle, near the end, that I particularly like:
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
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 thunderDa
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart,
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituariesOr in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
Da
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumors
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.Then spoke the thunderDa
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart,
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituariesOr in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
Da
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumors
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