Weeks 10/11/12: The Waste Land II

Part 2: A Game of Chess

Second half - dramatically more accessible, immediacy.

First part - he pulls out all the stops, luxury (opulence and sexual licentiousness)

Antony & Cleopatra // Romeo and Juliet...
Irony and cynicism - [middle-aged love] - more than the heroic ethos could ever entail...

Beauty, but with potential catastrophe awaiting... An intimation of beauty, but with an underlying threat.

A poem written for many voices.

2nd half of part 2 - Eliot speaking in his own voice (or the closest to it...)

Nothing ... cf Heart of Darkness

"I remember the pearls that were his eyes" - the love that used to be - again, it's that Proustian moment, where the past is restored in its full immediacy...

= pattern of sexually ambiguous language and imagery - e.g. Tiresias
- male-orientted moment of psychological intensity
- death of someone who was fondly remembered / cf present relationship that's miserable

// Pub scene: scathing (echoing)

cf poet Villon
end -> "good night sweet ladies" - Ophelia in Hamlet - the drowning of the soldier.