The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot · first published 1922
38% recommend51% neutral11% critical
Why HN recommends it
Dense modernist poem about a broken, post-war Europe and the collapse of the West. It rewards rereading and lands best when heard aloud or with annotations and lectures. Suits readers of literary difficulty.
Common criticism: Some find it pretentious or impenetrable without scholarly help
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"THE WASTE LAND" BY T.S. ELIOT, A SEMINAL WORK OF MODERNIST POETRY, EXPLORES THEMES OF BROKENNESS, LOSS, AND THE MEANINGLESSNESS OF MODERN LIFE, USING FRAGMENTED LANGUAGE, ALLUSIONS, AND A NON-LINEAR STRUCTURE TO CONVEY ITS MESSAGE. KEY ASPECTS OF "THE WASTE LAND": THEMES: BROKENNESS AND ISOLATION: THE POEM DEPICTS A WORLD CHARACTERIZED BY ALIENATION, DESPAIR, AND LACK OF CONNECTION. DEATH AND REBIRTH: THE POEM EXPLORES THE CYCLICAL NATURE OF LIFE AND DEATH, WITH HINTS OF POTENTIAL RENEWAL AMIDST THE DESOLATION. RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY, AND NIHILISM: ELIOT GRAPPLES WITH THE DECLINE OF TRADITION
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If you’re interested in reading The Waste Land, Standard Ebooks has a PD collection of his poetry,[1] and the poem can be read online at https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/t-s-eliot/poetry/text/poet... . [1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/t-s-eliot/poetry
on “How T.S. Eliot’s therapeutic practice produced The Waste Land” ↗…meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality." On the other hand if you rule such works out, wouldn't you also get rid of many important and enjoyable works. Much of Borges, Eliot's The Waste Land, DFW's novels and essays, Pynchon, Homer are some of the ones that immediately came to mind. My approach to these books is completely orthogonal to that described in the OP: Try reading it with no guidebooks,…
on “James Joyce's "Ulysses": Why you should read this book” ↗…or her place and time matters a lot. In this sense, this amazing iOS app completely changed my understanding of T.S. Eliot and his classic "The Waste of the Land": https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-waste-land/id427434046?m... Highly recommended. It makes it pretty obvious that there is still so much opportunity to do more things with augmented content.
on “Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?” ↗…Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution. Europe was in ruins and more importantly fractured. Go read TS Eliot's The Waste Land. It's partly about his angst of over a broken europe and the collapse of western civilization and the ultimate pointlessness of that war. > It's the only war in living memory considered near universally…
on “War Is a Racket (1933)” ↗…internal - a moment of crushing realization that you create most of your own pain and discomfort and the first step to freedom from this is this realization. Whether is it Buddha's Fire Sermon, Eliot's "Waste Land", Rilke's "Headless Torso of Apollo" - this is the answer. Not ditching friends. We move to Portland because we are not doing well in New York (or vice versa). The change in scenery will do us well for…
on “On Improving When Your Friends Aren’t” ↗If you haven't already, you should watch this lecture by Nick Mount on Eliot's "The Waste Land": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxF9xkB5o04 April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. I recently reread…
on “Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?” ↗The Waste Land is amazing but I recommend Four Quartets even more. Which reminds me, one of my goals for this year was to memorise it… better get back to that.
on “How T.S. Eliot’s therapeutic practice produced The Waste Land” ↗As any other poetry I've read by an AI this is uninteresting. I'd have a few real poets to recommend to whoever said that script chilled him to the bones... starting with the waste land by Eliot. AI makes cool verses, but deep meaning is still missing, sorry
on “Language models can only write poetry” ↗…heard it spoken out loud, which I think was the intent. Here's Joyce reading it: https://youtu.be/M8kFqiv8Vww?si=YO69BX_KVEINr5mo. I had the same sensation when I listened to Fiona Shaw performing The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who breathes completely new life into it: https://youtu.be/lPB_17rbNXk?si=IBKeyTnu0KCZ2r_U. (She's an amazing actress, truly one of the greats.) The poem is supposed to many types of voices…
on “Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes” ↗Paraphrasing Coase: If you torture the poem long enough, it'll confess to anything. The most insightful book on The Waste Land, I've found, is the early drafts and revisions of The Waste Land (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0156948702).
on “The First Eighteen Lines of the Waste Land (1989)” ↗…prioritize", and leave aside the problem that 2 or 3 of these would not yet have been published. The Iliad Shakespeare The Life of Johnson Federalist Papers Pride and Prejudice Ulysses The Waste Land The Selfish Gene The Making of the Atomic Bomb Infinite Jest
on “What does it mean for a journalist today to be a Serious Reader?” ↗…DeLillo, Don - White Noise Diaz, Junot - Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, The Döblin, Alfred - Berlin Alexanderplatz Dos Passos, John - 42nd Parallel, The Edwards, Frank - Strange People Elliot, T.S. - Waste Land, The Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying Figes, Orlando - A People’s Tragedy Fitzgerald, F. Scott - Great Gatsby, The Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary Friedrich, Otto - Before The Deluge Gillete,…
on “David Bowie’s Top 100 Books (2013)” ↗Anyone who likes The Waste Land should try and read Four Quartets, and his plays, especially Murder in the Cathedral, The Cocktail Party, The Family Reunion and The Elder Statetsman. They are all unique in their own way and reflect…
on “'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)” ↗I first read The Waste Land in high school without understanding much of it, but it left a big impression. It felt like the end of an era, one in which education was still rooted in the classical tradition (could someone today…
on “'The Waste Land' Reviewed (1923)” ↗There’s always been a lot of cultural stuff, but the key difference is the reduction of shared culture. 30-50 years ago if you wanted to read enough to contextualise The Waste Land[1] it would require a massive amount of ‘high culture’ from earlier centuries (and not just in English). Nowadays it would still be a huge amount of work though perhaps would not require trips to obscure…
on “Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?” ↗