Wasteland Allusions Part 2

Front 1

Game of Chess

Back 1

Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chesse. Dramatic alleory of chess as spanish politics and about prince charles and maria anna.

Also, an allusion to Middleton's "Women Beware Women," about betrayal of family and love for wealth and power. Where moves of the chess represent seduction.

Originally titled "In the Cage", after a Henry James Novella

Originally included the line, "the ivory-men make company between us"

Front 2

THE Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines

Back 2

Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra (II, 2).

Enobarbus describes the first meeting , Cleopatra kills herself

Front 3

From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)

Back 3

Cupidon = French for cupid, innocent love, William Bougeroua painter, also painted Dante and Virgil

Front 4

Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra

Back 4

Ccassiopeia is an Ethiopian queen who though she was more pretty than the Neids (see nymphs). Gods caused herpeople to have a famine. Then they turned her upside down as a constellation.

Also, refers to 7 Chakras, like throat and third eye, which Eliot read in an essay by Alice Bailey

Front 5

Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion; 85
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended

Back 5

Allusion to Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock, a mock epic written in heroic couplets. Lady Arabella is sitting in front of a mirror after her hair was cut off by the baron.

Front 6

Flung their smoke into the laquearia

Back 6

Virgil's Aenied, Book 1, Line 76, when describing Dido's banquet for Aeneas in Carthage (Dido connects with Cleopatra). The lamps dispel the darkness

Front 7

Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,

Back 7

That's how copper in seawater burns. Colored stone is a fireplace

Front 8

In which sad light a carvd dolphin swam.

Back 8

Dolphins: love, metamorphosis, male symbol. But also associated with Aphrodite because born of seafoam when Cronus castrated Uranus (she is Gaia's daughter). This is reminiscent of Boticelli's Birth of Venus.

Front 9

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale 100
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.

Back 9

Allusion to Philomela, Procne, and Tereus (Philomel is made masculine), from Ovid's Metamorphosis. Tereus assaults Philomel, cuts her tongue out. Phil weaves tapestry (!!! Wagner) to tell Procne, who kills her cihld with Tereus, and feeds it o him. They are turned into nightingale, swallow, and hawk. Ironic because nightingale's song has tongue cut out. Also, John Gould's paitning "Luscinia, Philomela, Nightingale"

Jug, Jug is part of Nightingale's song, a crue Elizabethan meaning or is from John Lily's play, "Compaspe", about Alexander's love for his Theban slave Compaspe.

Front 10

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair

Back 10

Allusion to woman who speaks in next stanza

Front 11

Spread otu in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

Back 11

7 shakras.

Or Medusa's hair. And the next line describes petrification.

Front 12

And other withered stumps of time were told upon the walls

Back 12

Tapestries

Front 13

'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

Back 13

Narrator could be:
Woolf's Dalloway
Duchess of Malfi (from John Webster)
Lady Macbeth
Ophelia
Gertrude
'
Probably Gertrude pleading to Hamlet

Front 14

I think we are in rats' alley
Where teh dead men lost their bones

Back 14

Rat-infested trenches in WWI (Eliot often refers to himself as a rat in "Hollow Men." Eliot represents humanity.

Erotic meanings: Fertility, Vitality, Erectibility. Lost in WWI, Beyond the Flesh

Maathew 23:27 - Woe to you, on the inside, you are like dead bones

Front 15

'What is that noise?'
The wind under the door.
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'
Nothing again nothing.

Back 15

John Webster's The Devil's Law Case, in which Romelio tries to prevent his sister Jolenta from marrying Contarino. (III, 2).

Wind refers to spirits.

Besides the death rattle, it could also refer to Danto's Inferno (Canto V), kin which the answer is "carrying away the little light dead people", and the context is the 2nd circle of Hell, that includes Dido, Cleopatra, Tristan, and Paolo/Francesco (lust destruction)

Also refers to John Webster's The White Devil, in which Vittoria tries to have affair with Brachiano. When it gets suspicious, they kill Vittoria's husband Camillo. Eventually, relatives Ludovico take revenge and kill Vittoria, and torture her brother Flamenio, who when asked hs final words, says "Nothing"

Front 16

I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes. 125
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'

Back 16

Ariel's song in Tempest (I, 2) sung to Ferdinand about his father's death (link to Phonencian sailor aka hyacinth girl)

Front 17

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It's so elegant
So intelligent

Back 17

Reference to "Shakespeherian Rag", a song whose lyrics are by Buck and Rubie and whose music is by Stamper. It is pardoy of Berlin and Snider's "Mysterious Rag"

4 O's refer to Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Titus Andronicus, Merry Wives,

Front 18

What shall I do now? What shall I do?'

Back 18

Gertrude asking Hamlet; he says she should repent

Front 19

With my hair down

Back 19

Prostitute

Front 20

Hot water at 10
And if it rains, a closed car at four

Back 20

Symbols: water = fertility, 10 = union of 1 and 0 = male and female; 4 = physical desire, lust

Front 21

Pressing lidless eyes and wating for a knock upon the door

Back 21

Lidless eyes = deception of self; by Roman philosphy, could also mean watchfulness. Allusion to Middleton's "Women Beware Women" (II, 2), in which Duke of Florence seduces Bianca

Front 22

When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said—
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,

Back 22

Demobbed means released from teh military. Lil was Adam's firs wife, became a succubus, kowns God's true name, portrayed as weak in TWL. In Isaiah 34:14, she is symbolized by a screech owl.

Front 23

HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME

Back 23

Phrase used by bartenders at closing time (spacing decreases). Neitzches idea of eternal reccurrence.

Front 24

Albert's coming back, make yourself a little msart

Back 24

Smart = pretty
Albert = husband

Front 25

They had a hot gammon

Back 25

Ham, also refers to backgammon, when you win without loser touching a single piece. Game motif. Also means deception, and has root in sexual encounter

Front 26

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

Back 26

Hamlet (IV, 5), in which Ophelia drowns, arms full of water"Flight of angels". Also, a popular song.