By Stephen Wilson
MOSCOW -- "I really enjoy his poetry. I especially like his poems
about
cats" admits
Svetlana Wilson, a 57 year old artist. And
the Russian teacher
Oksana Chebotareva, a teacher,
is fond of his poem :
The Wasteland , where she can
detect deep spiritual
meaning. The late theologian and
Philosopher Alexander
Men, in his works, freely quoted
the Wasteland where he
rhetorically raises the question
posed by T.S. Eliot :
'Who is the Other who walks beside
you ? ' For Men, this
is evidently Christ but for other
readers it could be
perceived as either an angel, a
delusion or a mirage
one imagines when one is disorientated
in the desert. While
there are a myriad of endless interpretations
of Eliot there is one
thing which is beyond doubt. Not only
has Eliot strongly
influenced Russian thought but, Russian
writers, thinkers and
philosophers had a profound influence
on the writing of his
poetry not to mention his personal life.
One only has to peruse
the eight volumes of his letters that
have been published,
examine his journal : The Criterion and
just take a sharper
look at his poems. In deed , Eliot's description
of London as a kind of
hell not only owes much to Dante but
also Dostoyevsky. who
wrote a scathing attack of London in
his work "Winter
Notes on Summer Impressions' as a city of
alienated and isolated
residents. Eliot, portrays a city of
people who have died
already :
He who was living is
now dead
We who are all living
are now dying
With a little
patience.
Eliot published book
reviews of Russian philosophers in exile like
Leo Shestov and
Nicholas Berdyaev. When on the verge of a
nervous Breakdown due
to family troubles, Eliot even went so
far as to describe his
life as being "like a bad Russian novel ". It
is often thought that
it was this darkest period of his life when
his wife had lost her
sanity, his father died and he could find
no peace of mind as
being the chief influence on the pessimism
which haunts the
wasteland. Some critics claim that the work is
an inherently dark and
pessimistic. But an English teacher called
Neil who worked as an
English teacher in Moscow strongly
disagreed. He told me
"I studied English literature at university
and argued in an essay
that Eliot's Wasteland could be viewed
as optimistic. But the
tutor marking my essay told me it was
impossible to make
this interpretation. They just impose their
views on students and
don't allow students to express their own
opinion" stated
Neil bitterly. In deed, all the books I had read
on The Wasteland '
seemed to reach the same conclusion that
The Wasteland is about
the decline of western civilization and
the growing spiritual
vacuum in Europe. Just take a read of
Colin Wilson's book
'The Outsider'. However , is this not a very
one sided and over
simplistic interpretation of The Wasteland ?
Has Neil got a point ?
The following quotation from The
Wasteland can be seen
as conveying a positive subtle note or
shining beacon in the
all pervasive darkness of the poem.The
darkness is certainly
there but does not have the last word !
Who is the third who
walks always beside you ?
When I count, there
are only you and I together
But when I look ahead
up the white road
There is always
another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in
a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether
a man or a woman
-But who is that on
the other side of you ?
Eliot himself was
inspired by reading an account of an Antarctic
explorer called Sir
Ernest Shackleton who wrote in his work
'South' that he
believed that on the last leg of his journey
to reach the pole
: " During that long and racky march
of 36 hours over the
unnamed mountains and glaciers of south
Georgia it seemed to
me that we were four and not three".
But Eliot also made
notes linked to these lines of a famous
incident in the Gospel
of Luke where two fleeing disciples
meet Christ on the
road after his death but don't recognize
him and gives them
bread after being invited to their home.
However, the poem and
other events from real traumatic
and dramatic incidents
suggest what psychologists call
The Third man factor
or syndrome. This is a situation where
a person in a daunting
and dangerous situation feels the
unseen presence of
some person, spirit or angel who helps
them find away out of
the crisis. While some people will
claim the person is
experiencing delusions or 'is seeing things',
a more religious
person might believe it is a dead member of
his family , an angel,
saint or Christ. For instance, at a storytelling
session at Moscow
State University I recall a student telling me
how a soldier in the
Great Patriotic War was warned by a dead
member of the person
to immediately move out of a dug out.
After he moved out a
shell landed in the very dug out he had
wisely abandoned. It
could be argued that although a person
is in the wasteland there
is always a possible way out and
a third person is
always there to assist. You never know who
might be looking over
your shoulder ! So in a sense , Neil
was right after all.
And so was the Russian philosopher Alexander
men!
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