Whatever the objective details of the situation were,
they don't really matter. The popular response was what
propelled the poem into its archetypal status, and a
whole lot of that had to do with its being read as a
response to WWI and to a sense that it defined the
sensibility of the time. Eliot himself, as I recall,
was shocked with the response and the heavy weight that
was put on the poem and on his shoulders as a result.
So, regardless of the timeline, WWI made the poem possible.

Dr. Peter C. Montgomery
Dept. of English
Camosun College
3100 Foul Bay Rd.
Victoria, BC CANADA V8P 5J2
[log in to unmask]
www.camosun.bc.ca/~peterm


-----Original Message-----
From: Nancy Gish - Women's Studies [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 3:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OT: Great war and 'honour'


I don't think it is really the case that TWL was "made possible" by
WWI in the sense I understand from your message because it was
written before, during, and after the war.  Key passages precede
the War.  But I agree that the War was extremely important in its
creation.  It was just not a result that came after.
Nancy

On 26 Nov 2002, at 16:47, Carrol Cox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> INGELBIEN RAPHAEL wrote:
> >
> > >From Tom K:
> >
> >
> > I was only taking Ireland as an example. I admit I sometimes have a soft
> > spot for Luxemburg, but you won't catch me saying that the Bolsheviks'
> > attitude in the war only reflected their high-minded pacifist
principles.
> >
>
> I regard pacifism as deeply mistaken. But you don't have to be a
> pacifist to oppose a given war. Neither Luxemburg nor Lenin acted (or
> claimed to act) from pacifist principles -- they were against workers
> slaughtering each other in the war of imperialist against imperialist.
>
> Since 1788 the u.s. has fought 1.66 legitimate wars -- the war to crush
> the insurrection of the slave drivers and WW 2 up to the point where the
> stupid doctrine of unconditional surrender kicked in. All other u.s.
> wars (declared & undeclared) have been at best incredibly stupid, and
> usually a crime.
>
> Against the slave drivers unconditional surrender made sense, but not
> otherwise.
>
> Incidentally, has anyone on this list ever invoked the distinction
> between the meaning and the significance of a poem (or any other text)?
> The meaning of a text may be partly at least within the writer's
> control, but he/she has no control whatever over the significance others
> find in it. I suspect the Wasteland is a poem in which the significance
> that some (many / most) readers have found (still find) in it absorbs
> whatever meaning it might have or have had. The poem was made possible,
> whether or not Eliot (consciously or unconsciously)so so intended it, by
> the vast irreality and illegitimacy of the slaughter of the Great War.
> The opening line, with its bow to chaucer and rebirth (Renaissance),
> evokes willy-nilly the "few thiusand battered books" of Mauberley.
>
> Carrol