Songs

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), Section III






          III. The Fire Sermon

                    Eliot reserved his discussion of The Fire Sermon, the source of the 
                    title to Section 3, until the section’s last lines, and he then immediately 
                    commingled this Buddhist lesson with the teachings of Jesus and the 
                    reflections of St Augustine (see notes at TWL 307, 308 and 309). With 
                    these pillars, the fire section will consider healing by a purging of 
                    emotions. Some have speculated at what the poet wanted to personally 
                    purge, but revealing this was probably not his intent. See Eliot, 
                    Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919): 

                    Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; 
                    it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. 
                    ...There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere 
                    emotion in verse, ...But very few know when there is expression of 
                    significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in 
                    the history of the poet.  The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet 
                    cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to 
                    the work to be done.  

                    In the process of surrender, the dying words of the last “air” section evolve 
                    into a series of SONGS. Songs are played outside of Section 3, at TWL 31 
                    (the sailor’s song), TWL 128 (Hamlet’s rag) and note, TWL 172 (Ophelia’s
                    Valentine song ), and later at TWL 331-359 (the water-dripping song),
                    note, TWL 367 (Dmitri’s drunken hymn) and TWL 379 (the fiddled whisper 
                    music), but we hear the greater concentration of songs within this fire 
                    section, at TWL 176 and 183 (a song to Sweet Thames); note, TWL 182 
                    (by allusion, the Lord’s song in a strange land); TWL 197 (horns and 
                    motors); TWL 199-201 (the soldiers’ ballad); TWL 202 (children’s voices 
                    in the dome); TWL 203-206 (the nightingale’s song); note, TWL 253 (again 
                    by allusion, Olivia’s song); TWL 256 (the lovely woman’s record on the 
                    gramophone); TWL 257 (Ariel’s song, with music that crept upon the 
                    waters); note, TWL 258 (by allusion, the graduates’ Strand song); TWL 
                    261 (the pleasant whining of a mandolin); and, finally and emphatically, 
                    TWL 261-306 (the song of the three Thames-daughters).


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)