Abstract
The essay charts The Waste Land's references to Buddhist and Christian ascetic attitudes to the spiritual and devotional component found in the invocations markata kishora nyaya and marjara kishora nyaya. This intersection once again enriches our reading of Eliot's poetic forays with intertextuality, inter-culturality, and inter-generationality, establishing the work beyond the period of Modernism.
Keywords: T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, Hindu devotional attitudes, markata kishora nyaya, marjara kishora nyaya.
The starting point of the argument of this paper is Eliot’s note to line 309 of The Waste Land. The line is
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
and Eliot’s note says, “From St. Augustine’s Confessions again. The collocation of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.” (Eliot 79). The “two representatives of eastern and western asceticism, of course, are the Buddha and St. Augustine. The terms markata kishora nyaya and marjara kishora nyaya used in the title of this article and crucial to the argument here, however, are Sanskrit terms used to describe specific Hindu devotional attitudes. The Waste Land itself culminates with some references to a Hindu religious text, the Brihadaranyak Upanishad, and it will be my endeavour to show how the Buddhist and Christian ascetic attitudes mentioned by Eliot and the Hindu devotional attitudes of markata kishora nyaya and marjara kishora nyaya are indeed coterminous. Eliot’s remark that the collocation of the two representatives of eastern and western asceticism is not an accident is significant when we see that indeed the entire spiritual dimension of The Waste Land is encompassed in these two attitudes of asceticism or devotion.
At the time of the publication of The Waste Land, it was almost impossible to talk of the poem’s spiritual dimension. One hundred years ago, when The Waste Land was published from Europe and America, readers reacted in very different ways, but no one talked about anything spiritual concerning the poem. Some thought it was all rubbish, while others were fascinated by it even if they found it extremely difficult to comprehend. Some critics were not amused by what they saw as the eccentric style of the poem, and thought the poem to be a failure. In a New Statesman review on November 3, 1923, F. L. Lucas said he thought poorly of Eliot’s style in The Waste Land:
…in the Waste Land Mr Eliot has shown that he can write real blank verse; but that is all. For the rest he has quoted a great deal, he has parodied and imitated. But the parodies are cheap and the imitations inferior. (Cox 38)
The poem was composed during a period of gloom, unhappiness and disease in the personal experience of the poet, and a period of uncertainties, fear and frustration in the socio-cultural scenario of western civilization. The poems that Eliot had published before composing The Waste Land all seemed to deal with various aspects of uneasy, hesitant experiences of personas trapped in unfriendly, urban spaces. Now, considering The Waste Land as the culmination of this style, most readers find the poem embodying the disillusionment of an entire generation, which was, incidentally, also one of the ways in which some perceptive readers read the poem even in its early days. In any case, for a long time, it was not seen as a poem expressing any belief system. Gilbert Seldes said in a review published in Nation on December 6, 1922 that together with James Joyce’s Ulysses, Eliot’s poem expressed “something of supreme relevance to our present life in the everlasting terms of art” (Cox 44) while I. A. Richards went so far as to defend the poet against negative criticism:
There are those who think that he merely takes his readers into the Waste Land and leaves them there, that in his last poem he confesses his impotence to release the healing waters. The reply is that some readers find in his poetry not only a clearer, fuller realization of their plight, the plight of a whole generation, than they find elsewhere, but also through the very energies set free in that realisation a return of the saving passion. (Richards 235)
Later, when the poem was considered a success, and reading it as an expression of the disillusionment of a generation was considered correct, Eliot famously rubbished all attempts to see any cosmic significance in the poem, and said that it was merely rhythmic grumbling, expressing his grouse against life, if anything. Nevertheless, generations of readers have taken The Waste Land as embodying the frustrations and disillusionments of western civilization in the first few decades of the twentieth century, and particularly during the inter-war period. Many readers also see the poet’s personal experiences creatively transmuted in the poem. Later generations of readers who have read Eliot’s Ariel Poems, “Ash Wednesday” and Four Quartets, and are acquainted with Eliot’s trajectory of belief, i.e., his turning away from the Unitarianism of his family and his conversion as an Anglo-Catholic, see The Waste Land as not just embodying frustrations and disillusionment, but also belief. This paper attempts to bring forth one aspect of the problematics of belief that can be discerned in The Waste Land.
Of course, The Waste Land cannot be considered as a statement of belief in the manner in which the poems Eliot wrote immediately after his conversion, the Ariel Poems, or “Ash Wednesday” or his last important poetic work, Four Quartets can be considered as expressions of religious belief. However, considering the entire oeuvre of Eliot’s poetic journey, we now understand how questions of belief have found differing expressions at different moments of this journey. In this context, the principal contention of this paper is that while The Waste Land does express the disillusionment of a generation, especially after the Great War, and also the frustrations of personal relationships in the increasingly commercialized, militarized urban society of the 1920s, at the same time the poem is especially concerned about belief. The poem does not involve a simplistic assertion of belief, but there are important expressions of the possibility of a certain kind of panacea for the ills besetting society and personal life. In other words, it is not an unambiguous advocation of religious belief as the answer to the problems that beset western civilization or personal relationships during the inter-war years, but it gestures towards certain possibilities. Also, by way of looking back at belief systems of the past, and emphasizing certain lessons from at least three religions—Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity—it seems to lament the loss western civilization has undergone by ignoring those lessons. In that sense, the poem emphasizes the healing power of belief, and seems to ask if it would be possible for modern western civilization to learn from those lessons.
Markata kishora nyaya and marjara kishora nyaya are Sanskrit phrases that mean “the way of the little monkey” and “the way of the kitten” respectively. Since The Waste Land itself speaks in many languages including Sanskrit, it is perhaps not too impudent to use these terms in the title of this article. The phrases help us to denote two kinds of devotional attitudes—first spoken of in Sanskrit literature—that seem to be at the heart of the spiritual dimension of The Waste Land. It is not known if Eliot knew these phrases, and for our discussion it is not necessary to know that, but having studied quite a few important Hindu and Buddhist texts thoroughly at Harvard, and always inclined to eclectic learning, Eliot may have been familiar with the two phrases. Markata Kishora nyaya refers to a devotee who clings on to God with all his might, just as the infant monkey clings to the mother monkey even as the mother moves around. In case of monkeys, the responsibility of remaining attached to the mother is the baby’s not the mother’s. Thus, the infant monkey demonstrates a certain kind of self-reliance. Although it needs the mother’s milk and help, it doesn’t have to be held by the mother; it holds on to the mother even when she is moving from branch to branch. A metaphorical extension of this idea would be to consider the devotee who practices such things as restraint and self control. Such a devotee is not so much surrendered to God, as he is reliant on his own strength of mind. Thus, the Buddhist ideas of self-control and of not giving into desires, for example, can be included in the markata kishore nyaya attitude. This is the sense in which markata kishora nyaya is used in this article. It will be shown how The Waste Land supports or values such an attitude, when it comes to finding a solution to the problems of individual and societal suffering. Marjara kishora nyaya refers to the devotee who does not believe in exerting any effort on his own, but believes in totally submitting himself to God or in erasing his own self. The Waste Land seems to appreciate this particular devotional attitude too, and it will be my endeavour to explain how. Thus, this paper argues that The Wast Land diagnoses a spiritual lack or weakness or aridity in modern, western society, and points towards the possibility of redemption through the spirituality inherent in the two kinds of devotional attitudes, markata kishora nyaya and marjara kishora nyaya.
In attempting this double task—of showing where the problem of western modern society lies, and of suggesting a possible solution—perhaps Eliot is only following his predecessors, the Victorian poets, particularly Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins. When Matthew Arnold philosophised that
…the world…Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night (“Dover Beach”)
he was saying more or less the same thing that much of The Waste Land, albeit in a much more complicated, “modernist” way, says. Hopkins is clearly unhappy about the way his society seems to have conveniently forgotten God in its rendezvous with mammon:
…Why do men then now not reck his rod?Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soilIs bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. (“God’s Grandeur”)
Throughout The Waste Land, Eliot repeatedly uses Christian, Hindu and Buddhist imagery to point towards the need for a spiritual solution to the problems besetting modern western civilization. Thus, although in technique, The Waste Land is unabashedly and audaciously different from Victorian poetry, in its content it echoes some of the fears that Victorian poets had expressed.
The fear is about the way the world has become irreligious, and Eliot’s diagnosis of the malady of the modern world involves his religious understanding of desires as dangerous. Thus, The Waste Land is replete with depictions of desire gone wrong: seduction, deceit, rape, casual sex, prostitution, and modern “devices”, such as birth-control pills used in the bed room and the sex industry. There are also many instances of the depiction of greed for money and morally ambiguous or downright wrong means of earning wealth, including Judas’ betrayal of Christ for a few coins.
The depictions of desires, particularly sexual desires as wrong or dirty or dangerous, are just too many too be detailed here, but for the sake of the discussion here, some of these are pointed out. The very title of the second section, of the poem, “A Game of Chess”, is meant to present man-woman relationships as constant vying for one-upmanship, and also such relationships as full of deceits and dangers, recalling the game of chess in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women, a game that works as a distraction for Bianca’s mother-in-law while Bianca is seduced. Also, this section enacts the scene of the violent rape of Philomela by Tereus. Besides, the lines
...“My nerves are bad tonight. 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”...
which, according to some critics, echo Eliot’s disturbed relationship with his neurotic wife Vivienne, begin a section in the poem that reminds the reader of the scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet where Hamlet confronts his mother Gertrude, accusing her of lechery. From line 139 until line 172, the end of this section, it is the famous pub scene, presenting poor women with possibly poor morals, talking of such things as the sexual appetite of a husband returning from war, the physical effects of birth control pills, and so on.
The third section of The Waste Land is entitled “The Fire Sermon”, directly connecting it with Gautama Buddha’s famous Fire Sermon. Although there is nothing directly from Buddha’s sermon itself in this section, the naming of the section as “The Fire Sermon” is certainly not accidental. It alerts the reader to the fact that the Buddha’s sermon and this section of the poem share a common concern: the fire of attachment and desire that is at the root of human suffering. The very opening of “The Fire Sermon”—
The river’s tent is broken; the last fingers of leafClutch and sink into a wet bank
urges the mind to dwell on the religious, biblical connotations of “tent”, recalling the tent or tabernacle carried through their wanderings by the Israelites. The tabernacle being a place of worship and sacrifice, the “broken” tent would suggest some kind of loss to something valuable or sacred. At the same time, this opening of Part III also recalls, with its river imagery, Ophelia’s death by drowning enacted in the last line (Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night) of Part II. Also, the reference to the river here can be seen as linked with
The river sweatsOil and tarThe barges driftWith the turning tide
and so on later in Part III itself, as also the reference to Elizabeth and Leicester on the Thames a little later and also the reference to how the Thames
…bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,Silk handerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette endsOr other testimony of summer nights
possibly spent by sexual partners described in the beginning of Part III. The Buddha’s Fire Sermon was about the dangers of the fires of desire. The Buddha taught the path of self-control, i.e., not to indulge the desires, but to starve them. The Waste Land’s repeated depiction of desire as ugly, as bad, is in line with the Buddha’s description of desire as a raging fire that burns everything. The Waste Land, through its numerous descriptions of the ugliness of desire first achieves the task of condemning desire, and then, in its polyphonic, multi-vocal way, invokes an ancient Hindu narrative from the Brihadaranyak Upanishad, to suggest that the way out of the snares of desires is through self-control, damyata. In the Upanishadic narrative, the three kinds of creation by Brahma, the Creator God—gods, demons and men—receive instructions from the Creator. Then, Brahma tests them by asking them what they make of a syllable he utters: ‘Da!” The section of The Waste Land presenting this parable is appropriately titled “What the Thunder Said”, because the legend says that Brahma’s pronouncement of the syllable “Da” is what the thunder thunders even today. The gods, who, according to Hindu mythology constitute a bhoga yoni—i.e., their primary function is to enjoy pleasures (usually earned through their good deeds in former lives as men) interpret “Da” as damyata, which would mean that the Creator wanted them to apply restraint in their enjoyments. Hence, the idea of controlling desires is enacted. Control means to have the capacity of restraint in one’s own hand. Buddhism, a religion that is not at all god-centric, teaches disciplines that one has to practise on one’s own. The self-control that one has to exercise in order to get rid of desires, is something one has to achieve through self-effort, not through an appeal or prayer to God or to any outside agency. This is very much in line with what is referred to an markata kishora nyaya in Hinduism although the Buddhist way can perhaps be described as atheistic while markata kishora nyaya involves the theistic Hindu idea of bhakti or devotion to God. The Buddhist’s reliance on himself to eradicate all desires from the mind, and the Hindu markata kishora nyaya devotion are both centred on the individual’s self-effort.
“The Fire Sermon” also introduces Sweeney, the crude, virile male and Mrs Porter, who is possibly a bawd even for her own daughter. Also, the nightingale’s call and the sad story of Philomela’s rape by Tereus is once again echoed in this section:
Twit twit twitJug jug jug jug jug jugSo rudely forc’d.Tereu...
Also, what is shown as an encounter between Mr Eugenides and the narrator apparently involves an invitation for a homosexual rendezvous in hotels. This is also the section of the poem which presents the loveless, mechanical, sexual encounter between a typist and a clerk “the young man carbuncular”. The repeated wail of the Rhinemaidens in this section enacts the pain of deceit and loss, while the brief mention of Elizabeth and Leicester perhaps links up the themes or love and lust across the Rhine and the Thames, suggesting the universality of the problems associated with desire.
Lines 307 to 311 are of special significance to this paper because as mentioned in the beginning, the argument of the paper emerges from what Eliot commented on line 309 in his notes. These lines are quick reminders of two things: the Buddha’s “Fire Sermon”, a sermon on the dangers of desires, and St. Augustine’s assertion about how God saves him by plucking him out of the very fires of the world of desires:
To Carthage then I cameBurning burning burning burningO Lord Thou pluckest me outO Lord Thou pluckestburning...
The Buddha’s way is markata kishora nyaya, the way of the infant monkey who holds onto to the mother with all its might. Just as the little monkey relies on its own power to be able to hold on to the mother, the Buddhist ascetic relies on his own ability for restraint and control. He exercises these powers of the mind to the utmost in order to remain unscathed by the fires of desires, the raging fires of the world. St. Augustine’s way is marjara kishora nyaya, the way of the helpless kitten, completely taken care of by the mother cat. Thus, God plucks St. Augustine out of the raging fires of the world, the fires of desire. The active element here is God, with the devotee lying completely passive. If there is any activity in him, it is the inner struggle of surrendering himself entirely, and relying on God’s grace alone.
Works Cited
Cox, C. B. and Arnold P. Hinchliffe, eds. T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land, A Casebook. Macmillan, 1968.
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot. Faber and Faber, 2004. First published 1969.
Richards, I. A. Principles of Literary Criticism. 1925. Indian edition. Universal Book Stall, 1990.