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Article: Eliot's The Waste Land.(T.S. Eliot)
- Article from:
- The Explicator
- Article date:
- September 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
(The Waste Land, "What the Thunder Said," 378-85) (1)
Although The Waste Land may be the most analyzed poem of the last century, certain passages remain elusive. The phantasmagoric scene beginning "A woman drew her long black hair out tight" is one such passage. Bookended by the ...