T. S. Elliot’s “The WasteLand” - short review

A short review by Julie Allan

Artwork by Pablo Picasso 

Guernica, 1937 by Pablo Picasso

“I must confess. I have no idea what I just read. But it was the most beautiful thing.” 

I believe this quote I found while scrolling through many reviews of T.S. Elliot’s “The Waste Land” is the shortest, yet most accurate review one can give to this poem. 

In the modernist fashion, this poem is an absolute mess. A mixture of fragmented imagery and lost allusions. The text reads like a mixture of dadaism and cubism artwork. The nonsense and irrationality characteristic to the dada movement and the fragmented and abstracted approach to representing reality from the cubist movement are the exact visual representation this poem brings to mind. In this, it is a modernist masterpiece. 

That being said, I am not a fan of modernism or abstract art. So although I recognize this work is a masterpiece, I will say I did not enjoy it very much. It does hold some beautiful imagery, but just as I think I am about to understand what he is writing about everything changes, or the line is broken and the thought goes unfinished, sometimes picked back up here and there. Images loose in my mind. Truly a waste Land. 

Regardless of my personal taste, I am able to appreciate the movements and recognize its innovation and relevance in history. The beauty of colors, words, and art in itself. Art for art's sake.