TWL, Part I: Characters

0.5     I.  The Burial Of The Dead

0.5 I.  The Burial Of The Dead

0.5. ACT ONE:  Eliot’s poem follows the structure of a five-act Shakespearean play.  Act One opens with a series of character introductions, beginning with the Austrian Countess Marie and followed by an Old Testament Son of Man, the mythological Hyacinth Prince, a modern day Clairvoyante and, obtusely, the Reader’s Brother. The characters generally seem eager to live, to speak and be heard, but death, or a tiredness of life, lingers around them.

The title to this first part alludes to The Order for the Burial of the Dead, from The Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer (1662). The order of service begins with a passage from John 11:26, and specifically from the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead:

“...whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.”

Lazarus is revived and promised eternal life, ostensibly something to celebrate, but this allusion also follows the Sybil’s lament over her state of never dying (see note 0.3).

THE CLASSICAL ELEMENTS of earth, air, fire, water and wind form another structural premise for this poem, as the elements, almost characters in their own right, make successive appearances in each of the poem’s five sections.  This, the first section, issometimes called the “earth” section.

Eliot would later repeat this structure with the first four elements and the quintessential wind in Four Quartets (1943), a collection of poems he wrote over the course of six years (1936-1942), reflecting air in Burnt Norton (1936), earth in East Coker (1940), water in The Dry Salvages (1941) and fire in Little Gidding (1942).  See notes 64, 306 and 434 for other references to Four Quartets.

Designation of the classical elements can be found in early Babylonian, Indian, Greek and Chinese philosophies. See Anon., Enuma Elis (ca. 1800 BCE, tr. as The Seven Tablets of Creation by E. A. Wallis Budge, 1921), a Babylonian cuneiform text which describes creation through personifications of water, earth, sky and fire.

See also Upanishads, Shvetashvatara Upanishad 2:12 (ca 400-200 BCE, tr. Robert Ernest Hume, 1921):

“When the fivefold quality of Yoga has been produced,
Arising from earth, water, fire, air and space,
No sickness, no old age, no death has he
Who has obtained a body made out of the fire of Yoga.”

For more on the Upanishads, see note 400.

See also Plato, Timaeus 48b, (ca. 360 BCE, tr. W.R.M. Lamb, 1925):

“We must gain a view of the real nature of fire and water, air and earth,
as it was before the birth of Heaven.”

Finally, see Anon., Mawangdui Silk Texts (ca. 168 BCE), presenting the Chinese philosophy of Wu Xing and the five phases of wood, fire, earth, metal and water.

For more on the classical elements, see notes 7, 26, 76.5, 172, 307, 311.5 and 321.5.

EARTH is the prevailing element of Part I, marked by three separate gardens (lines 10, 37 and 71) but also roots (see note 4) and the dust of graves (see note 30).  Mountains (line 17) and rocks (lines 24-26) are introduced and a brown fog pervades (line 61).  Attention is given to planting (line 71) and digging up (line 75), and there is a retreat from fire (lines 22-23), a fear of water (line 55) and, in short-breathed sighs, the death of air (line 64).