The Mythical Method in the Waste Land

Abstract

E.M. Forster wrote of Eliot‟s religion, „What he seeks is not revelation but stability‟. The quest for
stability is central to Eliot‟s work. The social and personal agony of The Wasteland and the individual agony
of „Prufrock‟ are responses to the instability of everything. The power of the religious poems is not their
faith but in the tormenting desire to believe- in the forms and dogma as much as in the Deity. When Stability
is unattainable the tone becomes elegiac, as in Prufrock or satirical, as in the Sweeney poems. Desire for
stability resulted in his lucid conservatism and his technical radicalism as a poet. His search for stability and
a satisfactory dogma structure made him explore the world of myth, it is a barbaric world for Eliot, one
agrees with Spender that “For Eliot Civilization meant the Europe of Dante with its roots in the Rome of
Virgil”. The ritualistic world of Indian Literature also have a similar appeal for Eliot. When Indian antiquity
appears in the poetry of T.S. Eliot, it is not one of valour, violence and intrigue but one of religious awe and
tender sentiments.