MODERN END OF THE WORLD.

FROM THE PENS OF T.S ELIOT AND W.B. YEATS

                 Virginia Woolf, arguably the most prominent female writer of the modern age, once wrote that, 'in or about . . . December 1910 human character changed. The change was not sudden or definite  but change there was nonetheless.' Her reflection was perhaps to the cultural shocks that gripped the continent of Europe at that time and its dire effect on the rest of the world. This age where famous poets like T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats wrote was therefore an age of contradiction and decadence widespread chaos and moral and spiritual degeneration. And it is this sense of fragmentation, loss and confusion that both these poets expressed best in the respective powerful, ingenious and apocalyptic poems: Hollow men by Eliot and Second Coming by Yeats.

                 T. S. Eliot in his Hollow Men (written in 1925, few years after the Great War) shows this emptiness of modern man and the dissatisfaction, passivity prevalent in his age. The poem begins with an epigraph from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. 'Mistah Kurtz - he is dead', which is an indication that Mr. Kurtz with his focus on materialism is spiritually dead, a hollow man. The first verse indicate an emotional and spiritual hollowness with no sense of individuality found in men who have a 'head piece filled with straw', without thought causing them to be empty and futile. This is a reference to Guy Fawks, an Englishman who tried to blow up the Parliament. The extremely graphic imagery used by the poet to show the sense of nothingness in their ‘whispering’ which is ‘quiet and meaningless,’ reveals how they are morally and spiritually devoid of feelings or any affection. Mankind had torn each other apart. The second part of the poem reveals an array of contradiction ‘shape without form, shade without color,’ a blend of colorful oxymoron which portrays how the essential elements are missing. These ‘hollow men’, which is a reference to the men of his age (and no doubt to our age as well), is according to the poet in the very state of limbo described by Dante, in his sensational ‘Inferno,’ who never made to the land of the Kingdom, because they are those who due to their own apathy only deserves to ‘look and pass them by.’

These references used by Eliot shows the moral paralysis of modern man where religion and other institution had failed and the ‘eye’ of the hollow men, vague and insolent reveals this complacency. The fragmented lines used by the poet in the poem and in his other works such as the ‘Waste Land’ demonstrate the chaotic state of modern existence – ‘these fragments I have showed against my ruins.’ The poet also as the poem progresses calls the society he lived in a ‘dead land’ and a ‘cactus land’, an image of Waste land, lifelessness; an indication to what man have done to their land in the never ending rage and conflict. Further spiritual deterioration is seen in the lines ‘stone images are raised,’ worshiping false Gods, bereft of spirituality. The poet continuously stresses this sense of alienation in every angle even the prayers of Hollow men as blasphemous one, devoid of faith. Entire modern world according to T. S. Eliot was a spiritual wasteland.

            It is this decadence that is expressed in W. B. Yeats’ Second Coming as well. Though the title indicates the prophesied Second Coming of the Messiah, the poet skillfully projects a rather subverted angle of this coming. Written in 1919, immediately after the First World War, the first line itself ‘turning and turning in the widening gyre,’ is like a dooming prophecy of the state of the world in that chaotic time. The spiritual and moral vacuum found in the world is best expressed in the lines ‘the falcon’ – man ‘cannot hear the falconer’ – God. This is powerful outcry at the failure of organized religion to sustain values and morals. The poet in the first stanza describes the condition of the world, the sheer lawlessness - ‘mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,’ ‘things fall apart,’ is a powerful description of the apocalyptic state the world was heading to. This is a reflection on the destruction caused by the First World War, death, upheaval and revolutions that followed – ‘the blood dimmed tide’ drowning everything in its path. In such catastrophic times the lines from the second stanza, ‘Surely some revelation is at hands, surely some Second Coming is at hand,’ at first brings a sense of relief that there might be something that could stop the mayhem and madness in the world. But instead of Christ’s Second Coming he anticipates the arrival of a beast, with a body of a lion and head of a man – according to most critics, the Anti-Christ. This juxtaposition of the ‘lion body’ and the ‘head of a man’ indicate the strength and power of the intelligent creature but it is in its movement that he creates the terror. Words like ‘slow thighs, slouches’ indicates though it is slow it has a pervasive determination and it is inevitable. So when the gyre that the poet referred in the beginning collapses due to the moral and spiritual crisis of man it would not be for a future of salvation as the biblical prophecy goes, but rather for a greater terror. The rocking cradle of man’s civilization will hence give birth not to Christ, but a monster.

It is this very sense of confusion and bitterness of a degenerated humanity that both these poets attack in their poems. While W.B. Yeats attack the status of modern man, by describing that the ‘best lacks conviction while the worst is full of passionate intensity,’ it is this lack of conviction that Eliot also notes and refer to as those who have ‘headpiece filled with straw.’ They are the hollow men. It is the inaction of good men which they both believe that had bought upon the triumph of evil in the world, a situation no different today as well. It is through the use of tone, visual imagery that both the poets paint a portrayal of a very apocalyptic world. This is also perhaps why both the poets are considered among the greatest modern poets of all time. The subversion of the Mulberry Bush by Eliot and the subversion of the Second Coming by Yeats are indication that both these poets feel that there is no positivity in future if mankind was to remain so complacent. It is a deliberate systematized creation of dystopia. Their prophecy of the end of the world is ‘not with a bang, but with a whimper’ – not as grand as conventions had promised but with suffering and chaos, not with the aid of a Messiah but at the hands of a ‘rough beast.’ This is because man has allowed the world that the God saved to deteriorate to this state and therefore they deserve not to expect a positive Second Coming. Although both the poems end with such negativity, there are critics who had seen a faint glimpse of hope in it. The fact that Second Coming ends with a question mark can be seen as a reflection of caution and also in Hollow Men, by painting such stark reality of complacent people, Eliot could be seen injecting a note of caution on what would happen if people continue being so, and it is this spiritual and moral chaos of man which makes both poets anticipate a future far more poignant and frightening than the present condition they lived in.

Pic: Deviantart.