【正文】 ts Eliot?s attitude to the perennial problem of human 上海立信會計學院本科生畢業(yè)論文 15 suffering， pain and evil. Eliot?s emotions must have been deeply moved by the events of World War， which made him speculate upon human destiny. Eliot sees suffering as inseparable from man?s life. His religious sense makes him ascribe human suffering to human sinfulness. Since human nature is radically sinful， man is subject to pains and suffering at all times. Thus original sin and suffering are related. Thus indirectly lust， surrender to sex, passion and “Love of created beings” are at the bottom of human suffering. Just as man cannot pletely get rid of his sexual appetites， so he cannot pletely eradicate evil and suffering. Eliot?s consciousness of death lies deeply in the present， but it also anticipates the future resurrection, mixed with his inclination to tradition and religions. Therefore， the poet is both a pessimistic realist and an optimistic romanticist. The greatest virtue of The Waste Land is that Eliot presents the modern mind and modern city as posed of fragments from the Past， “ a heap of broken images，” through which run great and obsessive anxieties. “In regard to Eliot?s belief in redemption， the story of the golden bough and of the Fisher King reveals his ideal. In the fifth section， he the thunder said. Freedom and wholeness (holiness、 bee possible， according to both Dante and the Buddha， when passions， lusts，and sins are eliminated, the duality of fire stems from the fact that it represents both the sin and the method of Purgation.”(7) Eliot masterfully illustrates this duality， and， in The Fire Sermon， he initiates a subtle transition from one kind of flame to the other， alluding not only to Dante and the Buddha， but also to Saint Augustine and to the Bible in his synthesis of lust and purgation. Water is also used as the symbol both for revival and death. 4. 2 A Textual Analysis of The waste Land The Waste Land consists five parts. The first part is The Burial of the Dead, it describes 上海立信會計學院本科生畢業(yè)論文 16 the spiritual death of the westerners. The opening lines are rather hard for understanding: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in fetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. (8) In Britain, April is the season for everything?s renascence, why can it be “the cruelest month”? Especially after Chaucer described April as the humeral and amenity season, which is good for pilgrimage in his “Canterbury Tales”, in British literature, April is always regarded as a beautiful and striving season. But Eliot?s great is here he can cite other writers? strongpoint and make them good use for himself. The Waste Land destroyed the peaceful vision, revived their desire, arouse their painful memory. Following is Mary?s monolog, she ran back to her carefree foretime, even have the exultation and romantic snippet, but all is gone suddenly. The fearful vision of the waste land makes the readers felt rather startled: Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet (9) 上海立信會計學院本科生畢業(yè)論文 17 Here Eliot described the hollowness of the westerners? spiritual world. The second part is A Game of Chess. The “game” here means the sex game of modern. The sex action which is inviolable in the past now became a senseless game. Eliot used this description for delineating modern people?s degenerate and absurdity. The first scene described a rich woman stay in a luxury palace, she felt very vacuity and make a series of questions to express her bother. Eliot inserted several fames, myth and literature quotation in this part to lay out people?s respect on sex in ancient time. The second scene is a little bar, two women talked about vulgar things shamelessly: make love, abortion, how to cope with their ingback husband, and so on. The third part is The Fire Sermon. Its theme is also sex. The Fire Sermon?s primary function is to advise people to exterminate the desire of ardor. But what described in this poem is cool and emotiveless sex, it is really a lampoon. This part contrasts the Thames? recent and fore image. The tender and peaceful Thames didn?t exist, “the nymphs are departed”, instead of this, it became a dirty river. The poet chooses a typical scene of modern people: the pure sex action between a women typist and a young man carbuncular: Flushed and decided, he assaults at once。s Westminster Abbey was dedicated to Eliot. He died in the knowledge that he was amongst the most important poets and critics of his century. 上海立信會計學院本科生畢業(yè)論文 6 Chapter 2 Eliot’s Literary Career T. S. Eliot was one of the finest poets writing in English in the first half of the twentieth century. Throughout his life, Eliot wrote five volumes of poetry, seven plays, twentynine nonfictions (including essays and critical writings), edited seven books (including selected poems), and translated St John Perse Anabasis (1930). He used unrhymed verse in his plays, and attempted to revive poetic drama for the contemporary audience. His most influential criticism concentrated on that the poet should approach the act of writing. In 1948, Eliot won the Nobel Prize for literature. As a Poet As a poet, Thomas Stearns Eliot had a long poetic career. In his early period (from 1915 to 1925), he published three volumes of poetic works among which The Waste Land was his famous long poem. In his poetry, Eliot explored a sense of the disintegration of life. In his later period, he only published two major volumes of poetry among which Four Quartets are more plex and prehensible