The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot reading The Waste Land. Recording of the poem by the poet himself set to some pictures. Nothing fancy. Just to get the audio up for anybody who has never heard him do it before.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• t.s.
• eliot
• the
• waste
• land

[ryan06105]

I love Eliot but someone should have grabbed him by the collar and said, "Hey Tommy Boy, reality check time: you grew up in Missouri!"

[PedroAlonsoLopez]

@ryan06105 One would hope a man can change, no? This is a theme throughout Eliot - if you feel more English than American is it possible to align yourself over time with something you identify with more? This is why he went the whole hog and got so deep into Anglicism. He felt more at home in England than the States. In his soul he was English.

[ChornyKlegg]

or did Linton Kwasi Johnson capture in words just what it is to be alive,

more than some white middle-class native American holed up

in England could ever do, an emigree,

fleeing, an expatriate, I'm lost for words!

to describe the pair of them

[PedroAlonsoLopez]

@ChornyKlegg The difference is that Eliot knew life could not be captured in words. That is what makes him a poet and Linton Kwasi Johnson second rate.

[0194D]

I hate the fact that i have to do this atrocious poem for an essay, every time I hear this drab voice and read his pathetic words on paper, which seems to be cement to me anytime I read this poem, its like a hitman, who obtained anonymous photo of me as the target not knowing I was the sender, is aiming his sniper directly at head as I hold still to and pray that he doesn't miss because I want it to be all over; for hell couldn't compare to the agony that this poem gives me.

[PedroAlonsoLopez]

@0194D It's a shame you are being force to read it. Try to listen to the poem without prejudice and hear Eliot's pain in the face of life. He is attempting to break through his icy personality to a universal (and timeless) message and so he avoids any dramatic effect or pull that might give you relief (or cartharsis). It is a poem about agony that induces agony. In other words it is a successful poem.

[ephemeraldeep]

I actually enjoy his voice- not in this one, but when he reads "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Portrait of a Lady." It sounds harsh here, but in those recordings, it's rather soothing.

[chowchow0726]

He sounds like a frightfully educated foreigner, like someone deeply learned from India, almost...

[mr093242]

i love ts eliots poetry, but not when he reads it

[Khuno2]

He should never have read his own work aloud. Awful voice set to inarguably one of the best poems ever written.

[JayGatsbyOdysseus]

@PedroAlonsoLopez Sort of like the reverse of Chrisopher Hitchens, although Eliot a poet, Hitchens a journalist.

[eastwood1941]

Interesting comment, which I think I can relate to myself. Being English (as, presumably, being any other nationality) could well be a disadvantage in one respect, in that one is too close to the reality to see it objectively- not seeing the wood for the trees.

But Eliot's vision of England was a romantic/intellectual one, because that's what he was- his modernism is only skin deep.

I apologise for my mis-spelling of "La Figlia Che Piange", and would recommend Eliot's reading of this.

[Surells]

Wonderful poem, though I prefer The Love Song of J A P myself. I can understand 0194D to a degree though, when I studied it at school I didn't like it either (though I was not such a drama queen about it), but as time has gone on I've come to see why it is so powerful. I think its a poem to complex and too adult in its melancholy to be understood by the average child.

Thank you for the upload, even though he's not a great reader I love knowing I'm hearing Elliot's voice. These emotions are his.

[kosmischesynth]

@eastwood1941 Perhaps the understanding of a foreigner to England is more true, certainly more perfect, than that of an Englisher. I know that I don't have any concept of England, a country where I was born and have lived all my life, except from literature and films.

[eastwood1941]

Eliot's understanding of England was that of an American tourist, and leads to a profoundly flawed, profoundly interesting understanding of what England is.

In the end, it doesn't matter that Eliot was more American than English. He lived in a vision of England even more bizarre than that of P. G. Wodehouse (who was English), but it is the poetry that matters.

I believe his best poem is not "The Wasteland" or even "Four Quartets".

I believe it is "La Figlia Que Piange". Anybody agree?

[ulp007]

English was yet another mask for TommyBoy. And, by the way, the difference between real English a la Churchill and English in a Missouri English family was not as overwhelming as it is today. Dig? Listening to Auden gone American is rather ghastly, int? Or shall we promote Gicano?