"The Waste Land" and T. S. Eliot's conversion

The January/February 2012 issue of Saint Austin Review has, as usual, many fine articles, one of which is available on the magazine's website (in PDF format): "The Prefiguration of T. S. Eliot's Conversion in 'The Waste Land'" by Paula L. Gallagher. She writes:

The beginning of Eliot's conversion, as prefigured in the poem, begins with his recognition of the emptiness of modernity. The fact that Eliot is writing this poem about the barrenness of modernity and imaging it as a Waste Land shows that Eliot sees through modernity to the reality of its sterility. The image of the Waste Land represents the aridity of modernity, its lack of culture and tradition, and indeed its inability to allow culture and tradition to grow and flourish. Hence, the Waste Land is repeatedly described as a desert with "dry stone and no sound of water". The Waste Land, where "there is not water but only rock", lacks the life-giving and life-sustaining water which will enable tradition and culture to thrive. The poet is seeking the rain which will reanimate the Waste Land of modernity; the rain which will touch and enliven the dead roots of tradition and culture. This water, ultimately, is Christianity.

The Waste Land also encompasses the "Unreal City" of London, a particular instantiation of modernity, which Eliot uses to convey specific ideas about the state of modernity. London is "Unreal"; it is not connected to objective reality but is immersed in the empty pursuits of modernity. In the fifth section of the poem, other major historical and cultural cities in addition to London are depicted as crumbling "falling towers" and as "Unreal": Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna. Significantly, Rome, the city from where the Pope traditionally leads Christianity, is not included in the list, and as such it is symbolically excluded from the Waste Land. Rome is not included in modernity because, in addition to symbolizing the grace of Christ, it is also a perennial fortress and advancer of culture and tradition. Eliot's recognition of the unreality of modernity and the role of Rome in history is another step on his path to conversion.

The essay is a helpful introduction to a poem renowned for being difficult to interpret. An annotated version of "The Waste Land" can be accessed here. My favorite poem by Eliot, "Ash Wednesday", has sometimes been called his "conversion poem", as it was his first major poem published (in 1930) after becoming Anglican in 1927.