Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: Existentialism and The Waste Land (original) (raw)

It is prudent to begin my discussion of the poem itself by treating the deep seeded existential and pseudo-Bradlian undertones of The Waste Land's epigraph. Perhaps it is best to say here both of the epigraphs, as I here contend that the Conrad bit from the facsimile manuscript and the Cumaean Sibyl excerpt from Petronius, which heads the finished poem, are inextricably linked. Both excerpts express the same anxiety over the absurdity of existence and the inescapable contradictions of reality. Moreover, when coupled with Eliot's letters to Pound discussing their content, Eliot emphasizes the importance of the epigraph to the tone and theme of the rest of his poem. The Waste Land: a Facsimile and Transcript reveals Eliot's original intention to use an epigram from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The passage is significant because it directly addresses the condition of existential nausea that I argue pervades the entirety of the journey in The Waste Land.