AN EARTH-SHATTERING PSYCHIATRY OF OBSCURE SYMBOLS AND IMAGERY IN T. S. ELIOT’S THE WASTE LAND

The use of a symbolic style can benefit a poet to achieve economy, direction, great emotional and spiritual intensity, which direct statement, might not be able to provide. A poet may draw upon the stock of conventional symbols or else he can contrive his own set of symbols to which he alone possesses the key. Symbolists usually use private symbols in their poetry. This, in the end, results in the obscurity of the poem. Although Eliot was influenced by the French Symbolist poets, and although he was not averse to the use of the private symbols, yet most of his symbols and images are conventional – drawn from myths, religion, literature, nature and urban scene. Some of these symbols, however, are compound of the conventional and personal symbols. The contorted lines, un-intelligible of quotations and opaque symbols increase the obscurity of the poem. The technical complexity and novelty, verbal ambiguity, and allusiveness of the style, all tend to bring obscurity in a work of art. Thus the present paper is an attempt to explore this element of obscure symbols and imagery in the Eliot’s The Waste Land.