English 2230F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: The Waste Land, Jacques Lacan, Aphorism
11 Apr 2016
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We are to follow two things in this passage: 1) the light. It is being relected of of diferent objects in the room. We travel the room by following the light: 2) scent and smoke. There is a logic to the space: it is a 3d version of a game of chess, the room is structured with a cofered ceiling, polished marble ile loor, and mirrors, candles, and light around the room. The poem then breaks into a popular song, the shakespearean rag (a real song: eliot knows that the song will invoke the doomed romances of shakespeare in readers, it encapsulates what has gone before. We are asked to witness this spectacle of mental illness and abuse: the tragedy of the passage is that the man is distracted and is unable to see her pain. There is a logic in play with the power and gender relaions.
