"The Waste Land" - The Burial of the Dead (part 1 of 2)

[@K_F_fox]

I am in awe in how you squeezed every milligram of meaning from this poem. I learn (absorb) new things every time I watch this video.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thanks! I just uploaded a two-part series on "Prufrock" if you'd like to check it out.

[@shanzakhattak5794]

uxUZZZUUUUUUUUUUUcccx

[@jacquelinepeoples379]

This is my first time watching the video. However, l am glad this guy is laying everything on the table to understand. Lord knows we need more teachers like him.

[@JohnnyJohnny-f5o]

All through school I was the kid sitting in the back of the class sleeping or bored out of my brain. Now I can't get enough of this stuff. Thanks.

[@johnmucha]

Mr. Huff, I want to tell you how wonderful this series is. I am 71 years old and first read The Waste Land as a sophomore in college at twenty and have read it many, many times over the years. Thank you for illuminating things I have missed and puzzled about all these years. I still find the poem both chilling and yet somehow optimistic as we shore against our ruins with fragments... I read it again today after reading Yeats The Second Coming.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Wonderful!

[@wondereda]

Oh my God! This is amazing. You saved my poetry career! Thanks a lot!!

[@Nia-yz4ft]

Every word you said resonated with the text . Your explanation made imagery intact in my mind. After navigating through labyrinth of triviality , I finally got the fundamental explanation. Thank you a zillion times for voicing this for us. You are wonderful ✨🦋🥀💌

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thanks! I just uploaded a two-part series on "Prufrock" if you'd like to check it out.

[@KiaNooriComedy]

best analysis of the wasteland I can find. I come back to it every now and again

[@mahimarathod464]

This is so helpful. Lots of references. By far this is the best analysis of the wasteland I've heard.

[@moicecibon4768]

Thank you So much for your analysis, this poem has always shaken me to the core ,to the point of bringing me to tears without knowing why. I am now on this quest of understanding why.

[@Phlebasphoenician]

I learned the burial of the dead by heart, and I intend to learn all the poem in the next few days. It has become like a mantra to me, and I've begun to see hidden patterns I had never seen before. I've also read the notes by Eliot and I am studying from your video too. I consider myself a poet, at least I write something, never published anything at all by now. Sometimes I feel intimidated by all the poems that are out there... So I've decided to completely avoid the problem by concentrating on a few authors a time, really carving their word in my brain, and in my mouth. That's something too good to be true, when the sound overcomes the meaning and words, dead till that moment, become part of a living being. That's really something, isn't it?

[@2msvalkyrie529]

I think you " understand " the meaning but like most of us you cannot express it in words . Those opening lines : April is the cruellest month / breeding lilacs out of the dead land / mixing Memory and Desire....provoke emotion which are almost impossible to explain. Also it's a very English poem .Even though He was an American.!

[@garyleo-xie7274]

To be honest, the analysis really throws me for a loop. Amazing! Excellent!

[@Kaascat]

Thank you for uploading this, it has been a great companion while re-reading The wasteland!

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

+Kaascat Kaasland I'm glad it could help!

[@elsewhere6388]

I just reread the Wasteland post-college, and this was an absolutely amazing companion to my reading! Thank you for making this available!

[@VinodKumar-gv9sg]

I have just listen to the first part of this series on The Waste Land. However it sounds immensely beneficial. I would really appreciate if you keep making more and more vidoes on main canonical texts. You are doing a wonderful job. God bless you sir ....

[@lbrahim1568]

Person who is explaining his knowledge is superb his soul is innocent and quest to know the truth

[@marys9889]

Your videos made me have a great grade at english literature! Thank you very much!

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thank you!

[@zinobiazia4574]

seriously, you're analysis is amazing, and it would help me in my exam :D Thank you!

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thank you!

[@amiralmira2269]

i can't describe how much pleasure and enjoyment i felt while watching this video. You explained every single detail! thank u so much Sir

[@Mugukaupo]

‘Marie’, who is obviously the narrator of the first sentences in The Burial of the Dead, refers probably to countess Marie Larisch, a cousin of both empress (archduchess) Elisabeth (Sisi) of Austria and (‘mad’) king Ludwig II of Bavaria. It is known that T.S. Eliot has spoken extensively with her about Ludwig II (when she was living in London). Ludwig is probably the cousin who 'took Marie out on a sled' ("and I was frightened"). This sleigh ride also is mentioned in the memoirs which countess Marie Larisch published in 1913, entitled 'My past'. Her personal history can be considered as an allusion to the collapse of the three European empires during The Great War and the social, economical and existential chaos that resulted from that catastrophic conflict (at least 21 million people died).

[@asmzalzhrani5149]

Oh my God I loooooved your analysis I‘m studying this poem & I have a midterm after tomorrow really thank you .. I'm a student from Saudi Arabia your analysis helped me a lot.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

asmz alzhrani Awesome!

[@DeathByMagikarp]

Just found your series of "The Wasteland" today and i'm tremendously excited to embark on this lecture journey! Thanks so much for uploading this and greetings from Singapore! (oh and would you ever consider doing a lecture on "The love song of J.Alfred Prufrock"? I am definitely looking forward to that in the future)

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thanks! I will certainly consider doing "Prufrock"

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

I just uploaded a two-part series on "Prufrock" if you'd like to check it out.

[@hamnamir3182]

So far one of the best explanations i have ever come across Thank you for this :)

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

You're very welcome!

[@markhughes7927]

Thanks for this most interesting induction to a very cryptic poem.

[@baselzain5886]

I really can't thank you enough. Your explanation was outstanding although you forgot to mention about Mari's life in the past that she was from an aristocratic family, and that she used to visit her cousin, who was the duke. Thanks a million :)

[@universitystudio742]

I think" there is a shadow under this red rock" is a reference to the church at that time ,when the church kinda look like saviour ,and people need to cover under the shadow to escape from the heat of the east land ,what you think?

[@skroy8886]

Mr. Huff,you are amazing.!!

[@gaslight112]

Thank you so much for your detailed explanation. A very good source to understand

[@HopeKim95]

Thank you very much...Would you please upload lectures about Prufrock and The Hollow Men?

[@halilsenturk2382]

I feel super ready for the tomorrow's 20th century poetry class! Thank you for this precious lecture!

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thanks!

[@mansooralam7142]

Excellent work by Mr. Huff. I think the subject matter more a fit subject for prose than a poem!

[@aladdin2407]

Amazing work and content. Can you do "The love song of J.Alfred Prufrock" and "Tradition and Individual Talent" ?

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

I am definitely considering uploading one on "Prufrock"

[@jamesgrady5142]

Amazing. Life Changing. Many, Many THANKS.

[@sampathjayakody9883]

A big thank you from a Sri Lankan.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

You're welcome!

[@smileshs1]

A great job 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Lots of love and respect from India. You don't know this, but you are helping thousands of literature students like me. Please don't stop making videos.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

My pleasure 😊

[@denizmuzaffer6351]

I'm translating Eliot's works into Uzbek language. Maybe you don't know what is Uzbek language or where's Uzbekistan. But whatever thank you a lot. You don't know how helpful your videos are. 🌻

[@alicececconello8229]

Thank you for your illuminating job!

[@VasimKaji]

Really appreciable work, Mr. Huff... thank you.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thank you!

[@patflores7115]

One thing that strikes me about Marie in "The Burial of the Dead" is that her feeling of joy and adventure feels very prewar...and if in 1922 anyone referred to an archduke, it would bring to mind Franz Ferdinand whose assassination was a cause of the war that turned the Western world into a wasteland. So, what has this hopeful child become in the post-war world? A middle aged or elderly woman who passes her life in meaningless activities that seem to have no point or purpose. I could say more...about the snow that brings her joy contrasted to the snow that is a narcotic blanket before the empty spring ( I wonder if Eliot was familiar with the slang use of "snow" for cocaine, used as an anesthetic in this period). You mentioned rain as baptism, but could you do more with this? Rain seems to be a rejuvenating force in the life of "young" Marie...and why the "true German" line...this was a time when one could more or less boast about being German...gotta go to bed...look forward to listening some more...

[@Batflix-66]

Your viewpoint is quiet interesting.

[@ishaqch4011]

Hey, Thanks for amazing analysis. This is my all time favourite poem...i came across your videos and I'm impressed... please make more videos to explain the literature.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Hang tight...

[@ishaqch4011]

Eagerly waiting for more knowledge...😀😀

[@baselzain5886]

I'd like to mention that Sibyl was guarding the gate of hell. That's why she was mentioned in the epigraph at the very beginning of the poem. As if she was guarding the hell, which is the waste land as a hell.

[@JeffRebornNow]

basel, his original epigraph was going to be a quotation from Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "The horror! The horror!" But Pound talked him out of it. He felt the poem should be prefaced with something 'weightier,' or at least something with more of a tradition. Also, Pound whittled the poem down to almost nothing. Eliot's wife published a 'restored' version of it in the early 1970s, but it's extremely difficult to find. Well, maybe not now, with the access to antiquaries the internet brings.

[@aditi413]

who can possibly dislike this? thanks!!

[@ayeshasaeed9279]

Sir please give more lectures on various works of poets like philip larkin, ted huges and many more.. pleasee please please

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Hang tight...

[@gayathrig4100]

it's very useful to understand the poem in detailed manner thank you so much sir

[@Dode2622]

amazing stuff. scared me of ever attempting to present the poem on my channel, though. i need a whole lot more studying to be able to take on this giant of a project.

[@shaistakanwal7750]

Can you do some other poetic analysis on other famous poems of Shelly , keates , Wordsworth etc ...the way you make analysis does not leave any space to go for other explanation... Well done

[@scottcomments58]

We are studying this master piece at high school, and this video has been of great help for me, specially considering this is an analysis of the text in its original language and not a translated version. The video is old but it was really useful nevertheless. Thanks a lot for this content.

[@SimplyLimbo]

actually, Apollo, who wanted her as his lover, asked: What do you want, and she grabbed a handfull of sand, and she said: Give me the years of every grain i hold in my hand. But indeed, she forgot to ask for eternal youth.. (good example for "be carefull what you wish for". Imo this poem hides so many deeper meanings and references to books and writers that broadens ones mind and world view, and if u know which ones, you'll notice too you rareley hear something from these works...And why is that ?...the smart ones will know. Also the fact Ezra Pound edited this work of Eliot, and after he edited it, it became what it is today. Hemmingway, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, and Eliot, all were rewarded for their works, while they were all Pounds apprentices, or he edited their works. And what did they do with Ezra Pound ? Exactly they threw him in jail in isolation, for i remember correctly 13 yrs. And try to find an uncencored version of his complete Canto's ! Its almost impossible !

[@shaistakanwal7750]

Hi Your explanation is beyond superb . I have no words to appreciate you I m desperately waiting for your new video but long time there is no video From Pakistan

[@bilalelhammoumy452]

How can I cite this? especially in text citations?

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

A KZbin Video Video and audio sources need to be documented using the same basic guidelines for citing print sources in MLA style. Include as much descriptive information as necessary to help readers understand the type and nature of the source you are citing. If the author’s name is the same as the uploader, only cite the author once. If the author is different from the uploaded, cite the author’s name before the title. “8 Hot Dog Gadgets put to the Test.” KZbin, uploaded by Crazy Russian Hacker, 6 June 2016, kzbin.info/www/bejne/jXPPoZ2Jetl4gtU. McGonigal, Jane. “Gaming and Productivity.” KZbin, uploaded by Big Think, 3 July 2012, kzbin.info/www/bejne/o5zHq6xvl7yKaac. from Purdue OWL.

[@bilalelhammoumy452]

+Mr. Huff's Literature Class Thank you very much for everything.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

No problem!

[@greenday5849]

Writers now : eliot's poem is strong and confusing, it has many meanings depite the fragmentation and the style of writing. Eliot : lol i never said all that shit, that was just a draft where i wrote notes than finished under my bed.

[@Ackermix]

Thanks for the lesson.... Why anybody explain why the location of the scene in places as Starnberger See (a lake in Germany), Hofgarten and the phrase "i am not Russian originary from Lithuania but a genuine Deutch". Why mention the archduke? Is something related to Austria? perhaps the begining of the Great War?

[@Mugukaupo]

‘Marie’, who is obviously the narrator of the first sentences in The Burial of the Dead, refers probably to countess Marie Larisch, a cousin of both empress (archduchess) Elisabeth (Sisi) of Austria and (‘mad’) king Ludwig II of Bavaria. Her personal history is an allusion to the collapse of the three European empires during The Great War and the social and economical chaos that resulted from that.

[@JeffRebornNow]

@@Mugukaupo I think you're right in your interpretation of to who Eliot's 'Marie' alludes. I read somewhere that he wrote the poem in Switzerland, at a resort spa, and he was recording some of the European voices he heard; thus all the mixed references.

[@vnkmurthykarumanchi5770]

Gud evng sir, i am very impressed with the way of your explanation..If possible pls do a vedieo class on poetry of ode of immortality, tintern abby of Wordsworth and my last ride together by browning

[@shaistakanwal7750]

A very well explained I really enjoyed your way of explanation plz keep it up

[@nadeemaslam1221]

Superb Sir

[@aparnavm44]

Thank you so much for doing this. ❤️❤️❤️ This really helped me preparing for examination.

[@shelo348]

Will u upload videos again ?

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Stay tuned...

[@abderrahimmachkouri6347]

When you a said a numbing agent about winter, i remembered john keats's ode to a nightingale opening lines: a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I had drank.

[@HBiswas-7]

wow! it's a great discussion ❤️❤️

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thanks!

[@samrtamarks8927]

This is really helpful. But I think where you mention of the Biblical reference to Christ as the branches in Old Testament. The old Testament does not have a reference to Christ.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Samrta Marks Thanks! What I'm referring to are the many ways in which the OT anticipates and points to the coming of Christ (e.g., Isaiah 53). The entire purpose of the OT is to look ahead to the cross for the salvation of the Jews (and ultimately the Gentiles as well).

[@thasnisalam8632]

sir can you upload a video of Shakespeare drama Henry 1V part 1,The winter's tale...

[@cmakif]

the video is about 3 fps yet the quality is above the clouds. thanks!

[@elifguzel978]

Can anyone please tell me what's the effect of allusion in the waste land

[@alethia_n_sophia]

I'm the 8000th subscriber :D

[@thepirbaba5007]

very simple and very helpful. thank you for uploading.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

+abdun nafee Thank you.

[@santosd6065]

Wow. Thank you for this. Unlike "The Hollow Men", without an explanation this poem made no sense to me whatsoever.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

+Santos D Thanks!

[@dhilleswararao760]

we are unable to watch but explanation is good

[@ThatsWhatChiSaid]

This is amazing, thank you!

[@ntgonish]

April IS the cruelest month because the food that sustained the peasant over the winter is exhausted, and the land has yet to produce food.

[@tamanishavlogs1]

Thank you so much for this useful explanation

[@thepirbaba5007]

what does the red rock symbolize?

[@highonliterature.2487]

Nafee Chowdhury Red rocks symbolize generally the rock where cruxification of jesus was done . It refers here as the only peace left is where the good souls are buried as all the other people are sleepwalking .

[@fatimazafar1091]

Thank you so much for this video

[@quagapp]

I doubt Eliot was very interested in the First World War or of the 'fragmentation' of things as via the 'Jazz Age' etc [although fragmentation of language is seen as it is seen in Pound's work] his was a strange sense of the spiritual or cultural decline which is effectively always present. He had also had a nervous breakdown. Pound and Eliot's wife effectively edited the Waste Land down so that it starts with 'April....' But analysis of the poem is deceptive. It is more than any of these stated things such as the search for the holy grail. A myth, and other myths of sacrifice. But 'Looking into the heart of light, the silence' is just an intense moment of great beauty somehow perceived. It is perhaps the 'overwhelming question'. (Marie was a real person, she wrote a book of her memoirs). The knowing of nothing etc has ultimately to be understood poetically. The 'explanations' are useful as the poem is strange or can be to a new reader. But it is a complex. The theme is dark, almost nihilistic unless we can believe some relief via the concluding Gives etc and the Shantih. The unknowable. The obsession with Dante: who lets us see Uggolino, and his terrible suffering (he and his children were forced to starve to death as a punishment), and all children, because they were not baptized, burning endlessly in Hell ? The poem is more a strange incomprehensible music than anything that can be elucidated. Eliot's notes are a worry also.

[@mariaraskulinec3147]

Thank you! You are fluent in Biblical allusion and metaphor

[@rd264]

its a simple ironic tone poem on the surface laced with literary sounding stones, references, guided by Weston's From Ritual to Romance, per Eliot's footnote. "Weston argued that many Christian myths and rituals had their origins in ancient, pagan forms of magic. Eliot was particularly interested in the myth of the Fisher King, most famously embodied in the Arthurian story of the quest for the holy grail. The Fisher King is impotent, his lands infertile and drought-stricken; one cause of this infertility is a crime, the rape of some maidens in the King’s court. Only the arrival of a pure-hearted stranger (Perceval, Gawain, or Galahad in different versions of the Arthurian tales) permits the land to become fertile again. Weston emphasized the sexual symbolism of the story, notably the grail (a cup said to have been used at the last supper) and the lance (said to have pierced Christ’s side), which can be interpreted as symbols of the female and male genitalia. This suggests ancient practices of imitative magic, including ritual marriages intended to encourage the plants to grow". Eliot's Wasteland is saying that purity of soul [figured in Gawain] is the way through and out of the hell of the Wasteland.

[@lazarosgavalas438]

it has been really helpful, simple but not simplistic, the material of a lecture, as it should be

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

+Lazaros Gavalas Thank you.

[@MarufMahmood]

the waste land বাংলা অনুবাদ সম্পূর্ণ , ব্যাখ্যা , সারাংশ, আলোচনা - www.storiesbd.com/2018/12/the-waste-land-burial-of-dead-bengali.html

[@AnilKumar-wp9ud]

Thank you so much respect from india

[@takheristabdelmalek4595]

Thank you so much. That will help me in my presentation

[@thasnisalam8632]

just summery of these dramas

[@kritika8891]

such an amazing lecture...thankyou so much..

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thanks for your feedback!

[@markhughes7927]

22:20 A Lett who is a true German? - what is implied? 25:50 Two more allusions here? The ‘Root of Jesse’ - the genealogical arrival of Jesus through - if memory serves - one Nathan a younger son of King David while the line of Royal descent by primogeniture dies out or ‘withers’; also the seed sown upon stoney ground and the prematurely growing seed burnt up by the sun?

[@amnahussain420]

OMG!!!! Thankyou so much.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

No problem 😊

[@thepirbaba5007]

very helpful, thank you so much.

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

Thanks!

[@cleonapatterson6112]

Thank you.

[@joeynightwingsuchiang4726]

Really good fr I'm gonna pass tomorrow 😃

[@timothygudz8756]

This is why I want to be an English teacher!

[@vishakasriram7989]

Thank you:) it is really helpful:)

[@virupakshawalla5734]

Dead land. Corpses are fertiliser. Life feeds on death always. He is morose but not hopeless. He senses all is for the good.

[@JazzyNiG]

Excellent.

[@0persona332]

Thanks a lot!

[@michaeldinkins9145]

April can have a killing frost that is cruel to a farmer

[@ib01-04]

god bless you

[@ahmetdogan5685]

I laid waste the Waste Land years ago.

[@lbrahim1568]

Very very nice

[@MeltMyDome]

Super helpful :)

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

+Lauren Malcomson Thank you.

[@AswathiKNair]

Thank you

[@allyright4954]

Really?

[@09vrs]

Awesome, MA Student from Kosovo !

[@MrHuffsLiteratureClass]

+Valon Raka Thanks!

[@hibalee8457]

Thanks alott

[@JeffRebornNow]

Mr. Huff's analysis is so decidedly Christian. For instance, 'you know only a heap of broken images' has been taken by me, and others, to refer to Plato's cave allegory but Huff wants it to allude only to language out of the Bible. Very capricious and slanted.

[@leahrose5129]

The beauty of literature is that there is not a singular interpretation, we can interpret it however we choose

[@navaneetha9590]

Wow

[@zetetick395]

I mean no offense, but I find this format of progressively defacing the pages just horrible! it gives the viewer the unconscious feeling (while watching) that the speaker thinks they can overwrite Eliot, as they know better, and that the explication is more important than the initial text itself. - why not do a vertical split-screen, with Text / Notes : it's not as if it's optimal for the legibility of the notations either. :/

[@SimplyLimbo]

Zetetik - Hes just repeating the notes of eliot himself for 90% ;) There is much more to say about the poem.