Exploring The Waste Land
An allusion page linked from The Waste Land, Part V, line 366

Blick ins Chaos

In his note to line 366 Eliot has directed us to Hermann Hesse's book Blick ins Chaos (In Sight of Chaos or A Glimspe of Chaos.) Eliot quotes from the last paragraph of Hesse's essay The Brothers Karamazov, or The Decline of Europe.

"Half of Europe, at least half of Eastern Europe is already on the road to chaos, moving in a drunken state in holy delusion along the abyss and singing also, singing intoxicated and hymn-like like Dmitri Karamasoff sang. The common man laughs about the songs and is offended, the saint and the prophet are listening in tears."

In the essay Hesse wrote a few paragraphs each for a number of loosely connected thoughts about the future of Europe. He contrasted European culture with the culture of Asiatic Russia as examplified by the characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov.

Here you can read the two paragraphs that make up Hesse's concluding thought.

This site also has the chapter from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov where we see the drunken and singing Dimitri Karamazov.


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Topics:

T 53 - Hesse, Hermann
T 35 - Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhaylovich
T 123 - The Brothers Karamazov

Links:

L 270 - Hesse's 'The Brothers Karamasov or The Downfall of Europe'
Herman Hesse's essay, a part of his Blick ins Chaos. This is the Stephen Hudson translation from the June, 1922 issue of The Dial.
L 271 - Hesse's 'Thoughts on Dostoevsky's The Idiot'
Herman Hesse's essay, a part of his Blick ins Chaos. This is the Stephen Hudson translation from the August, 1922 issue of The Dial.


Exploring The Waste Land
File name: aq366.html
File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002
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