There is Marie, the historical figure, a participant in an imperial
scandal still not forgotten in 1920s.
The time between
The Waste Land
and the death of Archduke Rudolph is about the
same as now and the assassination of the Kennedys.
Eliot might have mentioned the Archduke here to bring to mind the
sterile sex of
the Mayerling affair.
There is Marie, the woman. This is the middle-aged hausfrau
that might never have been a Countess. This is the woman who went
sledding with a boy in her youth but now travels south for the winter.
It is she who had a conversation with a young American poet and
MAY have told him of escaping from her husband by staying at
her house on the lake in the mountains.
This MAY have caused the older poet to think of being free from
his own wife while at another lake in the mountains
(Eliot wrote part of "The Waste Land" while undergoing psychiatric
treatment at Lausanne, Switzerland near
Lake Leman,
also known as lake Geneva).
There is Marie, the symbol. If you do not recognize the Marie of
The Waste Land
as either the historical person or even as a real woman then this is the
reading to rely on for a meaning in the poem and this is the reading
that one usually comes across in the criticisms.
As with the other allusions in
The Waste Land
the more layers you see the more you get out of the poem.
I encourage people to think of the relatively neglicted personal layer.
Exploring The Waste Land File name: cq015.html File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002 [Home] [E-mail]