In his 1956 essay "The Frontiers of Criticism" Eliot wrote an apology of sorts for the notes to The Waste Land:
After the production of my play The Cocktail Party, my mail was swollen for months with letters offering surprising solutions of what the writers believed to be the riddle of the play's meaning. And it was evident that the writers did not resent the puzzle they thought I had set them--they liked it. Indeed, though they were unconscious of the fact, they invented the puzzle for the pleasure of discovering the solution.
Here I must admit that I am, on one conspicuous occasion, not guiltless of having led critics into temptation. The notes to The Waste Land! I had at first intended only to put down all the references for my quotations, with a view to spiking the guns of critics of my earlier poems who had accused me of plagiarism. Then, when it came time to print The Waste Land as a little book--for the poem on its first appearance in The Dial and in The Criterion had no notes whatever--it was discovered that the poem was inconveniently short, so I set to work to expand the notes, in order to provide a few more pages of printed matter, with the result that they became the remarkable exposition of bogus scholarship that is still on view to-day. I have sometimes thought of getting rid of these notes; but now they can never be unstuck. They have had almost greater popularity than the poem itself--anyone who bought my book of poems, and found that the notes to The Waste Land were not in it, would demand his money back. But I don't think that these notes did any harm to other poets; certainly I cannot think of any good contemporary poet who has abused this same pratice. (As for Miss Marianne Moore her notes to poems are always pertinent, curious conclusive, delightful and give no encouragement whatever to the researcher of origins.) No, it is not because of my bad example to other poets that I am penitent: it is because my notes stimulated the wrong kind of interest among the seekers of sources. It was just, no doubt, that I should pay my tribute to the work of Miss Jessie Weston; but I regret having sent so many enquirers off on a wild goose chase after Tarot cards and the Holy Grail.
T.S. Eliot, "The Frontiers of Criticism," (1956) reprinted in his book On Poetry and Poets, Faber and Faber Ltd., London (1957) Reprinted by Faber and Faber as a paperback book in 1986 (ISBN 0-571-08983-6,) pp. 109-10 (paragraphs 14-15)
Exploring The Waste Land
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Url: http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/xqqfrontiers.html File date: Sunday, September 29, 2002