The first lines of "The Waste Land" use the surprising irony of a portrayal of spring as negative:
This reminds me strongly of the first lines of Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd":
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow ...
This reminds me strongly of the first lines of Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd":
When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
Not only do both poems overturn traditional conceptions of spring as a time for new life, replacing it with spring as a time for mourning, but both poems also allude to lost love and mention lilacs. I wonder if Eliot's poem isn't an application of the sentiments of Whitman's poem (which mourns, at least in part, the death of an individual, President Lincoln) to the whole of culture, the culture of England and all culture.
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