Myth in Eliot's "The Wasteland"

T.S. Eliot, in spite of being considered to have belonged to the generation of Modernists, sacredly believed that “nothing transcends the finite and particular world”1. Though, this belief and perception of life did not prevent him from seeing the truth and moreover, - ironically mock at his contemporaries. He indisputably dreamt of the times that were gone forever, but unlike to Romanticists, Eliot was very well aware of it and even took it almost for granted, because one could do nothing about it anymore… Moreover, the poet knew how to live in the illusory world created by his sole imagination, and at the same time he was fully aware of how to dispel all the dreams and transcend back onto the earth from some other realm. In fact, it did not take one long to, it was more difficult to ascend. The poet succeeded in it, though, with the purpose to look unto the modern world from the point of view of the past and its Ideals of Beauty, Love, Absolute, Divinity. Now crucified, abandoned and rejected forever. How disgusting the view was! How depraved and degenerated the people and their way of life! It was only in fairytales and myths where Love was still alive and Beauty unmarred. The cleanness and harmony with nature could have been obtained only there, in some magic country, which have not been then The Waste Land yet:
“The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights…”2

How skillfully the poet manipulates with the images of past and present, easily mixing them and characters belonging to the past and present. Mythical theme being the leading subject in the poem has become the core and key to understanding the basic motifs of writing such strangely wonderful piece of literature. Moreover, the mythical episodes have been taken by the author in order to compare the ethereal sense of beauty of the past with the contemporary rudeness and ignorance. In other words, “banality and barrenness of the contemporary world is contrasted with the richness of traditional spiritual and mythological forces”3.…