The Waste Land (TS Eliot) read by Alec Guinness
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- čas přidán 13. 03. 2016
- TS Eliot's The Waste Land read by Alec Guinness. Timings for the segments:
0:06 I. The Burial of the Dead
4:54 II. A Game of Chess
10:11 III. The Fire Sermon
17:33 IV. Death by Water
18:10 V. What the Thunder Said
(thanks to Phillip Brandel). You can't buy this anywhere - big love to Ludifex for making it a free download at / alec-guinness-the-wast...
i wonder how much damage critics have done to this poem by being so insistent about its difficulty. i'm convinced that if you just listen, you will find something. this is a poem of incredible warmth and deep sorrow, and those come across so wonderfully in this reading. you don't have to know who tiresias is; just listen to the nightingale and her inviolable voice.
Eliot himself stated that it was far easier to understand a poem without any guidelines to what you should be understanding.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea
It’s a poem to be read aloud and performed, not to be read silently
"Presents significant challenges to the reader" blah blah blah.....I know I've heard them all. You may as well tell people that "this is going to be torture"
There are as many versions of the poem as those who choose to struggle with it. I guess we need to do ourselves a favor when we read it or cannot help thinking about it since it just won't leave us alone. Forget what Eliot, Pound, or anybody else has said about it. All lasting works of art carry with them the burden of anecdotage.
Nobody talked about sir alec guiness…such superb performance, bring the poem to life
I agree.
Obi Wan Kenobi!
What a wonderful interpretation by the late Sir Alec Guinness! In my view it is far superior to Eliot's own reading. At the age of 82 I am a latecomer to Eliot, and to poetry generally and whilst I don't profess to understand everything in what is generally accepted as a difficult poem to get to grips with, this reading certainly helped.
I have spent 50 years with this poem. Trying to memorize it and amazed at my "new" favorite part. "The Golden Bough " revieled itself and The Upishandis ripped open a bottomless rabbit hole. I learned german and why there is always more than expected on this trek. It wants you to know . Its has no secrets. The thin volume fits great in back pocket of my work pants
This is my favorite comment I've ever read on youtube.
April is the cruelest month.... enjoying this under COVID lockdown
☝️
Same here. Genius.
Hadn't made the link well done.
April is the cruellest month
Anyone ready for round two? Woop woop
>Who is the third who walks always beside you?
>When I count, there are only you and I together
>But when I look ahead up the white road
>There is always another one walking beside you
Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”
Was thinking as I listened to that part of the road to Emaus - yours seems the closer reference - but then perhaps Matthew’s is an elaboration of that singular journey. The portrait of the dry rocks without water reminds of the Exodus experience where Moses momentarily loses faith - is that the intended allusion do you think?
1:43 - And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
stvtron that scared me
I can’t help but think of Steven King when I read this part. I love the little bits of poetry he puts in before the beginning of each of the Dark Tower books.
@guth Any language. These lyrics are......(sorry I can't find the words).
Reminds me of DC comics "Sandman" By Neil Gaiman, "I Will show you fear in a handful of dust" was the tagline for the marketing
Uncharted 3
‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’ His ruins, the ruins of his passing life, the ruins of his country...
0:06 I. The Burial of the Dead
4:54 II. A Game of Chess
10:11 III. The Fire Sermon
17:33 IV. Death by Water
18:10 V. What the Thunder Said
Thanks friends!
@Thomas Bell
Is the poem much different without those divisions?
I wrote my undergrad capstone and my graduate thesis on The Waste Land, and I'm still gleaning new tidbits every fifth listen/read-through.
Utter bliss. The poem and the reader. This in my view is the definitive recording of The Waste Land. I prefer it to Eliot's own reading. And it's not such a hard understand. It's just about life. Thank you so much for putting this up here.
Ditto!
Saying it’s just about life is not true and utterly belittling. “Life” has nothing to do with it
"Life" has less to do with it than death... or maybe more aptly put it has to do with what are now ghostly cues toward clues to reveal dark secrets. Check out this video on what T.S. Eliot has to do with the Zodiac Killer. czcams.com/video/ncgaUEeHQPQ/video.html
>I read much of the night and go south in the winter
WTF I love T.S. Eliot now
I agree, it’s utterly brilliant!! Never get tired of reading or indeed listening to it. The fire sermon is my favourite, takes me somewhere not known to man, simply beautiful Xxx
Eliots words evoke intense emotion because he suffered terribly in his life. In his poetry is his gift of sharing his grief and his joy. The four quartets are a lifetime of reading and contemplating in and of themselves. How I wish I could have met him.
i think you may have been disappointed.
Perhaps his best is in his poetry. Such a gift to us.
If you like this, make sure you read Four Quartets as well. His poetry is simply beautiful and captivating Xxx
i'm so happy to have found this! "the waste land" is such a beautiful, personal poem and guinness does a masterful job in conveying all those themes of sorrow and loss and life in his reading of it.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
When I first read this poem as a teen, I didn't get it. It did nothing for me. Now, after revisiting it several times over the years, and with the help of performances like this and Fiona Shaw's, I think I get it, or at least bits of it. Poetry is one of those things that does grow on you, and with Eliot, especially, there are always more shades of meaning to be found.
Shades of meanings found thanx to ezra pound.
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
@@spacemunky53 I like Ezra Pound's commentary/criticism. Unfortunately can't abide his poetry though.
Tomorrow We Live snapshots of life that fully engage one life at a time
This classic is wonderfully footnoted . Great themes are dog eared and are lyrics themselves. They offer little understanding but another layer of uberelliot
"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current undersea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."
22:28
"The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Phlebas
I live with that, impulsive innocence/stupidity, 1958. This is how I read it. The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence cannot retract. 81 yrs of age
@@irenejohnston6802 like some wise Viking said; No regrets, and every single regret. Cheers!
The real kick in the balls is he was thirty-four when he wrote this. At least we know what can happen when natural talent, great influences and timing work together. You could shoot for this level of quality and still miss beautifully. New voices for new times.
I never used to like this poem, but it's grown on me. Particular moments are extremely evocative.
Tomorrow We Live - Yes: Helps to have it read so well.
I was so confused and wasn't even sure I liked, it got worse and worse with the first two parts but then it started to get better and more awesome and a little more clearer, than I got to What The Thunder Said and that was just awesome and so beautifully surreal.
" I will show you fear in a handful of dust." This line was first brought to my attention in Stephen King's, "The Dark Tower" series. The same line being in Neil Gaiman's, "The Sandman" only solidified my necessity to seek out the original source of this material, and I am thoroughly pleased with it.
Long days and pleasant nights.
The Scarecrow from Batman also references that line, so it's rather popular in media it seems
@@samharness24271 may you have twice the number
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Game of Chess - this poem predicts the future, as the boredom of the idle rich in wartime (quarantine)
Ahmed Salah mind blown
I have yet to find a bigger Eliot fan than myself, and as far as I'm concerned he reads it better than TSE did.
Well- I am obsessed w his poetry. Absolutely the MASTER. Did you know when Eliot worked in editing at Faber he published WH Auden first poems ?
He spotted his greatness immediately.
@@Idmoment i did not!!
I have read The Wastelands many times since I first heard it as an angst filled teen, living in a small, coastal, Welsh village and I thought I loved it
Having just listened to this reading, I am transported. I don't think I have ever been so moved...
First class. A masterclass in spoken English.
A passionate cry against absence of passion
Of course I know him. He's me.
I had to swing by this video in case my depression went away.
Keep watching Tucker and you’ll witness “The Wasteland” of thought.
John Desiderio hmm. My Lit teacher quoted you today
big mood
@@Niovo Hej Anirudh
@@williamnordwall787 hej william hahah
The way this starts,
“April is the cruelest month”
always made me so confused when I was younger. How could someone in their twenties juxtapose the revitalization of spring with winter hiding a wasteland of damage. I don’t pretend to understand most of this poem, but I’m starting to see fragments of clarity.
A suggestion by Ezra Pound ...
Thank you for this incredible treat.
A poem wretched in substance. The perceived beauty of the individual lines is what keeps it going.
Your comment is wretched in substance and has no redeeming beauty.
Awesome rendering. Took me through the life of the lines. The journey around the world in 24 minutes.Thank you.
I do not find The Hanged Man
Fear death by water
Beautiful words read with exquisite beauty and grace by a consummate professional.
To say this is a beautiful reading does not convey what beautiful encapsulates when so much of lesser beauty occupies the same. This is exquisite. Alec Guinness has brought Eliot alive like Richard Burton brings alive Dylan Thomas in his CZcams uploaded recordings. Thank you so much for sharing.
No one would of beeeleaved din din dinnnnn
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall.
And walked among the lowest of the dead.
So grateful for this upload ✨❤️💕
I think the proudest moment of my high school life was when I could read the Wasteland without needing any translation.
A wonderful treat - cannot believe this only has a few thousand views.
You'll see far more views now. Poss early low number cos many like me had given up searching for several years. I first heard this reading on BBC Radio Three several decades ago. When youtube arrived, I searched avidly but it wasn't there. Eliot's own reading has been available for years, but quite frankly, it is dull!! As so often the case with poets reading their own work. It's just a joy that we have this now and thank you so much to modelsandjuniors for giving this back to me. Oh and in the original broadcast, Guiness reads Prufrock first, then Sir Stephen Spender talks a bit about the poems. That would be a lovely thing to hear.
It seems all of the beautiful things in this world will only get a few thousand views, my friend. :(
now it has over 200,000 views
Great reading of a great poem, I can listen to this over and over again. Thank you so much for posting!
I love this poem, and wrote my senior capstone on it. So much of this has to do with death and rebirth, from the references to many vegetation gods, to the rise and fall of great cities, to the references to the Golden Bough and the Fisher King. Too much for one comment to contain, but every time I listen to this or read it I always wind up unpacking a little bit more. Truly a masterpiece, even if its meaning remains elusive to the average reader.
A masterpiece of pretentious shite christ poor ezra had his work cut out mentoring this prick...thank god for eustace mullins!!
hi- is there any way you could send me your senior capstone? i'm doing a big report on this and im looking for other perspectives :)
@@hamstergirl-ii7su and here I am 3 years later writing on this very same poem.
Probably my favorite poem and one of my favorite readings of it, Alec kills it
How many times did I listen to this before I realized he says "schled" at 0:55? 😂😂😂
Far too may words.
Like any good sauce,
Condense Eliot into a word,
Not a sentence.
A paragraph,
Nor a tome.
There’s a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
And the ricks stand grey to the sun,
Singing: ‘Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover,
‘And your English summer's done.’
Kipling nails it.
I love this so much I'm speechless.
Quality. Absolutely top drawer. Found a copy of this in perfect nick in a London skip along with some Dylan Thomas, Ralph Richardson readings and the Burton Under Milkwood. Beautiful recording on the vinyl although this upload is a bit boomy. A good lesson for actors in how to read poetry; it's a different kind of use of the voice from stagework - it's about carving and polishing the words out of the air and making as much use of silence and sustain as an instrumentalist.
I'm going to memorize that phrase "it's about carving and polishing the words out of the air". Gorgeous description of this reading.
Finnbar Snowdrop Man, those are treasures! I can’t help feeling disappointed that the Waste Land was in perfect nick: somebody had it in their collection but never listened to it.
thank you for this masterpiece
Excellent!
An amazing treat... Thank you
this is downright ASMR
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
Perfection. Thank you!
He do the characters in different voices!
ŠΔNTI ŠΔNTI ŠΔNTI
Brilliant
Thank you, Sir..
I go back to this poem time and time again. One of the best. Read out aloud and feel the language slip from your mouth, simply beautiful. Thank you Elliot you have made your mark on literature 👍
Have grown so much more appreciation for reading these outloud - somehow gain more from speaking it - 'a current under sea picked his bones in whispers' ❤️
gives me goosebumps
it is wonderful audiobook with wonderful and perfect expressions.
GUINNESS GIVES YOU STRENGTH!
The " velvet voice " of a great knight in
harmony to the singular inner voice
of " the man ".........T S Eliot
📃 📝📖📄📓📕🖍🖋🖊
Pure genius
Elliot is brilliant and so natural
The poem was published exactly 100 years ago in the October issue of _The Criterion_ #TheWasteLand100
Love the start to Thunder, how his voice changes. lost, out of place, desperate feeling, no water, dry, otherworldly. Me and my husband have also been discussing the 'da' s. I still feel the da is loud and the dhatata (etc) is like a rumble after, an echo....my husband has always read the da and dhatata (etc) as all loud, like an interruption
absolutly delightfull
This is brilliant! Thanks a lot!
Marvelous!
This is the first time I have heard this recording. I don't how well read it was, but will guess because it was Sir Alec Guinness reading a poem by T.S. Eliot it must be something well done. Did I enjoy the different sections? They were interesting. I have read this poem to myself before in my head and out loud several years ago. I get some of the cultural and mythological allusions. I get the poem is working on multiple levels, but am guessing as to what those levels are. One day I may study it carefully. Thank you for posting the video.
sublime!
Incredible
This guy sounds just like Prince Faisal- "No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing." His cadence and accent are so close to what you hear in Lawrence of Arabia. Wow, to have command of language, speaking, tone like this.. . . . . Thanks for posting this. First time I have heard it read aloud.
Alec Guinness also played that character.
@@HEHEHE_I_AM_A_MASKED_WARRIA Indeed.
This is a great work. Truly happy I found this.
Brilliant - thank you.
This is absolute magic it's going to be really hard to play chess with this playing.
Thank you very much
Brilliant!
“This music crept by me upon the waters.”
O wow. Thanks for this!
wonderful.. , amazing reading by Alec Guinness
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, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
-Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
“You! hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frère!”
Magnificent!
Just wow.
Thank you so much for this.
Fantastic poem and performance. It really shows how devastated the world was by WW1.
This is an otherwise magical reading, but his German accent does sound a bit like Dracula...
German accent? He is not German. In actual fact, he is probably among the great English actors of a generation that included Lawerence Olivia (English), Richard Burton (Welsh), Peter O Tool (ex Pat), etc.
You mean a Saxon accent? Yea very Nordic. 🙈
@@jamesdolan4042 He's referring to the German language portion of the poem.
@@gageamonette5120 And what is the German language part of the poem? Let me know, and thanks.
@@jamesdolan4042 Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
and
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
and
Oed’ und leer das Meer.
That's all the German in the poem as far as I know.
My friend, blood shaking my heart.
T.S. was born in St. Louis, Misery. He went to Harvard and got a doctorate in literature. He made his living as a banker and dressed like one. He emigrated to Britain and became a British subject. "The Wasteland" was first published in "Criterion" , the magazine he edited. It has been 100 years since October, 1922. Elliot's nightmare goes on. Who better to tell the tale than a well educated bourgeois financier?
This poem became in big parts my life, its like a precise description of big parts of my life, the guy was magic.
Magic like cg jung writings.
Their writing is a living thing,
Like only some religious writings
Can be magic.
Every time i carry my water up a dry, dusty mountain road in spain
I am still amazed how he described in what i read in 1991, written longtime before, would be my life in 2021.
❤️
One of the most beautiful poem in English Literature.
excellent
I cried the whole time, I don’t know why
fuck off you absolute melt
James Boyle why
@@nobunnyspecial because i told you too. Get a fucking grip
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards
BlimaWormtong thanks
OMGOMOMGOMG awesome! THAAANKS A TON!
>I read much of the night and go south in the winter
WTF I love T.S. Eliot now
The jungle crouched, humped in silence
This is like if Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West” was a poem.
Eliot was 100% inspired by his favorite historian.
exquisite!
If lovely modelsandjunior you could find the original BBC recording that has Sir Stephen Spender doing the inter-poem bit... Cos we had Prufrock then The Waste Land. I think it was in a Proms interval many many years ago.
Beautifully spoken, but I'm still lost. Eliot goes over my beanie.
It's "the first great cut-up collage", as another writer once said. It presents a cross-section of many ages, periods, eras, and cultures... It's not supposed to "make sense", exactly, but only to present various scenes, from the most commonplace to the most elaborate and decorous. There are many quotes and allusions from other literary and musical sources.
Forget about trying to understand it and enjoy the rhythms of the language.
Now imagine having to write a summary of the first two poems for an english class.
The thing about the Wasteland is that it has a ton of references to other works people and languages and if you aren't familiar with the references nor have footnotes to guide you, it's easy to get lost.
Your lucky you dont understand. I wish I didnt know what he was talking about.
It communicates before it's understood, as Eliot said poetry should. I see it as a lament for lost spiritual direction. In the wake of Darwin, and Freud, it seems that God is dead, and in the wake of the first world war, it seems that man is lost. Hence all the images of emptiness, decay, and the great unquenched thirst for spiritual renewal that pervades the poem, expressed as a hard dry land without even the sound of water. The theme is sounded at the outset in the ironic reversal of Spring (the cruelest month) that offers no renewal, only the painful awareness of what has been lost and winter, that provides at least the mercy of forgetfulness. Look at the Hollow Men for echoes of the same
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel.
Thanks.
Very nice - beautifully read and communicated. Had thought Eliot a cold fish and great to be deceived in that thought.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear
The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same
Omg, I agree with some of the comments before mine that says this is the definitive reading of the poem.
interesting how alec's various character voices betray his particular interpretations of when exactly the speaker changes throughout the poem, which isn't always made obvious by the text. like how in the first stanza he switches from his default english accent to a mock-german one only once he gets to "summer surprised us..."
Doing this poem for one of my university modules, so I like to read along to this.