JESUS AND ASCENSION IN THE WASTE LAND

T S Eliot and Indian Wisdom

“April is the cruellest month, breeding

lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

memory and desire, stirring

dull roots with spring rain.”

Thus begins the trend setting poem, The Waste Land, by T S Eliot.The deeply religious person that he is, Eliot probably wrote, April is the cruellest month, because, Jesus was crucified in April.

But for us who have suffered another pandemic, April is cruel in another sense too.
In the northern hemisphere, April is classically associated with spring-  “breeding lilacs out of the dead land” is a very heavy, depressed way to describe the blooming of flowers. He sees the same things as everyone else, but there is no joy there. A sense of loss and longing, of being rooted in the past, and spring, re-awakening memories of things that have passed.

He further says:

“Winter kept us warm, covering         
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers. ” 

It means, winter was better than spring. He is giving us an insight into a mind that doesn’t revel in these things as might be expected. An old literature teacher once put it thus: when your arm is numb, you don’t feel it. But when the blood flows again, and the pins and needles come, suddenly you know about it. It’s not (emotional) numbness that hurts; it’s the return of feeling. Anyone who has dealt with long-term depression can probably feel the connection to what Eliot is describing here. April is the cruellest month because the life and colour of spring throws one’s depression into stark relief and forces painful memories to surface.

Scholars have said he is invoking Chaucer here.

TS Eliot, by opening the poem with this line about April is ironically playing off of the opening line of The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, whom he considers as the first true English poet.

Chaucer’s poem, “The Canterbury Tales” begins thus:

“What that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the root

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which virtue gendered is the flour” 

We would read this in modern times as, “When that April with his showers sweet, The drought of March has pierced to the root, And bathed every vein in such liquor, Of which virtue engendered is the flower.”

So, in The Waste Land, he is linking his poem to the great past and the founder of English poetry, Chaucer, but in the process, he is separating April from the notion as the month of Spring renewal of life; this renewal of natural life is opposite to the deadness of hope and spirit, as the “Waste Land” now begins and speaks.  

April is the cruellest month from the perspective of those who have died; even more, from the perspective of those buried and in hell, viewing with regret heavenly spring time. While the winter helped them forget what they lost, April made them see this all too clearly.

The title of this first of five sections is “The Burial of the Dead” which also suggests that this section is about those who have died. Tere are lines which suggest that they are in their graves, covered with warm snow over winter.

Psychiatrists have said that this is a psychiatric speculation. April is when life rebirths, yet it is also the month of the year when the suicide rate peaks among major depression and disorder patients. This is quite paradoxical but completely suits Eliot’s description of the month. It is also known that Eliot’s wife suffered from depression. Depression is not a mild disorder and its progress bears little resemblance to ‘silent implosion’.  

There is an argument that says while he was echoing Chaucer, he was referring to his friend from Paris, Jean Verdenal, who may have died in April, in WW1. There is an association between the lilacs in the poem and a later non-poetic reference to his friend carrying lilacs. More mundanely, spring brings warmth after barren winter but not the fruits of the earth, the crops that are reaped in autumn. This critique suggests that the poem was essentially about personal grief rather than societal decay. Given the state of Europe then, the interpretation of the poem focusing on social decay, is precious.

April is cruel because Jesus was crucified; but it is also the month in which he resurrected.

But did Jesus die at the cross?

In the Fourth Gospel, it is said, two men performed the Office of the Embalming, winding it in linen clothes. The women provided spices and ointments.Both Mathew and Luke say that the Body was taken safely by disciples to a secret hilly place, for embalming. So, the fact is, Jesus didn’t die on the Cross;it  is there in The Bible itself. Do you apply ointments to a dead body?  

Jewish custom doesn’t allow the crucified to hang on the Cross over night. In the letter of the Esseer, in The Crucifixion, emphasis is given to Jesus’ wound on his side. Nicodemus the Physician knew Jesus was not dead because, if Jesus had died, the wound would not have bled for such a long time. Nicodemus sent Joseph of Arimathea, the influential, to Pilate, and he himself went to collect proper drugs, pretending he wanted to embalm the body. 

The wound above the hip was lower down than what is generally believed. No vital organs were damaged.The spear pierced only the skin.His feet was not pierced, as it was not the custom at crucifixions.The earth quake that happened then, electrified Jesus’ nerves. I want to underline the information that Joseph was sent to Pilate. For What? Of Course, to facilitate the rescue operation.

At the time of Jesus, the Tau Cross, in the shape of, ’T’, was used. The Christians think Jesus carried the entire cross, believing the myriad paintings. It was not so.The victim carried only the Platibulum or the cross arm, weighing about 110 pounds or 50 kilograms, to the place of execution.The Stipes, or upright post was permanently fixed there, and the Platibulum was placed in a notch at the top of the Stipes.The victim was never nailed on the palms, the nails were driven between the small bones of the wrist, radial and Ulna. Luke the physician, in his gospel, says, at Gethsemane, Jesus’ sweat became drops of blood. In modern medicine, this is called, Hematidrosis.Under emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can burst.

The crucifixion usually ended with crurifracture, the breaking of the bones of the legs, which prevented the victim from pushing himself upward. The legs of the thieves were broken, but Jesus was spared, thus giving him a chance to survive. The line in the gospel of John, And immediately there came out blood and water, specifies Jesus didn’t suffer suffocation.

The bodily ascension of Jesus to heaven, in Mark and Luke is disproved by Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (15:5:50): Now this I say, Brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. The two disciples present, Mathew and John, doesn’t mention, ascension.

If there is resurrection, there is no sacrifice through death. If Jesus resurrected, he fails in comparison with the sacrifice of Prometheus, who stole fire for the entire humanity from Olympus. A martyr resurrects only in the minds of the humanity. It is better to think Jesus didn’t resurrect, but, he survived.

If Jesus escaped from the cross, what happened to him? He lived in India, in Kashmir. It is another story.

The Waste Land ends thus:

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih     shantih     shantih

The poem, thus, ends in India. It leaves eurocentrism, the philosophy of decay, and finds solace in Hinduism. This is from the  Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The three Sanskrit words mean Restraint, Compassion and Charity.

Lord Brahma, the Creator in the Hindu Trinity, instructs Devas to show restraint (in enjoying pleasures), Asuras to be compassionate, and mankind to be charitable. Mankind has the qualities of both Asuras and Devas, and so mankind should follow all three instructions. If these three instructions were actually followed , so many wars could have been averted. If mankind had embraced self-control and compassion, we wouldn’t be warring all the time.

Shanti  means peace. It is uttered thrice in Shanti mantras invoking the first utterance in the universe, OHM.

Ohm Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.