In a way, therefore, Eliot issues a challenge to every reader, not to understand what he is writing, but to interpret and scavenge what they can for themselves. Eliot leaves the situation open to interpretation, and this idea runs throughout the poem. This last option seems plausible in that Eliot claimed to have met and talked with the Marie in question, the Countess Marie von Wallersee-Larish of Austria, and yet each of the other interpretations still makes sense in the context of stream of consciousness. We are presented with several alternatives Marie is talking, describing a conversation in the past Eliot is addressing the reader in the last line Eliot is describing in the third person a conversation between Marie and himself. In the very first stanza the reader is left unclear as to who is speaking to whom. The confusion is further compounded by changes in narrative voice, and in places scene, in the midst of a section, even, occasionally, in the middle of a line. The change of narrative voice and of scene in each of the parts is confusing, strange, complex, difficult to follow and groundbreaking. This in itself is not a startling new invention, but the differences between each section exhibit perhaps the most basic of the “new” techniques Eliot employs. “The Waste Land” exemplifies experimentation with style and structure not necessarily purely for its own sake but as a genuine step towards advancing a genre which for centuries had been bound within self imposed restraints of meter and accepted poetic constructs. Along with Pound, Williams, Woolf and Joyce as well as countless others, Eliot’s work clearly illustrates the Modernist idea of portraying objects and situations as they are, and not as they appear, without explanation and using techniques previously rubbished or indeed, previously untried, such as the almost prose-like contents of the poem, and reliance on cultural consciousness to bring about understanding of the meaning of poetry written in a stream of consciousness style. Loathed and adored by critics and students alike, the complexities of technique, language (or languages), subject matter and the sheer length of the work have contributed to the poem’s status as a definitive example of “Modernist” writing. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” is perhaps a prime example of the experimentation in poetic technique occurring during the period encompassing the Modernist movement.
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