As TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ turns hundred, we attempt to decipher how this notoriously complex and enigmatic poetics masterpiece continues to remain new and relevant. (Image: News18 Creative)

In a shelter on the seafront in the English seaside town of Margate, where the poet TS Eliot was convalescing in 1921, he began writing what was to become one of the most important and influential works of modernist literature, The Waste Land. (Image: News18 Creative)

The poem is dedicated to Eliot’s fellow poet Ezra Pound, who had a significant hand in reshaping the poem from a much longer manuscript. (Image: News18 Creative)

Over the span of five parts, The Waste Land explores the dread and disillusionment of the years following the First World War. (Image: News18 Creative)

The Burial of the Dead section introduces feelings of dread and despair. Set in a post-war Spring, Eliot casts the season not as hopeful, but as a reminder of death and mortality. (Image: News18 Creative)

A Game of Chess, is chiefly about two very different women and their unfulfilling relationship with men. They are associated with Cleopatra, in the case of the first and Ophelia, in the case of the second – both were driven to take their own lives. (Image: News18 Creative)

The title, The Fire Sermon, is a reference to the Buddhist Fire Sermon, which encourages the individual detach from the five senses and the conscious mind. (Image: News18 Creative)

In the shortest section of the poem, Phlebas, the sailor mentioned by the clairvoyante Madame Sosostris in ‘The Burial of the Dead’, is introduced. (Image: News18 Creative)

What the Thunder Said, the final section features the influence of Indian thought on Eliot and offers a ray of hope penetrating the despair that hangs over the rest of the poem. (Image: News18 Creative)

The Waste Land is about the disillusionment of the post-war generation and sterility of the modern man, about brokenness and loss and about lives lacking in intimacy and deeper meaning. (Image: News18 Creative)

The Waste Land is full of rich symbolism. But its symbolism is also highly ambiguous. (Image: News18 Creative)

Despite the title suggesting drought and desert landscapes, The Waste Land is full of water-symbolism. (Image: News18 Creative)

In the Buddhist Fire Sermon, the Buddha states that everything is on fire: our lives are dominated by the ‘burning’ of passions, desires, and human suffering. (Image: News18 Creative)

Death is never straightforward in The Waste Land, and many of the living characters seem to be suffering from some sort of death-in-life. (Image: News18 Creative)

Not long after its publication, The Waste Land became a talking point among readers. A hundred years later, it continues to divide readers, but its reputation as one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century is secure. (Image: News18 Creative)

In 1939, Eliot published a book of light verse, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The book was later the basis of the musical, Cats, by Andrew Lloyd Webber, first produced in London’s West End in 1981. (Image: News18 Creative)

100 Years of ‘The Waste Land’ | Revisiting the TS Eliot’s magnum opus which continues to remain relevant

TS Eliot’s masterpiece The Waste Land is considered one of the most influential works of poetry in the 20th century. A look at the magnum opus that completed 100 years in 2022.