Nick Mount on T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land
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- Опубликовано: 12 июн 2015
- Rec. Jan. 15, 2009, Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto. Aired on Big Ideas, TVO, April, 2010.
TVO or RUclips took this down from TVO's RUclips Channel for some reason, so by request, here it is again.
Took Professor Mount’s class the last year he taught it (2021/22). At the time I was too busy being a first year student to appreciate the beauty of the poem and eloquence of his lecture. Looking back as a (slightly) older student, I find it to be one of the most painfully emotional depictions of modernity. Gone are the gods of old and hope of the new. All we’re left with is the knowledge that we are responsible for where we are, and there’s little chance of us getting out of it.
I’ve listened to this hour of enlightenment more than a dozen times and think about it frequently. Only wishing that Professor Mount would share more with his students in distant locations.
Interesting tour of the waste land. Nick condenses in less than an hour a quarter century of scholarship and presents it with the ease and disarming cordiality of a hypnotic raconteur. We hang on his lips like the proverbial wedding guest. Not a trace of pedantry or pedagogic ponderousness. Keep up professing with charm, Professor.
Truly the most passionate English professor I have been lucky enough to work with.This lecture was recorded a few years before I took this same course, and it had hardly changed--even his pitch and rhythm. It really was perfection, but you had to be there. You can see, here, how much he puts into his words and how much he means them, yet completely selflessly. He treats the words on those leaves that as our own, shared. Most importantly, one of the most kind and personable persons I have ever met.
I would like to say that had this poem been explained to me with such clarity, accuracy, and depth when I was at school I think I would have understood it better and liked it more, instead of feeling confused and frustrated by this difficult poem. This is the best lecture of The Waste Land that I have ever heard. I think the comparison of the stained glass window and the fragments of the poem is brilliant.
What a wonderful and concise lecture on a very difficult subject. The speaker's words were so eloquent and moving that the lecture itself felt like a poem.
My friends and classmates and I (seniors in high school) watched this lecture and we round-tabled for hours talking about the poem and your ideas. Thanks for this.
This is the best lecture on The Waste Land I have ever heard. I have watched it several times, and I'm watching it now with my son and my brother. My son read The Waste Land for the first time today. I wanted him to understand it, which is why we're watching this lecture.
This lecture is just precious; clear language and exposition, coherence and well-organized ideas, interesting analogies, perfect pace... Thanks very much sir for the upload.
one of my favourite lectures on The Wastelands, the analogy of the stained glass windows is so apt in relation to the poem...
Well done! Thanks Nick Mount for bringing canonical and complex literature to the mainstream. The historical and psychological value of “The Wasteland” is far too precious to lose in the 21st century yet sadly this poem is seldom taught.
Terrific lecture. Really illuminates the text with historical context, explanation of allusions, and biographical information. This Professor really gets the poem and communicates its truths with such lucid simplicity. So glad to have found this.
I love the humility and wisdom in this professor. His lecture on "The Wasteland" is one I've gone back to several times-- even just to grasp something of how it feels to be alive now.
Thank you so much for posting this wonderful lecture!
Incredible lecture. Thank you for helping make clear for us a nearly impenetrable poem!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing this poem to life.
Watched this twice. Absolutely fascinating.
Great lecture, really glad the video is back on RUclips.
Thank you! I heard The Waste Land this a.m. on the BBC, was fascinated but could not get at its meaning. This talk helped so much.
Glad to help!
Thank you wonderfully put.
Thanks a lot for ploading this! I've got a paper to write on this and erally needed a way in. This was perfect, now I know where I want to start :)
Thanks Mr Mount. Really helped me get into the poem at last. So he didn’t just write about cats after all
thank you for this lovely lecture. Really enjoyed it.
Thanks, Shaun. Kind of you to say.
This video helped me understand The Wasteland a little better...thank you!
Excellent lecture on a marvelous work.
Excellent lecture. Certainly elucidates many interesting aspects of The Waste Land and Eliot, the man. One can only guess at the intellectual resonance of living in the shadow of The Great War. I highly recommend watching Peter Jackson’s superlative documentary, They Will Not Grow Old, to get a sense of the effect on the men and women who lived through that horror. It makes a great companion to this poem.
U of T is my Alma mater so seeing this lecture made me both a little homesick and nostalgic for those glorious days of enjoying the intellectual life. Something that truly is missing in the world outside of academia. It is difficult to find people you can have a deep conversation with.
P.s. even though I went to U of T and lived at Hart House, I never heard that story of the stain glass windows before. Truly profound!
Thank you for sharing this leture
A highly enjoyable vid : Much appreciated. :)
Excellent. Thank you, Professor!
Thank you for being a great help to me :)
Salam ! Salaam !! Salaaam !!!
Great teacher ! Fantastic explanation !! Much appreciated !!!
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Wonderful lecture!
Studying modernism right now. This is a very helpful lecture and well done.
It is one video like this, in the millions of trash, that makes the whole platform worth it
That was great. Thanks.
when one like is just not enough . . Thankyou Sir
I hadn’t understood the ending of the poem at all until listening to this. Now I’m struck by how Douglas Adams took this idea of an ultimate answer which can’t be understood and turned it into humour: 42. I think the Waste Land has become so ubiquitous that we no longer feel it as tragedy. Of course “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.”
Amazing that they had the presence of mind to bring back scraps of stained glass, with everything they faced on a daily basis. Impressive
Fantastic!
From india. Love your lectures.
Hello Prof. Mount, I just fell upon your lecture on The Wasteland. The Sanskrit words in Part V "What the thunder said" in the poem, you mentioned signify nirvana and were from Buddhism. As matter of fact, these are words that Eliot took from the 'Brihadāranyaka Upanishad'. The Upanishads pre-date Buddhism well into the 9th to the 11th century B C. May be you should want to check that out.
i finally read the wasteland, and tbh its not as mountainously great as everyone talks it up to be. but i just read his whole collection, and don’t find him to be a fantastically great poet. ive been watching lectures of the poem and the poet all week, and im still not swayed.
A gift came to my room last evening. October 2021
Insightful.
Brilliant.
@26:00ish... Not only does it probably 'select its readers', through the allusions, who share Eliot's dispair, but its allusions/structure etc (probably) also simultaneously and ironically hope to bring together the readership/ people who Eliot felt could revive the cultural wasteland!
Dude you're awesome.
Thanks, Nick
+Mike Welch You are most welcome.
This was such a mind fuck, came here from IB English Glavin 2020-21
Excellent lecture about T S Eliot professor, do you have more videos/lectures/ articles that further explain the illusions in WL?
11:43 Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance mentioned.
Wade Davis also talks about the loss of meaning when culture, specifically languages, are forgotten. Each language has a unique perspective on the natural world and when the language dies this diminishes our world view, our relationship with the systems of the planet. This weakens us by making us less resilient...in effect, we lose a tool. One example he gives is the South Pacific islanders who traveled great distances, navigating only by the currents and the sound and shape of the waves striking the boat. Another example, all the names given to snow by the Inuit.
fucking legendary. well well done
Like a real life Robert Langdon; only in a way that makes sense.
..." historically unavoidable. ".. whoa....! that's a very elevated remark if there ever was one........even EXALTED. .......
I STILL think that this is a concern we can understand in 2020.
Thank you for the lecture, esp.for pointing out his antiSemitism & misogyny. All the other aspects, but those are vital.
It’s 2024 as I listen to this lecture. The World is full of conflict by elderly leaders in Russia, The United States, China, Iran and others. I thought of this as Prof. Mount discussed the story of ‘The Fisher King’. The land has become sterile as the King is elderly and in poor health. A noble knight of pure heart seeks the Holy Grail and the wisdom to cure the King…. It seems like we’re re living this world story currently.
I thought of our Ukrainian Defenders when he spoke of noble knights of pure heart. Our “Warriors of Light.” Obviously more thought will go into this idea/association, but that’s what sprung to mind. Also, “trench poetry” and Wilfred Owen.
At the onset of the 21st Century, the George W, Bush administration significantly increased military spending, withdraw from the anti-ballistic missile treaty while pursuing and funding missile defence shield systems, thus abandoning a key pillar of Post-war arms control. Bush then declares a headstrong determination to extend NATO ever eastwards prior to launching the invasion of Iraq on false evidence. US intervention in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya rode roughshod over international law. The Wolfowitz Doctrine and Project for the New American Century has led to over 20 years of interminable wars. It's killed millions, displaced about 39 million people according to data, and cost trillions of dollars. Global spending on weapons has never been higher.
Fortunately BRICS is growing, a multi polar world is emerging and dedollarisation is undermining US cohersion, which primarily impacts civilians. What did Madelaine Albright say about 500.000 dead Iraqi babies due to US sanctions? It was a difficult decision but we think it was worth it.
@@sabeaver9677you're delusional. You sound like Himmler describing the SS. He was also delusional.
...." loss of a shared culture "........is such a thing even POSSIBLE...let alone....VIABLE......??!!
Every great poem is great!
Until it is over-analysed....
Then It collapses into something
" Over-under stood"
I'm glad Elliott didn't self
Analyse the work!
God rarely proclaims with lightening, more often, She rumbles like thunder.
First world war deaths, 16 million.
1918 influenza outbreak deaths. 50 million.
The main takeout: loss of a shared culture
Fantastic lecture. But I have to disagree that Shanti is equivocal to "peace that surpasses understanding" and that even if one understands what Shanti is it is different to each undividual. Shanti is directly experienced and absolutely recognisable. Understanding Shanti if realised is not something that cannot be understood. It is the opposite in fact. It is a clarity of understanding that is completely unambiguous. This is because it has no individualistic nature, and it will be experienced in the same way by all who let go of the self and open to dharma - or "Da" -as depicted in the wasteland.
Oh, so wonderful. bunny Gin
Thanks. In fairness as Eliot was not a Buddhist as far as I know he could not know. The Wasteland is such a brilliant poem. James Joyce said he stole ideas the Wasteland from it to write Ulysees. There definitely is a connection between the two.
Or 2023
A Scapeshifter
I was enjoying listening to
The Waste Land
being read.
The internet linked to this
Tutorial
Now I'm bored!
Its odd. He says so much yet it barely scratches the surface of the poem in a way. This isnt a fault of this anaysis. One could spend a lot of time speaking of the poem.
Theres something i like about ts elliots poems in particular, and that is a self referential structure they bare, as though hiding a secret narrative in them behind a fog. In the wasteland, theres a many narratives playing out and recurring symbols that are without direct explanation, from birds, which in one part refence an older story of two women and a king, and also of water which see,s to symbolize both life and death in a way. I was sad to hear in fact part 4 was skipped over as it, more so than part 5, reads as a sort of climax of the poem. Its the fulfillment of madame sosotris’ tarot reading and, if all the men are the same, the death of the man from part 4. It has what seems to be a fairly clear message as well: memento mori
An interesting but problematic interpretation. By his citations and lingo, this man is clearly a modernist. T.S. Eliot hated modernity.
This is one of the most astute comments I have ever read on a forum. Also, in nice way, you reveal how much this lecture is really about Nick Mount's personal agenda disguised as explaining (but completely missing the central marks) of Eliot's work.
Every Jewish prophet spoke in Hebrew, never tongues. There is virtually no such thing as so-called Judaeo-etc. They have so little in common. The Christian Bible is full of deliberate misquotes & manglings. Read the Jewish originals-- not just an isolated verse here & there-- & you'll see
God, so monotonous voice..uff!