This is one of many times in the poem where repetition like this occurs. This is similar to "The Vigil of Venus" where the line "Tomorrow may loveless, may tomorrow make love" is repeated several times throughout the poem. Interestingly, the line itself is almost repetition but not quite, which makes the idea of love in the poem feel like an ever-changing thing that isn't stagnant. Meanwhile, "The Waste Land"'s use of "falling down falling down falling down," through its insistent and exact repetition, seems to show an action that cannot be undone and is damaging, like the London Bridge falling down.

Coming back to what I said in a previous annotation about actions getting darker as night comes, this seems to flip that idea on its head a bit when saying "Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours / Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus". Coriolanus is a Shakespeare character who is notably a bit of an antihero, so these lines seem to say that "aethereal rumors" at nightfall are what temporarily redeem Coriolanus, despite a previous annotation of mine arguing that peoples' actions get darker as the night falls. For Coriolanus, it seems to be the opposite.

This is also interesting when you consider Francis Herbert Bradley's Appearance and Reality where he argues that much of what humans perceive is an illusion, which makes it hard for people to truly connect with each other. This makes me wonder if these "aethereal rumours" are then actually other people and not supernatural beings, but Eliot is referring to them this way to show the true distance between ourselves and the reality of other people.

Both this stanza and P. Marudanayagum's "Retelling of an Indian Legend" deal with a mysterious other. In the legend, the vial (verandah) has enough space for one person to lie on, two people to sit on, or three people to stand on. Once three people are standing on the vial, they feel a fourth presence but don't know who it is, before realizing it's Lord Vishnu (a Hindu God). Following the logic of this legend, a mysterious presence in a space where it's not physically possible for the presence to fit inside is probably a God or other supernatural thing. However, this stanza shows two, not three, people that are standing, and their space isn't limited, but there's also a mysterious presence. There's definitely a lot to unpack here, and I'd welcome any theories about it, but I desperately need to go to sleep and can't properly theorize at this point.

Psalm 63 describes longing for God in a place with no water, while this stanza describes longing for water whilst pointing out the abundance of rock. In Psalm 63, it even says of God, "My soul thirsteth for thee," which equates God to water in a sense. When looking at this section of "The Waste Land" together with Psalm 63, it makes this part seem notably unreligious.

This line, which seemingly emphasizes how water can kill/take apart human beings, draws a contrast to Corinthians, which states "All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea," which appears to show how water is used to "baptize" someone into a religion. I think the difference between the water usages in these respective works stems from Eliot looking at some of the more literal actions of water while Corinthians looks at more figurative, religious uses of it.

Eliot references the "Isle of Dogs". Matthew 7:6 states "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." I find this interesting because I essentially understand to say "be careful who you associate with because not all people are good," which draws a contrast to this stanza which generally seems to lack intention. For example, it says "The barges drift" and references "Drifting logs," which implies a lack of control over the circumstances. This is all very interesting because in Matthew, "the dogs" seemingly refer to people you find yourself associating with if you become too careless with your actions, and going "Past the Isle of Dogs" feels similarly unintentional.

Interestingly, throughout this entire long stanza, the night seems to become darker as the actions become darker. First, we're just in the "violet hour", then time passes throughout the stanza, and it ends with "And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit" (Eliot, 248), after Tiresias has raped a woman. The way light and darkness is used here draws a contrast to how it's used in Fragment 149 of a Sappho poem, where she refers to "Bringing everything that shining Dawn scattered, you bring the sheep, you bring the goat, you bring the child back to its mother" (Sappho). Here, darkness and nighttime are seen as things that bring people/animals together in a pleasurable way by reuniting them, whereas in this stanza Tiresias and a woman are brought together at night, but he rapes her, thereby correlating darkness and nighttime with darker actions in "The Waste Land".

This is a clear reference to Edmund Spenser's poem "Prothalamion". I think it might represent Eliot trying to get closer to that aesthetic of the 1500s, when the world was generally more untouched. In the next lines he says "The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends / Or other testimony of summer nights" (Eliot, 176-178), which I think touches on the theme of industrialization. Therefore, Eliot may be referencing Spenser to feel closer to that pre-industrial world.

In Hamlet, this is the final thing Ophelia says before she leaves the scene for the moment after having an episode of madness onstage. However, Ophelia's line includes semicolons ("Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night"), while the usage of this line here does not. This may be due to the poem having less of a clear-cut separation between different ideas in general. This may also be due to this passage as a whole feeling more rushed than the Hamlet scene. Ophelia even says "We must be patient" in reference to whether things will turn out well in the future. Meanwhile, this passage keeps saying "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME," which makes it feel very rushed.

It's interesting that Philomela's name is written like "Philomel" here. The absence of the a at the end makes it feel less feminine, perhaps mutilated, similar to how King Tereus mutilated Philomela by cutting out her tongue. Despite this loss of the last letter, Philomela is still referred to as a "she" later on in the passage, when it says, "And still she cried, and still the world pursues" (Eliot, 102). Perhaps this could represent how King Tereus raping Philomela reminded her of her womanhood, since rape tends to be perpetrated against women more frequently than men. Alternatively, coming back to what I said before, the loss of the last letter could be less about gender and more about mutilation, especially since its context is "The change of Philomel" (Eliot, 99), where the "change" could refer to the loss of her tongue and trauma from the rape.

These lines speak to the idea of rebirth/remaking, which is also present in one of Gerard De Nerval's descriptions of his dreams. He contemplates a remake of the world, and has the idea that "There was a massive conspiracy among all living creatures to re-establish the world in its original harmony" (De Nerval, 9). This is similar to Eliot's lines in the sense that something is being reborn/remade as a result of the contributions of living creatures. In these lines from "The Waste Land", a living person had to die in order to get planted (by presumably another living person) and contribute to life that grows from the ground, so the corpse is reborn in the sense that it's contributing to and likely a part of new life. Meanwhile, De Nerval's dream is more obvious with this idea, as it literally says that the remaking of the world was a plan by "all living creatures". Though not quite the same as rebirth, remaking something is still very similar because rebirth and remaking are both different types of renewal.

"The Waste Land" as a title could refer to the figurative land's fluctuating livelihood, particularly resulting from the buried, yet conscious, corpse in the "Burial of the Dead" section. Similarly, in The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer, he explains that seasons were traditionally thought to represent the waxing or waning strength of divine beings that out of humans' control. In both scenarios, the land behavior is dependent on external factors. Also similarly, "From Ritual to Romance" suggests that in the Holy Grail story "Le Morte D'Arthur", the state of the land is dependent on the king's condition: "The King, though regarded with reverence, must not be allowed to become old or feeble, lest, with the diminishing vigour of the ruler, the cattle should sicken, and fail to bear increase, the crops should rot in the field and men die in ever growing numbers" (Weston, 6). This draws a parallel with "The Waste Land", when the land is described as "Mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain" (Eliot, 2-4). In both cases, the land's condition is dependent on some other figure, which in this case is the memory and desire "stirring" the dull roots with the spring rain.

This vagueness of life vs. death feels similar to the vagueness of Hyacinth's gender from a few lines up. Historically, Hyacinthus was a male god beloved by Apollo who was tragically killed. A yearly festival called Hyacinthia was created in his honor. It's interesting that the festival was called Hyacinthia because the -a ending is normally more associated with femininity and female names. In the poem, Eliot uses the term "hyacinth," as if he's trying to assign no gender to what could have been Hyacinthus/ia. This intentional vagueness connects to the line "I was neither / Living nor dead" (Eliot, 39-40) because Hyacinth is neither male nor female just like the narrator was "neither living nor dead". Essentially, these things all cancel each other out.

This idea differs from many of the lines presented in Mina Loy's poem "At the Door of the House". She refers to eyes being "riveted to the unrealisable" (Loy 1). The verb and noun here essentially cancel each other out with the impossibility of the situation. However, this differs to the idea presented in the first paragraph because these subjects aren't both rejected by the author. Hyacinth can't have a gender, the narrator can't be dead or alive, but the eyes are still "riveted to the unrealisable". The event presented here that inherently contradicts itself doesn't seem to be rejected, unlike how Eliot does it with life and death and with Hyacinth's gender.

The phrase "Son of man" is also used numerous times in Ezekiel, though there it seems to be used very frequently in the context of commands, such as "Stand upon thy feet" and "I send thee to the children of Israel" (Ezekiel). In this case, it's used on the front end of a statement of fact, that "You cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images" (Eliot, 21-22). Perhaps this could be because the "Son of man" here is referring to a corpse, who wouldn't be able to act on commands, and at best can only receive statements. Later on in Ezekiel, in the part concerned with Israel's future, the Lord uses "Son of man" in the context of a question: "Can these bones live?" (Ezekiel). Here, the Lord is wondering whether the land of Israel can live on. The livelihood of Israel is ambiguous at this time, which would explain why this part can be defined as neither a command or a statement.

The original opening of "The Waste Land" presents a group of friends having a good time together. It refers to the event in the past tense, so we know it's a memory. It's a very sentimental memory that uses little details and sensory information to enhance the reader's mental image: "The next thing we were out in the street, / Oh was it cold!" (Eliot, 3), "Mr. Fay was there, singing 'The Maid of the Mill'" (Eliot, 3). Included is also an element of desire: "Get me a woman, I said; you're too drunk, she said" (Eliot, 4). This part in particular is interesting because it quite literally mixes memory and desire, not only because this is part of a larger memory, but because alcohol is known to cause memory loss, which really adds to the idea of memory and desire being mixed. Memory and desire also mix in "Metamorphoses", "Satyricon", "Our Mutual Friend", and "Heart of Darkness". Firstly, all of these stories are in the past tense, so they're all memories. In "Metamorphoses", the Sybil tells Aeneas, "You will have what you desire" (Ovid). Meanwhile, "Satyricon" appears to highlight the people who shouldn't desire anything, as they're already entitled. This therefore also draws a connection between desire and entitlement, a theme also shown in "Our Mutual Friend" because the characters are trying to identify an heir to a fortune.