London Bridge is Falling Down and Eliot’s Shantih Mantra from Upanishad

Abstract

T S Eliot’s THE WASTE LAND is a groundbreaking poem in   the domain of ENGLISH poetry. It is one of the most discussed poems   in   the   20^th   century.  It   explains   the   cultural   and   psychological   crisis   that the WW-1   had radically furrowed   the humanity.  The   poem   delineates  the moral  degeneration  in  the  premise  of  contemporary Europe   collapsing  the   rich  cultural   heritage of  the   bygone  period.  The falling down of London Bridge shows the   artery-convulsing    barren   world   that set   bleak   images   of   the   modern   world.  The   modern   world    is  ‘’ the  brown   fog  of    a   winter  dawn’’ where   men   and   women  have    only  a  physical  relationship   but  devoid  of religious  texts  and   it   is   only  ‘’ a   heap   of   broken   images’’   where   ‘‘the  dead  trees  give  no   shelter’’.   Eliot,  that’s  why ,does   fear  to   see  the ‘’ stony rubbish’’    romance   with  a ‘’ hyacinth   girl’   by  the  young    clerk   Carbuncular  at  the   hotspot.   Despite   of   that,   Eliot   goes   to take   shelter in   the shade of   Brihadaranyaka    Upanishad    and shares   the     three-fold    moral    torchlight    to    be    the    ‘’solicitor in our empty hands’’   ‘’to   give’’, ‘’ to   sympathize’’ and‘’ to   control’’     the   possible   collapse   of   the   modern   civilization.