Eliot believed poetry should be a lot like archaeology, the process itself like a carefully excavated dig. His relics are no more than scraps of ancient texts, warped and distorted by time, like the archaeologist's "finds." And just like an archaeologist, Eliot can only understand his ancient treasures from his own context, utilizing his own experiences.

In many of his poems, Eliot writes of emptiness and the futile, chaotic nature of humanity. To use spiritual texts, then, is a powerful means to attract attention through contrast. Spiritual texts represent a way a people fill the void caused by the anxieties of uncertainty. That is to say they provide comfort through a structure of irrefutable beliefs. The Wasteland is Eliot's depiction of a shattered society, a Europe searching desperately for a spiritual direction that will restore "order" after The

" Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." - Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent

Dayadhvam- Be compassionate. Eliot excavates the character of Coriolanus here, the defiant protagonist in Shakespeare's play. Out of vengeance and malice for his former Romans, he leads enemy forces against them. He can be likened to a Judas type of character, a traitor who at the last minute realizes his mistakes, only to find he is too late. Only compassion "revives" Coriolanus, allowing his infatuation for vengeance to be replaced by the desire for peace. Compassion was too late to extinguish the nationalistic "fires" of Europe, only through the mass destruction of life could man recognize the need for Dayadhvam, the "key" confirming our earthly existence as a prison.

"Everything, O Bhikkus, is burning. And how, O Bhikkus, is everything burning?"

Horror of war. Each spiritual text is employed in a specific manner to weight the observations Eliot creates.

The Upanishads is teeming with reciprocal dichotomies, which reveal to the Brahmins the failure of all human language to describe Brahman. So rather than assigning him characteristics out of vanity, the Brahmins describe him as a universal soul, existing within and without, without and within simultaneously. Being one with Brahman requires freedom from evil, desire and doubt.

The use of spiritual texts, and a variety of them, was merely a compilation of all the various ways to escape the many "hells" here on earth. At the time of the writing of the poem, many people were looking to escape from their emotions, including Eliot, and spiritual texts represent guidelines for achieving that release. This is why their use in The Wasteland is so significant.

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Approximate Word count = 1374
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)