University of Virginia Library

The Typewriters in the Making of The Waste Land
by
S. Krishnamoorthy Aithal

Valerie Eliot's facsimile edition (1971) of the drafts of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land has provided an impetus to critics to trace the origin and growth of the poem. The typewriters used by Eliot to copy the poem have gained a certain amount of significance in this bibliographic study. Mrs. Eliot's reproduction of the drafts reveals that Eliot used different typewriters for transcription, and this knowledge, assisted by the knowledge of other external and internal evidence, has enabled critics to unravel at what periods,

in what places, in what sequence the different parts of the poem were written. Grover Smith and Hugh Kenner describe, on the basis of the typewriters, and, of course, on the basis of extensive evidence, external and internal, how the poem slowly took shape and developed into its present form.[1]

I wish to return to the typewriters as I find myself in disagreement with one particular observation and conclusion made by Mr. Smith and Mr. Kenner in respect of the machine related to Parts I and II. Both Mr. Smith and Mr. Kenner are of the opinion that Parts I and II were written in Lausanne where Eliot had gone for rest and treatment between the last week of November and the middle of December. Mr. Smith thinks that Eliot carried his portable typewriter to Lausanne and typed these Parts. Mr. Kenner thinks that Eliot got some typewriter in Lausanne to make a fair copy of the parts.

I have difficulty in accepting the above contentions. It seems to me very unlikely that Eliot carried his portable typewriter with him to Lausanne when he was in a poor state of health and was going there for treatment. If he had his typewriter with him, or if some other typewriter was available to him, it is rather puzzling why he did not type Parts IV and V also on it, and why he used Pound's machine to type them in Paris on his journey back to London. Although one cannot say definitely just when Part IV was written, it has been pointed out by Mr. Smith that the quality of the paper Eliot used to make a holograph fair copy is identical to the paper used for Part V, which, from internal evidence, could be seen to have been written at Lausanne. Eliot thus took pains to make a neat copy of Parts IV and V at Lausanne. It seems to me reasonable to suppose that he would have used a typewriter to make a fair copy, if one were available.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Kenner have no satisfactory explanation to give why Eliot typed Parts I and II in Lausanne, and why he could not do Parts IV and V. The situation does not seem to worry Mr. Smith. It seems odd that Eliot should carry his typewriter to Paris, and use Pound's, instead of his own, to transcribe Parts IV and V. Mr. Kenner does notice the anomalous situation, but he says that Eliot could not use the typewriter for Parts IV and V, as it suddenly became unavailable.

I tend to believe that Eliot had no typewriter at his disposal at Lausanne. Neither had he carried his, nor was someone else's typewriter available to him. Parts I and II, like Part III, were, in my view, composed in London, and Eliot had typescripts for all the three Parts before he left for Lausanne on November 18, 1921.

If my conjecture is correct, although I do not have, at present, any concrete evidence to prove it, a new picture would emerge of the unfolding history of The Waste Land. If Part III did precede Parts I and II, as Mr. Kenner and Mr. Smith argue, there could not have been a long gap between the composition of the three Parts. It would be, therefore, wide off the mark to

identify London, the theme of Part III, as the original theme of the poem, as Mr. Kenner does. In my view Eliot's original conception of the poem was bolder and far more complex than what Mr. Kenner makes it out to be.

Notes