Himavant

2 Pages 598 Words

Himavant”
T.S. Eliot’s unique approach to postwar decay and redemption in The Waste Land has left readers stunned. Eliot goes into many descriptions of “unreal” cities that continuously go through a cycle of destruction, rebuilding and then destruction again. Towards the end of the novel, a description of a horrid wasteland that seems to have no hope goes through a transformation back into a flourishing land, like an unreal city.
The sacred river of the India’s, the Ganges, which provides nature with its necessary resources to survive, has sunken to the point that everything is dying. As life withers away, there is a glimpses of hope as “the black clouds / gathered far distant, over Himavant”. According to the British National Library the Buddhists refer to the Himalayas, which lie to the north of the Ganges, as the “Himavant”. The reference of the Himalayas is important because of its power. This mighty power holds the key to the life in the wasteland, since it is what feeds the river, which revives the withered life. High above the mountains, the powerful thunder starts and through its speech it can “give,” “sympathize” and “control” over the wasteland. Eliot tries to reflect on each of these aspects of the thunder’s speech and its power. This idea of the thunder speaking and the word that it says is taken form the Upanishads and written by Eliot in Sanskrit. These words of power that he chooses convey another message than their meaning. According to Eliot’s footnote and other sources, God is known to speak through thunder to the Indian Upanishads. The Upanishads are a collection of Indian speculations on the nature of reality and the soul and the relations between these two. Eliot has chosen these word because the Upanishads and himself share this common belief about the nature of reality. Now that God has spoken through the thunder and showed mercy by allowing rain to fall, “th...