The Waste Land

The land emptied — of green, of speech, of meaning — because something in its governance is wounded or profaned. Manawydan's enchanted Dyfed falls silent; the Elucidation blames the violated well-maidens and their stolen cups; the Continuations make the unasked question the cause and the asked question the cure; the Post-Vulgate dates it to one blow of the sacred lance. Eliot made it the name of the twentieth century.

Weston's enduring distinction: in the older stratum the wasting precedes the hero (a condition to be healed); in the theological stratum it follows his failure (a consequence to be repented). Which direction the causality runs is never a detail — it is the difference between a world awaiting grace and a world answering for sin.