ABSTRACT
The blatant literariness of the opening paragraph of 'A Game of Chess' would draw us in, turning us into hypocritical readers in connivance with the knowing poet. Glowing into words reverses what was going on earlier in 'A Game of Chess', where the pictures of Philomel and of others unspecified 'tell' stories for our edification; in the lines just quoted the reverse happens and the woman's 'words' are made visible in their glowing. Social satire moves towards sympathy, and 'Shakespeherian Rag' modulates into a graver music. The Waste Land does not simply weigh a degenerate present against a pristine past; rather, the past haunts the present, and the way in which Ophelia's words hauntingly emerge out of and merge into the melee of voices that makes up 'A Game of Chess' is symptomatic. The Waste Land cries as it ventriloquises a broken music from those who suffer.
