ABSTRACT
T. S. Eliot's art of deliberate and close repetition is at work in The Waste Land's lines: Damyata: The boat responded Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar The sea was calm, your heart would have responded Gaily, when invited, beating obedient To controlling hands One line 'responds' to another. In the first half, that is, for fifteen lines, the poetry sounds as though it is standing still even as it moves forward. The thunder is announced by a flourish of inversion: 'Then spoke the thunder'. 'Da' has undergone much scrutiny, but they opposed responses it has inspired confirm the inscrutability. It is the voice of oracular authority or of sibylline irresponsibility. Dominic Manganiello hears 'Da' as the ultimate in linguistic alienation': 'Even the final words of salvation are uttered enigmatically as a fragmented syllable, "Da" in Sanskrit, another foreign language. Linguistic alienation in The Waste Land goes hand in hand with linguistic attraction.
