Reading "The Waste Land": Modernism and the Limits of Interrelation

Global Photographies

“…Literary critics have interpreted the meaning of Phlebas, the Phoenician's death in part four of Eliot's poem, 'Death by Water', on which this video is based, in two different ways. First, as a signification of death by water without resurrection, and, second, to symbolize the sacrificial death that precedes rebirth (Abrams 1993: 2157, Brooker/Bentley 1992: 159, Gordon 2000. The Deep Sea Swell (2009), applies these conflicting interpretations to my own fluctuating emotions regarding the separation from my father, through the creation of a visual metaphor that embodies the struggle between a haunting resurfacing of past memories, and the cathartic process of burial or acceptance.…”