The possible cosmic sympathy in the discourse of Marie in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land
A Cognitive Pragmatic Approach
Dr. Mohammed Sameer Abd Elsalam
Marie is a unique character in the poem The Land of Waste by the international English poet T. S. Eliot, and she presents a discourse that includes implicit and explicit significations that are renewed by focusing on the act of communication itself, and on the conversational tones as a cosmic sympathy that extends and transcends time and space. That is why I think that analyzing Marie's discourse through the mechanisms of the cognitive pragmatic approach will help us in reconsidering the conversation as a kind of literary and cosmic dream expansion and imagining the double spaces generated by the Hofgarten garden as an experimental spatial reference, also, we can recognize a new literary cosmic airspace that resembles the metaphorical potential spaces of literature behind the poetic- narrative scene of the poem.
*The wide cultural context, relevance, social attitude, and speech acts:
At first, we note that the speaker refers to Marie's conversation within a broad cultural context filled with cases of epistemological occultation, separation, and repetition that resembles a terrifying dream, as well as pauses contained in the thoughts and voices of the other artistic characters. Then Eliot weaves a representative speech act which was based on setting Marie's conversation as a possible literary dream within that context which will be renewed in the universe in different socio-cultural contexts; This is because of the possible symmetry that we infer from the spatial and personal experimental references which were mentioned in the poem.
So, the power of the act of representational speech act embodied in Eliot's discourse is achieved in the recipient through the power of the formation of a modified cognitive vision of Marie's conversation as a literary dream that accepts the cosmic expansion of its tones, or the formation of a cognitive vision that connects Marie's discourse with its relative context, and transcends it at the same time.
Also, we can deduce an expressive speech act in Eliot's speech that enhances Marie's connection with literary characters through the act of cosmic spiritual sympathy inherent in skiing, reading, and her implicit connection, in the whole discourse unit, to Madam Sosostris, the Phoenician sailor, or Theresias; It is as if Marie opens a wide range of broad spatial literary relationships in the possible cosmic space. That is why the power of the expressive speech act will be embodied in the recipient's bias toward the explanatory inner breadth of Marie's artistic personality.
We can also infer the existence of a directive speech act in the vast, invisible areas of Eliot's discourse; This act is based on guiding the recipient towards recovering the ethereal spectral field of Marie's artistic personality in her extended encounter that transcends time and places with literary characters through the act of reading that was mentioned in her conversation, and then the power of the directive speech act will be achieved in the recipient's viewing of the ethereal image of Marie flying in his own airspace. As for the recurrence of the speech act in the level of performance, it will be achieved in a metaphorical dialogic evocation expected with the ethereal field of Marie; This productivity will form an internal and aesthetical impact that constitutes an implicit promising speech act on the one hand, and it will be in a spatial metaphorical space between the first words of Marie and her renewed tones in the context of the harmony of second communication on the other hand.
And if we re-read the poetic discourse according to the relevance theory according to Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, we will see the dependence of the speaker on the selection of the mental pleasure of Marie in a situation of communication in which double signals of emptiness, horror, and the mysterious hidden life of the characters of literature and cultural heritage. So, Eliot gives the recipient an opportunity to select another cognitive contextual indicator similar to Marie's mental pleasure index in his own field of mental processing, in order to weave a different set of producing expanded inferences regarding Marie's renewed ethereal manifestation in another field and a different context.
*Marie's mental state:
We can also infer Marie's mental state through the renewing glow of the memory signs, mixing them with a creative daydream, or with feminine meditations similar to Bachelard's anima energy; It is as if Marie is located within a wide cosmic dreamy field that resembles a large cylinder that contains spectra, sounds, fragments of memories, clipped dream images and book lines. Also, she chose the aesthetical impact of the smell of coffee to indicate the cosmic mental spiritual pleasure inherent in the act of communication, and beyond the tones of the possible imaginary dreamy musical conversation.
*Marie's mental representations:
Furthermore, The personal and spatial references in Marie's consciousness can only be conceived of by creative imaginative symmetry in possible mental representations that the visual spaces of Marie's discourse include conversational harmony places of memory, and imagination together; That is why I can infer that there are mental representations inside Marie's mind that indicate that she looks like an actress on a stage that lies between dream, reality, and the vast cosmic space; As for skiing, it seems like a childish act of flight or the dreamy image of driving a car or an imaginary airplane or a new metaphorical bird which may come from ancient eras, also, it could be shaped like a return to the interior within a deep cylinder in which memories and dreams shine beyond the tones of conversation.
*The cognitive metaphor between the ascending and descending domains in the discourse unit:
We can read the interaction between mental spaces, cognitive metaphor, and the blending theory underlying Marie's discourse according to the findings of the cognitive research of Fauconnier, Lakoff, Johnson, and Mark Turner according to the analogy relationship between the first input space; It is the descending spatial field in the act of skiing, and the ascending spatial field as the second input space. It is a hypothetical space that lies in the airspace, freedom, and harmony of conversation. It is connected to the first mental space through the subjective-cosmic relationships, the dreamy mental life, the agreement behind the tone of exit from the monotheism of the communication position towards universal wide imaginary multiplicity worlds, and the joy which was mixed with the ancient mystic fear that transfers itself beneath the layers of the deep spiritual conversational harmony; Hence the public space will be the literary spatial domain; As for the blended space, it will be formed from all the complex overlapping relationship between the spatial field descending towards the interior, the spatial field rising in the air and the transformative signs of literature in a new flexible spatial window that discourse entails.
* Cataphoric semantic linking:
We cannot remove the ambiguity in the beginnings of Mary's speech and her memories, which combine harmony, joy, and a bit of fear, except through a succession of hatred for the later artistic hypothetical characters lurking in the books and in the literary characters that Eliot recalls or re-creates, and which combine the significance of absence with the significance of the literary, cosmic and vast ethereal present that reconstruct of yet another fluid representational imaginary presence of Marie.
*The deductive argument:
We can grasp the main deductive argument in Marie's discourse by the relative validity of the hypothesis of the existence of the hidden symmetry of conversation, place, and personality; The conversation hides a group of tones, memories, and dreams that are included in what is not implicitly mentioned. This assumes that she is in a state of extension from the past to the present to the future and in other possible cosmic contexts and places, and then the result becomes the possibility of reshaping Marie's personality within the complex and infinite perceptual and interpretative lines.
*Paul Grice's cooperative principle in Marie's discourse:
We can recognize that Marie's discourse is the most digressive from the quantitative angle; It is logically justified because Marie reminisces and creates some ambiguous gaps in her discourse that lead to more perceptual and possible digressions about her connection to other spaces and characters, and her cousin's speech is closer to suggestive directive speech acts that signify expandable cosmic sympathy, and the ambiguity of possible endings to the social situation at the same time; The sincerity of Marie's discourse comes from the validity of harmony of the distinctive hypothesis of an act of communication that can be recovered like a daydream. Marie's manner is characterized by intense narration which confirms the logical or creative expansion of the hidden tones of the conversation; On the other hand, Mary elects the hidden link between the garden and the potential virtual spaces, as well as the excessive withdrawal to the deep spiritual interior worlds.
Dr. Mohammed Sameer Abd Elsalam
Literary Critic and Art Critic
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