“
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
NarratorThe Waste Land · V. What the Thunder Said
V. What the Thunder Said
Section 5 of 5
The Thunder has spoken its triple command (Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata). The Fisher King sits on the shore. In the poem's final lines, fragments of multiple languages and literary traditions pile up. This line acknowledges the poem itself as a collection of fragments — shored against the speaker's personal and cultural ruins.
Why This Matters
The poem's most self-reflexive line — art as salvage operation, meaning assembled from cultural wreckage.
fragmentsartsurvival
The Damsel of the Sanct Grael
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1874 · Public Domain