The Artist as Bodhisattva Figure in Eliot’s The Waste Land and La Gravenese’s The Fisher King

Author(s): Maria-Ana Tupan

Abstract:

The artist figure of late modernity is commonly seen either as the constructivist self –reflexive subject of modernism (Valéry: “je me voyais me voir”) or as an open series of subject positions in language in the post-deconstructionist age. The artist as agent of enlightenment, as shepherd figure, guru or other spiritual guide sounds like an outdated legacy confined to premodernity. Nevertheless, despite tropical heterogeneity and ontological hybridity, the most celebrated epic of the earlier twentieth century, T S Eliot’s The Waste Land, and an emblematic movie of 1991, The Fisher King, directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Richard LaGravenese, revive the figure of the artist as sage and teacher of mankind modelled on the hero of the Grail romances whose roots are shown to reach back in time to Hindu and Buddhist mythology.

Keywords: The Fisher King, T.S. Eliot, Richard LaGravenese, Upanishads, Bodhisattvas, Theravada Buddhism

Pages: 01-05      |       59 View       |       11 Download