La tierra baldía

Few will argue that Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) is among the most influential writers of the last century. His poetry, which combined radically innovative proposals with rigorous formal care, opened numerous doors to creative exploration and caused a deep impact among the writers of his time. A major figure, along with Ezra Pound, of Anglo-American modernism, among his poetic works stand out, in addition to "The Waste Land" (1922), "Ash Wednesday" (1930) and "Four Quartets" (1943). The publication of "La Tierra Baldía" (1922), which is now a century old, was a true milestone for experimentalism in poetry. Crossroads of genres and styles, fragmentary, deliberately strange, enigmatic and multilingual, the poem symbolizes the soul's journey towards transcendence through the desert of ignorance, suffering and earthly aspirations. This edition features a new translation, which is accompanied by an extensive updated critical apparatus and an Appendix with a selection of the texts Eliot refers to in the poem.