T.S. Eliot was treated for mental exhaustion during the writing of The Waste Land. He worked at Lloyds Bank, was helping to launch a new journal, The Criterion, of which he himself was to be editor, and writing his epic masterpiece at the same time.
He was exhausted and suffered from “splitting headaches.” His wife, Vivien, arranged for him “to see a ‘nerve specialist,’ who promptly advised Eliot to ‘go straight away for three months complete rest and change and . . . live according to a strict regimen which he has prescribed”[1] (p. 20). That was in September, 1921. He didn’t leave for his treatment until late November 1921. In fact, he met Ezra Pound in October, who remarked to his own wife, Dorothy, “Eliot at last ordered away for 3 months—he seems rejuvinated [sic] at prospect” (p. 20).
According to Lawrence Rainey, the account goes like this. Eliot “was to stay for six weeks and receive treatment from the Swiss psychiatrist Roger Vittoz.” Before going, he kept working on his manuscript. Eliot “attempted to assemble a working draft of part III of the poem as so far compared.
While in Lausanne for his treatment, he stayed “at the Hotel St. Luce, a tranquil pension, from 22 November until 2 January. . . . Eliot finished his draft of The Waste Land” (p. 22).
That Eliot suffered a “nervous breakdown” and went away to a sanitorium and visited with a famous psychiatrist is all well known. But he finished the poem while undergoing treatment.
This is not a broken man.
Our understandings of mental illness have far advanced in the 100 years since Eliot’s breakdown. Our treatments are more advanced. Not to minimize Eliot’s distress, but looked at from afar, it feels as if Eliot went on vacation for a spa treatment, not a stay in a sanitorium a la One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
If Eliot suffered from mental illness, exhaustion, a nervous breakdown, and produced The Waste Land under such distress, consider what he might have done had he been “healthy.” We mere mortals celebrate getting out of bed and feeding ourselves a peanut butter sandwich and calling it a day when we’re stricken with mental illness. Our conception of exhaustion and mental illness has changed.
A Trip to a Mental Health Unit
Once, I took a weekend trip to a Mental Health Unit, a 72 hour trip for observation. I sometimes call it my vacation. It was not a vacation. It figures prominently in my memoir. I’ve devoted an entire chapter to the experience. Though I was emotionally suffering at the time, the physical effects I was feeling were mostly due to lack of sleep for 4 straight days. After a lengthy period of little to no sleep, the walls begin to move and creatures crawl on surfaces. Whether such images are born in the brain or are merely tricks of the light, either way, I experienced a break that led me to seriously contemplate some seriously dark things that are at odds with my normally sunny disposition.
I put pen to paper frantically, trying to capture what I could, but it wasn’t epic poetry, soon to be the foundation for a Nobel Prize winning poet. It was lunatic ravings, mostly. It was an attempt to resolve cognitive dissonances that weren’t entirely of my own making.
My own trip also had valuable restorative properties, even though it wasn’t a trip to the spa. It became immediately clear upon my first waking hours there that I didn’t belong at the Mental Health Unit. But I also was not free to go. Compared to my comrades inside, who definitely needed the help provided, I stood out, a healthy specimen among the botched and bungled.
I resisted seeking a “rest trip” for a long time for fear of becoming like my brother. Our similarities were legendary, and his path toward major depressive disorder was devastating to all. My fears were unfounded though. What I found was that I wasn’t like my brother, would never be like my brother. Everyone suffers crises and difficulties. But with loving support from friends and family and proper medical support when necessary, crises most often pass. It really depends on the circumstances
If you find any of this interesting, please let me know in the comments if you’d like to read my chapter about my trip to the MHU.
[1] Eliot, T.S. The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot’s Contemporary Prose, 2nd edition. Edited with Annotations and Introduction by Lawrence Rainey. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
I’ve found an article behind a paywall that looks at Eliot’s “nervous breakdown” and the production of The Waste Land. I’ll be looking into that to discuss in a future newsletter.
Thanks for reading along. Please share with your friends. I am nearing the end of my next query phase, sending out queries to agents in batches of 10. It’s almost time to look up the next 10 lucky agents who will receive my query.
Stay safe out there. Until next time, I’ll . . .
Just keep writing!