On the Other Hand: April is the Cruelest Month

The title for this column is taken from the opening lines of T.S. Eliot’s signature poem The Waste Land:

“April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.”

Disclaimer: To start with, I sincerely hope this April will not be the cruelest month, although one could argue that April 2020 deserved that designation. In March, we were all told about COVID-19, but most of us assumed it would all be resolved after a few weeks of minor inconvenience.

By mid-April, we were beginning to suspect we were in this crisis for the long haul. We settled in for a life of masks, quarantines, mass unemployment, toilet paper shortages, and daily reports of how many had been diagnosed, hospitalized, or died.

Eliot wrote his famous poem during the aftershock of the last global pandemic to shut down the world. In December of 1918, he and his wife had contracted what was inaccurately called the “Spanish Flu.” It was no more appropriately named than what some have called the “Chinese Virus” in our time. He wrote much of the poem during his recovery. Literary critics have just recently started to investigate the influence that the global pandemic had on the post-war literature that we have long called “Modernist.”

So why is April the cruelest month in the Waste Land? Because, in ordinary times—in the “non-Waste Land”—it is a time of richness and renewal. It is when the snow melts, the flowers start to grow again, and people plant their crops and look forward to a harvest. April is when the hearts of the young turn to thoughts of love. And, truth be told, the hearts of the old aren’t usually far from similar thoughts. April is when we dare to hope.

In the Waste Land, nothing can be crueler than hope, since it can only lead to disappointment. It always leads to disappointment. In the Waste Land, hope hurts, and April hurts most of all by mocking us with possibilities that can never be realized.

And not just in the Waste Land. For all too many in our time, cynicism and irony are safe. To hope, one must open the door to disappointment, rejection, and disbelief. What a dangerous emotion the great theological virtue of hope can be!

The dark irony of April that Eliot captured so brilliantly is that last year may have been the first April in memory where Eliot’s opening lines seemed to make sense. And that’s just what made last April the cruelest: What should have been a time of reawakening, of rejuvenation and hope for a bright future, had become a time of disappointment and in many cases, of despair.

Let us hope that this April and the ensuing months will be different, and that what should be a season of optimism and new growth will not give way to a new round of cynicism and despondency. Pandemics end. Rain falls again. Spring rains renew the earth every year. We do well to remember this, even as we might be tempted to gear up for another cruel April in the Waste Land.

Psalm 30:5 says, “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” Unfortunately, that does not literally mean we will weep through the night and tomorrow everything will be better. But instead it assures us that there WILL be a time of joy even in the midst of our trials.