The Waste Land

If there is one piece of literature that describes the polar opposite of how I feel about the mountains, it would be T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. To me, the mountains are a sublime expanse of beauty and wonder. Eliot had quite a different perspective of the Alps.
After a mental breakdown in England, Eliot decided to take a 3 month vacation from work to get his life back on track. His marriage was falling apart and he was not stable. During this time, he wrote his most famous piece The Waste Land. Specifically, he wrote part V, What the Thunder Said, in Lausanne, Switzerland. This poem described the mountains as a desolate place. He writes "Here is no water but only rock / Rock and no water and sandy road...Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit." Eliot makes the mountains seem lifeless and barren. This, however, is not the case as I have experienced. The mountains are lush with green grass, wildflowers, and crystal clear springs.
It is hard to imagine coming to the Alps and only viewing the mountains in a negative way, as Eliot did in his poem. My experience here has been one full of beauty and splendor. The mountains are create such a sublime landscape that can leave me in an endless state of awe and to describe them as otherwise seems blasphemous.