A Rising Creative Force in Global Gaming

AVAPDP, known professionally as Ava, has become one of the most influential Iranian figures in the digital design and gaming ecosystem. As the official P.D.P Set Designer for PUBG MOBILE in Iran, she has produced several designs that have been selected and showcased on PUBG’s official platforms—an achievement that places her among a small group of recognized creators worldwide.

Her work stands out for its unique fusion of Iranian cultural heritage with futuristic and modern aesthetics, a combination that has resonated strongly with both regional and international audiences. Through character design, fashion concepts, and environment art, Ava introduces elements of Iranian identity into global creative spaces, offering a fresh and distinctive visual language within the gaming industry.

In addition to her design work, Ava is the founder of WOW Academy Iran, the first structured educational community dedicated to training Persian‑speaking creators in WOW map design. The academy has quickly grown into a hub for emerging talent, providing guidance, training, and opportunities for new designers to enter the professional landscape.

Ava’s presence extends across multiple platforms—including YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok—where she shares tutorials, showcases her projects, and engages with a diverse international audience. Her expanding digital footprint has strengthened her role as both a creator and a cultural representative.

Despite her success, Ava has faced challenges, including repeated cases of identity misuse and impersonation. These incidents have highlighted the importance of official verification and brand protection as her influence continues to grow.

Official Quote from Ava (AVAPDP)

"My goal has always been to represent Iranian culture in a modern, global context. Through digital design and gaming, I want to show that creativity has no borders—and that our stories, visuals, and heritage can stand proudly on the world stage. Every project I create is a step toward building that bridge."

About Ava (AVAPDP)

Ava, known professionally as AVAPDP, is an Iranian Digital Creator, Official PUBG MOBILE P.D.P Set Designer, and Founder of WOW Academy Iran. She specializes in character design, fashion design, and environment art, blending Iranian cultural motifs with futuristic aesthetics. Her work has been featured multiple times in PUBG MOBILE’s official P.D.P competitions, and she continues to build a global audience across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

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In what was billed by the White House as a press conference following their meeting, Mr. Trump and Putin took no questions, ignoring shouted ones from reporters.

Putin spoke little of Ukraine, focusing on the bond and heritage between the U.S. and Russia, while Mr. Trump said many points were agreed to, and a few are left, regarding Ukraine. The U.S. president plans to call European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he said.

Here is a transcript of what Mr. Trump and Putin said:

PUTIN: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, our negotiations have been held in a constructive atmosphere of mutual respect.

We have very thorough negotiations that were quite useful. I would like to thank once again my American counterpart, for the proposal to travel out here to Alaska. It only makes sense that we've met here, because our countries, though separated by the oceans, are close neighbors. So when we've met, when I came out of the plane and I said, 'Good afternoon, dear neighbor. Very good to see you in good health and to see you alive.' I think that is very neighborly. I think that's some kind words that we can say to each other. We're separated by the strait of Bering, though, there are two islands only between the Russian Island and the U.S. Island. They're only four kilometers apart. We are close neighbors, and it's a fact.

It's also important that Alaska has to do with our common heritage, common history between Russia and the U.S., and many positive events have to do with that territory. Still, there is tremendous cultural heritage, back from the Russian America, for example, Orthodox churches, and a lot of- more than 700 geographical names of Russian origin. During the Second World War, it was here in Alaska that was the origin of the legendary air bridge for the supply of military aircraft and other equipment under the Lend-Lease Program.

It was a dangerous and treacherous route over the vast emptiness of ice. However, the pilots of both countries did everything to bring closer the victory. They risked their lives and they gave it all for the common victory. I was just in the city of Magadan in Russia. And there is a memorial there dedicated to the Russian, the U.S. pilots. And there are two flags, the U.S. flag and the Russian flag. And I know that here as well, there is such a memorial. There is a military burial place several kilometers away from here. The Soviet pilots are buried there who died during that dangerous mission. We're thankful to the citizens and the government of the U.S. for carefully taking care of their memory. I think that's very worthy and noble. We'll always remember other historical examples when our countries defeated common enemies together in the spirit of battle camaraderie and allyship that supported each other and facilitated each other. I am sure that this heritage will help us rebuild and foster mutually beneficial and equal ties at this new stage, even during the hardest conditions.

It is known that there have been no summits between Russia and the U.S. for four years, and that's a long time. This time was very hard for bilateral relations, and let's be frank, they've fallen to the lowest point since the Cold War. I think that's not benefiting our countries and the world as a whole. It is apparent that sooner or later, we have to amend the situation to move on from the confrontation to dialog, and in this case, a personal meeting between the heads of state has been long overdue, naturally, under the condition of serious and painstaking work, and this work has been done.

In general, me and President Trump have very good direct contact. We've spoken multiple times. We spoke frankly on the phone. And the special envoy of the president, Mr. Witkoff, traveled out to Russia several times. Our advisers and heads of foreign ministries kept in touch all the time, and we know fully well that one of the central issues was the situation around Ukraine.

We see the strive of the administration and President Trump personally to help facilitate the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict, and his strive to get to the crux of the matter, to understand this history, is precious. As I've said, the situation in Ukraine has to do with fundamental threats to our security. Moreover, we've always considered the Ukrainian nation, and I've said it multiple times, a brotherly nation. How strange it may sound in these conditions. We have the same roots, and everything that's happening is a tragedy for us, and terrible wound. Therefore, the country is sincerely interested in putting an end to it.

At the same time, we're convinced that in order to, to make the settlement lasting and long term, we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict, and we've said it multiple times, to consider all legitimate concerns of Russia and to reinstate a just balance of security in Europe and in the world on the whole, and agree with President Trump, as he has said today, that naturally, the security of Ukraine should be ensured as well. Naturally, we are prepared to work on that.

I would like to hope that the agreement that we've reached together will help us bring closer that goal and will pave the path towards peace in Ukraine. We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively and that they won't throw a wrench in the works. They will not make any attempts to use some backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress.

Incidentally, when the new administration came to power, bilateral trade started to grow. It's still very symbolic. Still, we have a growth of 20%. As I've said, we have a lot of dimensions for joint work. It is clear that the U.S. and Russian investment and business cooperation has tremendous potential. Russia and the U.S. can offer each other so much in trade, digital, high tech and in space exploration. We see that arctic cooperation is also very possible, in our international context. For example, between the far east of Russia and the West Coast of the U.S.

Overall, it's very important for our countries to turn the page to go back to cooperation. It is symbolic that, not far away from here, the border between Russia and the US, there was a so-called International Date Line. I think you can step over, literally, from yesterday into tomorrow, and I hope that's- will succeed in that, in the political sphere. I would like to thank President Trump for our joint work, for the well wishing and trustworthy tone of our conversation.

It's important that both sides are result-oriented and we see that the president of the U.S. has a very clear idea of what he would like to achieve. He sincerely cares about the prosperity of his nation. Still, he understands that Russia has its own national interests.

I expect that today's agreements will be the starting point, not only for the solution of the Ukrainian issue, but also will help us bring back business-like and pragmatic relations between Russia and the U.S.

And in the end, I would like to add one more thing. I'd like to remind you that in 2022, during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague, it should not- the situation should not be brought to the point of no return, when it would come to hostilities and accept it quite directly back then, that is a big mistake. Today, when President Trump is saying that if he was the president back then, there would be no war, and I'm quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that. I think that overall, me and President Trump have built a very good business-like and trustworthy contact, and have every reason to believe that moving down this path, we can come and assume it better to the end of the conflict in Ukraine. Thank you. Thank you.

TRUMP: Thank you very much, Mr. President, that was very profound, and I will say that I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points that we agreed on, most of them, I would say, a couple of big ones that we haven't quite gotten there, but we've made some headway. So there's no deal until there's a deal.

I will call up NATO in a little while, I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate, and I'll of course, call up President Zelenskyy and tell him about today's meeting. It's ultimately up to them. They're going to have to agree with what Marco and Steve and some of the great people from the Trump administration who've come here, Scott and John Ratcliffe. Thank you very much. But we have some of our really great leaders. They've been doing a phenomenal job.

We also have some tremendous Russian business representatives here. And I think, you know, everybody wants to deal with us. We've become the hottest country anywhere in the world in a very short period of time, and we look forward to that. We look forward to dealing- we're going to try and get this over with.

We really made some great progress today. I've always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir. We had many, many tough meetings, good meetings. We were interfered with by the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. It made it a little bit tougher to deal with, but he understood it. I think he's probably seen things like that during the course of his career. He's seen- he's seen it all. But we had to put up with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. He knew it was a hoax, and I knew it was a hoax, but what was done was very criminal, but it made it harder for us to deal as a country, in terms of the business, and all of the things that would like to have dealt with, but we'll have a good chance when this is over.

So just to put it very quickly, I'm going to start making a few phone calls and tell them what happened. But we had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to. There are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there. I would like to thank President Putin and his entire team, whose faces who I know, in many cases, otherwise, other than that, whose- whose faces I get to see all the time in the newspapers, you're very- you're almost as famous as the boss, but especially this one right over here.

But we had some good meetings over the years, right? Good, productive meetings over the years, and we hope to have that in the future. Let's do the most productive one right now. We're going to stop, really, 5, 6, 7 thousand, 1000s of people a week from being killed, and President Putin wants to see that as much as I do. So again, Mr. President, I'd like to thank you very much, and we'll speak to you very soon, and probably see you again very soon. Thank you very much, Vladimir.

PUTIN: Next time in Moscow.

TRUMP: Ooh, that's an interesting one. I don't know. I'll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening. Thank you very much, Vladimir, and thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.

TRUMP: Ooh, that's an interesting one. I don't know. I'll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening. Thank you very much, Vladimir, and thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.

PUTIN: Thank you so much.

Author: Saša Milivojev

T.S. Eliot stands as the first truly modern English poet and among the earliest European poets of the twentieth century. His debut collection, Poems 1909–1925, already heralds a profound shift and exerts considerable influence.

The earliest section of the book dates to 1917 and marks a pivotal moment in English lyric poetry—Prufrock. The opening poem of the entire collection is:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

This poem represents a complete rupture with the traditions of the nineteenth century. The nature of its imagery reveals both a complexity of approach and a subtlety of tone.

By “complexity of approach,” we refer to Eliot’s ability to encompass a wide range of sensibilities and images within a single poem. He fuses a modern, urban sensibility—with depictions of the city, though no longer in the descriptive manner of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry—with a pervasive sense of aging, and the tragedy of aging and transience, both personal and universal. Diverse elements come into direct contact: from lines such as “I grow old … I grow old … / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” which were criticized at the time as unpoetic, to passages describing yellow smoke and fog drifting through the city, rubbing its back against windowpanes and urban canals—imagery poetic even by nineteenth-century standards. Thus, high poeticism is interwoven with irony and self-irony, reflecting a nuanced relationship with the self and the world.

The banality and superficiality of modern man are expressed in lines like “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo,” whose refrains evoke a claustrophobic sense of urban ennui.

In this way, the laws of the poetic are forgotten: the poet claims the liberty to use any material he deems significant. This is the sensibility of one who lives fully within his time. Yet, there are also passages whose rhythm is slow and ponderous, such as those with overtly refined and pathetic expressions like “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” or in combination with the caricatural: “I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter.” A conscious elegance in disappointment: “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, / And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid.”

Portrait of a Lady

In the following poem, Eliot achieves a far greater degree of balance and refinement. The tone is more consistent, the rhythm more harmonious. Here, he emerges as master of both poetic experience and technique. Everything is in motion, yet under absolute control. Again, the theme is aging—not personal, but that of a woman who is both a friend and something more. Personal aging is felt through reflections, fears, and premonitions of the future. The dialogic form is differentiated by presenting the lady’s utterances in the idiom of contemporary speech. The verse is free, yet Eliot’s strength lies in achieving internal precision and control. For the first time in English poetry, the poet approaches contemporary speech as closely as a novelist might. This marks a major triumph over traditional habits. The boldness of transitions and psychological delineations, along with the use of refrains that sustain rhythm and evoke the endless, meaningless duration of life in old age (as when the lady, realizing she is no longer capable of love or the charms of life, repeats: “I shall sit here, serving tea to friends”). This is the most significant poem in the Prufrock section.

Baudelaire owed much of his invention to Tristan Corbière and Jules Laforgue, as well as to the late Elizabethan dramatists and poets of England—all of whom Eliot studied. The development of urban sensibility links him to Baudelaire. He is particularly indebted to Laforgue for the self-ironic, skeptical stance in Prufrock. Yet, given the structural differences between French and English verse, this only underscores the originality required to transform such influences into great poetry. The most important poem following this work dates from 1920:

GERONTION (Greek: “Little Old Man”)

This poem is significant on multiple levels. It stands as a major poetic achievement in its own right, but it is also crucial for the precise development of Eliot’s celebrated technique—essential for understanding The Waste Land. The dynamic resemblance to late Elizabethan dramatic style is evident. Yet, no poem of comparable quality exists in the works of Middleton, Webster, Tourneur, Chapman, or even Donne, whom Eliot greatly esteemed—perhaps only in Shakespeare.

Here, sensation becomes word and word becomes sensation, as Eliot described the metaphysical poets. The poem exhibits:

• Psychological subtlety

• Complex imagery of diverse richness

• Miraculously assured execution

It marks a stark departure from nineteenth-century English poets such as Tennyson. Even when Tennyson writes in iambic pentameter with dramatic intent, his tone is more Miltonic than Shakespearean. His poetic expression is distanced from speech, and the musicality of his language becomes an end in itself. In Eliot, both rhythm and language are rooted in contemporary speech.

Whereas Prufrock and Portrait of a Lady explore personal turmoil and individual concerns, Gerontion presents an old man who embodies a condition far removed from the poet’s own. He represents a comprehensive human consciousness, elevated beyond the individual.

Eliot’s method here eschews narrative and logical continuity. The poem is best read backwards—only at the end do we realize that all the characters are contents of the old man’s memory: “Tenants of the house / Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.” Let us proceed: the poetic “I,” an old man “in a dry month,” too aged even to read, listens as a child reads to him, while he waits for rain. The imagery shifts to a Jew supposedly seen sitting on a window ledge, and simultaneously to a coughing goat on a hill near the house. These two images cannot be logically or visually connected; they coexist only as contents of consciousness—a fact revealed only at the end. All figures serve to help the old man resolve the question: What remains? What is the meaning?

This connects to the epigraph from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: “Thou hast nor youth nor age, But as it were an after-dinner’s sleep, Dreaming of both.”

A central Eliot theme—present from Prufrock through The Waste Land and beyond—is also found here: the mixture of memory and desire within present barrenness. The old man, waiting in vain for rain in a barren month, experiences envy toward both others’ and his own youthful vigor. Youthful desire is entwined with the mysteries of faith: “The word within a word, unable to speak a word, Wrapped in the robes of darkness. In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger…”

Thus, youth and Christ’s strength are fused within a single line. Eliot’s signature leaps between themes are evident—entirely different emotions and sensations are juxtaposed and merged.

Most importantly, once this emotional depth is established through faith, it is contrasted—through a sublime passage—with worldly, modern frustration, evoked through concrete names, feelings, and images: “To be eaten, to be drunk, All in whispers, by Mr. Silver, With caressing hands, in Limoges, Who walked all night in the adjoining room, By Hakagawa, among the Titian paintings, who bowed, By Madame Tornquist in the darkened room, Who rearranged the flowers, by Fraulein von Kulp, Who entered the hall and passed through the door with a rustle.”

Again, the transition is exquisitely subtle. The feeling, elevated to a metaphysical level through allusion to the Holy Communion, is delicately contrasted with worldly vanity. The whispers—initially sacred, like those of prayer—become conspiratorial, lustful gossip, evoking brothels. Art is now introduced “among the Titians”—art and faith, both refuges from time and nihilistic reality, suffer the same frustration. Finally, the image descends to a very specific individual in a concrete pose, emphasizing present emptiness: “Vacant shuttles Weave the wind. I have no ghosts. An old man in a draughty house Under a windy knob.”

The image ends precisely where it began—with the old man in barren solitude.

Finally, Gerontion introduces another structural element of Eliot’s poetics: ambiguity. A prime example is the closing image of the gull. This image accompanies scenes from the newspaper—“World News”—with names listed haphazardly. The oily wind scatters a handful of the gull’s feathers, painfully revealing the futility and helplessness of individual life. Yet, the gull’s capricious vitality also stands in opposition to a world of finance, crime, and depravity. The old man’s position is now ambiguous: the feathers signify inevitable death and decay— “An old man driven by the Trade Winds To a sleepy corner”— but they also symbolize the strength and passion he has lost.

The following poems develop the technique initiated in Gerontion to a high degree. They are significant for introducing what will become dominant in The Waste Land: allusiveness and citationality, which were not yet present in Gerontion.

Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar This poem can be understood in relation to the opening citation from Antony and Cleopatra. Its primary function is ironic contrast: heroic, exalted love (in the first part of the poem) is juxtaposed with a contemptible episode from modern urban life, where the Jew Bleistein visits a brothel.

Sweeney Among the Nightingales A similar technique is employed. The allusion to Agamemnon’s murder is again contrasted with a brothel scene—where a prostitute (here a Jewish woman, which led to accusations of antisemitism against Eliot) kills the visitor, Sweeney. In the finale, myth and the everyday are fused through the existing church of Sacré-Cœur, where spilled liquid defiles the king’s shroud, all accompanied by Agamemnon’s cries.

In these two poems, the number of allusions is nearly incalculable—ranging from epigraphs and hidden quotations to descriptive allusions. They directly usher in The Waste Land.

THE WASTE LAND (1922–1923)

The central issue of The Waste Land is the problem of interpreting modern poetry. The poem provoked considerable controversy—Eliot was accused of requiring erudition for comprehension, and of providing insufficient commentary and guidance, as the symbolic and mythological references drawn from various cultures could not be grasped within such a brief framework. Today, this criticism carries less weight. First, it is partially valid; second, some elements may be better understood without commentary; and third, Eliot’s model has become foundational for modern poetry—marked by allusive practice, citationality, and intertextuality.

Modern sensibility and the consciousness of modern man are fractured—defined by distortion, dichotomy, and unresolved antinomies. Such a consciousness demands in art an open form, rather than a final, closed, and unified work. F.R. Leavis offers a widely influential objection: that The Waste Land fails to articulate a coherent metaphysical idea. Yet this critique reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of Eliot. The poem is indeed organized, but this organization does not imply formal closure or conceptual completeness—not even metaphysical. Eliot’s erudition, his wealth of literary allusions and borrowings, reflects the current state of civilization. Traditions and cultures are presented, but no single tradition can encompass the vast diversity of material summoned by historical imagination—an imagination that must contend with the immense capital of the past. This is the source of fragmentation of form and the irreversible loss of a sense of absoluteness. Eliot’s aim is to present the absence of form as a form.

On the other hand, Eliot’s notes pose a separate problem. In short, they exert pressure on the reader’s reception. This pressure arises from the nature of artistic reception—the work demands to be constituted in the recipient’s consciousness as a more or less unified aesthetic object (which has nothing to do with extracting a metaphysical idea, since the poem is not a theological treatise but a work of art). A work with so many points of entry, so radically open, reaches a level of semantic extensiveness that threatens the formation of an aesthetic whole. The author’s notes thus function as a form of extratextual, non-fictional pressure on reception. The challenge of understanding this poem lies in determining the extent to which those notes belong to the world of the poem.

Leavis describes the condition of modernity as one of speed and diversity, shaped by life in the machine age. The result is a break in continuity and a violent uprooting of life. This metaphor of roots fits well within Eliot’s context—we witness the complete uprooting of old habits, of life once rooted in the earth. Urban imagery linking Eliot to Baudelaire and Laforgue is particularly significant.

Eliot’s first note refers to From Ritual to Romance, Jessie Weston’s anthropological study of fertility rites, where the motif of the waste land plays a central role. A second key parallel is Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which also engages with the waste land theme. Frazer’s grove of Diana is a multifaceted symbol. There, Diana’s priest is a murderer—he must kill his predecessor to renew the cycle of life. This ritual killing is not an end in itself; its purpose is to preserve the old within the framework of the new, which is the condition for continuity and development. This directly connects to Eliot’s conception of tradition and to the title The Waste Land, which is a direct allusion to Frazer’s forest. Thus, life is born from death. A fundamental link exists between the sacred and the profane. In Weston’s motif of the slain god (the “Hanged God,” in Eliot), the central element of sacrifice carries the same idea.

Eliot’s primary concern: birth, copulation, and death. The key theme is the distance between the civilization depicted in The Waste Land and natural rhythms, rendered through ironic contrast using anthropological motifs. Vegetative cults and fertility celebrations, with their attendant magic, represent harmony between human culture and the natural environment, expressing a sense of life’s unity. In the modern waste land: “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land…” Spring is thus perceived as cruel, because today—due to the rupture between civilization and nature—it fails to ignite the human spirit. It does not generate life and fulfillment, but rather disgust, spiritual lethargy, and unanswered questions. Again, we encounter the intermingling of memory and desire, familiar from earlier poems. Spring painfully blends memory and desire within present sterility. Once more, this unfolds on the level of personal aging, which, through Eliot’s characteristic transitions, becomes the aging of civilization.

The structural unity of this poem is not merely metaphysical, as some have claimed. It is constructed simultaneously on dramaturgical and musical levels. In fact, the entire poem possesses musical organization—it functions as a symphony, meaning it must be read from beginning to end. Each preceding passage creates a semantic background upon which all subsequent parts must be read.

Let us proceed.

The first section of the poem is The Burial of the Dead. In truth, the actual beginning is Eliot’s note, which establishes the connection to Weston and Frazer. The symbolism of vegetative cults presented in those works provides the initial semantic background. Thus, the anthropological foundation serves a positive function—it creates the most general backdrop, evoking a sense of life’s unity that is essential to the poem. Here, the personal experience of Prufrock and Portrait of a Lady is entirely transcended—there is a complete projection of consciousness and abandonment of the individual. The poet becomes not only aware of his entire era and all that preceded it, but excessively aware. The result of this excessive awareness is the loss and fragmentation of form, accompanied by a sense of futility.

What is the significance of anthropology in the poem? It is, after all, a science—and science is largely responsible for this maximal expansion of consciousness. A process of disintegration. To the modern mind, pagan cults are merely human customs. The modern individual possesses knowledge of fertility rites, but the primal experience of nature and its cycles is left to the primitive. Thus, it becomes clear why April is the cruellest month, and spring a barren season. Winter is the winter of forgetfulness, a sterile winter that covers everything in the snow of oblivion. Summer arrives with a downpour. The cycle is thus closed.

Each new cycle must be viewed as a symphonic variation on a theme. The image ascends to a higher level—now it is a specific, representative experience: drinking coffee in the square, childhood memories, and the finale: “In the mountains, one feels free / I read late into the night, and in winter I go south.” This is the feeling of modern vanity. It is the memory from the April line that blends “memory and desire.” The formula known from Gerontion: memory awakens desire, but fulfillment is impossible—the condition is sterility. This is suggested by “I read late into the night,” which carries the tone of empty intellectualism. Immediately follows the contrast and commentary: April may stir dead roots with rain, but since we are given an image of vain, hollow human rumination, the next question closes the cycle: “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?” This stony rubbish evokes the waste land through allusion to Ezekiel and Ecclesiastes—addressing the Son of Man: “You cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, / And the dry stone no sound of water.” Thus begins the image of spiritual agony, which will be developed in later sections. The stanza ends with: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” The theme of fear is also developed in other parts of the poem. It is both the fear of death and a primordial terror, a horror before absolute nothingness—which later becomes fully apparent.

The excerpt from Tristan and Isolde introduces a stark contrast, presenting an image of romantic, absolute love. The girl with hyacinths embodies “memory and desire”; the hyacinth, like the lilac, is associated with fertility cults. It is directly evocative, and this is further intensified through anthropological analogy. Simultaneously, the flower is linked to the Hanged God—the god of vegetation. Thus, the desolation of the waste land briefly transforms into passionate ecstasy, only to return again to the tragic image of a man who is “neither living nor dead… staring into silence.” The passage on romantic love ends in despair.

The complexity deepens in the next section of the first movement, which introduces Madame Sosostris, the clairvoyant: “Famous clairvoyante / Had a bad cold, nevertheless / Known to be the wisest woman in Europe.” Eliot adopts an ironic stance here. She presents a Tarot deck, which becomes a new semantic field, crucial for the subsequent sections. The prophetess introduces the demi-monde, just as the earlier conversation in the square introduced vanity and superficiality. Eliot explains the significance of the Tarot in his notes. First, the Tarot is connected to fertility rites. Second, the figures on the cards serve as a backdrop for the characters in the pivotal section “What the Thunder Said.” Eliot demonstrates how various figures merge into one another: the Hanged Man relates to Frazer’s Hanged God of fertility, and later connects to the cloaked figure from the Emmaus journey that opens “What the Thunder Said.” We realize this is the same Son of God introduced in the first section. The Phoenician sailor with pearl eyes and the one-eyed merchant also reappear later, as do the crowds described by the prophetess, who are immediately identified in the next stanza with the masses crossing London Bridge. The prophetess warns to beware death by water. In the section “Death by Water,” we will see that this warning is futile—death is inevitable, and the salvific water longed for since the beginning, the water from which all life springs (in fertility rituals), does not save—it kills.

Thus, charlatanism and banality coexist with fate and metaphysical depth. Next comes the image of the Unreal City, shrouded in dawn mist, mown down by death. Eliot’s note helps us interpret this through the lens of Dante’s Inferno, where punishment for sin is endured in eternal wandering, aimlessness, and failure to reach a destination. The Unreal City alludes to Baudelaire, and its nightmarish quality is intensified by an episode from Eliot’s personal life, when he heard a chilling pause after the ninth chime of the clock at St. Mary Woolnoth. This becomes, within the poem, the horror of the modern city—its eerie silence: “The dead sound after the stroke of nine.” The poet meets a friend and asks about the corpse he buried last year in the garden: “Has it begun to sprout?” Again, this connects to the fertility cult, but here the dimension is nightmarish—previously introduced, now further developed.

The section ends with a line from Baudelaire’s opening poem in Les Fleurs du mal: “Tu! Hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!” This is a direct descent into the personal, highly effective, and distinctly Baudelairean.

The next section, A Game of Chess, begins with an allusion to Antony and Cleopatra, but quickly shifts into a feverish rhythm of neurasthenic agony (Leavis), continuing and expanding the nightmare theme from the first movement. We see two people trembling in fear at strange sounds in the house, and the Phoenician sailor with pearl eyes reemerges—this part of the second movement ends in a somber image of death. What follows appears to be a contrast—life—but it is a miserable life, where a failed thirty-year-old woman tries to attract a man, and everything ends in endless repetition of banality: “Good night! Good night! Good night! Good night!”

The Fire Sermon alludes to the Buddha’s sermon, the Buddhist counterpart to Christ’s preaching. The poetic “I” sits by the river fishing (an allusion to the Fisher King from the first section), reflecting on the death of his father the king, and his father before him. The line of the Hanged King is reestablished—tracing from Weston’s and Frazer’s Hanged God, through the Son of Man (Christ), to the Hanged King of the Tarot in the first section. Again, the Unreal City appears, but now it contains the one-eyed merchant from the Tarot, who is simultaneously real—a friend of the poet inviting him to lunch. The very center of the poem (the central part of the third section, which is itself central) is the key to interpretation. Eliot states this in his notes. It is the image of the androgynous prophet Tiresias, who supposedly merely observes, but is in fact the central actor of this world. Just as all characters blend into one another and emerge from one another, so too do all themes and variations complement each other. Tiresias, who sees all and knows all, is the convergence point of all male and female figures. The key to the poem is the attempt to place total human consciousness at the center of attention, embodied in Tiresias. This explains and justifies the difficult problem of the poem’s organization: the desire to present the consciousness of modern man promotes the absence of organizing principles, the lack of any internal direction. A poem that contains all myths cannot be built upon any single myth. Tiresias simultaneously describes and foretells scenes: “I, Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs / Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest.” Once again, love—meant to aspire toward creation—is reduced to mere sex and dissatisfaction, that is, fleeting gratification.

This passage also raises a problem regarding Eliot’s notes. It ends with the following lines: “To Carthage then I came / Burning burning burning burning / O Lord Thou pluckest me out / O Lord Thou pluckest / burning.” Eliot claims this is clearly an allusion to St. Augustine (his arrival in Carthage) and to the Buddha. As a culmination, he says, he placed an allusion to representatives of Western and Eastern asceticism. However, the fact remains that these lines do not easily generate such an allusive level. It is the least convincing passage in that regard.

Death by Water, the fourth section, enacts the foretold demise of the Phoenician sailor. His death, previously foreshadowed by Madame Sosostris, now unfolds with stark finality. The sailor, once adorned with pearl eyes, is claimed by the very element that was longed for throughout the poem—water. Yet this water, symbolic of life and renewal in fertility rites, does not redeem—it destroys. The salvific promise collapses into fatal inevitability.

The fifth and final section, What the Thunder Said, is the most renowned. Much is clarified here. Its semantic structure is tripartite, interweaving:

• The Road to Emmaus

• The approach to the Chapel Perilous (from Weston)

• The decline of Eastern Europe, particularly the Russians, whom Eliot viewed as barbaric usurpers of civilization

Following the icy silence—echoing the silence after the ninth chime of St. Mary Woolnoth and the broader motif of the waste land—and the “murmur in the rocks,” which recalls the neurasthenic rhythm of A Game of Chess, Christ arrives with the sound of thunder. He is the evolved form of the Hanged God, the Fisher King, the resurrected buried corpse. His arrival signifies rebirth through death and simultaneously evokes the Emmaus narrative. He is the cloaked figure, the invisible companion on the Emmaus road.

Eliot, in his notes, introduces a striking intrusion of reality into this fictional world—he recounts how Arctic explorers, exhausted to the point of hallucination, reported visions of an unknown man following them. This Christ is the sum of all spring gods—Adonis, Attis, Osiris—sacrificed and hanged. The drought in this section becomes a thirst for the water of faith and healing, rendering the orchestration of the poem overtly religious. Yet the thunder is dry and barren—there is no rain, no resurrection, no renewal. After the opening, the verse loses its suppleness, dragging like the figures on London Bridge. The imagined sound of salvific rain becomes a torment.

The most significant passage presents a nightmarish vision of universal chaos, where the ruins of Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, London, and Vienna appear as unreal cities—already familiar to us. The image ascends to a portrayal of humanity endlessly circling—a vision of eternal futility. Weston’s Chapel Perilous becomes a Chapel Dangerous, ominous, filled with bones that are sterile, incapable of sprouting life.

Then the thunder speaks, uttering the Upanishadic triad: Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata Eliot explains: Give, Sympathize, Control. Yet under “Give,” we find only the barren offering of the self—fleeting and devoid of essence. “Sympathize” connects to Bradley’s philosophy: since we perceive the world from finite perspectives, we live in isolated prisons and know only our own key. “Control” is deeply disheartening, culminating in the question: “Shall I at least set my lands in order?”

There is no transformation at the end of this incommensurable myth. The poet sits by the shore, fishing, behind him a barren plain and the ruins of London. He is Nerval’s Aquitanian prince of shattered towers.

The poem concludes with the Upanishadic invocation: Shantih Shantih Shantih This is a notably uneventful ending. Eliot felt compelled to comment on it in his notes, translating—by his own admission—only a partial meaning of the Vedic verse as “the peace which passeth understanding.” He tacitly acknowledges the limited effect such a line can have on the Western reader’s consciousness. It is the message of the later Four Quartets, where Eliot advocates acceptance of divine mystery regardless of rational insight.

THE HOLLOW MEN (1925)

These are the poems that follow The Waste Land. The dedication—“Mistah Kurtz—he dead”—refers to the character from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In the novel, a boy announces the death of the protagonist, who has spent years in the African jungle trading ivory. The second epigraph is drawn from the children’s chant during Guy Fawkes Day, commemorating the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which Parliament was to be blown up. On this anniversary, an effigy of Guy Fawkes—stuffed with straw—is burned, and children collect donations from passersby. The epigraph reads: “A penny for the Old Guy.”

The poem ends with the famous lines: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” Thus, through quotation and allusion, a semantic framework is established—from beginning to end—signaling the disappearance of all hope, as we know from Conrad’s novel that the character dies unable to characterize his life with anything but the words: “The horror! The horror!” The entire poem is constructed to follow this allusive trajectory—initially steeped in neurasthenic agony, caught between “the idea and the reality,” “the motion and the act,” and ultimately concluding in a quietude that stems from the inability to articulate anything about a world of emptiness, as in Conrad.

On the other hand, the allusive spectrum introduced through the story of Old Guy evokes a world populated by hollow-headed beings—utterly vacuous existences. This is a complex layer, as Eliot confirmed that the title also relates to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (among other works), where Shakespeare notes that love in decline requires ceremony and theatricality. The hollow men, like parade horses, stage grotesque and pitiful displays, lacking all depth.

This is crucial within the poem itself, as it clarifies why the text is so deeply entwined with religious ritual. Through Shakespeare, the image of empty ceremony is evoked—the poem even ends like a liturgy, with choral repetition in address to God (“Thine is the Kingdom, Thine is the Life…”), which are in fact refrains within the poem. These men are not entirely dead—they are spiritually inert, and therein lies the irony. They touch heads emptily, as in mass, and sing together, but their heads are filled with straw—like the effigy of Guy Fawkes.

This is Eliot’s well-known contrast between sacred ritual and banal everyday life—a juxtaposition that exposes the spiritual void of modern existence.

ASH-WEDNESDAY (1930)

In this collection, Eliot’s preoccupation is purely religious. It follows the period of his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism. A religious tone is interwoven with lamentation over the irrevocable loss of youthful creative power: “I have no hope that I shall ever know / The glory of the positive hour again”— that fragile moment in which we touch divinity, however partially and faintly—through creation. And this, now, is irretrievably lost.

The entire poem represents a struggle to attain faith in something beyond the self—a difficult effort to reach, through pure belief, something that reason cannot grasp. Life’s journey is presented as a metaphysical path between antinomies, toward the recognition of the One. The central problem of the poem is explicitly framed as the problem of patience and faith. Liturgical echoes appear in the allusion to Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, which Eliot renders in English. Patience and sincerity are posed as challenges of both faith and creation—our relationship to the Creator and to the created. The created must be embodied, however imperfectly, for if it is not embodied—if it is not made—it is nothing.

A direct prayer to the Virgin, surrounded by three leopards, exemplifies Eliot’s fusion of the irreconcilable—symbolically elusive even to interpretation. The Virgin is refracted through the image of Woman, as Christ is through Man.

FOUR QUARTETS (According to Helen Gardner)

These poems exhibit an almost mystical symmetry—both in meaning and in structure. They are four meditations on the same revelation, each articulated differently: through distinct symbolism, rhythm, and tone. Each bears the name of a geographical location with symbolic resonance:

• Burnt Norton evokes no particular associations. Time itself holds no special significance here; it is a moment in time at a specific place.

• East Coker refers to the village from which Eliot’s ancestor departed for the New World in the 17th century. The poet spends his summer there, his thoughts occupied with ancestry and family. The personal dimension is transposed into historical reflection.

• The Dry Salvages is an archipelago off the coast of Massachusetts, associated with Eliot’s childhood and the settlement of his forebears. It is a place of private and pleasant memories, nostalgically colored as the end of childhood is remembered.

• Little Gidding carries exclusively historical, not personal, connotations. It is the village where Nicholas Ferrar withdrew to lead a devout life—a place of mystical stillness. Here, the semantic scope reaches its fullest extension.

The most frequent image in Four Quartets is that of the traveler—linked to the figures on London Bridge in The Waste Land and the journey to Emmaus. These are grotesquely grimacing faces, weary and wretched—not travelers, but wanderers. For Eliot, this is a metaphor for human sinfulness. Movement from point to point symbolizes partial knowledge, the imperfection of human intellect, which requires faith—for only faith can offer the complete picture. Faith is linked to movement that is stillness, akin to Taoist thought.

The paradox is that reason, rather than ignoring its own limitations, must acknowledge and understand them—and this recognition itself constitutes a path: a journey through past, present, and future.

The central sentence across all four poems concerns time, expressed in various ways. The essence is given at the very beginning: “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future.” And another: “The way is not in movement but in stillness.”

Each poem offers three dimensions of meaning—literal, moral, and theological:

• First Quartet

  • Literal: A moment of inexplicable joy, an ecstatic experience

  • Moral: The virtue of humility, submission to the truth of experience, acceptance of what is—including ignorance

  • Theological: Divine grace, the gift through which we strive toward revelation

• Second Quartet

  • Literal: Old age, the recognition of time’s transience and mortality—both personal and collective

  • Moral: Faith—not merely as acceptance of ignorance, but as an act of belief

  • Theological: Christ’s suffering, the dogma that in the darkness of death, man is not alone but united with God

• Third Quartet

  • Literal: Not a specific experience, but the sum of all experiences we call the past—personal and collective history

  • Moral: Present hope—hope in our vocation and in what we are presently engaged with

  • Mystical: Incarnation, through which time is unified with eternity

• Fourth Quartet

  • Literal: A visit to a chapel on a winter afternoon—a place sanctified by prayer

  • Moral: Mercy

  • Mystical: The Holy Spirit, the gift of resurrection and the ascended Lord

The poem "The Son of the UAE" represents a pinnacle of contemporary poetic expression, uniting personal confession, national gratitude, and a universal message of love for the homeland. Written in Serbian, English and Arabic poem is a symbolic gift to the United Arab Emirates. At once a patriotic ode, a spiritual elegy, and a metaphysical prayer, the poem shines with the poet’s profound affection and devotion. It should be recognized as a cultural and literary offering to the UAE and its people.

Title: "The Son of the UAE"

Even in the title, Milivojev employs a powerful metaphor - "The Son of the UAE." This is not just an emotional statement but a poetic gesture of identification, belonging, and spiritual symbiosis with a land that offered refuge, purpose, and inspiration.

To you my desert, I am returning,
the land of happiness and serenity behold,
the camel carries me towards the Sun,
adorned with the hues of gold.

The poem opens with a return - not merely physical, but spiritual and emotional. "My desert" is a personification of the UAE, seen not as mere geography but as a sacred place of peace and joy. The camel and the Sun evoke traditional Arab imagery, while "hues of gold" suggest both material and metaphysical wealth. This stanza sets the tone: a celebration of a sanctified homeland and the soul’s journey back to it.

Mother of noble heroes untold,
Only you know how to forgive,
Softly embrace, conceal a tear,
Emirates, Mother,
this life I have for you I’ll give,
and no other.

Here, the UAE is portrayed as a mother - a universal symbol of love, forgiveness, and sacrifice. The poet pledges his life not abstractly, but as a solemn vow, reinforcing a deep emotional and spiritual bond. This stanza elevates the relationship with the UAE to the sacred realm of family and loyalty, portraying it as the only place deserving of absolute devotion.

Here, where I have a sister and a brother,
where all the doors are open for me,
where Lilly blooms, as beautiful as can be,
Emirates, the Heart of the world it’s thee.

The poet speaks not of biological siblings, but of spiritual kin - those in the UAE who welcomed him. "All the doors are open" is a metaphor for hospitality, inclusiveness, and respect. The lily, a symbol of purity, represents spiritual beauty and rebirth. The stanza concludes with a powerful affirmation: the UAE is not just a homeland, but the heart of the world.

We’ll fly on the wings of the hawk,
we’ll soar through all of the space and all time,
embellish the stars with our flags,
before we leave them behind,
red, green, white and black
will shine from Moon to Neptune and back.

This stanza lifts the national flag into cosmic realms - literally. The UAE is not merely a land; it is ambition, ascension, and future. The falcon, symbol of strength and freedom, carries the poet through space and time, while the colors of the flag shine across the universe. This is both a visionary manifesto and a poetic ode to the UAE’s progress and pride.

A flash of white kandoras, glistening so bright,
angels, guardians, illumine like starlight,
glistening, from Dubai, right up to the Skies,
to Abu Dhabi,
to paradise,
to sisters abayas, as black as the night.

The poet now paints a human landscape of the Emirates - kandoras and abayas are not merely garments, but symbols of purity, dignity, and identity. The white kandoras shimmer like stars, suggesting spiritual light; the black abayas signify the noble strength and modesty of Emirati women. Cities are transcended into heavenly realms - there is no distinction between the Emirates and paradise.

…to father’s caress,
where grows the seed of virtuousness,
In the golden desert,
thirsting for love,
where the umbilical cord is breaking,
where mother is always waiting,
for the day,
her son will return, from lands far and away,
where Lilly blooms, as beautiful as can be,
Emirates, the Soul of the world it’s thee.

This is the most emotional part of the poem. “Father’s caress” symbolizes protection and moral strength; “the seed of virtuousness” is the ethical legacy growing in the desert. The umbilical cord is breaking - a metaphor for physical separation - but the bond with the Motherland remains unbroken. The image of the mother waiting for her son to return is timeless and universal. The lily blooms once again - symbolizing spiritual renewal. And at the end, the UAE is no longer just the heart, but “the soul of the world.” The poet concludes in a state of unity, reverence, and sanctity.

Conclusion:

The poem "The Son of the UAE" is not just a poetic composition - it is a spiritual and cultural symphony dedicated to the UAE. Each stanza, each line, radiates with respect, elevation, and sincere gratitude.

This poem has the potential to become part of the national literary heritage of the Emirates, as it is written not by someone born as an Emirati, but by one who has become Emirati in spirit, through love and loyalty.

The people of the UAE should embrace this poem as a sincere gift - precious, pure, and of the highest artistic caliber. It asks for nothing - it offers everything: reverence, love, and eternal devotion to the land of light.

Saša Milivojev

THE SON OF THE UAE

To you my desert, I am returning,
the land of happiness and serenity behold,
the camel carries me towards the Sun,
adorned with the hues of gold.
Mother of noble heroes untold,
Only you know how to forgive,
Softly embrace, conceal a tear,
Emirates, Mother,
this life I have for you I'll give,
and no other.

Here, where I have a sister and a brother,
where all the doors are open for me,
where Lilly blooms, as beautiful as can be,
Emirates, the Heart of the world it's thee.

We'll fly on the wings of the hawk,
we'll soar through all of the space and all time,
embellish the stars with our flags,

before we leave them behind,red, green, white and black
will shine from Moon to Neptune and back.

A flash of white kandoras, glistening so bright,
angels, guardians, illumine like starlight,
glistening, from Dubai, right up to the Skies,
to Abu Dhabi,
to paradise,
to sisters abayas, as black as the night.
to father's caress,
where grows the seed of virtuousness,
In the golden desert,
thirsting for love,
where the umbilical cord is breaking,
where mother is always waiting,
for the day,
her son will return, from lands far and away,
where Lilly blooms, as beautiful as can be,
Emirates, the Soul of the world it's thee.

Translated by Ljubica Yentl Tinska