TIME, GODS, ASCENSION: ELIOT LEAVES THE WORLD

Regarding T.S. Eliot, I'm assuming that we agree on one point, that Eliot essentially wrote a single poem, a very long and evolving poem, that began with "Prufrock" and concluded with Four Quartets. Another way of making the same point:  Eliot had his subject matters, and they were presented and developed in an orderly fashion, and as a result, Eliot's poetic career is imminently "readable," patently interpretable.  It's as if he set himself a group of problems to explore as a young man, devoted his mid-career to exploring them, and having drawn satisfactory conclusions regarding these problems by 1942, when "Burnt Norton" was published and when Eliot still had nearly a quarter-century to live, he ceased writing poetry.  Problem solved.  Case closed.  Poems done.

I've always admired that about him, the way he used poetry to define and complete a task, and I think it's a defining quality of a superior mind.  Eliot never wrote out of habit, it seems to me, nor did he write because he was in a lyrical mood and wished to give vent to his lyricism.  No, Eliot wrote to solve solvable problems, and so the end of poetry was in sight for him as soon as he wrote his first line.

Eliot's defining problems are gathered together in Four Quartets, as if for a final assault.  It's a mighty poem, in my estimation, because it records the struggle required to achieve real clarity on a number of difficult issues.  Eliot is interested in the Christian notion of time, how it fuses time past, present, and future, at the moment of the incarnation, and how, properly conceived, "all time is eternally present," as he says, which is to say, every instant of our lives, again, properly conceived, is a moment of the incarnation. 

Except of course that Eliot was heavily influenced by Indian philosophy, particularly by the Indian practice of figuring forth psychological states as visualized deities:  "I don't know much about gods," Eliot writes, "but I think the river / Is a strong brown god."  Eliot learned from Indian philosophy a kind of lyrical dialecticism, a way of representing poetically the idea that it's difficult to speak of eternity without understanding, implying, and finally accepting the temporal in our lives, the ebb and flow over which we have no control.  To resolve this issue, Eliot ultimately returned to Christianity, a much worked-over Christianity, and found solace, as I read him, in a kind of salvation as figured forth in Christ's life.  Eliot's Christianity in some senses is a conservative Christianity, but in others highly synthetic and unorthodox.

Which leads us to the questions that we might discuss in class.  To what degree do we find Eliot's religious resolutions to be suitable to the contemporary world?  As you probably know, Eliot's stock has dropped somewhat since the heyday of the 40s and 50s.  But I wonder why it has dropped, precisely.  Of course he's conservative politically and artistically, and we tend to fancy ourselves very liberal.  But I think there's more to it than that. 

Eliot has a very distinct vision of art and its purpose, which is, to my eye, visible in his poetry from time to time.  How would you characterize it?  How does it structure his verse?  What are its social implications?  And how does Four Quartets that vision?  What are the poem's essential subjects, and do they engage us today?  Why or why not?  The back cover of my edition has Stephen Spender proclaiming the arrival of "ideas" in Eliot's verse, and what a bracing and much-needed innovation that is.  Agree?  Disagree?

How would you assess Eliot's accomplishment?

Comments

[alschmidt]

Upon my first reading of Eliot's "Four Quartets," I was pleasantly surprised by what Dr. Burris identifies as an admirable consistancy in Eliot's body of work. I expected the Eliot of "FQ" to be quite different than the Eliot of "The Wasteland"-- somewhere along the way, someone(s) gave me the impression that the later, reconciled Eliot contrasted starkly with the earlier, discontented one (that his "conversion" greatly impacted his writing, and that his poetics pre-conversion were worth much more time/study). I suppose I see now what would cause one to make such a distinction, but I prefer seeing the consistencies that Dr. B points out, looking at Eliot's individual works as parts of a larger project, to emphasizing the differences among his individual works.

The view of humanity Eliot presents in "The Wasteland" re-appears periodically in "FQ." In the third section of "Burnt Norton," the speaker describes "strained time-ridden faces. . . / Filled with fancies and empty of meaning." Such faces belong to "Men" who possess "unwholesome lungs" and "unhealthy souls" and who are blown about by wind, "that sweeps the gloomy hills of London," as bits of paper. Such a characterization continues throughout the text, as in the second section of "Little Gidding," where descriptions of the painful realization of "human folly" and your own deeds "ill done" appear.

Additionally, the same distaste for modernity that pervades "WL" is echoed throughout "FQ." The passage Dr. B mentions-- musings about the river being a "strong brown god" is directly followed by the river being "almost forgotten . . . By worshippers of the machine."

Rather than such descriptions functioning as the focus of the text (as is the case with "WL"), Eliot presents them more as illustrations of why our existence is so transitory and of why we are nearly incapable of coping with such a realization. (I think the calmness with which Eliot presents this state of affairs is perhaps the reason some characterize "FQ" as so different than "WL"; additionally, such descriptions read more like forgiving acknowledgments than indictments-- I'm thinking of the last section of "The Dry Salvages": we "are only undefeated/ Because we have gone on trying.") Indeed, Eliot seems much more concerned with (maybe even impressed by?) the state of nature rather than of humanity, as the former functions comfortably (and almost "knowingly") in perpetual transience. I'm thinking of Eliot's frequent allusions to seasons changing and also (perhaps more importantly) of Nature's way of marking (?) time. The "tolling bell" (introduced in the first section of "The Dry") that "Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried/ Ground swell" is a particularly striking image.

This recurring theme of our transient existence, however, was none too comforting to me this weekend-- as I was reading "FQ," I was being herded on and off of 10 row airplanes (not even four seats per row) that had faulty engines, malfunctioning steering equipment, etc. For one who needs medication to fly on a plane that is in good shape, these circumstances were a less than ideal combination with Eliot. As I felt my certain death approaching, I got hung up on Eliot's pattern of fire imagery (probably due to the fact that I read Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" last week). So that I was reading Eliot's phrases, such as "destructive fire," "frigid purgatorial fires," "To be redeemed from fire by fire," "crowned knot of fire," in rather apocalyptic ways, though I acknowledge my personal anxiety coupled with my reading list of late colored this reading-- any thoughts?

Lastly, I think Eliot continues to be quite relevant, but I'm not sure I can back this up with anything particularly scholarly sounding. It probably goes without saying that many of the issues modernists, including Eliot, were grappling with continue to haunt our postmodern era. As much as I love "WL" and as many similarities as I see between it and "FQ," the latter seems quite a bit more balanced (refreshing?) than the former. I suppose what I mean by "balanced" is realistic, or an acknowledgment/portrayal of complexity that I think "WL" in some ways lacks (i.e. "FQ" doesn't make me want to open a vein like "WL" does). We could use a bit more "balance." Thus, I for one am willing to overlook any conservatism in Eliot in favor of the more synthetic view he provides.

[Term paper]

It’s great to see good information being shared and also to see fresh, creative ideas that have never been done before.

[heavy equipment sales]

Definitely, The passage Dr. B mentions-- musings about the river being a "strong brown god" is directly followed by the river being "almost forgotten . . . By worshippers of the machine."

Luigi Hanway