Only through time time is conquered. III Here is a place of disaffection Time before and time after In a dim light: neither daylight Investing form with lucid stillness Turning shadow into transient beauty With slow rotation suggesting permanence Nor darkness to purify the soul Emptying the sensual with deprivation Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker Over the strained time-ridden faces Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies and empty of meaning Tumid apathy with no concentration Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind That blows before and after time, Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs Time before and time after. Eructation of unhealthy souls Into the faded air, the torpid Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London, Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney, Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate.
Not here Not here the darkness, in this twittering world. Descend lower, descend only Into the world of perpetual solitude, World not world, but that which is not world, Internal darkness, deprivation And destitution of all property, Desiccation of the world of sense, Evacuation of the world of fancy, Inoperancy of the world of spirit; This is the one way, and the other Is the same, not in movement But abstention from movement; while the world moves In appetency, on its metalled ways Of time past and time future.
IV Time and the bell have buried the day, The black cloud carries the sun away. Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray Clutch and cling? Chill Fingers of yew be curled Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still At the still point of the turning world.
V Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness, as a Chinese jar still Moves perpetually in its stillness. Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts, Not that only, but the co-existence, Or say that the end precedes the beginning, And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. Shrieking voices Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering, Always assail them. The Word in the desert Is most attacked by voices of temptation, The crying shadow in the funeral dance, The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The detail of the pattern is movement, As in the figure of the ten stairs. This quartet is the most explicitly concerned with time as an abstract principle. The first section combines a hypothesis on time—that the past and the future are always contained in the present—with a description of a rose garden where children hide, laughing. The second section begins with a sort of song, filled with abstract images of a vaguely pagan flavor. However, this statement does not intend to devalue memory and temporal existence, which, according to the poem, allow the moments of greatest beauty.
The fourth, very short section returns to a sort of melody some of the lines rhyme to describe the unattainable, fictional point of fixity around which time is organized. This point is described as surrounded by flowers and birds; perhaps it can be found in the rose garden of the first section.
Eliot is much less experimental with rhyme and meter here than he is in his earlier works. Instead, he displays a mature language consciousness. Through the repetition of words and the use of structures like chiasmus and pastiche, he creates a rhythm not dependent on previous poetic forms.
The Four Quartets were written over a period of eight years, from to You die to the distraction of the world and renounce your self in order to come to the point of spiritual illumination of the still point within that darkness. Part 4 of Burnt Norton focuses on the church bell that signals the ending of the day a sort of death , and yet it is that same bell that acts as a call to prayer, which opens up to new life in the spirit.
Eliot also gives the image of the yew tree, which not only is to be found in various graveyards in England, but also acts as a symbol of new life—hence a symbol of resurrection among the dead. Part 5 of Burnt Norton contemplates the impossibility of transcending the limits of language. Transcendent reality is beyond the limits of language , and yet we need language to point to the reality of that transcendent still point.
Hence, the transcendent Word is attacked by words of temptation that exist in this desert of time. Eliot then mentions the figure of the ten stairs. This is an allusion to St. The first five stairs involve renunciation and descent, while the last five stairs involve fulfillment and ascent to unity. In this discussion, Eliot differentiates between desire and divine love. Desire is distracting movement within time, whereas divine love is unmoving because it is to be found in the timeless still point.
The last seven lines wrap up the main theme thus far. Within the limits of time, we occasionally experience the illumination of reality of the still point, yet those moments and glimpses of eternity quickly pass, and we are left within the ridiculousness of the waste of sad time.
To be honest, a lot of it is completely incomprehensible at least to me. In contrast, your own analysis is crystal clear and pretty much on point. I have learnt a lot and will incorporate some of your ideas and quotations with your permission I hope in my book. Of course, I will give full attribution.
Thank you. Hi there Ray, Sorry, I forgot to respond, but thank you very much for your note about my Four Quartets posts. Obviously, T. I did those posts really for just myself—I love his work. I extremely appreciate your comments about how I was able to make his work comprehensible. Like I said, I really appreciate it. So, you could be looking for that in the future!
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