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Four Quartets

Our reading group just finished studying Four Quartets, the remarkable series of poems T. S. Eliot completed in 1942. Here Eliot explores the riddles of -- and the intersections between -- time and eternity, beginning and end, motion and still-point.  

In these poems I was frequently reminded of Ecclesiastes and of Pascal's Pensées. We also saw the influence of Dante upon Eliot's imagery.   

I recommend Thomas Howard's Dove Descending (Ignatius, 2006) as a helpful, and not overly analytic guide for understanding Eliot's words and allusions. 

Eliot's closing stanza brings together the themes of beginning and end, Eden and afterlife, and the unitary role of fire (which destroys and purifies) and the rose (which is life and beauty). Both the fire and the rose have the one purpose of returning us to the Garden, that we might "know the place for the first time."  

Eliot writes, 

"With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
     Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

(T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding" in Four Quartets)





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