So. Here we are, the final section of one of history’s richest poems, one of humanity’s finest explorations of the spiritual, and one of our most powerful, most open-hearted (strange to say that of T.S. Eliot, famous for his apparently straightlaced reserve … but remember, this is the man who wrote Old Possum’s Book of … Continue reading “Little Gidding,” Movement V: “The Fire and the Rose Are One”

We only live, only suspire / Consumed by either fire or fire Allegro, andante, scherzo, adagio, allegro vivace – the movements of a string quartet unfold over time, sharing themes, juxtaposing moods, pulling the players and listeners out of time through a medium that only exists in time’s relentless sequence. The quartets of Eliot function … Continue reading The Unfamiliar Name: Little Gidding 4

We’re coming upon the way up, having spent much time on the way down. Eliot begins by reasserting that our spiritual lives have expression through attachment (the live nettle) and detachment (the dead nettle). These have been expressed in the hedgerows' May flowers and midwinter snow “flowers,” in the wedding dance and the darkness of … Continue reading History Lessons

In our end is in our beginning…. I began this series on T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets with a piece entitled “Pause or Journey,” thinking about what the experience of Lent might be—either as a moment to pause and reflect more deeply on our faith and on one’s own physical, psychological, and spiritual states, or as … Continue reading Pilgrimage and Prayer in “Midwinter spring”: “Little Gidding” Movement 1

When there is distress of nations and perplexity / Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgeware Road When we are distracted by the disturbance of the day’s news and worry for the future, Eliot asserts that we are drawn to the many methods of prediction, scrutinizing the night sky, peering into the … Continue reading Wiser Than Despair: The Dry Salvages 5

Here is Mary, the Lady whose stands on the promontory above the dark throat of the sea. Finally in Dry Salvages we move from intimations of incarnation to explicit religious language: prayer, annunciation, and Mary, aka Lady enshrined on the fierce edge of the sea. Mary, figlia del tuo figlio, daughter of your son. Another time … Continue reading Can We Talk About Mary?

“Dry Salvages” is Eliot’s “Water Quartet.” To the extent that the first two “Quartets” take place anywhere, they take place on land—often in a dry and barren land, sometimes in an equally barren and desolate urban landscape.  But at the beginning of “The Dry Salvages,” landscape changes to riverscape and then to seascape.  This is … Continue reading “Water, water everywhere…”: Dry Salvages 2

The Four Quartets is quite an outdoors poem. We have seascapes, country hamlets, bombed-out city scenes, gardens. Sometimes these are themselves, and much more often, maybe always, they reasonate with spiritual states. In The Waste Land, that unforgettably dreary, painful beginning, April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory … Continue reading Voyage by River and Sea: “Dry Salvages,” Movement I