T.S. Elliot.
T.S. Eliot, in full Thomas Stearns Eliot, (born September 26, 1888, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died January 4, 1965, London, England), American-English poet, playwright, literary critic, and editor, a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry in such works as The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in the century. His experiments in diction, style, and versification revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays he shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones. The publication of Four Quartets led to his recognition as the greatest living English poet and man of letters, and in 1948 he was awarded both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature
The Wasteland (1922)
[T. S. Eliot’s reading his poem]
FOR EZRA POUND
IL MIGLIOR FABBRO
I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? 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. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!
“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
[T. S. Eliot’s reading his poems]
Comment
The
Wasteland
“The
Burial of the Dead”
This
is a poem by T.S.Elliot, most of it written in 1921 and first published in
1922. Together with James Joyce’s Ulysses,
it is one of the most representative literary works of the period known as
Modernism. Although the whole poem is divided in five sections, this text
corresponds to the first one, “The Burial of the Dead”.
The
same way it happens in “The Second Coming” by Yeats, we perceive a pessimistic
tone all throughout the poem, representing the delusion of Modernist writers for
the world’s future after WWI. This first section, called “The Burial of the
Dead”, has a lot to do with death, something we deduce from the very first moment,
given the title of the section. All throughout every section of the poem there
is a circular structure, as we can read in this excerpt. Mentioning seasons, and
also a month (April), evokes a circularity which connects the issues of death and
birth. This can also be related to time, being winter the past; Spring (April),
the present; and summer, the future. That is why the poem says “Winter kept us
warm”, making a reference to people being safe in the past, before the war conflict
begun. As for April, which we can consider the present, we read “April is the
cruellest month”, thus revealing the dramatic consequences of the conflict and
the terrible reality of the world after the conflict. Winter means death, but
summer means rebirth, a new beginning they did not expect: “Summer surprised
us.”
We
need to be aware of the importance of the symbolism of memory within the poem,
among other things because memory is always related to the past, when recalling
past events. The poetic persona mentions a cousin and a girl, Marie, and it is not
only important the fact that he remembers that, but especially the way he does
so. The fact that he mentions “there you feel free” makes us understand that he
misses the old days when things were better. Another powerful symbol is water,
present all though the poem. It is mentioned several times, and water is a
symbol of new life. For instance, after it rains, the earth grows plants, and
with plants, a new life is born. Plus, any living being needs water to live. However,
water is also used in the poem to refer to the opposite, death. Some examples
of this appear in “the drowned Phoenician Sailor” (line 47) and in “Fear death
by water” (line 55).
Another
significant feature is the use of the tarot cards with also a symbolic force,
specially the card of “The Hanged Man”, since it is hanged upside-down instead
of being hanging by the neck. What this represents is the idea of seeing things
from a new perspective, just the same way in which the tarot cards suggest the need
of watching the world from new perspectives, something which characterised modernism
and its artists.
In
light of this information we could say that The Wasteland is a masterpiece of modernism
for having a unique way to describe the world and the way society saw it at
that time. Nevertheless, all five parts deal with similar but also different
topics and “The Burial of the Dead” is just the tip of the iceberg.
Four Quartets (1936-1942)
BURNT NORTON
I
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
EAST COKER
I
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
LITTLE GIDDING
IV
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
[...]
V
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
[...]
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's Four Quartets, read by Jeremy Irons: I. Burnt Norton (extracts)
Comment
“Four
Quartets”
Four
Quartets was written by T.S. Elliot between the 1930s and early 40s and
published in the early 1940s, reason why the things it deals with are different
to those in “The Burial of the Dead” commented above. Here, the most important
theme is time.
All the poems are concerned with time and eternity, history and the present, and with
the divine intervention in human life. We know this last thing also because
Elliot had belonged to the Church of England years before. The four poems are
divided in five different sections, and the structure and features of those
sections is not the same in the four of them. For instance, while part I (seen
in Burnt Norton) has a sonata form and no rhyme, part IV (seen in Little Gidding)
is lyrical, in stanzas, and we can appreciate the rhyme. Elliot mixes, in Burnt
Norton, present past and future, in an attempt to make readers realise that
they need to meditate about what life is and also be aware that we can only control
the present. On the other hand, we see in East Cooker a kind of philosophical
approach to time, with many antonyms related to that topic being used to generate
contrast: “In my beginning is my end”, “new building, old timber”. Thus, he
approaches the processes of being born and dying.
We
should bear in mind that each poem could be considered as one of the four elements:
Burnt Norton would be air, East Cooker would be earth, The Dry Savages, which
does not appear in these extracts, air; and Little Gidding, fire. This is
something we read in section IV, where fire is the main theme. Regarding part
V, the last of “Four Quartets”, the author finally seems to come to a conclusion.
He reminds the reader about the ends and the beginnings, but he shows he has understood
the circularity of life and embraces it. In the end, when he says: “We shall not
cease from exploration”, he intends for the reader to keep reflecting on the
world, how it is and how it can be.
Ultimately,
I think that it is important to give credit to T.S. Elliot for being able to
show hope in these poems even though he was writing them during WWII.
Furthermore, the way he does it, with the poems following a similar structure and
dealing with similar but also different issues and themes at the same time, is
impressive.
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