"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Tuesday, September 20, 2022

T.S. Eliot - The Four Quartets 1 - Burnt Norton



T.S. Eliot - The Four Quartets
Burnt Norton

R.E. Slater, My Class Notes;
with due thanks to English Professor Michael Stevens

Please Note - These are my class notes. I am in the process of reading Eliot with the help of a quarter-term quasi-college community class. These notes might not be correct as I have written them. Please utilize the additional resources I will list here and in other parts of this poetry website as I refer to them. Thanks! - re slater





@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved

As a Christian, Eliot began to think about the church that was and the church which is. These thoughts produced in him not only a sense of tension but a great sense of disruption both in his own life and the life of the church in the world. A world in which it had failed in its outreach between the voices of old and new theology. Theologies which were either bad or good or were not meeting the needs of humanity in its strifes and confusions. Eliot's own life was similarly filled with its many voices of where the bedrock of faith lay. Did it lay in Jesus' commands to love or in the church's commands which seemed to distance itself from its God, its duties to ministries, and its calls to love rather than to judge and condemn. Such was the turmoil Eliot was dealing with.

Secondly, and most importantly, Eliot visited Burnt Norton with his ex-wife, and later, close companion Emily Hale, walking the grounds with him in his memories. Much later, Eliot's second wife, Valarie, captured his thoughts in the play "Cats" when Eliot reflected that "memory is the real parts of us; that memory revises us as we cast about in our thoughts."

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved

Burnt Norton was the first of what became four parts, or musical compositions, known as Eliot's "Four Quartets". The other three sections - each having five tonal poems each - were East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, respectively. These latter three were produced several years after the first composition, Burnt Norton. In essence, Eliot's former life, and all that was in it, had burnt up. After suffering various and sundry griefs as only a poet might do, Eliot picked up its tattered pieces to being to put together his past with his present and where it might lend itself into the flowing streams of humanity's despairs and disillusionments.

Further, each composition held differing themes and subject matters but when read within themselves and between themselves the reader will find all themes, matters, and compositions as one tightly interwoven piece across 4x5 orchestrations (4 poems x 5 sections per each poem).

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved

Above are the five sections of Burnt Norton which became the five common themes for all preceding sectional poems of "The Four Quartets". One may think of them musically as "movements" between composition lending to the overall musicality of the poems themselves.

Here is my own interpretation of Eliot's themes:

  • I am an eternal being learning to live in the present-ness of the present
  • My experience of present-ness is one of living an existence in crisis
  • My existential struggle feels to me as my own dissent into the many hells of the world besides mine own
  • I cry out to God moment by moment for help, wisdom, and the ability to love
  • I struggle to find and express wholeness through past and present hardships

Conclusion: Every part of Burnt Norton  struggles with crisis towards surviving despair and disappointment asking daily the questions of "What now? How do I live with myself or with the things I witness about me in the world, the church, my faith, friends, and family?"

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved

"Words beyond words" says Eliot:
Our words fail to express what we know, what we see, what we hear, smell, and sense. Poetry attempts the impossible by uttering the inexpressible. It's not enough to say as a Christian, the all is expressed by God in the Incarnation of Christ as the Word or Testament or Covenant or Action of God. Even in God's Word lies the inexpressible. Neither the Author of creation nor creation itself can be written about without our language and senses failing us. The deep mystery of storytelling, or story expressing, is that even the very process wearies the author and poet of the infinite ways to experience and tell of a situation. And yet, as a poet, I am driven to express the inexpressible as only I can, though I feel my own fraility in the very process I attempt. - R.E. Slater

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved



The tone of Burnt Norton is that of paradox. Eliot expresses his words in epigrams. By pithy sayings or remarks of an idea he has in a clever or amusing way. His words swim through our heart and soul much like a summer's tornadoey gust of swirling wind we run to catch and stand within before it blows past us quickly expiring on its meandering route.
John 1.1 "In Christ was the Word, the Logos of God" - Eliot takes the universal Logos and particularizes it in creation. Like the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." So Eliot weaves and reweaves time about itself sounding more like the British Process Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead than himself as he looks at time and life to flatly state every moment is unlike the last and will not be like itself in the future. What then, is life all about? And why is life found to be in this way? All fluid in motion, event to event, interacting with itself from itself to become more of itself in restless, ceaseless being and becoming." (sic, process philosophy; and, process theology; both of which may be found in contemporary discussion here, at Relevancy22).

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved

Here, the question might be asked of Eliot whether he knew of the contemporary academicians of Einstein and Whitehead. The first, Einstein, who was famous for his Relativity Theory which preceded all future Quantum Physics studies. And the Second, Whitehead, for his "Philosophy of Organism" later to be known as "Process Philosophy" along with its many derivations of process theology, process sciences, the process quantum sciences, neurology, evolution, sociology, psychology, religion, socio-political economic systems, and etc. Each academic knew of the other as friends and fellow Brits in the Royal Academy of Sciences. And both their life works had been recently expressed no more than 15 years ago or there-abouts. Yet whether Eliot was expressing in the Four Quartets his own observations or improving in character his predecessor's observations is moot as Eliot uses these expressions time and again to tell us that he is in a quandary, held in a world which is perplexing, spinning about like the swirling wind attempting to explain his experience with Christ's Word to "Incarnate the World" by acts of love and desperation.

Hence, Eliot states that "time is relational" which is what Einstein and Whitehead were saying. Moreover, that ALL things are relational with ALL things whether near or far. Nothing operates alone with an effect/affect on ALL other things. Einstein says "Without matter in motion there can be no time, event, space, or gravity." Whitehead similarly says, "Nothing operates alone. All things are in relation to one another. Our cosmology is ultimately relational." 

"All past and future falls to the present." - adaptation: R.E. Slater

"Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past." - James Joyce (Ulysses)

Observation: The eternality of the present-ness of the present presence becomes unredeemable if unused; but redeemable when used in "LIVED" existence. - R.E. Slater

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved


Here TSE pictures "motion and growth": The dancer and ice skater; the spinning of the stars; the movement of the moving tree. That we are in the movement of time's motions of stars and seasons and flesh whilst living in an eternal present which passes and begins all at the same time.

Eliot speaks to the crosswords of time v eternity: That neither time nor eternity ever is arrested or stops moving; that they are always in ascent and descent; in stasis and then dynamic interleave. We can never be anywhere else but in the here-and-now attempting to work out, to reconcile, our present with its past and future movements to come.

As such, our memories, like Eliot's, are trapped in the rose-bed wishing to rise up through the trees into the heavens above. That our dance with life in this life is never suspended or interrupted lest we allow it to be upon momentary horrors lived. We dance with timeful eternities conspiring an immortality of a kind upon the motion of concrete things which harm or still the soul to the motion of concrete things which inspire and drive one forwards in passion, with resoluteness, to rise above the defeats and tragedies, and woes besetting our souls with losses deep and scarring.

Living in this life requires doing what we are meant to do and not quitting until it is fulfilled, or passed down, or both. To conquer time is to live timefully in time where past and future are gathered, in reconciliation within ourselves. And from a Christian standpoint, that justice will be met, and love and hope be reborn again, despite all which strives against living by undoing living life's from their purposes and wills.

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved


Eliot continues his descent into darkness in section 3.  He speaks to his perpetual solitude, destitution, desiccation, evacuation, and inoperancy gained from living in the world with dashed hopes, harm, and poor choices. Choices which plague him. Which have unmade him in his considerations of whether he should have, or shouldn't have done this thing or that thing. Of the wrongs he has done and the rights he had missed to correct opportunities in time.

But then he thinks to himself that when finally recognizing what his life has spent of itself, has made of itself, has missed in this or that department, that he cannot live like this, driving himself crazy in his penitence of soul and heart. But that this very process of repenting, of being emptied of one's self is the very process of death which becomes ironically very life itself.

As the Magi had once said of the baby Jesus they had beheld, "This birth was like unto our own death!" No truer words were spoken to the state of mankind dead to itself with no life. That in the paradox of things, to die is to live, and for the Magi, their death to self in its myriad ways of unlove, unforgiveness, ungiving, can only be righted in recognizing the love of God who is ever constant in loving, forgiving, and giving of the divine Self to the needs of a mortal creation blackened and gone mad by sin. That without self-diminishment (not in the ascetic, monkish kind of way of self-deprecation), without undergoing the internal, personal processes of self-emptying of one's deadened life, one cannot live. And it is in the Christ child wherein life is found again in its death. Where hope and love may be birthed again - not only in the renewal of penitence but in the renewal of the human spirit by divine means of grace and reclamation power.

Humanity therefore is always in the process of eternally dying to itself but also always in the process of being emptied out of itself whether by laments or hurts or the scars which it bears. For Eliot, as for his new Christian faith, the way down is also the way up. And its is this aspect of eternally becoming within his broken being which aspires him to rise up, to reconcile with his regrets and harms, to return back to his identity and purpose in the adolescence of his being bound by a new self-awareness released from his darkness to live in the light of being and becoming.

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved


TSE begins his ascent up from the death of self. First, by recognizing that we live in the here-and-now. And secondly, by recognizing that when we are emptied of ourself we are rid of the things which hold us back from new-birth-living. One might say this is an "Elergy to Ascent" or "Ascending" from the grave of self-and-world towards light and life. "The light is still at the still point of the turning world." We who have died as living beings have been stilled in our hearts and minds to consider the turning world in its glories, its vanities, its sobering realities, its harsh melting points, and may rise like the kingfisher's wing unstilled in the light against the darkness which might still it to its duties, needs, arousals, passions, and very being of its soul to become.

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved


Here, in section 5, Eliot wrestles with speaking about his relationship with life, with Vivien, Emily, etc, as well as life's elements - especially of his close relationships - with himself. Of how their worlds intersected with his, clashed with his, made peace with his, as he with them. To learn to speak of beingness in an infinite sense of processual development, growth, maturation, pursuit, of never-ceasing beginnings and endings, both in life's deathly sense and life's atoning redemptive senses.

Overall, Eliot expresses in his worldly and personal weariness, hope. He is learning to live together with himself when filled with joy or sadness. That within his melancholy heart of existence there may be overall goodness merging in-and-out with times of wasted possibilities. In a sense, Eliot is seeking a restitution within himself, or a permission, to live in a broken world, as a broken (time-ful) being himself, in recognition that life's truer modes stretch endlessly with generative, valuative possibilities. An infinite arrangement of these should mankind find within itself the ability to become humble with nature, each other, and within oneself. If not, we war with all - and especially ourselves - as restlessly as we might coexist in goodness and love with one another - and ourselves. These then are the mysteries of life.

@copyright Dr. Michael Stevens - all rights reserved


Burnt Norton’ is the first poem in Four Quartets. Although it was first published in 1936, the poem appeared together with the rest of the quartets in 1943. Four Quartets includes four poems that were independently published over six years:  ‘Burnt Norton’, ‘East Coker’‘The Dry Salvages’, and ‘Little Gidding’. T. S. Eliot believed that Four Quartets was his best work. These poems explore the relationship between men and time, the need for spirituality, the importance of consciousness and existence, among other themes.

Sections of Burnt Norton

Burnt Norton’ has 178 lines and can be found in full, along with the rest of the Quartets, here. The poem, like East CokerThe Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, is divided into five sections. The first section focuses on the movement of time, while the second section explores the unsatisfying worldly experience. The third section introduces a possible purgation of the modern world, which contrasts with the lyric prayer of the fourth section. Finally, the fifth section presents the question of art’s possible entirety, which is equivalent to the seek for spiritual health. The poem is named after a manor house in Gloucestershire.

Theme of Burnt Norton

The main theme of ‘Burnt Norton is the nature of time, its relation to salvation, and the contrast between the experience of the modern man and spirituality. The lyrical voice meditates on life and the need to subscribe to the universal order. The poem’s structure and form are similar to T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, as several fragments of poetry are put together and set as one. The rhyme and meter rely on the repetition and circularity of language, which corresponds to the conception of time introduced in the poem. Light and dark, movement and stillness, and roses are some of the motifs that appear in ‘Burnt Norton’.

You can read the full poem here and more poems by T.S. Eliot here.

Analysis of Burnt Norton

Section One

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 […]

The first section of ‘Burnt Norton’ presents, on the one hand, a particular conception of time: “If all time is eternally present/All time is unredeemable”. The different temporalities of time are related to each other, as past and future are always implicated in the present. Through this conception of time, the lyrical voice explores the possibility that men can only control the present. This section also explores an alternate temporality (“Down the passage which we did not take/Towards the door we never opened/Into the rose-garden”) that, as the ending of the section suggests, is also part of the present: “What might have been and what has been/Point to one end, which is always present”.

On the other hand, the poem describes a rose garden, which is navigated by the lyrical voice. A bird works as a guide through the garden shows the lyrical voice around and asks him/her to look for the laughing children: “Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,/Round the corner”. The rose-garden is a symbolic place, as it evokes the Garden of Eden. This can be related to the author’s relation to Christianity and how it is manifested in different moments in the Four Quartets. The garden also shows signs of human presence and neglect: “Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty”. This idea of ruin will also come out in the lyrical voice’s mention of modernity.

Section Two

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars […]

The second section opens with irregular tetrameters, forming an embedded poem. This shorter poem connects unusual images (“Garlic and sapphires in the mud/Clot the bedded axle-tree”), which are “reconciled among the stars”. Although these images appear pagan to a certain extent, the relationship between them anticipates the theme of unity found in Four Quartets. This can also be read as an acknowledgment of the fragmentary nature of modernity.

Then, the poem changes its form and focuses on a meditation of consciousness and living (“Time past and time future/Allow but a little consciousness./To be conscious is not to be in time”) that goes back to the idea of coexisting temporalities in the present: “To be conscious is not to be in time”. The lyrical voice reflects on how to live in only one temporality when time is always changing (“I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where./And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time”). Consciousness, as opposed to time, is fixed but enables memory: But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden […]/Be remembered”. Note how the image of the rose-garden appears once again and how this section, as the previous one, is filled with images of nature.

Section Three

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

Wtih slow rotation suggesting permanence […]

The third section of Burn Norton focuses on one moment: “a place of disaffection”. This place is linked to every day, which “Neither plentitude nor vacancy” can be found, and the modern life, where there is no transcendence (“Nor darkness to purify the soul”), no meaning (“Filled with fancies and empty of meaning”) and no beauty (“Turning shadow into transient beauty”). The lyrical voice relates to this modern world and self with numbness and lack of spirituality. Notice how this is emphasized by the use of repeated structures and words: “Dessication of the world of sense,/Evacuation of the world of fancy,/Inoperancy of the world of spirit;”. This is contrasted by the movement of time (“while the world moves”) that has been developed and detailed in the previous sections.

Section Four

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?

The fourth section has only 10 lines and it focuses on the description and movement of time. Again, there are many images of nature that resemble the rose-garden in the first section.  The image of the yew (“Fingers of yew be curled /Down on us?”) that belongs to the yew tree, also known as the “tree of death”,  brings the possibility of a spiritual rebirth, which is, later, discarded by the lyrical voice. Notice that this short section establishes a sort of melody, as some of the lines rhyme, which is accompanied by the different lengths of the lines through the stanza that concentrates on the word “chill” that stands alone in the middle. This emphasizes the coldness of modern spirituality.

Section Five

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 […]

The fifth section of ‘Burnt Norton’ goes back to images and themes that were introduced in previous sections of the poem. The movement of time and how it can be addressed is again mentioned: “Words move, music moves/ Only in time”. Yet, the fixed point presented in this section is not related to every day as in the third section but to death: “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”. Thus, there is a paradox presented regarding time here, as the constant movement mentioned at the beginning and the stillness mentioned in this section seem opposite. In that sense, the lyrical voice mentions that desire would be similar to the constant movement among temporalities (“Desire itself is movement”), whereas love is closer to stillness (“Love is itself unmoving”). Love, as the relation of the themes and the poems itself to Christianity suggests, is related to religion and devotion, and it is a central element for remaining conscious and present.

This section also addresses art (“Words move, music moves”), its relation to time, and its capacity to become eternal, and it can be related to the image of the Chinese jar. Moreover, this image is a clear reference to Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, as the jar represents the capacity of transcending the moment and times itself. According to the lyrical voice, “words, after speech, reach/Into the silence” and poetic form, like the stillness of the Chinese jar, can resemble something eternal in its present state.

The final lines of the poems return to the laughing children in the rose-garden, asserting the circularity of the poem: “There rises the hidden laughter/Of children in the foliage”. Yet, the laugher becomes a mocking laugher, related to the enslavement of modernity.

* * * * * * *


Burnt Norton (poem)

T. S. Eliot

Burnt Norton is the first poem of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. He created it while working on his play Murder in the Cathedral, and it was first published in his Collected Poems 1909–1935 (1936). The poem's title refers to the manor house Eliot visited with Emily Hale in the Cotswolds. The manor's garden serves as an important image within the poem. Structurally, the poem is based on Eliot's The Waste Land, with passages of the poem related to those excised from Murder in the Cathedral.

The central discussion within the poem is on the nature of time and salvation. Eliot emphasises the need of the individual to focus on the present moment and to know that there is a universal order. By understanding the nature of time and the order of the universe, mankind is able to recognise God and seek redemption. Many reviewers of Burnt Norton focused on the uniquity and beauty of the poem. However, others complained that the poem does not reflect Eliot's earlier greatness and that the use of Christian themes harmed the poem.

Background

The concept of Burnt Norton is connected to Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral; he worked on the poem while the play was being produced during 1935. The connection between the poem and the play is deep; many of the lines for the poem come from lines originally created for the play that were, on E. Martin Brown's advice, removed from the script.[1] Years later, Eliot recollected:

There were lines and fragments that were discarded in the course of the production of Murder in the Cathedral. 'Can't get them over on the stage', said the producer, and I humbly bowed to his judgment. However, these fragments stayed in my mind, and gradually I saw a poem shaping itself round them: in the end it came out as 'Burnt Norton'.[2]

Like many of Eliot's works, the poem was compiled from various fragments that were reworked over many years.[3] To structure the poem, Eliot turned to the organisation of The Waste Land.[4]

In 1936, the poem was included in Collected Poems 1909–1935,[5] of which 11,000 copies were published;[6] the collection symbolically represented the completion of his former poems and his moving onto later works.[7] "Burnt Norton" was Eliot's only major poem to be completed during a six-year period as he turned to writing plays and continued with his work on essays.[6] The poem was re-published as an independent work in 1941, the same year "East Coker" and "The Dry Salvages", two later poems of the Four Quartets, were published.[8]

The actual Burnt Norton is a manor located near the village of Aston Subedge in Gloucestershire that Eliot visited with Emily Hale during 1934. The original Norton House was a mansion burned down in 1741 by its owner, Sir William Keyt, who died in the fire.[9] Even though Eliot was married, he spent a lot of time with Hale and might possibly have become involved with her had he not been married. Even after their time at Burnt Norton, Eliot stayed in close correspondence with her and sent her many of his poems.[10] The actual manor does not serve as an important location within the poem. Instead, it is the garden surrounding the manor that became the focus.[11]

Epigraphs

The poem begins with two epigraphs taken from the fragments of Heraclitus:

τοῦ λόγου δὲ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοί
ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν

— I. p. 77. Fr. 2.

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή

— I. p. 89 Fr. 60.

The first may be translated, "Though wisdom is common, the many live as if they have wisdom of their own"; the second, "the way upward and the way downward is one and the same."[12]

Poem

The poem was the first of Eliot's that relied on speech, with a narrator who speaks to the audience directly.[13] Described as a poem of early summer, air, and grace, it begins with a narrator recalling a moment in a garden. The scene provokes a discussion on time and how the present, not the future or past, really matters to individuals. Memories connect the individual to the past, but the past cannot change. The poem then transitions from memory to how life works and the point of existence. In particular, the universe is described as orderly and that consciousness is not found within time even though humanity is bound by time. The scene of the poem moves from a garden to the London underground where technology dominates. Those who cling to technology and reason are unable to understand the universe or the Logos ("the Word", or Christ). The underworld is replaced by a churchyard and a discussion of death. This, in turn, becomes a discussion of timelessness and eternity, which ends the poem.[14]

Themes

Eliot believed that Burnt Norton could benefit society. The poem's narration reflects on how humankind is affected by Original Sin, that they can follow the paths of either good or evil, and that they can atone for their sins. To help the individual, the poem explains that people must leave the time-bound world and look into their selves, and that poets must seek out a perfection, not bound by time in their images, to escape from the problems of language.[15]

Peter Ackroyd believes that it is impossible to paraphrase the content of the poem; the poem is too abstract to describe the events and the action that make up the poem's narrative structure.[13] However, the philosophical basis for the poem can be explained since the discourse on time is connected to the ideas within St. Augustine's Confessions. As such, there is an emphasis on the present moment as being the only time period that really matters, because the past cannot be changed and the future is unknown. The poem emphasizes that memory must be abandoned to understand the current world, and humans must realize that the universe is based on order. The poem also describes that although consciousness cannot be bound within time, humans cannot actually escape from time on their own. The scene beneath London is filled with the time-bound people who are similar to the spiritually empty populace of The Hollow Men; they are empty because they do not understand the Logos or the order of the universe. The conclusion of the poem emphasizes that God is the only one that is truly able to exist out of time and have knowledge of all times and places, but humankind is still capable of redemption through belief in Him and His ability to save them from the bounds of the material universe.[16]

Imaginative space also serves an important function within the poem. Part one contains a rose garden that allegorically represents potential within human existence. Although the garden does not exist, it is described in realistic manner and is portrayed as an imagined reality. Also, the narrator's statement that words exist in the mind allows this imagined reality to be shared between the narrator and the reader. This is then destroyed by the narrator claiming that such a place has no purpose.[17] The garden image has other uses within the poem beyond creating a shared imaginative space; it serves to invoke memories within the poem, and it functions in a similar manner in other works by Eliot, including The Family Reunion.[18]

Sources

A key source for many of the images that appear in Burnt Norton is Eliot's childhood and his experience at Burnt Norton.[19] Other sources include Stéphane Mallarmé's poetry, especially "Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire" and "M'introduire dans ton histoire"[20] and St. Augustine's Confessions.[21] Likewise, many of the lines are fragments that were removed from his earlier works.[22]

Structurally, Eliot relied on The Waste Land to put together the fragments of poetry as one set. Bernard Bergonzi argued that "it was a new departure in Eliot's poetry, and it inevitably resulted in the presence of the manipulatory will that [C. K. Stead] has observed at works in the Quartets, and in the necessity for low-pressure linking passages. As I have previously remarked, Eliot was capable of expressing the most intense moments of experience, but had little capacity for sustained structure."[23]

Critical response

An early critic, D. W. Harding, viewed the poem as being part of a new concept within poetry.[24] Similarly, Edwin Muir saw that the poem had new aspects to it and felt that there was beauty in the poem similar to that in The Hollow Men.[25] Peter Quennell agreed and described the poem as "a new and remarkably accomplished poem" featuring "uncommon rhythmic virtuosity".[26] Marianne Moore stated that it was "a new poem which is concerned with the thought of control [...] embodied in Deity and in human equipoise".[27] She argued that its "best quality" was "in its reminders of how severe, strenuous, and practical was the poet's approach toward the present enlargement of his philosophical vision."[28] Rolfe Humphries declared, "How beautifully [...] Eliot winds the theme, from the simple statement that perhaps any dialectical materialist would accept [...] to the conclusion that any revolutionist might find difficulty in understanding [...] How beautifully it is done!"[29]

However, George Orwell disapproved of Burnt Norton and stated that the religious nature of the poem coincided with Eliot's poems no longer having what made his earlier works great. The later critic Russell Kirk agreed with Orwell in part, but felt that Orwell's attacks on Eliot's religiosity within the poems fell flat. In particular, he argued that "Over the past quarter of a century, most serious critics—whether or not they find Christian faith impossible—have found in the Quartets the greatest twentieth-century achievements in the poetry of philosophy and religion."[30] Likewise, the 12 April 1941 Times Literary Supplement said that the poem was hard to understand. This was followed by another review on 4 September that attacked Eliot's understanding of history.[31]

Later critics varied in opinions. Bergonzi emphasised the "beautifully controlled and suasive opening" and claimed that "It contains some of Eliot's finest poetry, a true musicalization of thought".[32] According to Peter Ackroyd, "'Burnt Norton', in fact, gains its power and its effects from the modification, withdrawal or suspension of meaning and the only 'truth' to be discovered is the formal unity of the poem itself."[13]

In popular media

Singer Lana del Rey recites an excerpt of the poem as an interlude on her fourth studio album, Honeymoon.[33]

Notes

  1. ^ Ackroyd 1984 p. 228
  2. ^ Eliot 1953
  3. ^ Bergonzi 1972 p. 18
  4. ^ Bergonzi 1972 p. 164
  5. ^ Grant 1997 p. 37
  6. Jump up to:a b Kirk 2008 p. 192
  7. ^ Ackroyd 1984 p. 237
  8. ^ Moody 2006 p. 142
  9. ^ Chappell 1994
  10. ^ Ackroyd 1984 pp. 229–230.
  11. ^ Gordon 2000 p. 266.
  12. ^ Diels, Hermann; Burnet, John Translator. "Heraclitus 139 Fragments" (PDF) (in Greek and English). {{cite web}}|author2= has generic name (help)
  13. Jump up to:a b c Ackroyd 1984 p. 230
  14. ^ Kirk 2008 p. 245–248
  15. ^ Pinion 1986 pp. 221–222
  16. ^ Kirk 2008 pp. 246–248
  17. ^ Bush 1991 p. 159
  18. ^ Gordon 2000 p. 267
  19. ^ Ackroyd 1984 p. 22
  20. ^ Pinion 1986 p. 221
  21. ^ Kirt 2008 p. 246
  22. ^ Kirk 2008 p. 245
  23. ^ Bergonzi 1972 p. 166
  24. ^ Bergonzi 1972 quoted p. 167
  25. ^ Grant 1997 pp. 37–38
  26. ^ Grant 1997 qtd. p. 340
  27. ^ Grant 1997 qtd. p. 352
  28. ^ Grant 1997 qtd. p. 354
  29. ^ Grant 1997 qtd. pp. 358–359
  30. ^ Kirk 2008 p. 240
  31. ^ Grant 1997 p. 43
  32. ^ Bergonzi 1972 p. 167
  33. ^ "Lana del Rey – Burnt Norton (Interlude)"

References

  • Ackroyd, Peter. T. S. Eliot: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. ISBN 0-671-60572-0
  • Bergonzi, Bernard. T. S. Eliot. New York: Macmillan Company, 1972. ISBN 0-333-24258-0
  • [1] British Listed Buildings. Burnt Norton with Service Wing, Weston Subedge. Retrieved 17 October 2012.
  • Bush, Ronald. T. S. Eliot: The Modernist in History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-521-39074-5
  • [2] Chappell, Helen, "GARDENING / A Poet's Garden: On a walk in Old Pussum's wood: T S Eliot spent an illicit few hours in Burnt Norton, the estate that inspired the poem of the same name. Helen Chappell retraces his steps with two owners, a gardener and a cat," The Independent, 29 March 1994. Retrieved 17 October 2012
  • Eliot, T. S. New York Times Book Review. 29 November 1953.
  • Gordon, Lyndall. T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. ISBN 0-393-04728-8
  • Grant, Michael, T. S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage. New York: Routledge, 1997. ISBN 0-7100-9224-5
  • Kirk, Russell. Eliot and His Age. Wilmington: ISA Books, 2008. ISBN 1-933859-53-9
  • Manganiello, Dominic. T. S. Eliot and Dante. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. ISBN 0-312-02104-6
  • Moody, A. David. "Four Quartets: Music, Word, Meaning and Value" in The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot ed. A. David Moody, 142–157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-521-42080-6
  • Pinion, F. B. A T. S. Eliot Companion. London: MacMillan, 1986. ISBN 0-333-37338-3

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