Literary Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

[sun surfer]

This is the MR Literary Club selection for January 2015. Whether you've already read it or would like to, feel free to start or join in the conversation at any time! Guests are also always welcome.


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So, what are your thoughts on it?

[HomeInMyShoes]

I'm excited to brave the cold (-34C wind-chill) and walk to the library to pick this up to read.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

I'm excited to brave the cold (-34C wind-chill) and walk to the library to pick this up to read.

Stay warm and wear lots of layers! I hope you don't have to walk far.

The book is also available on Oyster (but not Scribd or Kindle Unlimited).

[HomeInMyShoes]

Too warm actually. I walk rather briskly so the ten minutes there and ten minutes back made me quite warm.

I am Canadian.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Eliot was an expert on presence and meditation.

Spoiler:

"Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present."

I have to say I'm already enjoying this a lot having read half of Burnt Norton. A great nomination.

[desertblues]

Well, I've got the book and will take a serious look at it.

[Bookpossum]

I just have to get over this weekend (house guests) and will get on to it next week. I'm really looking forward to revisiting this wonderful poetry.

[desertblues]

First impression after reading it: I fear it all is too much of a melodrama for me. I am more for the understated sentiment, I think. And I like 'clean', that is, stripped from all decoration, language. Well......
But.......for the Bookclub, I will read something about the author, the context, the mood of that age, his yes/no contribution to the art of making poetry and so on.
Then, I will read it again and give my second impression.

[BelleZora]

I found the Four Quartets available online here: http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/1-norton.htm

After reading Burnt Norton, I found this excellent reading by Tom O'Bedlam on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvXznmKHTnc

The words are displayed as they are read. Listening opened up depth and meaning to me that I missed the first time around.

Then I found this commentary. After reading all of these excerpts from books about Eliot, I'll reread the poem. I need all the help I can get, but I really started loving Burnt Norton by the second reading. I guess I like decoration and the language used.

[fantasyfan]

The Oxford Anthology of English Literature(Kermode and Hollander) contains "Little Gidding" and gives some general information on these remarkable pieces which might provide a useful general approach.

"Burnt Norton" was developed from left-over lines of Murder In The Cathedral in 1935 and was a meditation on time and eternity. For some years it stood alone. "East Coker" (1940) was written as a parallel to "Burnt Norton" and "The Dry Salvages" and "Little Gidding" followed In 1941--the group as a whole being published in 1943.

Eliot conceived the works as a poetic analogy to Beethoven's Late Quartets "with their strange transitions--intermingling of conventional and original forms, internal references and unpredictable sonorities."

Each quartet follows a movement form analogous in some ways to the Late Quartets:
1. A first movement in three parts (rather like the sonata form)
2. Lyrical stanzas and prosaic sections
3. A discursive exploration of stated themes
4. A fourth lyrical section usually in stanzas and explicitly Christian in theme
5. A concluding recapitulation.

The themes are variations on time and eternity, history and the present, and the intervention of the divine into the human condition.

Thus the poem is a philosophical and spiritual Christian meditation.

As is the case with all great art, the poems reverberate with subtle meanings which (like the late quartets) give a resonance to life. One never really finishes reading them.

Originally Posted by BelleZora

I found the Four Quartets available on line here: http://www.coldbacon.com/poems/fq.html

After reading Burnt Norton, I found this excellent reading by Tom O'Bedlam on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvXznmKHTnc

The words are displayed as they are read. Listening opened up depth and meaning to me that I missed the first time around.

Then I found this commentary. After reading all of these excerpts from books about Eliot, I'll reread the poem. I need all the help I can get, but I really started loving Burnt Norton by the second reading. I guess I like decoration and the language used.

Thanks for that link. I may read these poems after all. The problem I have with poetry is like any literature it can be good or bad. I just give no extra credit for the cleverness of writing it in meter or rhyme.

[desertblues]

Thank you, Belle Zora and fantasyfan for the useful information. I will follow this up and report back.....

[BelleZora]

I'm loving this month's selection, and I'm still only on Burnt Norton. Here is an excellent lecture by Thomas Howard, Professor Emeritus, St. John's Seminary, and author of Dove Descending: A Journey Into T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnTqmpti6So

Here is my happy discovery today: The Four Quartets read by T.S. Eliot.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks so much to BelleZora and fantasyfan for these various commentaries and readings. I am looking forward to getting into the poems and also the background reading.

Hamlet, I do hope you find Eliot worth a try at least. However, poetry is very much an individual taste so I suppose that we would never find a poet whose work would move all of us in the same way.

[BelleZora]

I discovered an error in the online version at coldbacon.com which I linked to above. While listening to Eliot while reading along, I saw that a line was missing in V. of Burnt Norton: Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,

This online source of Burnt Norton (although I haven't yet checked the other poems) is correct: http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/1-norton.htm

I'll change the earlier link. I particularly appreciate the notes on the above link.