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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
I need to re-read this. Maybe I'm old enough to understand it now.
2024 reading:
But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
previous review
That I haven't put Four Quartets in my Goodreads log is a crime against my own reading life. I think I've read it three times so far, but I also feel like I read it before I got into college. I'm not sure when that would have been, though, so I'm leaving it at three.
I read Four Quartets out loud to myself on January 1st because it's perfect, and I needed "so here I am, in the middle way" and "next year's words" to be some of the first words I read this year. My throat was very, very sore by the time I got done but it was worth it.
But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
previous review
That I haven't put Four Quartets in my Goodreads log is a crime against my own reading life. I think I've read it three times so far, but I also feel like I read it before I got into college. I'm not sure when that would have been, though, so I'm leaving it at three.
I read Four Quartets out loud to myself on January 1st because it's perfect, and I needed "so here I am, in the middle way" and "next year's words" to be some of the first words I read this year. My throat was very, very sore by the time I got done but it was worth it.
93rd book of 2021.
Eliot's favourite of his work and his self-proclaimed best. FQ is beautiful as it is elusive, and with those adjectives reminds me of some of Rilke's work. And of course, Eliot's other work. I'm leaving it unrated so I can read it again, and again. I never used to like Prufrock when it came up in "Modernism to the Present" in university (what I wouldn't give to take that class again...) and I still didn't like it when my housemate wrote an essay on it. Several reads later, and several years later, and now I'm very fond of it. Perhaps this will be the same case. Though I must say I adored The Waste Land from my very first read. Eliot remains one of my favourite poets all the same, but this is a tricky old nut to crack, as they say.
Eliot's favourite of his work and his self-proclaimed best. FQ is beautiful as it is elusive, and with those adjectives reminds me of some of Rilke's work. And of course, Eliot's other work. I'm leaving it unrated so I can read it again, and again. I never used to like Prufrock when it came up in "Modernism to the Present" in university (what I wouldn't give to take that class again...) and I still didn't like it when my housemate wrote an essay on it. Several reads later, and several years later, and now I'm very fond of it. Perhaps this will be the same case. Though I must say I adored The Waste Land from my very first read. Eliot remains one of my favourite poets all the same, but this is a tricky old nut to crack, as they say.
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
only through time is time conquered
Read aloud at a poetry club February 2022. Read by myself December 2022.
Read aloud with a group in a graveyard in May 2023. I liked it very much this time around. I think I want to read it again sometime soon. It's going to take at least seven times before I start to understand it.
---
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
Fare forward. All manner of thing shall be well.
Read aloud at a poetry club February 2022. Read by myself December 2022.
Read aloud with a group in a graveyard in May 2023. I liked it very much this time around. I think I want to read it again sometime soon. It's going to take at least seven times before I start to understand it.
---
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
Fare forward. All manner of thing shall be well.
I kind of hate Eliot, both for his political beliefs and his incredibly haughty attitude about everything, but the man could poem.
"Neither plentitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration"
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration"
Time is never time at all.. so says Billy Corgan, but T.S. Eliot says it so much better. This feeds into my fascination with the incongruity of the way we measure time and the way we experience it. Eliot's poetry is wrenching in its dry, painstaking passion. Those are descriptions that shouldn't go together; yet somehow in this volume, he manages to bring it all together. the poetry reflects a man who alternately chafes against, and accepts his finity.
