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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
these poems live rent free in my brain and have shaped me as a person. also, they’re painfully beautiful.
Um, how does one review this? I'm at a complete loss. I read these four poems once before in high school. I remember digging the chronos/kairos (time/eternity) theme back then, because that's what I was obsessed with (still am to a similar degree), but re-reading them now... it felt like one long, constant epiphany. Overwhelming. I couldn't possibly share all of my favorite passages because there are too many. Eliot was a BAMF.
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
"Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers."
~~
An excellent slim volume of modern poetry. I think Eliot really shows his masterful work here. It's not quite as grounded as J Alfred Prufrock, but it encompasses broader themes like nature and language, if in that curiously vague modernist way.
"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.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire."
The soul's sap quivers."
~~
An excellent slim volume of modern poetry. I think Eliot really shows his masterful work here. It's not quite as grounded as J Alfred Prufrock, but it encompasses broader themes like nature and language, if in that curiously vague modernist way.
"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.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire."
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Solidan, ali ipak je Eliot najbolji kad je u svom Prufrok gasu. Ova metafizička proseravanja prosto nisu zanimljiva. Pusta Zemlja predstavlja dobar balans između dve Eliotove strane.
I read one of these daily for Lent. One poem a day for 40 days comes to 10x through the Four Quartets each year.
The Four Quartets answer every question worth asking.
The Four Quartets answer every question worth asking.
I don't know much about poetry. But I know I liked this.
One of my favorite sections at the end of the third poem, "The Dry Salvages" --
"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.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled..."
One of my favorite sections at the end of the third poem, "The Dry Salvages" --
"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.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled..."
All things from the poem aside, the acknowledgements include the line "I wish to acknowledge my obligation to friends for their criticism," and it's absolutely wild to me that people can constructively criticize this sort of thing.