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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
I am sorry. I am just not smart enough or sensitive enough or whatever to get anything out of these poems. It makes me a little sad.....
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
east coker was my favorite of the four - all have their brilliance
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
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.
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
When I heard an Eliot scholar compare Four Quartets to Chartres Cathedral, I chuckled to myself and thought the man smitten. But after reading the poems repeatedly and subjecting the edifice to a thorough inspection, I think the man was right. This is the work of a poetic architect, a craftsman who joyfully builds whispering galleries in places where martyrs come to die.
Eliot's theology seems cumbersome at times, but I think his theological position is less dogmatic than many think. There are many rooms in this mansion, and exploring them in detail was a singular experience.
Eliot's theology seems cumbersome at times, but I think his theological position is less dogmatic than many think. There are many rooms in this mansion, and exploring them in detail was a singular experience.
slow-paced
At the still point of the turning world.
For a collection called the Four Quartets, resembling the four seasons, he actually focuses on stillness and emptiness in whatever is wedged between past and future. Typically, seasons are used to describe movement, and the type of cyclical change which comes back around. But the present, to him, has no movement. In this and The Wasteland, I feel like ‘the turning world’ perfectly sums up Eliot’s present. Before comes destruction; the future, or the end, will bring open possibilities; but the present is almost timeless. Clocks have stopped and everything that is supposed to have meaning no longer does.
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
If that doesn’t perfectly sum up online procrastination, then I don’t know what does.
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness
deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about
There is an optimistic finish towards the end of the collection, but he begins with this dour nihilism. That everyone is living in a kind of fugue state. That everything in history has led to this moment, but that moment is – nothingness; it’s a world that doesn’t know what to do with itself.
Love is nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
This is by far my favourite line. The entire collection is a meditation on time and how we interact with the past and future. I find such comfort in love being timelessness. When you both interact without time. That bordered room, with the closed door, is a cubicle to exist aside from everything else. Love is when it’s just you and them. When everything else ceases to matter.
For a collection called the Four Quartets, resembling the four seasons, he actually focuses on stillness and emptiness in whatever is wedged between past and future. Typically, seasons are used to describe movement, and the type of cyclical change which comes back around. But the present, to him, has no movement. In this and The Wasteland, I feel like ‘the turning world’ perfectly sums up Eliot’s present. Before comes destruction; the future, or the end, will bring open possibilities; but the present is almost timeless. Clocks have stopped and everything that is supposed to have meaning no longer does.
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
If that doesn’t perfectly sum up online procrastination, then I don’t know what does.
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness
deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about
There is an optimistic finish towards the end of the collection, but he begins with this dour nihilism. That everyone is living in a kind of fugue state. That everything in history has led to this moment, but that moment is – nothingness; it’s a world that doesn’t know what to do with itself.
Love is nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
This is by far my favourite line. The entire collection is a meditation on time and how we interact with the past and future. I find such comfort in love being timelessness. When you both interact without time. That bordered room, with the closed door, is a cubicle to exist aside from everything else. Love is when it’s just you and them. When everything else ceases to matter.
3 1/5
Ash in an old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
The death of hope and despair
This is the death of air.
Ash in an old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
The death of hope and despair
This is the death of air.