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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
so basically the rose is god but also england but also a flower but also love but also the garden of eden but also the true self but also a dream but also absence but also endings and beginnings but also debris from wwii blitz bombing but also life which is death but also salvation which is necessarily balanced with suffering 😀 super simple and light read, not confusing at all 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Ehhhh moeilijk moeilijk. Het is zó hermetisch en nu heb ik niet heel hard een probleem met hermetische poëzie (anders moet ik echt een ander onderwerp voor m'n proefschrift vinden) maar als je niet in het wereldje van de dichter zit kan je er gewoon snel zo weinig mee. Ik had een prima geannoteerde editie en dan krijg je wel wat meer mij van de genialiteit die erachter zit, maar dit soort werk toont voor mij: geniaal is niet hetzelfde als goed. Je kan er heel veel gaafs in stoppen door het zo gesloten te houden, maar je mist er ook wel heel veel dingen door.
There are likely entire courses dedicated to these four poems. Seeing as if I have, say, only 3 weeks to hold Four Quartets before the library summons them back, much of these lines will go unnoticed to what they deserve. There are some fantastic lines and tangents here on time, spirituality, and lovely ol’ England. I enjoyed Eliot’s use of traditional verse and language intermixed with modern flow switch-ups and meta-like references to retro styles. Like a poet remixing an old song for their generation.
medium-paced
I first read T.S. Eliot in 2013 (?) and I wasn’t very impressed. Regardless, I could not ignore the consistent praise for his Four Quartets. So I gave him another try and I enjoyed this much more than my previous go at him. I wouldn’t know how to offer an intelligent epitome of the work so instead I’ll share some of my favorite quotes. • “Words, after speech, reach into the silence.” • “Words strain, crack and sometimes break, under the burden, under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, will not stay still.” • “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.” • “To arrive where you are, to get where you are not, you must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know you must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to posses what you do not possess you must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not you must go through the way in which you are not.” • “For us, there is only trying. The rest is not our business.” • “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, remembered gate when the last of earth left to discover is that which was the beginning.”
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Beautiful poems; rich Christian imagery — interesting intersections w the natural world. Vision of apocalypse in final poem is TEA
There are Four Quartets and also Four Sundays in Advent. coincidence? didn't have to be*
* not to suggest, of course, that I understand these poems, or that I understand Advent
Men’s curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. 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. There 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.
* not to suggest, of course, that I understand these poems, or that I understand Advent
Men’s curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. 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. There 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.
December 2023: "For last year's words belong to last year's language / And next year's words await another voice. / [...] Between two worlds become much like each other, / So I find words I never thought to speak / In streets I never thought I should revisit / When I left my body on a distant shore" (39).
I propose that future me should reread this annually during Advent and Lent. <3
I found an early Faber edition in an Edinburgh bookshop (thanks, Tills) and bought it, even though my annotated Wheaton copy is still hiding somewhere in my TN room. It was too pretty, I confess.
Always blessed and challenged by these words. I think it changed the trajectory of my life to read this passage aloud in British Modernism years ago; it still gives me chills:
"I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you / Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, / The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed / With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of dark- / ness on darkness, / [...] 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" (East Coker, 19).
April 2021: "What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. / Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden" (13).
Fragments of this keep haunting me, so I had to reread.
I propose that future me should reread this annually during Advent and Lent. <3
I found an early Faber edition in an Edinburgh bookshop (thanks, Tills) and bought it, even though my annotated Wheaton copy is still hiding somewhere in my TN room. It was too pretty, I confess.
Always blessed and challenged by these words. I think it changed the trajectory of my life to read this passage aloud in British Modernism years ago; it still gives me chills:
"I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you / Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, / The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed / With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of dark- / ness on darkness, / [...] 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" (East Coker, 19).
April 2021: "What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. / Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden" (13).
Fragments of this keep haunting me, so I had to reread.
