A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"

am i hooked up can you hear me okay good well you people are brave for two reasons number one it's 4:30 in at the end of a long day I gathered and you're you've girded up your loins to listen to something about TS Eliot which is Eliot's poetry is heavy sledding but anyway was he we what we can do with it Four Quartets maybe some of you have ventured to get your toe into the water and you probably found yourself baffled and so on Eliot by the way Eliot and CS Lewis were the press liked to poise them counterpoise them over against each other but they were both orthodox unabashed Christians and but Lewis didn't like Eliot's poetry at all because Lewis was very much of a traditionalist and Eliot was very very much of a modernist speaking aesthetically and so on but Lewis paid two of the most elegant compliments that I've ever heard paid from one man to another they disagreed about Milton Lewis loved Milton and Eliot did not like Milton and Lewis in one of his writings said the poetry of Milton is like the Great Wall of China outside inside is civilization outside are the barbarians or those like mr. Chiu's Eliot who have gone out into the wilderness to fast and pray I thought that was a lovely compliment yeah well to the work here let me make a couple of comments to help you get a toe into Four Quartets I myself would put four quartets the achievement of this artifact here in a class I'm serious with Chartres Cathedral van Eyck's painting the adoration of the mystic lamb which is in Ghent or is it Bruges Ghent I think Belgium box B minor mass and the Mozart Requiem I think it's one of the great monuments of Western Christian civilization probably in some English class you may have made an attempt to read the love song of j alfred Prufrock some time or other and if you can only remember one line from it you might remember how poor proof fog proof Rock was a pathetic sort of a person and he kept saying oh do not ask what is it oh do not ask what is that he was terrified of asking the question what is it it well Eliot asks the question what is it and that's what Four Quartets is about now his poetry is it is modern and it is difficult Eliot believed that poetry should be difficult he certainly appreciated the tradition of English poetry but he felt that by the time we get to the 20th century poets have been deprived of the luxury of writing rhymed and rhythmic poetry the Sun that brief December day of cheerless Overkill's of grey so on healing that would lull us into a torpor and we need to we need something brittle we need something to bother us to shake us up so his technique is it's blunt it's stark it's flat it's it's prosaic it's like reading prose except it is prose brought to it's almost sublime purity it's it's it's almost a remorseless purity and I'll read aligns from the poetry presently a lot of people think poetry is a kind of a gingery up of the language it's the opposite it is the purifying and concentrating of language - it's absolutely ferocious purity it's like what you want in a Bunsen burner you don't want a bonfire you I gather from you chemists and other odd types that what you wanted a Bunsen burner is a little prick of blue flame is that right I think rather than a bonfire that's what poetry is - language it is the supreme attempt to purify and concentrate and distill language into this almost remorseless power to speak to us now one thing I will also say in by way of introduction is that I would say some some critics might disagree with me there are no symbols in for quartets or in any Eliot's poetry rather what you stumbled across in there are cases in point I would much prefer that word to symbols a symbol makes you a symbol is sort of two-dimensional like a paper doll or something in Elliott for example when you come across a garden the your first inclination impulse is to say wait a minute how did we get here what garden is this the Garden of Eden the gardens of the Hesperides all this sort of thing my grandmother's tomato patch what what is it how did we get here Elliott would say it's a garden any garden what what is a garden it is an ordered disciplined space which is which is brought into order with a distinct purpose flowers vegetables whatever but it's a it's a discipline space in the interest of and fruitfulness so this is why or I can give you another example you'll you'll come across if you've tried reading for quartets you will have come across horseshoe crabs and you know what what is what are they assemble up they're not a symbol of anything they are horseshoe crabs and the point that Elliott is making about them is that he doesn't go into this but the point is they are some of the oldest living forms that we we know of and they've been here and he's talking about walking along the beach with starfish and horseshoe crabs and it it hails you any horseshoe crab on any beach with a Titanic the Titanic mystery of the passage of time these are prehistoric my word Here I am waltzing along in the 20th century where has all this time gone what what hails me in in the presence of this antiquity it disturbs me so that's when you run across something solid in an Eliot poem it's not a symbol it is itself it's a case in point of what he's talking about now to the task what is work work gets about as far as I can distill it it's about the riddle that all of us if you're operating on more than one-and-a-half watts in life you will have found yourself scratching your head or mulling at some point of another Oh over the riddle of time because you belong to a species it doesn't bother the animals or the birds they just go tapering along through life but we human beings we men are hag ridden with the riddle of living in time when we've got as Wordsworth put it intimations of immortality we have this deep-seated indestructible hunch that we are made for eternity or made for that which does not fade that which will not drain away into nothing we resist that and as far as I can boil down for quartets I believe that it Rings the changes on this riddle that we mortals we human beings live with of having been made for that which is more than mere sequence more than mere ashes in the end it's and but Eliot doesn't it's not a gnostic poem he doesn't reject time he doesn't bewail the reality of time the lesser poets might do that you know oh tralala tralala i wish we could just keep load off into eternity and so on what he sees is that time is the very condition of our salvation or damnation it's what we do in time and with time it is the very structure and precondition of our salvation or our damnation and one of the most terrifying lines in the whole poem for whole sequence of poems for me is he rings the changes he speaks of the poor people that you might see on the on the underground in London or a bus or something and he he sees their time ridden faces and he says there it's as though they are distracted from distraction by distraction I mean we live in an era whose whole modus vivendi whose whole motivation is distraction have you ever heard of television distracted from distraction by distraction what are we thinking about when we watch television unless you're like me and watch nothing but highbrow television BBC stuff like that but you know we all would like to be distracted now in this poem Oh people ask why why Four Quartets when there's five sections of each poem isn't that a quintet well the quartet comes before that there are four major sections and my own hunch Eliot doesn't volunteer this information but that he is be speaking the original four elements earth air water and fire that these were the classical this is the classical understanding of physics that these are the basic things and I think his his Four Quartets ring the changes but each it's it's a quartet is a composition for four instruments violin viola cello and bass or piano whatever the four are and the instruments or Eliot would be earth air fire and water I think the four locations if if you have a copy with you I know a couple you've brought it you don't have to have it but the poem is divided and it addresses four locations the first section is called burnt Norton and that refers to a sixteenth seventeenth century mansion house in Huntington sure I think which was burned down so it used to be here it ain't here now hey what about that the second section is called East Coker and that is a little town in which Shire is it in I was driving past at one time and saw the little sign that said East Coker and Elliott traced his ancestry if some of his family to this little village of East Coker and in the little parish Anglican parish church there if you look up on the wall there was a hatch meant as they call it an oval and Elliot's ashes are there and he he quoted a line which is attributed to Mary Queen of Scots when she had to put her head on the Block when her ambiguous cousin Elizabeth the first chopped her head off because she was a papist and also because she wanted to take a look Lizabeth thrown among other things but elliot on this oval on the while there it says of your courtesy pray for the soul of Thomas Stearns Eliot in my end is my beginning and of course for any Christian you know what that's all about in my end not just the end of my when I collapse into the grave but my end in the sense of the Greek key allows my destiny that the end for which I was created in my end is my beginning and in my beginning is my end when you were conceived in a uterine wall your whole biography was there to all the potentialities of you you were there and in that beginning is your destiny and what you do with time is the big question do not ask what is it said Prufrock and Elliot says oh yes you better ask what is it or you're going to go to hell and then the third section is the dry selves ages and that's right here in our door yard it's just there's some rocks off Eastern Point in Gloucester and the sailors around here the men who have their boats and so on can tell you exactly where they are I've never I've been out there a dozen times with I'm not a sailor myself but my friends are and but I've never actually seen the dry selves ages I think they're visible at low tide as any sailor here también open but that's the third section and then the fourth section is called little gidding and that is a little community in England where a 17th century Anglican parson wanted to found a small community a lay community of single and married people where the daily and week in life would be ordered around the mass and what's called the the or re and the the so called monastic hours of the day Matins prime turth sex note and so on so those are the four sections and we'll come to them as we move along by the way if you're interested I'm not a very good salesman for our own books but you can't understand the the phone without this book it's called dove descending I guess how you mentioned it I don't know I don't know overkill but you can't get into heaven without reading it now I think I was going to tell you all about the Greek superscripts which are in the front pages there and there there we have time at the end I might mention that but anyway the great thing is to is to hear the poetry so burnt Norton the first section and this is how the poem opens in a sense he puts his cards on the table time and you think this is this is nothing but froze is it's not poetry well yes it is time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future and time future contained in time past and if you're like a lot of us you might want to throw in the sponge there and say he's lost me already but you already know about this time present and time past are both present in time future and time future contained in time past you know what an acorn is what's there it's here in the present the whole mystery of Oak ness is in that acorn and one fine day given the right circumstances it will be a magnificent hue huge oh so its end the destiny of the Acorn is in its beginning and in its beginning is the end and so on so the time present and time past for Elliott who was what we call an Anglo Catholic I can see at least one anglo-catholic in the audience here there there Episcopalians who'd like to think they're Catholics which they are that's an insider's jokes not fair from a papist like me but the Elliott was a high church Episcopalian Angra con which is the smells and bells end of the Episcopalian ISM and at the center of his imagination of course was the mass and what is the mass it's time present Sunday morning October the 10th in Hamilton Massachusetts or whatever it's the present time past the mystery of Golgotha the sacrifice of Calvary is made present here time past it's it's a reality here in time present and time future st. John's wonderful vision in the apocalypse they saw he saw a lamb as it had been slain the lamb slain from the foundation of the world time past time present time future and in the Catholic and Anglican imagination and belief theology it's that is a case in point of time past time present time future and time future contained in time past if all time is eternally present all time is unredeemable if we've got nothing but the moment now and it's just a question of getting through it and so on and leaving it behind if we're distracted from distractions by distraction it has no particular meaning then all time is unredeemable there's nothing you can do about it then he goes on to say what might have been is an abstraction remaining a perpetual possibility only in a world of speculation probably everybody in the room here as if only I could have been at that place at that time if only I could if only if only things had worked out with this boyfriend or girlfriend of mine and so on and they didn't oh if only we all have that feeling what but he says but what might have been if you had married that person and lo and behold it didn't work on what might have been he says it's an abstraction its remaining a professional possibility only in a world of speculation it doesn't have solid reality but then he goes then he comes to a key word here what might have been and what has been ones unreal and ones real what has been some point to one end which is always present now point is a major word in the four quartets point it nudges us along it crowds us along it reminds it plucks our sleeve what might have been and has been leave behind the the what might have been and get real with what actually has been it's always present now I'm going to skip a bunch of lines here if you're one of the people that has a edition with you I'm skipping over to line 67 in burnt Norton this is a way of I've skipped East Coker sorry too far all right we we have some lines here starting at line 62 I think yes and in the 60s before you all were born but when the hippies came came into play and began to run everything every other coffeehouse was named the Stillpoint and everybody loved that phrase well Elliot got there first he says at the still point of the turning world period and it was the Elliot that's not gramatica at a sentence well he put a period there and he's Elliot so you can Cour at the still point of the turning world bump neither flesh nor fleshless neither from nor towards at the still point there the dance is and it's a major major word in Eliot and should be in if you're a Christian in your vocabulary the dance is synonymous with the architecture of the universe it's the way things are ordered it's the it's the harmony of the universe and that involves morals and everything else you happen to live in an epoch where the notion is everything is up for grabs there isn't any prior pattern to things and we just makeshift the whole thing our morals what I want to do what gender is and so on everything is changing Eliot would have said not so the dance is the magnificent harmonious blissful choreography of the universe and if you wonder well what's the still point well you already know about that it's not a symbol at the center of every single wheel you've ever seen your bike or anything else there the math the mathematicians tell me I know nothing about it that mathematically speaking at the center of any the center of any wheel and so on there is a point which is actually not moving and yet and yet it is the motivation of a whole movement over the wheel and yet it is a still point it's the Animus behind the turning of the wheel and he says there at the still point of the turning world there the dance is but neither arrest nor movement it's not dead still but it's not mere move it isn't moving itself but and then he goes on to say but do not call it fixity it's quivering it's alive where past and future are gathered neither movement from north towards neither ascent nor decline except for the point the still point there would be no dance and there is only the dance I don't know whether you think about your life this way but you are involved in a dance and eternal ascent eternal a blissful overwhelming dance and you your salvation or your damnation depends on whether you learn the steps in Eliot's books I just caught sight of a former student of mine back there who knows more about Four Quartets than I do and I wish you would leave tiptoe out I'm now terrified oh dear is Johnny skilling god I was going to say God blessing I'll say that in any event he's used to this kind of font if Akane now I will I'm now skipping along this is just so you can hear some of these lines skipping over to Roman numeral three if you have your your have your Bibles in your laps about this is and he's speaking of here in ordinary life here is a place of disaffection time before and time after in a dim light neither daylight investing form with lucid stillness turning shadow into transient beauty with slow rotation suggesting permanence in other words in in real daylight and so on were you given the chance to see with lucidity and so on this lucid stillness where you could really see that's the reason the lighting in an art museum is important so you can see what the artist wants you to see the lighting anywhere the Sun comes up in the morning and you can see the garden and so forth but he says here when we're trapped in the mere sequence of time we have these experiences where it's neither daylight nor darkness to purify the souls and this is a major motif or theme or reality in Eliot's Four Quartets the light of course that's one of the metaphors that we grow at to try to approach the notion of eternal bliss and so on the light of heaven the the brightness of heaven and all of that but darkness is also if you read the Saints and someone you realize that the way toward the light has got to include darkness darkness to purify the soul they evacuate well I'll keep on reading here because he's the one who says it better the the purification the the divesting oneself of the distractions and so on the silence and the darkness he says in this place of disaffection it's neither daylight nor darkness to purify the soul emptying the sensual with deprivation being deprived cleansing affection from the temporal are your affections cleansed from the temporal think about it fall on your knees wondering about it neither plenitude fullness nor vacancy all we get here is this somewhat higgledy-piggledy sequence only a flicker we get oh and then this is a desperate picture coming up here oh he's he's looking I mean I'm jumping ahead a few lines but he's looking as it were at the faces that you might see in the London Underground the commuters should we say doesn't have to be that but only a flicker over the strained time ridden faces here's distracted from distraction by distraction these people what are they thinking about or not thinking about filled with fancies and empty of meaning tumid apathy swollen diseased apathy tumid apathy with no concentration men and bits of paper how do you like that bit to omit men and bits of paper world by the cold wind that blows before and after time wind in and out of unwholesome lungs the bad breath said or the lungs of the soul where there's nothing in there but rottenness time before in time after eructation of unhealthy souls halitosis into the faded air the torpid people trapped in torpor which is even more than a stupor the torpid driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London Hampstead and Clarke and well Camden and Putney Highgate Primrose and Lud gate these are the stops on the Underground in in London not here not here the darkness the purifying darkness the salvific darkness not here not here in this twittering world put that in your pipe and smoke it well where do we go next all right we're going to jump over to East Coker now I mean it's it's a major tragedy to leave out lines but we be heard all night so we go to East Cova this is the little village where heat Tricia's in so all these have to do with time burnt Norton that which was and is no more or that which was and is still present there's a burnt spot in the ground where the manor house at East Coker was I'm at burnt Norton East Coker his ancestors were there he's there dead now and so on in my beginning is my end write a term paper on that it's wonderful in my beginning is my end in in a might be incorrect in my creation in my conception is my destiny in my beginning is my end and also if we're mortal in my beginning is my end in the sense that if you're born into this mortal coil you're going to die you're not going to get out of it in my beginning is my end and then he gives us a series of wonderful pictures they're not symbols they're real in succession houses rise and fallen by the way in Eliot that's a real house that was built in fourteen hundred and something and is toppling over now or maybe has toppled over but these are the also it can be doesn't have to be the the royal houses of Europe the dynasty of the house of your family and so on the the Hohenzollerns the Vidkun Stein's the Habsburg the Windsors and and so forth the Lancaster's in New York's in succession houses rise and fall crumble are extended are removed destroyed restore or in their place is an open field or a factory or a bypass that's what that's British for cloverleaf or a traffic circle or one of these interchanges or a bypass old stones and by the way Elias loved the apparently unpoetic eructation of unhealthy souls any was able that's not poetry goodness sakes he loved that he loved to starve you we'd love to bother you old stone to new building oh look at these neat old old stones here let's build our house out of it old stone to new building old timber to new fires old fires to ashes and ashes to earth which is already flesh fur and faeces bone of man and beast corn stalk and leaf houses live and die there is a time for building he's quoting ecclesiasticus here time for building at a time for living and for generation and a time for the wind to break the loosened pain and to shake the wainscot where the fieldmouse trots you know the wainscot is it's one of the it's a baseboard that's about shoulder high you know and in old ruined mansions and so on the fieldmouse trots behind the way the old Wainscott and to shake the tattered heiress the old tapestry on the castle wall woven with a silent motto oh nice Joaquim Ali pants or etc Semper Fidelis these mottos and here it is it's just rags now in my beginning is my end let me see how far I want to read here these coker now I'm stopping there alright now we're going to jump over here to the wisdom of old men you thought they were wise all right do not let me hear of the wisdom of old men these great sages so on don't let me hear the wisdom of old men but rather of their folly their fear of fear I don't hear about fear distract me I'll turn on the telly their fear of fear and frenzy their fear of possession of belonging to another or to others or to God zeliha just plunks that in there the only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility humility is endless the houses are all gone under the sea the dancers are all gone under the hill we had to skip a wonderful picture of 17th century peasants with their muddy feet clomping away in a folk dance out out in the field and so on but he says don't don't let me hear of the wisdom of old men but rather of their folly you don't get wise just by passing through time ah this'll cheer you up Roman number of the Oh dark dark dark they all go into the dark the vacant interstellar spare where do you go when you die if you're a Christian you hope you're going to waltz into paradise somewhere if you're a Catholic you think are going to have to go via purgatory but in any event they all go into the dark the vacant interstellar spaces the vacant into the vacant me nothing in my head into the vacant and then you have this wonderful roster of impressive men the captains merchant bankers eminent men of letters TS Eliot among others the generous patrons of art the statesman and the rulers distinguished civil servants chairmen of many committees Industrial Lords and petty contractors all go into the dark and dark the Sun and Moon and the Almanac the Gotha that's the Almanac of European royalty the Almanac the Gotha and the Stock Exchange Gazette not very poetic the directory of directors and the cold the sense and lost the motive of action and we all go with them into the silent funeral nobody's funeral for there is no one to bury this was a nonentity he never caught hold he never was incarnate into actuality no one to bury I said to my soul be still and let the dark come upon you which shall be the darkness of God it's not the vacant interstellar spaces the Saints knew what it was to invite the darkness of solitude and silence that's where the richness and the light came from and what they wrote for us let the door I said to my soul be still the still point of the turning world and let the dark come upon you which shall be the darkness of God and now I skip over to line 147 ah Roman numeral four here again you think how did we get here well you all know about this anyway the wounded surgeon plies the steel that questions the distempered part what's going on there you're in an operating room well who's the wounded surgeon oh it must be a symbol for somebody price for something any surgeon is wounded he scraped his knee when he was a boy he broke his arm one time playing sports any surgeon is wounded all surgeons are would the wound be mortal he's wounded wounded with mortality the wounded surgeon plies the steel the the knife the scalpel that questions the distemper'd part there's a disease in here let me poke in here let me lay this aside let me get on in there the questions the distemper'd part and beneath the bleeding hands maybe his hands or his latex gloves now our bloody from the operation or bleeding in the sense that he's mortal he's vulnerable he's a human being beneath the bleeding hands we feel the sharp compassion of the healers art resolving the enigma of the fever chart the chart hanging on the end of the bedroom clipboard you know you've got these these symptoms these this this and the other thing the patient is complaining of what's wrong with this patient let's cut them open and get in there and see and you might say that that's cruel this man is cutting me but Eliot causes the sharp compassion of the healer I want you to get well so we got to go in here our only health is the disease if we obey the dying nurse whose constant care is not to please but to remind of our and Adams curse and that to be restored our sickness must grow worse and I think now this is very melancholy there very discouraging but our only health is the disease if we obey the diners if I do what the dying nurse tells me to do then there is health health is in the cards and so on if we obey the dying nurse some people try to make that a symbol I'm not a symbol hunter but for the church the church is the handmaiden the associate of the surgeon the great physician and so on if you want that you can go with that if you like to but whose constant care the nurse isn't in there to say oh now let's see how how should we make you comfy she may do that it's time to but sometimes she makes you very uncomfortable wake up wake up it's time for your hypodermic needle it's 3:00 a.m. and so on whose constant care is not to please but to remind us of our and Adams curse thou shalt die unless and that to be restored our sickness must grow worse we've got to bite the bullet admit it get into the fullness of it and then there's a chance that our sickness may get our mortality may be healed the whole earth is our hospital endowed by the rouen millionaire Johnny do you have a texts on that I've never been a but now here's a symbol I think it's Adam he was a millionaire he had everything and he endowed us with the fall but is that Alright okay thumbs up Johnny's killer we're on safe turf here everybody and died by the ruined millionaire we're in if we do well get this we shall die of the absolute paternal care that will not leave as it won't leave us alone but prevents us it's old usage of the word prevent meaning proceed goes ahead of us will but prevents us everywhere the absolute well what's the absolute paternal care the father the archetypal father the only father is ultimately and we will die and that is of course referring to our mortality but it's also in order to live we have to die I mean if you've forgotten about that read the Gospels again and you'll get some unhappy news there you got to die the chill ascends from feet to knees it reminds you of Sir John Falstaff with mistress quickly describing him on his deathbed there the chill ascends from feet to knees the fever sings in mental wires if to be warmed then I must freeze and quake in frigid purgatorial fires of which the flame is roses and the smoke is briars Eliot you're lost terrier lost in a lot of paradoxes no but he's a high church Episcopalian Church of England so he believes in purgatory if that puts you off it all that refers to really is that mystery whereby the work of grace in us is brought to completion and it may go on beyond death that is to say he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ the work of grace goes on in making us and so Eliot would can call this the frigid purgatorial fires which is it absolute zero or the boiling point and so on it's both it's the bringing to the N of that which I've cherished so much and it is the the purging of the fire and so on now put this in your 20th century pipe and smoke at you secular athletes and readers of villagey but I mean what does the secularist make it is the dripping blood our only drink the bloody flesh our only food in spite of which we'd like to think that we are sound substantial flesh and blood again in spite of that we call this Friday good why is it a good Friday the most horrible day in the history of the creation and yet and yet and yet I mean there's a is a planet - there's a fructifying of paradoxes here what is our ultimate only drink unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no wife life in you all right moving right along as they say or dark dark dark the wounded surgeon we now come to the dry self ages I'm just keeping my eye on the clock here dry selves ages these little rocks off and Elliott by the way his his family was a New England family but he grew up in st. Louis today he's part of the family had moved there but they spent their summers on Eastern Point here in Gloucester and he loved to sail so he would know all about the dry salvations and let's see where am I going to pick it up here line 15 now he's talking about the river that's a lovely part but he speaks of this the sea is the lands edge the nothing you can do about the ocean you can't plow it you can't damn it you can't manage it the sea is the land as far as long as you're on the land you can do something about it the sea is the lands edge also the granite into which it reaches the beaches where it tosses its hints of earlier and other creation walking along the beach the starfish the horseshoe crab the whale's backbone the pools where it offers to our curiosity the more delicate alga we would say algae Elliott pronounces it al gay the more delicate al gay and the sea anemone these proto historic creatures it tosses up our losses as well of them the torn same fisherman's net the shattered lobster pot the broken oar and the gear of foreign dead men the sea has many voices many gods and many voices the salt is on the Briar Rose the fog is in the fir trees let me see if I'm reading farther than I mean to read here no we can carry on the fog is in the fir trees to see howl and the sea Yelp if you've ever been on the beach when there was no other sound of traffic and so on you know that you can get all sorts of different was often heard together the wine in the rigging the Menace and caress of wave that breaks on water the distant wrote in the granite teeth and the wailing warning from the approaching headland these are all sea voices and the heaving groaner there is a buoy out here off my wife and I could hear it from our bedroom in Beverly farms when we lived there and you could hear this thing it's a haunting wonderful marvelous frightening fathomless sound the heaving groaner rounded home words and the seagull under the oppression of the silent fog the tolling bell there's a their bell buoys - clang clang clang under the approach of the oppression of the silent far the tolling bell measures time not our time rung by the unhurried groundswell a time older than the time of chronometer 'he's older than the time counted by anxious worried women women up here in the these big houses up in Newburyport where the wives of the clipper ship captains waited and watched for their husbands there was there were no cellphones then and so on it sometimes three years the older than the time counted by anxious worried women lying awake and calculating the future is he going to come back or isn't he trying to unweave unwind unravel and piece together the past in the future between midnight and Dawn where the past is all deception the future futureless before the morning watch when time stops and time is never ending and the groundswell that is and was from the beginning clangs the bell is the groundswell that makes that bell ring and it's frightening and it's electrifying and it's mesmerizing and it's haunting and so forth all right lobster pots ha 129 we have here oh yes if I've got time you know I'm going to skip this moving right along as they say this is a lovely part Elliott has fun I mean he's very courteous very polite he was an elegantly civilized man but he is mercilessly mocking all the attempts to peer into the cheap cheesy attempts to peer into the future with you know what's the stuff in the newspaper my mind for the horoscope yeah that's probably a sin you don't believe it but Elliott would have in other words because it doesn't belong to our mortality to know the future so I don't know you can you can quarrel with that in some prayer group you have is it a sin but this is Eliot's description of all this nonsense to communicate with Mars you know the planets I was born under the sign of so and so therefore I have this inclination to communicate with Mars converse with spirits Ouija boards and so on to report the behavior of the sea monster describe the horoscope her Russification I'll give you a dollar if you know what that word means Gilliam does but it means rummaging through sheeps and trails to which they did in Rome the priests to try to find out whether told me of Egypt is going to come over and beat you in a battle to describe the Horus pocket or scry to descry the future observe disease and signatures graph all analysis forsooth evoke biography from the wrinkles of the palm all those palm reader palmist palm readers you go to you know dressed like somebody from nowhere beside the road in Florida biography from the wrinkles of the palm and tragedy from fingers release omens by sort the letters so casting Lots or tea leaves riddle the inevitable with playing cards the Tarot pack fiddled with pentagrams or barbiturate acids Timothy what's-his-name in the 60s or dissect the recurrent image into preconscious terrors young and company to explore the womb or tomb or dreams all these are usual pastimes and drugs Zelly just dismisses them all these are usual pastimes and drugs and features of the press what could be more infra dig and always will be some of them especially when there is distress of nations and perplexity whether on the shores of Asia or in the edgeware Road or on Boylston Street at the marathon the edgeware Road is one of the big roads in London men's curiosity searches past and future and clings to that dimension but period but to apprehend the point of the 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 ardor 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 time unseen or the winter lightning or the waterfall or music heard so deeply that it has not hurt at all but you are the music while the music lasts these are only hints and guesses are you picking up the hints and guesses big gang hints followed by guesses and the rest here comes some hammer blows and the rest is prayer observance discipline thought and action the hint have guessed the gift have understood is incarnation God came into our time and in our flesh here the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual in the incarnation here the past and future are conquered and reconciled the creator the eternal second person of the Most Holy Trinity here in Bethlehem Dead risen again coming again and so forth ponder it where action were otherwise mere movement of that which is only moved and has no source of movement all right now I'm going to skip and finishing to little getting the little community which was to be organized around really the mass and the canonical hours as they're called of the in the breviary the monastic hours and what shall we pick here 939 all right it's your the tourist if you came this way there's almost nothing there there's just a little tiny chapel there now at least the last time I was there that's always there I didn't more there yeah if you came this way taking any route starting from anywhere at any time or at any season it would always be the same you would have to put off sense and notion you are not here you are not here to verify instruct yourself or inform curiosity or carry report let's see what the travel book says about this here and so forth or was Nicolas getting right or wrong you're not here to verify instruct yourself or inform curiosity or carry report you are here to kneel where prayer has been valid and prayer is more than an order of words the conscious occupation of the praying mind or the sound of the voice praying and what the dead had no speech for when living they can tell you being dead the communication of the Dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living here the intersection of the timeless moment is England and nowhere never and always it's yearning and it could be here in this room the point of the intersection of the timeless with time it's in the liturgy it's in the mass and then yes a lovely little lyric here I'm just going to pick part of it this is in the fourth section room number four and he raises this question it's the second stanza in this if you're following who then devised the torment and every person sitting in the room has had torment you've had your heart broken you've broken a bone you've been crushed by some development and so forth whatever it's been and there's nobody here that doesn't know about torment well who then devised the format well a cosmic sadist obviously I mean hey this you know I didn't ask for this well Elliott doesn't agree with you who then divides the torment questionmark love period love is the unfamiliar capital name behind the hands that wove the Intolerable shirt of flame like Medea wolf or was it Jason the Intolerable shirt of thing which human power cannot remove we only live only suspend by either fire or fire ultimately either the fire of my own creating the solitude the fire of Hell which is bottomless and meaningless or the fire the divine love and then this is the end we shall not cease from exploration zazz Iliad and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started the wheel and so on and in a sense Eden was as close as you can get to paradise in our own globe will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time we live in a murk as long as you live your mortal life and live in history and mere time and so on we only pick up hints and guesses fugitive hints and guesses what was that all about what did that mean 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 at the source of the longest river the voice of the hidden waterfall and the children in the apple tree not known because not looked for but heard have heard in the stillness between two waves of the sea it's also fugitive I didn't get good hold of that quick now here now always they can get these next two lines a condition of complete simplicity parentheses costing not less than everything you have to die costing that listener and then and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well when the tongues of flame are in folded into the ground not of fire and the fire and the rows are one and I understand the theme of today is beauty right the fire the celestial rose Dante's celestial rose it's probably as close as nature can get to be speaking that perfection and mystery and beauty of the eternal and let me read it again Elliott got this from game Julian of Norwich who was an anchor Asst bricked up in a cell and when she died they just put the brick in she's still there dead but and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well when the tongues of flame are unfolded into the crown not of fire and the fire and the rose are one and I hope you heard the difference between that all shall be well that Elliot and Dame Julian are speaking of and the usual everything is going to be okay Pingree hunky-dory don't worry it's okay how often I mean I was looking at the people on Boylston Street the other day it's okay it's not okay I've been blown to pieces it's not okay for anybody in here you're going to suffer and die but Dame Julian said Anne Elliot Eckhart ER all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well and the tongues of flame are unfolded into the crown not of fire and the fire and the Rose are one thank you for your

Channel: Gordon College

Views: 97,952

Rating: 4.8733335 out of 5

Keywords: Gordon College, Symposium, What Is Beauty?, Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot

Id: fnTqmpti6So

Length: 56min 42sec (3402 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2013

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