Dustin Kidd

226-06-6540

ENTC 830

Nelson

10/23/98

The early poetry of T. S. Eliot, poems such as "The Wasteland" or "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", is filled his despair of the human condition. Man is a weak soul, easily tempted and filled with lusts, who has no hope of redemption. These views of man did not change when Eliot converted to Catholicism. Eliot still maintained man’s desperate plight, but supplemented that belief with the notion that man has some hope through the work of Christ. This expanded view first appeared with the publication of "Burnt Norton" in 1935. From this poem, Eliot built a delicately intricate set of Christian devotional poems, Four Quartets.

The second of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, "East Coker", is the poet’s reflection on the English village in which his ancestor Sir Thomas Elyot wrote The Governour, and from which Andrew Elyot embarked for the New World (Blamires 41). Eliot understood poetry to be a series of images, phrases, and feelings deposited into the consciousness of the poet and then fused together to form something new (Eliot 55). Often, this collection is unified by a device that has little to do with the actual emotions that are the subject of the poem. In "East Coker," the village in Somersetshire is only a departure point for two discussions. The primary issue is the determinism that governs man’s activities and ultimately makes a failure of all his pursuits. The second issue is like the first: that the poet’s words fail in their attempts to elucidate the problem of determinism. Eliot prefaces Four Quartets with the words of Heraclitus: "The way up and the way down are the same." This quote highlights Eliot’s concern with naturalistic determinism in that it reminds the poet that every construction is followed by destruction, every creation is followed by demolition.

Eliot opens the first section of "East Coker" with the banner "In my beginning is my end" (l.1). This line is a reversal of the motto of Mary Queen of Scots, in my end is my beginning (Blamires 41). Here lies the foundation of Eliot’s notion of determinism. It suggests that a man’s life and death has been determined at the time of his birth. In the act of coming into the world he is resigned merely to enact that which has already been planned for him. Eliot goes on to describe the birth and death cycle of houses, both physical houses and dynasties (Blamires 41). He reminds the reader that every home will eventually be torn down and replaced, every ruling family will yield power to another. Once a house falls its elements are recycled and recombine to form the next generation.

Eliot then brings the reader into the physical realm, somewhere just outside of East Coker. Again, the power of determinism is found in the language. Eliot describes the subject, the "you", as standing in a particular lane which "insists" (l. 18) on his journey into the village; he is "hypnotised" (l. 20). But Eliot keeps the reader outside the village in a nearby field. There, the poet finds ghosts from the past enacting an ancient marriage celebration. Eliot uses older spellings of words like matrimony ("matrimonie," l. 29) and conjunction ("coniunction," l. 31), not only to infer the ancient setting, but also to invoke his ancestor, Sir Thomas Elyot, from whose book, The Governour, he is quoting. They are leaping and dancing around a fire, which is suggestive of the Heraclitean fire, a symbol for the flux of life. For all the life they seem to embody, the narrator knows that in reality these people are nothing more than the soil their decayed bodies have become. In their beginning was their end, and the end of their dancing is "dung and death" (l. 46). That is to say, that with their feces, as with their decaying bodies, they fertilize the earth (Blamires 42).

Eliot continues his reflections on the Heraclitean fire in the second section of the poem, which begins with a section of lyric verse about the Leonid meteor shower of late November. When Eliot correlates such strange occurrences as "Late roses filled with early snow" (l. 57) to the "constellated war" of the Scorpion fighting the Sun (ll. 61,62), he is suggesting that the patterns of activity on earth are merely reflections of heaven’s patterns, with the meteor shower serving as a point of connection between the two realms. In this, Eliot is revealing the deterministic power of nature as seen in the powers of the earth and the greater powers of the universe.

The poet then steps outside poetic discourse to reflect on the successes and failures of the poetry thus offered. Not only is he unsatisfied (l. 68), but he even describes his own style as "worn-out poetical fashion" (l. 69). He goes on to curse the lie of the wisdom of old age, suggesting that the serenity of the aged is not wisdom, but "hebetude", dullness of mind (l. 78). The poet no longer trusts experiential knowledge. He feels that abundance of knowledge only serves to weaken his poetic abilities. Such knowledge leaves the poet with the false belief that history is static, when, in fact, he realizes that history is constantly in motion. Eliot expresses similar notions in his essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," when he says that the poet, "must be aware that the mind of Europe…is a mind which changes" (Eliot 51). He instructs poets to remember that the body of poetry is alive and flows on a "current." Eliot requests not to hear of the successes of historical figures, but rather their failures, what they learned in mistakes (ll. 93-95). He is left with the sense that poetry is futile. "The only wisdom we can hope to acquire/ Is the wisdom of humility," (ll. 97-98). His pursuit of ultimate reality in poetry has failed.

Eliot returns to the poetic when he opens section three with a listing of the various lords over humanity, from "captains…bankers…men of letters" (l. 103) to the "Sun and Moon" (l. 107), from the "Almanach de Gotha" (l. 107) to the "Stock Exchange Gazette" (l. 108). Each of these powers, despite their control over humanity, will "go into the dark" (l. 106), will become insignificant. Not only these powers, but also each individual man will disappear from the world of the meaningful (l. 110). Here the poet echoes Milton’s prophetic judgment on civilization by quoting from Samson Agonistes. Eliot then introduces the theme of waiting that he characterizes with three analogies: the theater, the underground train, and the operating table. The poet suggests that to escape this determinism, man must still his soul and wait for the presence of God to come upon him. This theme is in direct contrast to the Eliot family motto: Be silent and act (which is surely the "silent motto" mentioned in l. 13). The waiting proscribed is that which occurs after one experience with reality was been abandoned and a new experience is anticipated but not yet attained. This waiting is like the experience in the theater when the lights have fallen dark and the scene is being changed, or like on the subway when the train stops awkwardly long between stations in the dark of the tunnel. This waiting is like the experience in surgery as the anaesthetic begins to take effect, but before unconsciousness sets in. He is waiting for that which could be fearful, yet anxiety has passed and only acceptance remains.

The act of attaining this waiting is similar to a mystical experience. The individual must release all knowledge, all beliefs, all thoughts of ownership and all understandings of location. He must, in a sense, "lose himself." But there is no mystical ecstasy involved. This is simply the emptying of one’s soul for the purpose of stepping outside of the flux of life. The poet looks not only to Eastern philosophy to find the necessary path to the still point (Murray 134), but also to St. John of the Cross (Gardner 107). Lines 135-146 are loosely translated from Ascent of Mount Carmel. Eliot has again stepped out of the poem to discuss his frustrations in writing the poem. He knows that he is repeating himself but can find no other way to get his point across.

Section four offers Eliot’s Christology. Christ is the "wounded surgeon" (l. 147) who with "bleeding hands" (l. 149) heals the corrupt soul of man. This passage is reminiscent of Christ’s claim that he came to heal the sick and not the healthy, and employs Christ’s metaphorical role as physician of the world. Man’s only hope is in Christ’s healing of his most broken unhealthy nature. Thus, man must forsake his own life to participate in the paschal experience of Christ. The earth is a "hospital" (l. 157) in that Christ the physician uses the earth to heal mankind, the wounded. The section closes with a Eucharistic song, marking the significance of communion as man’s only path to redemption from life in the flux. Friday is "good" (l. 171) because Christ’s death on Friday is good for man.

Eliot again reflects on his poetic attempts in section five, attempts that have taken place during the two decades between the first and second World Wars. While he sees no alternative to writing poetry, he feels that each poem is a "kind of failure" (l. 75). Language is too corrupt to sufficiently express his concerns, he calls it "shabby equipment always deteriorating" (l. 180). And other poets, those "men whom one cannot hope/ To emulate" (ll. 184/185), have already said everything at least once. But language is his only tool and poetry his responsibility, "For us, there is only the trying," (l. 189). He is fulfilling his duty by writing the poem, despite its failures.

The poet speaks as an old man reflecting on a life that has become increasingly "complicated" (l. 191) as he has moved from the womb towards the grave. In his maturity he has become aware of the "intense moments" (l. 192) not only of his life, but also of the lives of those who came before him. He sees the growing need to seek escape from the flux and realizes that it is his task, through poetry, to meet this need. This section is Eliot’s defiance of determinism, and so, when the poet says, "In my end is my beginning" (l. 209), he means that at the end of his life he has finally found meaning.

"East Coker" is mediated by Eliot’s understanding of the Heraclitean flux, the perpetual recycling of birth, life, and death. Eliot has combined this philosophy with his Christian sensibilities and placed God at the still point, in the center of the flux, something like the eye of a hurricane (Reibetanz 21). Christ, the Word, marks the only path between the flux and the still point. Eliot, manipulating the manifestation of the Word, which is language, seeks to rise from the flux into the still point. He seeks to reach God in an attempt to understand the futility and determinism of life.

Four Quartets also applies Heraclitus’ emphasis on the seasons by aligning air with "Burnt Norton", earth with "East Coker", water with "The Dry Salvages", and fire with "Little Gidding" (Reibetanz 205). "East Coker" begins with the image of life’s cycle in and out of the earth. The house rises as it is made from the products of the earth; and when it falls, the house returns to the earth. Man rises as he is fed by the nutrients from the earth; and when he dies, his body supplies those nutrients. The element of earth provides another way of understanding the determinism that so frustrates the poet. The second section closes with the dancers, the living, returning into the earth: "The dancers all gone under the hill" (l. 100). That image continues in section three with the various lords returning to the earth and then, in section four, the earth becomes a hospitable where Christ operates on the souls of man. Finally, section five finds the poet contemplating the earth, through the symbols of the petrel (a small sea bird that flies far from land) and the porpoise, as he reverses the opening line and discovers that, "In my end is my beginning" (l. 209). The earth is a reminder of present reality in which the tool of the poet, language, is unable to adequately express his views of ultimate reality.

This weakness of language allows Eliot to create what Blamires calls a writer-reader relationship (Blamires 52). Typical of the high modernist poets, Eliot writes in a somewhat inaccessible, allusion-heavy style. But Eliot apologizes to his readers for this difficult style, and gains their sympathy in his attempt to wield an imprecise language and express the unfathomable qualities of reality. The reader is thus brought side-by-side with the poet to face a shared obstacle. He wins the reader with his humility.

One wonders what insight Eliot felt was missing from his poetry. Despite his insistence on the "failures" of his poems, they seem to work. His poems captured the collective intellect of the twentieth century just as Eliot himself captured the Nobel Prize for Literature. Eliot’s fascination with ancient philosophy, his faithful concern with Christology, his desire to make ultimate reality a relevant experience for twentieth-century man, all seem abundantly clear in his poems. What was the "private insight" of the poet that remains ineffable?

Blamires, Harry. Word Unheard: A Guide through Eliot’s Four Quartets. London:

Meuthen & Co. Ltd., 1969.

Eliot, Thomas Stearns. "Tradition and the Individual Talent," from The Sacred Wood:

Essays on Poetry and Criticism. London: Meuthen & Co. Ltd., 1920.

The Four Quartets. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1943.

Gardner, Helen. The Composition of Four Quartets. London: Faber and Faber, 1978.

Murray, Paul. T. S. Eliot and Mysticism: The Secret History of the Four Quartets.

London: Macmillan, 1991.

Reibetanz, Julia Maniates. A Reading of Eliot’s Four Quartets. Ann Arbor: UMI

Research Press, 1970.