T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”: Burnt Norton

I’m going to start this year’s edition of Resurrecting Orthodoxy a little differently. Instead of a book analysis, or something about YECism, or a Biblical Studies post, I’m going to share my love of the poetry of T.S. Eliot. I was first introduced to Eliot’s poetry, as most people are, with his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. To be honest, at the time, 16-year-old Joel could hardly make heads or tails of it. Nevertheless, there was something strangely appealing to it. Later, as an English Literature major in college, I read a bit more of Eliot, and although he was still hard to understand, his poetry spoke to me.

In the years immediately after my graduation from college, both my two years as a substitute teacher and my time as a TOEFL teacher in the Peace Corps in Kazakhstan, I dove headlong into Eliot’s poetry. I spent time in the Wheaton public library, reading books that analyzed his poetry, I marked up his poem with notes, and while in Kazakhstan I memorized many of his poems. Eventually, when I returned from the Peace Corps and began my “career” in Biblical Studies, both with my graduate work and my teaching career, my books on Eliot went on the shelf—but as I look back, it is very easy to see just how much his poetry has shaped my outlook on life.

And so, to begin this year on my blog, I am going to revisit some of Eliot’s poetry, beginning with his masterpiece, The Four Quartets. It is actually a collection of four poems that Eliot wrote over the course of a decade: Burnt Norton (1935), East Coker (1940), The Dry Salvages (1941), and Little Gidding (1942). In many ways, The Four Quartets is perhaps the hardest of Eliot’s poetry to understand—and that is saying something because all of Eliot’s poetry is hard to understand! Nevertheless, I want to share both a reading of each of the four poems in The Four Quartets, as well as just a few remarks that (hopefully) will make each poem a bit more understandable.

I am not going to provide a detailed commentary or explanation of everything in each poem. As the ancient Freman saying in the novel Dune says, “Truth suffers from too much analysis.” Although a certain amount of explanation and analysis is necessary to help get your bearings in the poetic world of T.S. Eliot, his poems are there to be dissected like a corpse. They are meant to be read and contemplated, and read and contemplated, and read and contemplated. The Four Quartets is Christian mystical poetry that contemplates the intersection of the fleeting moments within time to the ever-present now of eternity, with Christ as the still point, the spiritual center, within time, around which all of time and history revolves, and through which we experience union with the divine. What follows are three things: (A) A very brief explanation (taken from my own notes form the various books I’ve read on Eliot) regarding how these poems are constructed, (B) A very brief “Cliff-Notes” explanation regarding what Burnt Norton is about, and the (C) A YouTube video in which I read Burnt Norton for you.

The Construction of the Four Quartets
Each poem takes its title from an actual place Eliot was familiar with in his life and is divided into five sections. The first section is one of a landscape meditation in which Eliot contemplates the philosophical and spiritual tensions between time and timelessness. The second section provides an “interior geography of the soul” in which Eliot reflects on the landscape meditation of the first section. The third section, the center of each poem, invites the reader to contemplate and practice the spiritual discipline that leads one to experience the intersection of timeless moments within time. This spiritual discipline involves both self-surrender (a kind of death) and a transformation of one’s own will (a kind of resurrection). The fourth section provides a short, purgative lyric which contemplates the need for purification of the soul. The fifth section then reconciles all the central themes in the quartet.

Eliot begins The Four Quartets with two quotes from Heraclitus that are key to understanding the overall thrust of the entire poem. The first quote is this: “Although the Word [Logos] is common to all, most people live as though each one had an understanding peculiarly his own.” For Eliot, the Word [Logos] is ultimately Christ, as taken from the prologue of the Gospel of John (the Word became flesh and dwelt among us). His point is this: Although Christ became incarnate, and although he is the ultimate “unifying principle” to all creation, most do not recognize him. They remain largely ignorant of the Word because they are beholden to their own particular understandings—their own words—that are limited within time. The limitations of their own words make it hard for people to perceive the Word.

The second quote is this: “The way up and the way down are one and the same.” In layman’s terms, this actually gets to the heart of Christianity. In order to achieve union with Christ (the way up), one must die to oneself (the way down). There is only one way—and that way consists both of dying to self and rising with Christ. So, Christ is both the Word, as well as the Way.

Burnt Norton
I will start with two quotes from a book I’ve long forgotten, yet put in my own copy of The Four Quartets that summarize the theme of Burnt Norton:

“Because all is one, the modern man’s attempt at an individualistic separation from tradition, from God, and from society as a whole can only result in an existence that is meaningless and un-Christian.”

“Basically, what Eliot says is that all life is one. What he urges is that man recognize the inherent oneness of things and strive for an art, a society, an individual existence which is a reflection of, and in harmony with, that oneness.”

Part 1 of Burnt Norton describes a transcendent experience Eliot had in a rose garden, where there was an empty pool. This introduces us to the main focus in all The Four Quartets, namely a contemplation of those timeless, transcendent experiences we experience within time that are simply isolated events that pass quickly. Or as I put it, those fleeting glimpses of eternity we sometimes have that are gone before we know it. Those experiences give us a glimpse of a union with the divine (what Eliot calls the Still Point), but since we are bound in time, our experience of that union last for only a moment. Still, those experiences point to a full realization of that union. The challenge presented to us, therefore, becomes this: “How do we move toward that union? What is the way that takes us to union with the Word?”

The function of memory in The Four Quartets is key. For we live our lives and experience various, random events, yet it is our memory and contemplative recollection of those events that arranges them into a pattern, and thus transforms them into something different—something that leads us to union with the divine. So here in part one, the “memory” is that of Eden, of our original, natural innocence that is nevertheless fleeting. Our “memory” takes us through that “first gate” and into our “first world” where we inevitably follow that “deception in the thrush.” Still, there is the transcendent experience of a pool that is “filled with water out of sunlight,” and yet it is soon over, and we are left with an empty pool.

And so, we realize that transcendent reality is revealed only in fleeting moments and flashes within time, and it can only be remembered when placed within the reference of time—and yet, those moments act as pointers to the ultimate end of an ever-present eternity.

Part 2 of Burnt Norton contemplates the Still Point (Christ) around which all the world turns. It is the timeless reality that gives purpose and meaning to all the events we experience within time. Yet since we are mere mortal creatures, bound by time, we cannot yet endure timeless reality. We can only bear it in small doses—in those fleeting transcendent moments within time—and even those glimpses of the still point are given to us only by grace. Time itself, though limiting, nevertheless protects us mortal creatures from both “heaven and damnation.” We cannot endure either one in our present, mortal condition. Thus, it is through time, and through our use of memory and contemplative recollection of those transcendent moments within time in which we experience the still point, that we are able to conquer time and eventually experience full union with the still point.

Part 3 of Burnt Norton speaks to the spiritual discipline that is necessary to purify the soul on its journey to union with the divine. That spiritual discipline is essentially the “Dark Night of the Soul” expressed in the theology of St. John of the Cross. You enter into the “darkness of this twittering world” in which so many are so easily distracted by all the noise and wind in this world. I find it ironic, given our current society’s fascination with Twitter, that Eliot describes it as “this twittering world.” You descend into and through this darkness and distraction to the point of interior solitude. You die to the distraction of the world and renounce your self in order to come to the point of spiritual illumination of the still point within that darkness.

Part 4 of Burnt Norton focuses on the church bell that signals the ending of the day (a sort of death), and yet it is that same bell that acts as a call to prayer, which opens up to new life in the spirit. Eliot also gives the image of the yew tree, which not only is to be found in various graveyards in England, but also acts as a symbol of new life—hence a symbol of resurrection among the dead. The kingfisher’s wing is a reference to the Holy Spirit. Therefore, although death brings stillness to our bodies, it also brings us to the still point at the center of the world—the still point, “where the dance is” (see part 2). And so, it is in the “stillness of death” that we experience the “dance” of the still point. It is in the “darkness of death” that we experience the life of the turning world.

Part 5 of Burnt Norton contemplates the impossibility of transcending the limits of language. Transcendent reality is beyond the limits of language, and yet we need language to point to the reality of that transcendent still point. Our words will always “strain, crack and sometimes break,” and “will not stay in place, will not stay still.” And then Eliot mentions Christ, the Word in the desert, and reflects on his temptation in the wilderness by means of voices of temptation. Hence, the transcendent Word is attacked by words of temptation that exist in this desert of time.

Eliot then mentions the figure of the ten stairs. This is an allusion to St. John of the Cross’s teaching of the soul’s ascent to God—ten rungs on the mystical ladder of divine ascent. The first five stairs involve renunciation and descent, while the last five stairs involve fulfillment and ascent to unity. In this discussion, Eliot differentiates between desire and divine love. Desire is distracting movement within time, whereas divine love is unmoving because it is to be found in the timeless still point.

The last seven lines wrap up the main theme thus far. Within the limits of time, we occasionally experience the illumination of reality of the still point, yet those moments and glimpses of eternity quickly pass, and we are left within the ridiculousness of the waste of sad time. Hence, the majority of one’s life seems wasted in comparison to the ecstatic moment of the still point.