Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

Afforded the opportunity to read along with Jeremy Irons on BBC Radio 4 was just too good an opportunity to resist. The first time I’ve read all four poems from beginning to end in one go. It is an impressive work full of variety and with wonderful plays on words from the beginning-

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.
(Burnt Norton)

How can anyone read this without going on to contemplate the concept of time? It reminds me of one of my father’s favourite quips: ‘Time flies, we cannot, they are too elusive.’ I have always presumed it is ‘elusive’ and not ‘illusive’, although either is possible. What is important is the concept of time, what is it? Did it start and, if so, when? Will it end, and when, and what precisely do we mean by ‘the end of time’.

…In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from 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 possess 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.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
(East Coker)


How moving is this tribute to those who served at sea: the fishing fleets; the convoys; and those who were left behind:

Lady, whose shrine stands on the promontory,
Pray for all those who are in ships, those
Whose business has to do with fish, and
Those concerned with every lawful traffic
And those who conduct them.

Repeat a prayer also on behalf of
Women who have seen their sons or husbands
Setting forth, and not returning:
Figlia del tuo figlio,
Queen of Heaven.

Also pray for those who were in ships, and
Ended their voyages on the sand, in the sea’s lips
Or in the dark throat which will not reject them
Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell’s
Perpetual angelus.
(The Dry Salvages)

In a curious way, I find this contemplation of the end curiously comforting:

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
(Little Gidding)

These extracts are, for me, simply the most thought-provoking parts of an eclectic collection that speaks of England at a particular time when the war was being lost and hope in the future was rare. The quartet has a settling effect, a putting of things in perspective, a taking of the long view that offers a kind of consolation, and may yet again be called upon to console future generations.