Four Quartets
Reading Group
July 2024
We will read and discuss Four Quartets, a four-part poem composed by T.S. Eliot between 1935 and 1942. The collection represents a zenith of poetic achievement in the 20th century and within Eliot’s own career. The sequence, comprising “Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding,” blends themes of time, memory, roads not taken, states of liminality, and spiritual depression and enlightenment. Eliot’s fusion of rich philosophical musings with profound religious insights demands careful, deliberate attention, and readings upon re-readings.
In this reading group for Patreon members, we will meet four times throughout the month of July to slowly read (aloud) and closely read (collaboratively) Eliot’s poem. Students will be encouraged to make the poem their own, to discover what resonates with them personally, to seek the hidden harmony of the poem, to cultivate a posture of receptivity before the work, and to intuit the inner logic by which the poem lives and moves.
By the end of the reading group, participants will have gained the following:
- an appreciation of Eliot’s art and style;
- an enjoyment of poetry through discussion and analysis;
- a better understanding of Eliot’s use of imagery, rhythm, and symbolism;
- and confidence in reading other difficult poems on their own.
Schedule:
We will meet the first four Mondays in July at 6pm EST over Zoom for discussion.
July 1, 6pm EST | “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets
July 8, 6pm EST | “East Coker,” Four Quartets
July 10, 6pm EST (Wednesday) | Eliot Guest Lecture on “East Coker” by Andrew Koenig
July 15, 6pm EST | “Dry Salvages,” Four Quartets
July 22, 6pm EST | “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets
Some wonder if the “flow” of existence comes from the physics concept of Quantum Time (suggesting that the passage of time is not real). Philosopher Augustine of Hippo reportedly wrote that he “felt he knew what time was, so long as no one asked him”. (these thoughts from Brooks article in “New Scientist” 2018 which I read recently.) Eliot says: “to be conscious is not to be in time”
Eliot’s (only one”l”?) apparently autobiographical semi-Wordsworthian poem seems rooted in nature, motion, reflections past and present. Is the focal point the “dance”? of part II?
How artful to throw in a random German word “Ehrebung” (elevation) without motion. Was Eliot reading Rilke? (who died in 1926) (Herbstag) which is a seasonal reflection of time?