T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton II.c

16 Thursday Sep 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in T.S. Eliot

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Boethius, Burnt Norton, eternity, poem, Poetry, Poetry Analysis, T.S. Eliot, Time

The inner freedom from the practical desire,

The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded

By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,

Erhebung without motion, concentration

Without elimination, both a new world

And the old made explicit, understood

In the completion of its partial ecstasy,

The resolution of its partial horror.

Yet the enchainment of past and future

Woven in the weakness of the changing body,

Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

Which flesh cannot endure.

We now move from a description of this place where opposites are present – and not, the still place. Rather than examining this place, Eliot turns to consider the effect of this place upon the human being. This portion of the poem considers: what does this still point do to the one who enters it.

Working backwards, we can see a parallel here with the line in the first section “human kind/cannot bear very much reality.” Here, something has been interposed which

Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

Which flesh cannot endure.

There may be an allusion here to Paul’s statement in the great 15^th chapter of 1 Corinthians on the resurrection of the body that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.” The idea of Paul is that the human body must undergo a renovation to participate in the life to come.

Here, Eliot speaks of something which protects human flesh from experiencing a too real world. In making this world too real (I am borrowing from the language of the first stanza), it seems we are in a Platonic realm with this world of ideas and forms is more real than the physical world. Lewis plays on this idea in The Great Divorce.

Continuing to work backward from this protection

Yet the enchainment of past and future

Woven in the weakness of the changing body,

Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

Which flesh cannot endure.

The present, which is neither the past nor the future is “enchained” (a fascinating word here) and “woven” in the human body. Notice how he describes the human body, it is “changing.” I believe this must be a reference to the fact that the present is constantly new as this still point between the past and future changes.

It is a quite literal statement that our human body can be nowhere but in the present. I must admit that I am not certain as to what is the reference to “heaven and damnation.” I suspect this is a merism for the entirety of Platonic reality. We cannot move outside the present and thus the powerful currents around us cannot touch us here.

The movement in the first section to the phantoms would be a movement into this Platonic realm.

And this leads to a question: is this still place something which is there, something which is there and we do not notice it, or is it a place to which we must enter? Is it a psychological relationship to this place?

The beginning of this line of thought reads

The inner freedom from the practical desire,

The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

And the outer compulsion,

This reads very much like a Buddhist idea of enlightenment and being freed from an illusory relationship to “reality” – which is really an illusion. As such we are discussing a psychological/spiritual relationship which is the result of a different understanding of such things.

But the poem complicates this conception with a contrast, “yet”

yet surrounded

By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,

Erhebung without motion, concentration

Without elimination, both a new world

And the old made explicit, understood

In the completion of its partial ecstasy,

The resolution of its partial horror.

It is not just the state of detachment, he adds here “a grace of sense.” This is quite different than the dissolution of the “I”. He is moving into something perhaps more similar to a Christian Platonism where eternity is an eternal now. (And at this point, perhaps he has Boethius in mind). Quoting the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy:

In Boethius, the contrast is between timeless eternity, which only God enjoys, and everlastingness, which (following Plato) the world itself possesses.

It is the common judgement, then, of all creatures that live by reason that God is eternal. So let us consider the nature of eternity, for this will make clear to us both the nature of God and his manner of knowing. Eternity, then, is the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life; this will be clear from a comparison with creatures that exist in time.

…for it is one thing to progress like the world in Plato’s theory through everlasting life, and another thing to have embraced the whole of everlasting life in one simultaneous present. (Boethius Consolation, V.VI., transl. V. E. Watts 1969)

Boethius uses his view of eternity to address the problem of divine foreknowledge (see section 6.2). If God knows beforehand what we will do then how can we act freely? His answer is that this problem dissolves in the face of the fact that God does not know anything beforehand but has an immediate, atemporal knowledge of all things. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eternity/

I think this conception answers more nearly to Eliot’s thought at this point. It is as if one has moved into a realization where everything is frozen in an eternal now. Scenes in a movie where there is an explosion and than a freeze frame where the character looks around and see the matter in motion perfectly still might be a good idea here.

If so, then this is a realization of what is already there. It has just been lost. Our enchainment to the present protects us in a movement from seeing the eternity about it – and eternity as a place of heaven and hell.

Erhebung without motion

The precise meaing of the German here is beyond me because the word refers to a movement up so it could be an uprising or a physical rising or a metaphorical use of the conception. There is a rising without a motion.

both a new world

And the old made explicit, understood

In the completion of its partial ecstasy,

The resolution of its partial horror.

The old and new worlds could be past and future, or perhaps mundane and Platonic. Our relationship to them is “understood.” And that understanding is both an ecstasy and a horror, which would return us to the idea that reality is simply something which we cannot bear. Hence we are protected from the full experience of this place.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton II.b

12 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, T.S. Eliot

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Burnt Norton, Literature, Parmenides, poem, Poetry, Poetry Analysis, T.S. Eliot

The previous post on this poem may be found here.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

This strikes as quite similar to Parmenides’ denial of motion. In his poem, at fragment 8, beginning at line 26 we read:

But motionless within the limits of great bonds,
it is without a beginning and without an end, since the birth and death
were rejected very far, a real certainty expelled them.

It would be possible to translate the language a bit differently. For instance, it could be “birth and destruction.” The language of “real certainty” is a combination of “truth” and “trust” (or faith or belief). A fundamental difference between Parmenides is that the philosopher seems to hold that all things are without motion. Eliot, on the other hand, seems to be describing a particular place:

At the still point of the turning world.

The world turns, but in the midst of that moving world is a place without motion. This space seems to answer a question which arises with the consideration of the world of the forest floor somehow being replicated in the sky, Where is the place of connection. How does one world touch the other?

Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement.

And

Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

This center point is a place where opposites have come together: it not movement from or towards. It is not a place of past or future. There is no “way up” or “way down” (to use the language of motto for the poem).

It is a place without place:

I cannot say where.

It is a place without time

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

Notice the opposites which do not exist here:

There is no being:

Neither flesh nor fleshless;

There is physical distance:

Neither from nor towards;

….

Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline.

There is no movement or stillness:

But neither arrest nor movement.

There is no time:

And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered.

…

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, Part II.a

23 Monday Aug 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in T.S. Eliot

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Boarhound, Burnt Norton, Peter Jones, poem, Poem Analysis, Poetry Analysis, T.S. Eliot, Time

We come to the second division of the poem. The first 15 lines which comprise a stanza and certainly must be understood together read:

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The mud thrown-up by the wagon as it plunges along spray up, unto the axle and would “clot” it. That makes plain sense. Yet is not the mud which is send to clot the wagon but the “garlic and sapphires.” This is a striking and strange phrase. Why would there be garlic or sapphires in the mud. Certainly one wouldn’t leave them there – certainly not sapphires. And then to have them merely muck thrown-up to the underside of a wagon. The world is certainly mixed up. But to what end is not apparent in these lines.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The precise nature of the “trilling wire” is not exactly clear. I certainly don’t think he intends any precise physiology on this point. Then what do we have: I take this as something similar to Whitman’s “I sing the body electric” or perhaps Thomas’ “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” It is some sort of live force that runs through all things. I think he means some sort of force in all living things (even all moving things) and more than just human life.

The “scars” above the blood here will become stars above all the rest. The combination of scars and wars works well: The war brought about the scar. The scar will never be removed, it is “inveterate”. And this life at work even beneath the scars of war appease the wars. But how so appease? To appease is to bring to rest some anger. There is a life which runs through and under even wars

Eliot writing after WWI and written during at least the first part of WW2 would not have a dim idea of war. But here the wars are “long-forgotten.” In saying this, he seems to be moving in a dim history. He is not speaking of his own life, but something of life. There is a history written in the life and in the scars. This present is not sharply marked-off from the past. The present bears the scars of the long forgotten wars and the same life sings beneath.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

The distinctions between the life of his body and the life of nature also become lost. The life in his body is the life of the movement of the stars. The parts are mysteriously linked together. My pulse is tied up with the movement of stars (and visa-versa).

The effect is quite pagan, where gods become animals or have human lovers and humans have half-god children and humans may find themselves transformed into something quite different. (For a less poetic and more philosophical consideration, see Peter Jones, The Other Worldview)

What is important here for the overall theme of the poem is that it is not just time as an abstraction, but the all things which are bound up together in this moment which is present.

Next, it is the movement above and below which are reconciled and coordinated. The sky above and the mud below:

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

The chase of animals on the ground is the chase of animals in the stars. The music of the spheres is transported to what we “hear upon the sodden floor.”

But there is something else here than bare correlation of opposites or even all things are one: The verb “reconciled” is interesting. What is reconciled? Most directly the chase of the boar and the boarhound. Their conflict and fight is “reconciled” above.

This moves us in a somewhat different mood than bare pagan all is one and inter-vesting each the other. The conflict upon the earth is not merely reflected in the heaven, it is reconciled. This introduces a Christian tone which moves beyond Greek or Norse mythology. Everything is telling one story, but there is a way to understand this story, if you will, in a higher key.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.7

19 Thursday Aug 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, T.S. Eliot

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Burnt Norton, Determinism, Freedom, Imagination, reality, T.S. Eliot, Time

Finally, the poem moves to a loss of the phantoms and the perpetual possibility and a recapitulation of the first movement:

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

With these spectres, the “we” of the poem moves in “formal pattern” (the dance perhaps, some sort of joint enterprise).

This dream scene moves into “the empty alley”. And with this movement, it seems we have moved into the world of Eliot’s earlier poems, Prufrock, Preludes, and Rhapsody on a Windy Night, the grim modern city rather than the still garden with unheard music.

The imagery at this point becomes deathly (I had not thought death an undone so many):

into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,

A “box circle”: using google n-gram, I believe that Eliot has coined a phrase. This is perhaps a paradox: a circle cannot be squared. The impossible “squaring a circle”. A trap, a box canyon? I take it for an impossible place.

And in this into this impossible place we have a scene of death: the pool is drained, dry, rotting (brown edged). In his poem The Waste Land in the section, “What the Thunder Said” the dry rock is the image of a dead land. And so the ghostly band has come into a city-scape, and to an impossible place of death. Where there should be water (a pool) there is none.

At this point, we come to a series of images which I cannot help but relate to Wallace Stevens. In “The Glass of Water” we read the lines

Light

Is the lion that comes down to drink. There

And in that state, the glass is a pool.

Ruddy are his eye and ruddy are his claws

When light comes down to wet his frothy jaws.

I am not saying that Eliot was thinking of Stevens (Eliot’s poem was earlier that Parts of the World), just that it resonates. The lines of Eliot read:

And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.

Here in the midst of a dead land (a dry pool) sunlight entered and produced light. Living in a very sunny place all year round, sunlight would make me think of a dry land, but living in England, I imagine sunlight would be associated with the production of life. A lotus would be exotic to one in England. The whole scene then seems like a wonder of life exploding.

This spectral world is becoming quite real and full: the “they” are there looking into the world, too. It seems that the whole is on the verge of becoming not merely a possibility but real. And then

Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

The cloud interrupts the revelry. It is whatever prevents the imagination from persisting. I don’t know that it has any particular “outside” reference: if the sunlight is the imaginative work of creating the scene, then the cloud is that which interrupts.

Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.

This is curious: the bird says go! Why? Because the leaves are full of children (just as the shrubs were filled with music). Are the children dangerous in some way? Why? It seems the children are again the intrusion of something more intense. In the parallel lines it is reality. By means of the parallelism I take the children to be the intrusion of reality.

Human kind
Cannot bear very much reality

This speculation and possibility of the past is on the verge of becoming real.

Or is it that this revelry is disclosing something about reality which has not yet known? What is the reality which we cannot bear?

Having comes to this point, we return to the inevitable present:

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

There is a greater will of some sort which always bears upon reality and which determines the present.

When I come to this point, I wonder if more than a meditation upon time and imagination and regret, it is also a meditation upon freedom and what must be.

He has brought me to think about these things, but not as in an essay or argument. Rather than telling me about them, as a poet, he is calling me to look at them. Whether he receives a clearer resolution will depend upon what comes next.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.6 (Phantoms Dancing)

18 Wednesday Aug 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in T.S. Eliot

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Burnt Norton, eyebeam, Literature, poem, Poem Analysis, Poetry, Poetry Analysis, T.S. Eliot

Having come through the door we meet the “them” promised by the thrush. Here is what was lurking in the poet’s “first world”

There they were, dignified, invisible,

Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,

In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

And the bird called, in response to

The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

The inhabitants are described as follows:

Dignified. That is a curious word to begin. We could just dismiss this as Eliot being proper. But something more seems here. Something which is unreal could easily be ridiculous: but there is an honor here of sorts.

Invisible: How then are known? Imagination. They cannot be remembered, because this is the world which has never been. And so we enter into the imaginary world somehow shared (whether Eliot with someone else, or perhaps with us the reader is unclear).

Moving: The idea of moving is coupled with the “unheard music” compels me to think of a dance. These phantoms (I don’t think “ghost” or “spirit” is right) are dancing over “dead leaves” but they break nothing. They “mov[e] without pressure.”

I’m not sure what to do with the “autumn heat” beyond notice that the whole has the feel of being stifling. There are phantoms, but nothing is stirring. It is hot, but there is no breeze. When this is coupled with the language from earlier about unstirred dust on rose leaves, there is a feeling of an utterly closed-up world.

This was a choice Eliot has made: while this old, closed up world is one way to imagine the never-has-been past, it is also the case that he could have produced a chaotic and vibrant never-have-been. This was a choice.

Notice the environment: the air is “vibrant” but like the dancers without pressure, the vibration is of a music which is not heard. Everything is it seems potential: this is what could have been: dancing, music. But not there.

The bird is here: it is the guide into this imaginary space. The bird calls to the unheard music: it is in the shrubbery, it is off-camera, coming from some place ou cannot see.

The eyebeam crossed: This is an idea as far back as Plato in Timeaus who explained that the fire made within us can cross through the eye and shine upon things to give sight:

“And of the organs they first contrived the eyes to give light, and the principle according to which they were inserted was as follows: So much of fire as would not burn, but gave a gentle light, they formed into a substance akin to the light of every-day life; and the pure fire which is within us and related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense, compressing the whole eye, and especially the centre part, so that it kept out everything of a coarser nature, and allowed to pass only this pure element. When the light of day surrounds the stream of vision, then like falls upon like, and they coalesce, and one body is formed by natural affinity in the line of vision, wherever the light that falls from within meets with an external object. And the whole stream of vision, being similarly affected in virtue of similarity, diffuses the motions of what it touches or what touches it over the whole body, until they reach the soul, causing that perception which we call sight.”

The idea had various uses in science and art thereafter. Eliot certainly was not proposing this as a real effect (no one believed such in the 20^th century). So why then this reference here?

Eliot was influenced by the metaphysical poet John Donne (if you are interested, here is a paper on the topic, https://www.academia.edu/38522764/The_Poetry_of_John_Donne_T_S_Eliot_as_Critic_and_Poet) and perhaps these lines from Donne’s poem the Extasie were alluded to by Eliot

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thred

Our eyes, upon one double string;

If there is allusion to regret and love in the poem, then the reference to Donne would be appropriate and ironic.

Next comes a line which has always delighted me:

for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at

This speculative space of what has never been is inhabited and it effects and affects. The eyebeams of the phantoms (?) have seen the roses – which calls back to rose leaves above. The roses disclose the presence of the lovers seeing one-another. The roses evidence the crossed gazed. The reality of this love played out in the unseen world.

And finally:

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

This raises a question: Is this imaginary space the poet’s own life? Are these true third parties. Or is this some alternative to himself: this is me if the world had been different?

And how then are they here as guests? They are not recriminating: accepted and accepting.

He never quite defines these phantoms. I think they must be poet and someone else (again a lover, the reader, is this written to a particular person and we are overhearing?) are the ones at issue. The “they” is not someone else but rather a who Eliot could have been.

The reference to the “eyebeams crossed” makes this intimacy a moment of lovers. And the prove of their presence is shown in the roses.

And for a moment, there is peace. We are permitted in; and we are at peace with this other self.

In the next movement, this equipoise will be dissolved.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.5

12 Thursday Aug 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, T.S. Eliot

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Burnt Norton, Memory, poem, Poem Analysis, Poetry, Poetry Analysis, T.S. Eliot, Time

Other echoes

Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,

Round the corner. Through the first gate, (20)

Into our first world, shall we follow

The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

To put these lines into their context, here are the lines already considered. I have also added an underscore to the word “echo”.

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. (5)
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present. (10)
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind. (15)
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate, (20)
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

Looking back we can a major shift in line 11 with the first “echo”. The first ten lines are philosophical and distant. But at line 11 we enter into some sort of memory and that memory is an “echo”. The echo is of “footfalls” and so of some movement which never happened (down the passage which we did not take). At line 15 there is a bit of a pause, should we follow after this memory?

Then in middle of line 17, someone else intrudes and pulls the “we” toward the door which was never opened. Here there are “other echoes”. We will meet these phantoms in a bit, but here are just sounds.

So why this word “echo”. It is not a sound but the echo of the sound; it is not the original but the copy. By using the word “echo”, Eliot increases the dream quality. Also, these sounds are “echoes” because the original happened (or did not happen) in the past, but they are being experienced in the present.

We also learn what is on the otherside of the door which was never opened, “the garden.”

Raising the image of a “garden” holds all sorts of allusions, particularly in the hands of someone like Eliot. There is archetypal garden of Eden. There are also all of the wall, specially kept places as gardens.

Here the garden is “an abstraction” and a “perpetual possibility” which exists “only in a world of speculation.” To enter through this door in the memory is to enter into this “world of speculation.”

The image of the rose-leaves now comes into focus for we know where the roses came from: the garden in this memory.

But how could there be “other echoes” in this space? If the first echoes were the hurried steps to the door, who is on the other side of this door. But the “reality” (if you will) of the echoes beckon:

He then turns to the reader (?) “Shall we follow?” We could be overhearing his conversation with someone, or we could be the one spoken to: This would mean that in reading the poem, you are being addressed in the lines, “My words echo/Thus, in your mind.” And even if the poem is addressed to a particular “you” and “we”, the fact remains that the reader of the poem is the one who is following down the path toward the garden.

There is something quite mythical about a speaking bird leading one toward a garden. I feel there must be a particular allusion here, but I do not know what it is. It might be an allusion to the Norse god of poetry, Bragi. Whatever the allusion, the image is charming.

This bird calls “us” on quickly, and now we are hurrying down the pathway through the door, through the gate.

In lines 20-22 we have the word “first” used three times: It is the “first gate” and then twice “our first world.” When we couple this with the “garden” we have our first world is the garden: this points toward Eden – at least some pre-Fall world.

Now, Eliot will not actually place in the primeval garden, but there is a deliberate prelapsarian element: The fall may not be the fall of all humanity, but rather a much more personal “fall”. This is “our first world.”

Shall you (the reader, someone in particular to Eliot) and I (Eliot) open this gate in the memory and proceed to the world which didn’t happen and yet is this real to us?

There is one more point to consider, “The deception of the thrush.” What precisely is the thrush’s deception? That there is this “first world”? That we can enter it? If I am being called into something which is abstraction and possibility, is the call to consider that at all a deception?

Is it a deception to consider a world which never happened as a reality now?

And as we know from the first lines: this world which did not happen “point[s] to one end, which is always present.” This first world which did not happen brought about this present: a present where I am being deceived to enter a the garden of our first world.

It is fascinating because it allusive and difficult, but not muddled. He is describing something which cannot easily articulated: it is the vision out of the corner of your eye, the thought which startles and then slips away before you can focus. It is real and a deception; present and only a speculation.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.4

10 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in T.S. Eliot

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Burnt Norton, poem, Poem Analysis, Poetry, Poetry Analysis, T.S. Eliot

The previous post on the poem Burnt Norton may be found here

My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I do not know.

It is a path “we did not take”. My words echo in your mind. We are entering into a profoundly private space, a space of shared memory such that as the poet thinks, he sees the memory as a shared space.

Then we come to the word “But.” We are entering into this shared memory. We have come to the door which was never opened at the end of the path which we never took. And as he is standing at the door, he stops short: Why am I doing this?

It is interesting that here the metaphor changes from a door at the end of a pathway to a bowl of rose-leaves so long undisturbed they are covered in dust. To open this memory is to open a door, but it is also to trouble something which has long been a peace.

The movement from a door – which is outside – to a bowl rose-leaves – which is inside makes for a dreamlike movement: it is a shift from one place to another, from one scene to another which have some sort of association which is not clear to one from the outside.

A pathway and a door have a certain usefulness and sturdiness which is completely absent from a bowl of rose-leaves. Someone has carefully placed the leaves in a bowl. They have grown dry and are so brittle that to touch them is to break them.

The image of the bowl of rose-leaves strikes me as something we would find in a house which has long been unoccupied, or at least a room so. If the door opens to a space we never entered, then the rose leaves are in a room to which we never returned.

And so he asks, Why? To what purpose am I disturbing this memory? I do not know.

When come to these memories, seemingly of regret: something undone, some place unvisited, what compels to visit them? The delicacy of the memory and the imagery together with the intimacy of the place seem to indicate a romantic regret so long undisturbed.

Since Eliot will not answer the question plainly, we are left with the question for ourselves: Why would, why does one disturb the memory, the speculation of what did not happen? Is it, If I had done that differently, I would be happier now?

He is also trying to awaken this memory in the other: My words in your memory are disturbing the dust.

The next movement in the poem is to advance into this “deception”, a land with “unheard music”, and phantoms that walk upon dead leaves “without pressure.”

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.3

23 Friday Jul 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in T.S. Eliot

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Burnt Norton, Eliot, Literature, poem, Poetry, Poetry Analysis

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden.

I, lines 11-14.

Having raised the question of “what might have been” (from line 6), Eliot takes us into that “might have been”. In these lines he traces out how we get from “the present.”

Since we are traveling there, his description of this place here takes on a new depth of meaning. In line 7, it is an “abstraction”; thus it has some substance as an idea. In line 8, it is remaining and “a perpetual possibility.” At first read, it is easy to take “remaining a perpetual possibility” to be

Thus, there is a reality to the “might have been.”

Here, beginning in line 11, there is a movement from the present to this “abstraction” which is remaining perpetually.

We can confirm this is the event which did not happen in verse 12, “Down the passage which we did not take.” This is the thing which did not happen.

The passage creates a hurried movement: It begins with “footfalls echo”. There is a sense of someone walking, but only as heard. That would intimate the walking is taking place nearby but out of sight.

That place is then defined as “Down the passage”. Next comes “towards the door”. The use of “towards” rather than near, creates the sense of movement.

The door opens onto a rose-garden.

The speed is created by the inability to ever see who is walking. We hear the sound and move to the passage. But when we get to the passage, the sound is now moving toward the door. And as soon as we recognize the door, it has opened onto a rose garden. The effect is mesmerizing.

The place of all of this is the memory: There was a place we did not go, a door we did not open, a garden we had not visited.

This then makes for a bit of a paradox: If it is a memory it is something which did not happen. But, this never happened. Memory could be, “I remember seeing a passage I did not take.” But the memory cannot hear footfalls which never echoed.

This would then, (1) this is a memory of a constructed event. There is a place which he has returned more than once: he thought of what would have happened had he opened the door to the rose garden. He is now remembering his “speculation.” (2)
“Memory” is a trick: he is experiencing this construction as if it were a memory. By constructing what never happened, he is pretending that it did happen in fact.

My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

The plot becomes stranger: The footfalls which echoed are now the words which echo – not in my memory, but your mind. We have now entered into an extraordinarily intimate space: His memory of this door never opened are words – were these words never spoken? Are these words now being spoken? Was there an event which did not happen and of which they both spoke?

Does this mean, “You remember our conversation, when I told you of how I did not go into the rose garden?” For the poet, the memory is of the walking through the door. For “you” (whoever that might be), it is my words about that.

It is unclear what words are issue: Is the poems the words which now echo in memory, but stirring up memory?

Whatever is happening, the rather abstraction discussion of time in the first lines has moved the most intimate of spaces, a shared memory of what did not happen.

Since this memory of not happening is being rehearsed, it seems to anticipate a regret.

Burnt Norton.2 (“a perpetual possibility”)

18 Sunday Jul 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in T.S. Eliot

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Burnt Norton, Literature, Memory, Modern Poetry, poem, Poetry, Poetry Analysis, T.S. Eliot, Time

Burnt Norton.2

The prior post on this poem is found here

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.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Prosody

It appears he is structuring the lines around beat and alliteration. I may be off here, but there is not a regular meter like iambs. The basic line seems to be built off the Old English alliterative four beat line.

TIME PREsent and TIME PAST

Four beats, the T and P repeated

are both PERhaps PREsent in TIME FUTure

The T and F from the first line as well as the P.

This scheme is not cared with perfect fidelity to the alliteration. For instance line 8:

ONly in WORLD of SPECulAtion.

We can get four accents but no alliteration in the line. It would be possible to read this instead as a third beat line.

Notes:

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

“What might have been” is the item under consideration. He then defines it by three characteristics:

First, it is an “abstraction”. It is an abstraction in both senses: It is abstracted,that is set apart from all else It has no connection with the tangible world. Second, it is an idea without tangible substance.

Second, it remains always and only a “possibility.” It had an opportunity to have come into existence, but it did not. It never matures from that place.

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility

Third, it remains in “a world of speculation.” Access to this “might have been” is available only through speculative thought. It has a real existence, but only as a speculation. I can gain access to this “might have been” by thinking it; but it never moves from that space.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

This takes some consideration: Why the addition of “might have been” to what has been? Here he says that might have been and what has been point together to this one point: the present.

The actual past makes sense as pushing a direction to the present. But how does the might of have been participate in this?

Since there is an abstract, speculative existence for might have been, we can’t say that it has no existence; only, no tangible existence.

He is going to develop this “might have been” more as the poem develops, but let’s consider here what it could be. The “might have been” while not have a historical effect outside of my thinking has a profound effect upon me.

Might have been can be the source of enormous regret and loss. But it can also be a ground for thankfulness on tragedy avoided. The might have been is “remaining a perpetual possibility”. When we think of how a might have been actually effects us, that line “remaining a perpetual possibility” grows larger. I am constantly being affected by this perpetual possibility. It is always there.

And this potential acting upon me, and all that has actually occurred have conspired and I am here at this one point, in the present.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.1

15 Thursday Jul 2021

Posted by memoirandremains in Augustine, T.S. Eliot

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Augustine, Burnt Norton, T.S. Eliot, Time

T.S. Eliot is a poet who requires slow, careful consideration. His poems in the small volume Four Quartets are fascinating. I have had some realization from this or that part, but I have never taken the time to truly understand the poems. And thus, I will parade my ignorance as I think this through, beginning with the opening lines of Burnt Norton.

The title itself refers to an English Manor. It seems that it got its name “burnt” due to the drunken depression of a former owner. William Keyt married Anne. However, a dalliance with Anne’s maid Molly, resulted in Keyt losing his wife. It seems he built quite a house nearby for Molly. According to a story in the Daily Mail (which includes some fine pictures of the house), “In 1741, abandoned by Molly and after days spent drinking, he set fire to the new house, which was destroyed, killing him with it. The fire was so powerful that one side of the original house was also scorched, hence the property became known as Burnt Norton.”

Mr. Eliot spent time at this property and named this poem after the same. The poem begins:

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.

He starts here with these abstractions on time as if time were a substantial thing that could segregated: First, there is time present. Now time is a curious thing because it has no existence as just their: rather it denotes a relationship between things. And just like space, I can only occupy one “time” at a time.

So we have now.

We also have past, that is what has gone on before. But in what way to do we have past time: as a memory? In its present effects?

And if the past is affecting the present, then it must be true that the present – when we come to the future — will then be past and will then have its effect upon the future (which will then be present).

Note the use of the word “present” in the second line: It denotes a certain relationship: Object X is present with Object Y: there is a proximity to it. Past and present time are there each in proximity to time future.

But as soon as they are in proximity to time future, the future is no longer “future”, it is now the “present” and the present we began with is now past. .

And so when present and past are “present” with the future, the future is now present and the present is now past.

We need also consider, in what way are the past and present “present” with the future? Does he mean that they are somehow substantial entities that can in this or that place, as if there were a box labeled “time present” which was carted to time future?

But as soon as a moment is past it is unretrievable.

Or does he mean that the movement of time is the movement of potentialities or causation over time? I drop a ball in the present which then bounces in the “future”: without the present action of dropping there would be future action of bouncing.

There is also a tentativeness of the whole, “perhaps present”: has not necessarily arrived at his conclusion, just a potentiality.

Then he turns the analysis around: If the past and present are “present” with the future, is the future already there in some manner in the past? When I drop the ball, the falling and bouncing – both in the future – are already in a manner determined. The future is already contained in the past: it is there present, even though not fully unpacked:

And time future contained in time past.

Then if the future is already there in the past, has there been any movement? There then is no real past or future, since each is present in the other. This leaves us with an eternal present:

If all time is eternally present

This whole movement of thought is ambiguous on a point of the word “present”. Things may be present, because they are substantial proximity to one-another. My dog is present with me: my dog is in proximity to me.

These categories of time may be present in one another as a matter of potential and expression: The ball bouncing was already ‘present’ when the ball was dropped.

He seems to move between these various uses of the word “present” (right now, proximity, potential-expression) which creates the oddness of the language.

But he concludes then with the possible conclusion that there is actual movement of time: there is only a constant “present,” because the future is the outworking of the past and the past contains the future.

This brings us to our final point:

All time is unredeemable.

Redemption: what could be meant by this. A clue may come from noting that Eliot’s consideration past, present, future seems to be developed from Augustine’s notes on time in Confessions. For instance:

I know it to be time that I measure: and yet do I neither measure the time to come, for that it is not yet: nor time present, because that is not stretched out in any space: nor time past, because that is not still. What then do I measure? Is it the times as they are passing, not as they are past?

And:

Who therefore can deny, that things to come are not as yet? Yet already there is in the mind an expectation of things to come. And who can deny past things to be now no longer? But yet is there still in the mind a memory of things past. And who can deny that the present time hath no space, because it passeth away in a moment? But yet our attentive marking of it continues so that that which shall be present proceedeth to become absent. The future therefore is not a long time, for it is not: but the long future time is merely a long expectation of the future. Nor is the time past a long time, for it is not; but a long past time is merely a long memory of the past time.

Augustine of Hippo, St. Augustine’s Confessions, Vol. 2, ed. T. E. Page and W. H. D. Rouse, trans. William Watts, The Loeb Classical Library (New York; London: The Macmillan Co.; William Heinemann, 1912), 269 & 277.

The temptation would be to try to explain Eliot by Augustine as if the poem were merely putting the Confessions into verse. But Eliot is not trying to recite Augustine, but rather to think through a problem. He may conclude as Augustine, but will do his own thinking. Note again the “perhaps” line 2: he is stating nothing with certainty.

He is thinking about a problem raised by Augustine concerning time. What then does Eliot mean by the question of time being redeemable? At the least, there is an issue here of change: to redeem a thing is to change its state. It was in one state and then comes to a new state.

What precisely Eliot means by redemption in this instance is not yet clear.