Four Quartets

Four Quartets is the name given to four related poems by T. S. Eliot, collected and republished in book form in 1943 (ISBN 0156332256). They had been published individually from 1935 to 1942. Their titles are Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding.

The Dry Salvages (1941)

:Eliot himself describes the place in a note at the beginning of the poem as "The Dry Salvages – presumably les trois sauvages – is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts." The family used to spend time in the area during Eliot's childhood.

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Before placing himself at the title's place, Eliot starts describing his feelings towards the river as opposed to the sea. Being born in St. Louis, he had a profound child experience concerning rivers (the Mississippi). He sees the river as a

Related Topics:
St. Louis - Mississippi

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: strong brown god – sullen, untamed and intractable,

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:Patient to some degree

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but which men have been able to deal with in some way, and have come to forget. His feelings towards it are nicely expressed

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:His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,

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:In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,

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:In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,

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:And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

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This familiarity and even comeliness of the river is in deep contrast to the sea's strangeness and ruthlessness (now he is referring to the title)

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:The sea is the land's edge also, the granite

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:Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses

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:Its hints of earlier and other creation

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:It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,

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:the shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar

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:And the gear of foreign dead men.

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This behavious makes the author reflect about the powers above us human beings, and how time, again, is something we cannot understand completely (the tolling bell of buoys and beacons easures time not our time) and far from our control. Destiny is not in our hands.

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The second part starts with six nested stanzas of six verses (which rhyme between stanzas, not in them) presenting life at the sea (seamen and their wives specially) as an image of ordinary life and its sufferings. Human beings cannot control time nor fully understand it, as fishermen cannot control the sea:

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:We cannot think of a time that is oceanless

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:Or of an ocean not littered with wastage

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:Or of a future that is not liable

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:Like the past, to have no destination.

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But there is some hope: Christs' coming to the world,

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:There is no end of it (the suffering, wreckages...)

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:. Only the hardly, barely prayable

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:Prayer of the one Annunciation.

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The second half of this part is a painful description of time and life as seen by a man with an earthly outlook. The meaning of Happiness is not clearer than that of Pain, and both are above our possibilities. And time makes no difference: Time the destroyer is time the preserver.

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Then comes (third stanza) another reflection on the future, and a long meditation on human behaviour and attitude towards live, comparing it to a voyage. Here, Eliot makes use of his knowledge of Buddhist myths, specifically, Krishna's words. There is in life, as in any voyage, no point of wishing well, but simply of going on:

Related Topics:
Buddhist - Myths - Krishna

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:Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging

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and at the end,

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: Not fare well,

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:But fare forward, voyagers.

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Fourth stanza is a prayer (to Our Lady) for seapeople, but in view of the above, it may be seen as a prayer for humanity, also.

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The poem ends (fifth stanza) with a description of men's efforts to understand history and divine the future (personal and human) by magic, horoscopes, etc... and stating that

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:; all these are usual

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:Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press

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what matters really is eternity and its link with men's history (which is the Incarnation of Jesus).

Related Topics:
Incarnation - Jesus

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:. But to aprehend

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:The point of intersection of the timeless

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:With time, is an occupation for the saint –

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and other people (we, ordinary people) are unable to do it. At least, maybe our point is to understand its importance and its liberating power, which Eliot tries to explain in the final verses.

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