“Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves” : T.S. Eliot’s exploration and depiction of the nature, process and purpose of art in his Four Quartets

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with T.S. Eliot’s exploration and depiction of art in his Four Quartets. Central to this investigation is the logos/flux paradigm, which is established by the two quotations from Herakleitos, a 6th to 5th Century BC philosopher, which preface the cycle: they direct the readers to the “Herakleitian concept of the opposition and paradoxical interdependence between logos and flux as a paradigm in the poem, a paradigm that [Eliot] uses for an investigation and articulation of a number of philosophical contemplations in [Four Quartets]” (Wessels, 2009:4). The logos represents the “eternal stillness of a divine pattern of reality” which, in each quartet, is “set against the endless movement of a temporal pattern [the flux], a pattern characterised by action and appetency” (Schuchard, 1999:188). Artistic creation is presented as a point at which the logos and the flux intersect, in that the artist imposes an eternalising pattern on the human materials and experiences of the flux, thereby immortalising the artwork which is then both timebound and timeless. After providing a sense of T.S. Eliot’s private and public context, as well as explicating the facets of the logos/flux paradigm which are relevant to Four Quartets, the study proposes that Eliot considers the nature, process and purpose of art in each quartet, within the logos/flux paradigm, and that he comes to the conclusion that artistic creation—poetry in this case—has the capacity to recall and restore moments of timeless intersection, catalysing the recognition of their significance, which was otherwise missed in the moment itself. In addition, the study suggests that the Divine is possibly experienced as Divine Art at points of timeless intersection, that is, as “unheard music” (BN, I, 27) or as the art of healing (EC, IV, 4), and examines the nature and purpose thereof. The study concludes with a close reading of “Burnt Norton”, illustrating that Eliot uses the form of his Four Quartets to demonstrate in practice what he expresses in principle, “transforming living into art, not thought, [giving] us a sense of beginning and ending, of the theme having been fully worked out, which is rare in the long poem” (Gardner, 1949:47).