Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Read:

http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/...

Listen:

http://youtu.be/qpuzIoso-44

http://youtu.be/LA9XJmf8FsQ

Do you hear bells?

Notes:

http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/elio...

https://www.behance.net/gallery/15086...

http://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/salvages...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/201...

I

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees.
The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,
The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.

http://youtu.be/PLcoQOa_II4

It feels like in this section that time is linear again. 'When time stops and is never ending;' or '...piece together the past and the future,' This seems like a contrast to the opening lines of Burnt Norton: 'Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future.'

It feels like Eliot is saying that time is both circular and linear at the same time. And perhaps on a broader scale, the true nature of time is unknowable.

I'm also curious what Eliot means when he says 'Only the hardly, barely prayable, Prayer of the one Annunciation.' and 'The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?'

How can something be unprayable? Or hardly prayable?

'The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being, Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection, Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination-We had the experience but missed the meaning and approach to the meaning restores the experience In a different form, beyond any meaning We can assign to happiness.'

It seems like Eliot is defining happiness here and that happiness is the search for meaning? Do others see this or am I missing something? And if I'm not missing anything, then I'm not sure I agree that the search for meaning = happiness...

Happiness -- perhaps joy might be a better word -- is a sudden sharp moment in which everything falls into place.

Tiffany wrote: "'The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being, Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection, Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination-We had the experience but missed the me..."

I read the passage like this: "We had the experience [of happiness] but missed the meaning, and approach to the meaning [of happiness] restores the experience in a different form, beyond any meaning we can assign to happiness".

To put it in another way, Happiness is ineffable, like Beauty. We only experience it in bits and pieces, but the whole meaning behind the experiences is beyond expression and experience.

Tiffany wrote: "I'm also curious what Eliot means when he says 'Only the hardly, barely prayable, Prayer of the one Annunciation.' and 'The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable Prayer at the calamitous ..."

Paul speaks of prayers without words that come from us when we are in such need that we cannot even articulate our needs:

Romans 8:26
Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

I keep thinking of George Herbert's poem:

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

"Prayer of the one Annunciation":

This must be either the short statement of Mary when the angel Gabriel told her she would be the mother of the Messiah:

Luke 1:38
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

Or her longer song when she went to visit her relative, Elizabeth:

Luke 1:46-54
And Mary said,
My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:
for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things;
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him
from generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with his arm;
he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats,
and exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath holpen his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy;

Laurel wrote: "Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,"

Is Herbert saying that prayer is the Tower of Babel, the Engine against God, the Spear that pierces Christ's side?

I've never heard / thought of that before.

Mary wrote: "Happiness -- perhaps joy might be a better word -- is a sudden sharp moment in which everything falls into place."

Beautiful, Mary!

Laurel wrote: "Mary wrote: "Happiness -- perhaps joy might be a better word -- is a sudden sharp moment in which everything falls into place."

Beautiful, Mary!"

I agree!

Nemo wrote: "Laurel wrote: "Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,"

Is Herbert saying that prayer is the Tower of Babel, the Engine against God, the Spear th..."

He's saying it's something that humans can do to, so to speak, act on God. With some hyperbole.

Mary wrote: "Nemo wrote: "Laurel wrote: "Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,"

Is Herbert saying that prayer is the Tower of Babel, the Engine against God,..."

One reading of engine/tower is a siege engine or tower, laying siege to God. "Christ-side-piercing spear" might allude to our sin hurting God. Considerable hyperbole, and also amusement at our (and his) presumption.

To lay siege to God, man would have to locate Him first -- impossible if Christ hasn't provided a target.

Mary wrote: "Nemo wrote: "Laurel wrote: "Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,"

Is Herbert saying that prayer is the Tower of Babel, the Engine against God,..."

A tower was a place of refuge and a watching place.

Don wrote: "Mary wrote: "Nemo wrote: "Laurel wrote: "Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,"

Is Herbert saying that prayer is the Tower of Babel, the Engine..."

Oh, that's good, too, Don! We should all read George Herbert together sometime. I've been reading him for the past fifty years.

Nemo wrote: "To lay siege to God, man would have to locate Him first -- impossible if Christ hasn't provided a target."

Amen!

Kenneth Paul Kramer:

"In spite of regular evening bombing sorties over London and his ongoing viral infections, by January 1941, Eliot was able to send a draft of The Dry Salvages to his valued critic John Hayward, and, after exchanging responses to queries from Hayward and Geoffrey Faber, he saw it published in February. One of Eliot's chief concerns resurfaced during the composition of The Dry Salvages: he "did not want to repeat himself."' He did, however, repeat the pattern established in the first two quartets. Calling on the basic five-part musical structure used in Burnt Norton and East Coker, The Dry Salvages reframes the central images and tropes of the earlier quartets. In The Dry Salvages, more than in any other quartet, the poet's themes become explicitly incarnate in shared archetypes or figures of the divine, especially in the profiles of Krishna and Christ, whose similarities-in-difference and differences-in-similarity provided Eliot with an efficacious interspiritual prism, as we will see, through which to understand each figure in new ways."

—Redeeming Time

Nemo wrote: "Laurel wrote: "Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,"

Is Herbert saying that prayer is the Tower of Babel, the Engine against God, the Spear th..."

He's saying it's something that humans can do to, so to speak, act on God. With some hyperbole.

Exactly, Mary.

Thomas Howard:

"From the title and Eliot’s explanation thereof in the subscript, not to mention the wave cry, the petrel and the porpoise at the end of “East Coker”, we might be forgiven for expecting to launch out onto the ocean here. But no. We find ourselves at a muddy river. Readers are free to suppose that this is the Don or the Yangtse or the Mississippi: it doesn’t matter. All big rivers present the same challenge to the first men who try to cross them. It is also to be noted here that the river, like the country dance and the vision in the garden and the Almanach de Gotha and the shifting scenery in the theatre, stands on the cusp, so to speak, between what is and what was. Time. Past, present, and future. The whole concern of the Quartets."

—Dove Descending

Laurel wrote: "We should all read George Herbert together sometime. I've been reading him for the past fifty years..."

I'd like that. Does he belong on the classics bookshelf?

'Time destroys but it also preserves, and just as there is no mastery there is also no escape. The third section of the poem ruminates on words attributed to Krishna, advising humanity not to “fare well” but to “fare forward.” This is an exhortation to give up aspirations—to stop seeking to do “well”—and to be satisfied with mere existence.'

I was interested in this explanation on the sparknotes link, I never had the sense reading through that Eliot was telling people not to have aspirations, but I suppose it makes sense within the time thing, and the idea of becoming spiritual rather than worldly.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—

ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget.

I read an article this morning that made me think of this passage--- man thinks he has put Nature under his own control; but he is mistaken.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.,..."

Throughout a man's life:

From birth, through spring, (the summer when the grapes grow), the autumn, and finally the winter of his life.

I thought, "Even when man has made himself a way to escape the natural rhythms (hours) --- with artificial lighting, yet, he cannot alter the Natural Rhythms--- time has winter (death) for every man.


(Ecclesiastes 3 King James Version (KJV)

3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...)

I.E., Whether man "believes" in the Power or not, the Power exists.

Clari wrote: "'Time destroys but it also preserves, and just as there is no mastery there is also no escape. The third section of the poem ruminates on words attributed to Krishna, advising humanity not to “fare..."

I agree, Clari. "Fare forward" for the Christian means "Keep going; don't retreat."

Adelle wrote: "His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.,..."

Througho..."

Nice, Adelle.

Does anyone hear Walt Whitman in that second line?

"time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past"

Herman Servotte and Ethel Grene:

"41: Some commentators have identified this line with Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, who would secretly unravel by night what she had woven by day. She said that she was weaving a shroud for her agèd father-in-law; and promised that when her weaving was completed she would give a reply to her many suitors, who were courting her on the mistaken assumption that her long-missing husband must have died in the Trojan War or on his voyage home."
—Annotations to T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets

II

Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there and end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?

There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable—
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.

We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.

There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

Laurel wrote: "II

Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there and end to the drifting wreckage,
.."

A typo in that last line, "where is there an end to the..."

Notice all the "less"es: soundless, motionless, voiceless, emotionless, devotionless...

While emotion takes to itself the emotionless

This is an interesting thought. Is there no emotion anywhere in the world but in the heart/mind of man?

The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.


I'm thinking this afternoon that there might be a touch of Dunne there:

Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/no-man...

People are pulling so many great things out of this poem. I wish it spoke to me more. I feel it might if I listen to it over and over again. It's as if I am enjoying the individual word selections but I cannot see the patterns correctly. Perhaps my thinking is too linear.

Anyway, I am here and enjoying all the comments but cannot find anything to contribute myself. Thank you everyone.

Many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees

I hadn't seen this myself. A Reading Of ... suggests that although man lives on land, there is "the reminder that the sea's presence can be felt constantly upon the land: 'The salt is on the briar rose,/ The fog is in the fir trees."... and the 'briar rose' is "a variation on the roses ... of Burnt Norton"

Mary wrote: "Happiness -- perhaps joy might be a better word -- is a sudden sharp moment in which everything falls into place."

I re-patriated a couple of months ago (after writing abroad for 23 years). It is gratifiying to see discussions online of TS Eliot's poems. It is difficult to learn the extent of contemporary business practices (directional drilling, waterless fracking, etc.). No wonder people crave escape! I am careful to provide it in my books now. I hope to participate in your discussions in a couple of months. Thanks! Mary Ann (Martine) Davis

The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.


This was nice:

"As John Hayward points out, the phrase 'before the morning watch' echoes Psalm 130-5-7:

'I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning. Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption"" (A Reading of... p. 109).


(FOUR QUARTETS According to Miss Helen Gardner, Four Quartets... particularly with the help of one John Hayward to whom Eliot expressed his gratitude )

@ 28 Laurel wrote: "Adelle wrote: "His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight...."

Does anyone hear Walt Whitman in that second line?




:-), lol, you prompted me to look it up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Li...

II. My very favorite part of the poem thus far.

Nemo wrote: "Laurel wrote: "II

Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there and end to the drifting ..."

A typo indeed! From the site that claims to have the only accurate text.

Adelle wrote: "The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculatin..."

Yes, very much Donne.

Tk wrote: "People are pulling so many great things out of this poem. I wish it spoke to me more. I feel it might if I listen to it over and over again. It's as if I am enjoying the individual word selections ..."

That's what I did, Tk—listened over and over to several narrators.

Adelle wrote: "Many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees

I hadn't seen this myself. A Reading Of ... suggests that although man lives on land, there is "the reminder ..."

Ah! Good!

Tk wrote: "People are pulling so many great things out of this poem. I wish it spoke to me more. I feel it might if I listen to it over and over again. It's as if I am enjoying the individual word selections ..."

Don't be fooled into thinking there's a "correct" way to read this, Tk. There are a lot of links and references to criticism in these threads, but the critics don't have a corner on the market here. I can't find the comment at the moment, but someone pointed out that Eliot meant for this poem to be accessible to us all. Trust in your own reading!

Tiffany wrote: "It feels like in this section that time is linear again. 'When time stops and is never ending;' or '...piece together the past and the future,' This seems like a contrast to the opening lines of Bu..."

I noticed this too, Tiffany. Especially when I read:
There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours...
He keeps asking where the end is, but then decides "there is no end of it..."
and then:
It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence--
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.

Then I feel I'm back in the East Coker sense of time. The speaker seems to be working out his ideas about time in this quartet again.
The "superficial notion of evolution" makes perfect sense to me today as well. How often do we hear in popular culture the notion of "progress" which is used to justify any number of awful, destructive things?

Kathy wrote: "Tk wrote: "People are pulling so many great things out of this poem. I wish it spoke to me more. I feel it might if I listen to it over and over again. It's as if I am enjoying the individual word ..."

Exactly! Each of the critics finds different things.

Did you notice the rhyme pattern of the first 36 (6x6) lines of movement II?

Kathy wrote: Eliot meant for this poem to be accessible to us all. Trust in your own reading!



Laurel wrote: "Exactly! Each of the critics finds different things..."

I see it that way as well.

My own method it to read a piece of writing on my own. What I get out of it is what resonates for me as an individual.

And then I do love to read a critical commentary or two. For the reason that these people have spent years studying the work and have seen things that I won't see in one or two readings. And... for most works of literature, the odds are that I will never find the time to go back and re-study them: therefore, I want to get all I can out of them the first time 'round.

Laurel wrote: "Did you notice the rhyme pattern of the first 36 (6x6) lines of movement II?"

I didn't until now :). It would feel less repetitive, if the rhyming words are not used more than once.

The river, sea and ocean may be taken as metaphors of time, the history both of the individual and of the world. "The river is within us, the sea is all about us;" The past is present within us just as the river and ocean keep deposits of the distant past.

"All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full; To the place from which the rivers come, There they return again." Eccl. 1:7

"We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.."

I didn't make the connection the first time, but this may be a reference to The Fishing Story in John 21. The disciples are fishers of men, drawing men out of the sea of world history. Their fishing trip will not be unpayable.

Tk wrote: "People are pulling so many great things out of this poem. I wish it spoke to me more. I feel it might if I listen to it over and over again. It's as if I am enjoying the individual word selections ..."

I think that's what I like the most about this group. I often feel like I'm lurking in the comments with my occasional questions or post but I always get more out what I read with this group than I ever have with other book groups even when I don't connect with or understand much about the book.