Classics and the Western Canon discussion

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

Reading:
http://youtu.be/ghM1cL4OFt4

A Visit:
http://youtu.be/8WnOU-VDh8E

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/20...

http://www.littlegiddingchurch.org.uk...

I

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city—
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

Howard Thomas:

We are nearing the place toward which the entire poem has been straining. Little Gidding, readers will recall, is the place where in the seventeenth century one Nicholas Ferrar attempted to establish a lay community that would, as much as possible, organize its daily activities around the Eucharist and the canonical hours. Obviously they could not ask people to arise every three hours during the night, as was the case in monasteries, for matins, lauds, prime, and so forth. But surely it must be possible for us mortals to live plain lay life in some sort of recognition of, and obedience to, the choreography the liturgy imposes on time. Little Gidding, then, would present the opportunity for families and other laymen to live in a proximity as close as is possible under the species of time and our mortal flesh, to the Still Point, since in the tabernacle on the altar in the chapel there would be the Blessed Sacrament, which is the flesh that stands on the cusp between time and eternity, or between the imperfections of our ordinary lives and Beatitude.

What is this “Midwinter spring” that opens the section? It may be like the late November disturbed by spring in “East Coker”—a sort of time-out-of-time, or time unhinged from the normal expectations of the calendar. A sudden warm flush in the middle of winter calls into question such expectations. But this “spring is its own season / Sempiternal. . .” How so (sempiternal means “enduring constantly or continually; everlasting”)? Well, if it defies the calendar, say, then perhaps it partakes of a quality unavailable to mere time. I myself would not insist on this understanding of the situation, but it is at least one possible reading of the cryptic lines. If I am right, then of course the rest follows. At Little Gidding one finds time punctuated (or defied) by eternity. The altar is a case in point of such a punctuation; and here we have this odd weather, which, given the point of view at work in this community, might be perceived as another case in point of this punctuation of time by eternity. In the rest of England people would simply say, “A bit of a warm spell, eh?” and leave it at that. But at Little Gidding, time has been opened up to eternity, or the quotidian opened to the unconditioned, say.

But because it is, in fact, just a meteorological phenomenon, it is subject to the covenant that governs weather. The ice has melted briefly and unseasonably, so things get soggy toward evening. The moment seems “Suspended” between the pole (winter) and the tropics (hot weather).

The next seventeen lines work this theme of winter and spring, cold and heat, and, most notably, ice and fire. We may recall here “East Coker”, II, and the “vortex that shall bring / The world to that destructive fire / Which burns before the ice-cap reigns”. Eliot is drawing on the old commonplace that ice is to be found beyond the fire of apocalypse. The locus classicus here is, of course, Dante’s hell, where we find Lucifer at the bottom of hell, far below the flames and burning sand, up to his waist in ice, and everything down there shaggy with ice.

Here at Little Gidding, at the brightest part of the day, it seems as though we have both frost and fire simultaneously, with the sun flaming on the ice of ponds and ditches with a glare that blinds us. But what is this “windless cold that is the heart’s heat”? This seems odd—a non sequitur, really. Well, we find out presently. This fiery chill turns out to be “pentecostal fire”, which, like that original Pentecostal fire, “Stirs the dumb spirit”. “Dumb” here implies mute, not stupid. The whole interlude partakes of the stillness that may attend the arrivals of the Holy Spirit, as in the “still, small voice” heard by Elijah, rather than in the sound of rushing wind at the original Pentecost.

The life of our souls (“the soul’s sap”) always quivers “Between melting and freezing”. The trembling insubstantiality of our mortality is always beset, on the one hand, by fire (here I think it is the fire of the divine Love) and ice (perdition). The choice is always ours. This uncovenanted spring time yields none of the rich smells that hail us with the rise of real spring. The hedges are blanched with snow and not the hawthorn that sprinkles all English hedgerows in spring. The snow itself is, of course, “transitory” (like our souls), since sooner or later it will melt, but right now its bloom seems more striking even than summer’s blossoms. The hedgerow here neither buds nor fades, since it is held, as it were, in the motionlessness of winter. This whole odd reminder of summer, however, is “Not in the scheme of generation”. What scheme is that? The scheme visible in “the living seasons / The time of the seasons and the constellations / The time of milking and the time of harvest / The time of the coupling of man and woman. . .” (“East Coker”, I). No generating is going on here. It is just “Sudden in a shaft of sunlight. . .” (“Burnt Norton”, V).

But then where is the real, eternal, vivifying summer of unimaginable beauty, of which this midwinter spring is merely a fleeting epiphany? We yearn for the “Zero” summer, that is, the state of affairs at the Still Point, which is not to be quantified. Where is it? Of what bliss is this a hint or guess?

The people at Little Gidding, unlike the drooping souls in the Underground, and those distracted from distraction by distraction, and the distinguished civil servants and chairmen of many committees, are keenly alive to the intersection of the timeless with time. For them, all is redolent of hints and guesses.

Visitors to Little Gidding, from wherever they may have come, will find things unexceptionable. In May, for example, the hawthorn will be intensely sweet, unlike the ephemeral “blossoms” of snow that deck the hedges in winter. Whether they are pilgrims, or chance tourists, or somebody like a broken king (Charles I, who very much liked Little Gidding, and who was certainly “broken” by Cromwell?), they will have to make their way along the rough road and past the pigsty if they want to arrive at the Still Point, which is here. This journey is not unlike the journey every man must make, whether he is a king or a thrall. Everyone, no matter what his station in life, is going to be greatly surprised at how the actual arrival outstrips all of their notions as to what they would find here. Casual tourists will be haled up from their various distractions, and even serious pilgrims are going to find that their expectations are supervened by the reality of the place. Only the fulfillment will reveal what anyone’s “purpose” should have been. In these precincts alone is to be found that fulfillment, since Little Gidding is, at least for Eliot’s purpose in this poem, as close as we can get in this mortal life to the Still Point. Burnt Norton reminded us of how time can wholly obliterate things. East Coker, still a reminder of the past, also reminds us that “Home is where one starts from”—to go where? The Dry Salvages will either wreck you or assist you to “Fare forward”.

Of course there are other final destinations: drowning, being shot down over a dark lake, parching in the desert, or whatever. But Little Gidding “is the nearest, in place and time, / Now and in England”. This “Now and in England” will serve well enough to remind us that all “nows” have the potentiality to be “the nearest”, and any geographical location will serve as the approach to the Still Point. It is just that Eliot has brought us to Little Gidding, which, because of its very nature, is a particularly explicit and stark approach.

A peculiar demand, or actually a prohibition, presides over this place, because it is a most holy (that is, purposefully set apart) place. You are going to have to divest yourself of “Sense and notion”. You can’t come here driven by appetency (see “Burnt Norton”, III), that is, with your sensual faculties humming with busy desires, or by “notion”—all of your busy presuppositions in high gear. The language in the following lines could not be more elementary. They need not be reworded here. We had better kneel.

Prayer pierces the scrim between time and the timeless, through to the region where the dead are to be found. They alone speak with the fiery tongues needed to bespeak the thunderous mystery and glory that looms over Little Gidding. Some language “beyond the language of the living” is necessary, like the Pentecostal tongues with which the apostles announced that glory. Insofar as we happen to be at Little Gidding, “the intersection of the timeless moment” happens to be in England. But no “where” can quite be imposed on this intersection, any more than any time (“Never and always”). At Little Gidding we find, as the shepherds found at the manger in Bethlehem, or the disciples at the Transfiguration, say, or wherever Love in its glory is glimpsed, a particularly stark epiphany of “what the dead had no speech for, when living”.

Eliot, of course, was still one of the “living” when he wrote the poem. Hence, despite his titanic effort with words in the Four Quartets, he acknowledges that no words (speech) will quite suffice. This intersection of the timeless moment will yield its secrets only in the fulfillment. Dante himself would dismiss his Paradiso as so much chat in comparison with the glory into which one stumbles upon entering the Celestial Rose.
—Dove Descending

I've progressed a fair way into "Little Gidding."

I've found a certain encouragement in knowing that others are reading 4Q at this time too.

I've come to believe this to be a more personal read than I had expected it to be.

Adelle wrote: "I've progressed a fair way into "Little Gidding."

I've found a certain encouragement in knowing that others are reading 4Q at this time too.

I've come to believe this to be a more personal read t..."

It is very personal, isn't it?

II

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house—
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of interminable night
At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
Had passed below the horizon of his homing
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
Between three districts whence the smoke arose
I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
Both one and many; in the brown baked features
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
So I assumed a double part, and cried
And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
Knowing myself yet being someone other—
And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
And so, compliant to the common wind,
Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
I may not comprehend, may not remember.'
And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse
My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
He left me, with a kind of valediction,
And faded on the blowing of the horn.

Laurel wrote: "Howard Thomas:

Thank you for sharing these insights. It helped me get to the heart of my concerns about mismatched seasons. :) Particularly enlightening bits for me: "time unhinged from the normal expectations of the calendar"

"The life of our souls (“the soul’s sap”) always quivers “Between melting and freezing”. The trembling insubstantiality of our mortality is always beset, on the one hand, by fire (here I think it is the fire of the divine Love) and ice (perdition). The choice is always ours."

"The Dry Salvages will either wreck you or assist you to “Fare forward”."

Laurel wrote: "II

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
..."

I'm not making great progress with the "meaning" of the poem, but I am marveling at its structure. For example, here in the second movement of LG II the first three stanzas appear to reference the first movements of the previous three quartets --

First stanza: Burnt Norton I: the dust on the bowl of rose leaves;
Second stanza: East Coker I: the mirth of those long under the earth;
Third stanza: Dry Salvages I: water as the implacable destroyer.
Fourth stanza: Little Gidding I: the pentecostal fire of the brief sun flaming the ice, and the communication of the dead "tongued with fire."

The fourth stanza takes a different form from the first three, but referring back to the communication of the dead mentioned in the first movement, the poet speaks with "some dead master." Judging by the form of the verse, it appears the master is Dante; if that isn't enough, "What! Are you here?" is what Dante says to his teacher, Brunetto Latini, when he meets him in Inferno.

The ash and dust brought burial lines to mind for me. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

Adelle wrote: "The ash and dust brought burial lines to mind for me. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.""

I feel like Little Gidding is full of death. Which isn't to say that Eliot doesn't deal with death in the other Quartets but that this one is the final death - the death rattle so to speak. As if death is the one that surely conquers time but at the same time is ultimately unknowable and timeless.

(I'm also writing this just before heading to bed so I'm not sure if I'm making sense...)

Thomas wrote: "I'm not making great progress with the "meaning" of the poem, but I am marveling at its structure. For exam..."

I noticed that the mouse and the wainscot from East Coker were back. It seems to me that in cross-referencing bits of the poem to itself, Eliot is demonstrating the back and forth concept of time which keeps coming up. Form follows content.

III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

So we started in a garden and end in a church, with stops in a village and near rocks encircled by the sea. It seems almost a metaphor for how memory works.

IV

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Laurel wrote: "IV

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire...."

The juxtaposition of the Holy Spirit with what is presumably a German bomber raining fire on London is a powerful and remarkably stark image. As a comment on the human condition it is entirely despairing. Eliot speaks of a choice, but I don't see how there is one -- with bombs raining down and cities burning, putting on the intolerable shirt of flame and burning on the pyre of the Holy Spirit is the only possible redemption for the poet.

But

". . . all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

Laurel wrote: "But

". . . all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.""

Yes indeed, but the line before this is important: (Costing not less than everything). All shall be well, but first there is the conflagration. I hear this repeatedly in the poem: only after a horrifying descent into darkness does the light return. What I like about Eliot is that he does not candy-coat this harsh process (even if he does, at the end, bracket it.)

Amen, Thomas!

Two small thoughts on Eliot's craft:

The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,

"Diffident" and "ostentatious" seem to me almost onomatopoeic, the former sounding nit-picky, the latter overblown.

Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity...

The first four words are one syllable each; the first phrase (or sentence part) two words that pass quickly; then two words, each between commas, forcing one to stop on each; and after the four single syllable words, the two syllables of "always" seem drawn-out, doing the work of a more ostentatious word like "eternally." The second line may modestly mock the simplicity of his means.

To me these are small examples of Eliot using everything he knows, has learned, to give us the chance to experience something that can not be expressed in words.

Speaking of nit-picking, I have a question about the text-- the line after "History is now and England." In my 1962 "Complete Poems and Plays" there is no space before the next line, "With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling"; my newer paperback of just the 4Q has the space both before and after this line. Can anyone shed a light on this? And what does this line, standing alone with no end punctuation, say to any of you? For several readings of this section I had it as "the dawning of this Love...."

Interestingly, The Composition of Four Quartets shows that in the first draft of Little Gidding sent to John Hayward, 7 July 1941, the first section of Part V [indicated as "V")[Sheet 11] ended:

"History is now and England."

And the next section of Part V (indicated as "V.2") on an entirely different sheet [Sheet 12] began:

"We shall not cease from exploration"

...

And THERE IS NO LINE "With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling"...

Gardner gives no explanation of when the line was added or why--- at least I couldn't find one.

In A Reading of Eliot's Four Quartets:

"As the disembodied voice of the next line phrases it, it is 'With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling' that history is a pattern of timeless moments. The line is taken from an anonymous treatise, The Cloud of Unknowing, written by one of Julian of Norwich's contemporaries" (182).

I don't know if that sheds any light or if it's simply me throwing information at you. But... I gave it a go.

Don wrote: "Two small thoughts on Eliot's craft:

The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,

"Diffident" and "ostentatious" seem to me almost onomatopoeic, the former sounding nit-picky, the latter overblow..."

Great, Don! I love digging into the writer's craft like this.

Adelle wrote: "Interestingly, The Composition of Four Quartets shows that in the first draft of Little Gidding sent to John Hayward, 7 July 1941, the first section of Part V [indicated as "V")[Sheet 11] ended:

"..."

Don wrote: "Speaking of nit-picking, I have a question about the text-- the line after "History is now and England." In my 1962 "Complete Poems and Plays" there is no space before the next line, "With the dra..."

A puzzlement!

Maybe I missed something, but why does Eliot say that "History is now and England"? I expected him to say History is now and some other reference to time. E.g., 'history is now and past' or 'now and then' or 'now and gone' or something like that. Why choose a country and why specifically England and not Europe? (Considering that this was written during WWII). Or considering that he was from the States, why not the US?

Tiffany wrote: "Maybe I missed something, but why does Eliot say that "History is now and England"? I expected him to say History is now and some other reference to time. E.g., 'history is now and past' or 'now an..."

Eliot writes "now and England" also in Part I, "But this is the nearest, in place and time, Now and in England."

I think the phrase is used to denote the present time and place, the moment when and where we find ourselves, the moment in history, which is "a pattern of timeless moments", encompassing past, present and future.

Laurel wrote: "I
...
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
..."

These lines should perhaps be posted on a billboard in front of every church cathedral that is also a tourist attraction. :) When I visit famous cathedrals, I often do those things that Eliot warns against.

Tiffany wrote: "Maybe I missed something, but why does Eliot say that "History is now and England"? ...Why choose a country and why specifically England and not Europe? (Considering that this was written during WWII). Or considering that he was from the States, why not the US? "

I suspect part of the reason for his use of England is that it refers back to the first movement of this quartet:

There are other places
Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city--
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.
...

They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

I think you're right to think of WWII in connection with this. I can't remember if this has been mentioned, but Eliot was a fire warden during the war. "The dark dove with the flickering tongue" in the second movement of Little Gidding is most likely a Nazi war plane firing on London. But at the same time this kind of fire is intertwined with the pentecostal fire of the Holy Spirit. It's a very interesting juxtaposition.

Don wrote: In my 1962 "Complete Poems and Plays" there is no space before the next line, "With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling"; my newer paperback of just the 4Q has the space both before and after this line. Can anyone shed a light on this?And what does this line, standing alone with no end punctuation, say to any of you? For several readings of this section I had it as "the dawning of this Love...." "

Regarding the punctuation, it occurs to me that what we Americans call a "period" is in British usage called a "full stop". Here there is no stop, and the next line reads: "We shall not cease from exploration..." It's a nice little textual device.

The last section of Little Gidding points back to the first part of Burnt Norton, because, of course, "my end is my beginning." I read the Drawing and the Calling as the echoes that inhabit the garden.

Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner, through the first gate...

And then at the end of Little Gidding:

Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning...

Laurel wrote: "But

". . . all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.""

One notes that the first two lines are quotes from Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love and are meant in a -- rather absolute sense.

If the end is in the beginning, and all things are present, then "all shall be well" also means all was well and all is well. Doesn't it? But then, "for most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised".

I think "the end is in the beginning" in the sense that a rose bush is in the rose seed: it is present in its causes, in that it will, in due course, develop into a rose bush.

Doesn't mean that it's realized yet.

Is a withered rose also present in a rose seed?