Dialect of the Tribe: Modes of Communication and the Epiphanic Role of Nonhuman Imagery in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets*
In T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets an attempt is made to investigateoften in a discursive mannernotions of time, language, and the divine. Yet the poet is hindered by certain limitations: wordsas a primary vehicle of expressioncollapse under the pressure, frequently sabotaging attempts at true...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
[2015]
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 2015, Volume: 108, Issue: 1, Pages: 98-112 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Eliot, T. S. 1888-1965, Four quartets
/ Nature
/ Figurative language
/ Epiphany
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| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets an attempt is made to investigateoften in a discursive mannernotions of time, language, and the divine. Yet the poet is hindered by certain limitations: wordsas a primary vehicle of expressioncollapse under the pressure, frequently sabotaging attempts at true articulation as detailed in the poem's opening quartet, Burnt Norton: Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, / Under the tension. . . (V: 149-51). Consequently, the medium of language itself frames an apparent contradiction throughout the Quartets: how a contrived system can represent notions intrinsically elusive and ephemeral. This conundrum inculcates all four of the poems, making them in some ways the ironic frame of their own reference. Despite this inherent dilemma, Eliot recognized that harnessing certain imageryboth animate and inanimateand exploiting it for its numinous qualities was indispensable to achieving his aesthetic and thematic aims. Such imagery included elements taken from the natural world which pointed beyond their own outward forms to some ideal form that lay behind them. It was an approach motivated in part by what Frye describes as the poet's concern with Heraclitean logos zynosor a common logosand had as its aim the participation of man in the divine. To achieve such ends, Eliot relied on bird calls, echoes, bones, bells, and other seemingly prosaic phenomena and transformed them into conduits by which revelations might occur. That is, certain central images the poet adopts in Four Quartetsthough not endowed with the capacity for human languageare nevertheless engendered with communicativeness of a uniquely numinous kind. Aligned with this notion was Eliot's belief that the way to commune with the past and with the divine was through ritual; by employing common natural objects and investing each with sacramental significance, the poet was able to evoke a temporal link with the ineffable world. It was also a means of reconciling what he perceived as the disjuncture with conventional language. By grounding the effort in an approach reminiscent of sacred Christian ritual and aesthetically portraying a new mode of communication consistent with transformative ceremony, Eliot aimed at the restoration of a past community of values. This highly distinct mode of communing came to represent its own unique type of langue, carrying forward thematic concerns while at the same time detailing a stylistic approach to poetic composition not prevalent in Eliot's earlier work. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S001781601500005X |