Autumnal tones with T.S. Eliot

 

Autumnal tones for October. T.S. Eliot's book of poems offer that look of browned leaves on the trees about to fall and twirl into piles on the ground. I’ve been revisiting with depth and appreciation the mysterious poems of T.S. Eliot. His poems are stunningly deep, mystifying, musical, and wonderful to get lost in. I look forward to every snippet of time I can steal to pick this up.

Dust in the air suspended

Marks the place where a story ended.

Dust inbreathed was a house -

The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.

…

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre -

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

I have written about Eliot before, because I revisit his poems every now and then and it comes out into the form of a blog post. He was born in St. Louis but moved to London, went to Oxford, but preferred London so he lived there and eventfully became the literary editor and director of Faber & Faber (publishers in London - notice this is a Faber and Faber edition, which only seemed appropriate). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. 

Eliot's poetry is notoriously difficult to understand - tending toward elusiveness and obscure notions sometimes. Nebulous yet rich with imagery. Modern and in the style stream-of-consciousness, my re-reading of his poems is now causing me to notice how musical and rhyme-filled his verses are, which I am really enjoying. I can see all the details of well-structured and well-thought words selected.

His poems kind of split in two - his pre-Christian writing and then when he became an Anglican his themes were changed to reflect his deep spiritual transformation and deeper exploration of the mysteries of faith. 

Reading his very early,  well-known "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" I am struck with how I love his word usage, repeating phrases or words, personification of the yellow fog, and alliterative usage that slips off the tongue with enjoyment. I bold the beginnings of the lines below, so delightfully alliterative (you can hear the L sound leading each line):

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,  

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-pane,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, 

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, 

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 

And seeing that it was a soft October night, 

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.  

In his later poems, he charges his language with mystical notions and then comes back to similar images and themes through his poems, especially in his wonderfully mystical and mysterious "Four Quartets", a set of 4 poems circling around the ideas of time, space, love, the infinite, light, roses, and fire. He is pulling from numerous literary sources, many I am sure I don't even know of, but I recognize the ideas of Dante and Julian of Norwich throughout. 

The light is still
At the still point of the turning world.

The paradoxical nature of his wordplay makes me pause, smile, and read again.  Read the line again, and let it swirl in your thoughts. He revisits this idea later.

And he ends his Four Quartets with some of my favourite lines of poetry, well-known, I won't include the whole passage that I am so fond of, but just these last lines are straight out of Julian of Norwich (all shall be well) and Dante (fire and the rose). It's just stunning poetry.

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.