{"id":12110,"date":"2017-08-09T14:40:45","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T18:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/?page_id=12110"},"modified":"2017-08-29T12:47:12","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T16:47:12","slug":"sagear","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/journal\/past-issues\/issue-9\/sagear\/","title":{"rendered":"Meditations in N<\/em> Dimensions: The Waste Land<\/em>, The Four Quartets<\/em>, and Eliot\u2019s Inquiry into the Restrictive Nature of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sheila Sagear<\/h2>\n

Read the instructor’s introduction<\/a>
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We begin by building a tesseract with poetry. This object, the four-dimensional equivalent of a cube, can be thought of as having axes in the three spatial dimensions and in one fourth dimension, time. In the universe we live in, it is supposedly physically impossible to transcend these boundaries, but this deters few deep and conscious thinkers from speculating on what could lie beyond them. T.S. Eliot is one such thinker who builds his tesseract with his poems The Waste Land<\/em> and \u201cThe Four Quartets,\u201d introducing meditations that create uncertainty around the true limits of the dimensions we live in. In his own way, he speculates on whether this tesseract has more than four axes, beginning in The Waste Land<\/em> with an emotional response to the destruction and desolation of World War I. Especially considering these expressions in Part V, \u201cWhat the Thunder Said,\u201d it might be tempting to see the poem as an exploration of the effects of death on a society and its perception of physical and temporal boundaries. Similarly, Part I of \u201cThe Four Quartets,\u201d \u201cBurnt Norton,\u201d follows a speaker who muses on these boundaries and wonders whether there must be a more meaningful existence beyond them. David Soud describes \u201cThe Four Quartets\u201d as a poem in which<\/p>\n

a crescendo of images, allusions, and quotations culminate in a Dantean anticipation of the afterlife\u2026 and point beyond the boundary of death, where, for both Eliot and Barth, the dialectic of time and eternity is resolved. (205)<\/p>\n

He argues that the poem is an inquiry into death, what comes after it, and what this says about the existence of time outside of our own plane of existence.<\/p>\n

However, I voice that Eliot does something much deeper than this in both The Waste Land<\/em> and \u201cThe Four Quartets.\u201d He is not necessarily concerned with physical death. Instead, he asks a broader question: what exists out there, beyond time? Is there any way we can reach it, be it in death or even somehow in life? Perhaps it is only in death that we discover the answers to these questions, but Eliot asks these questions without specific consideration for death. Eliot\u2019s true inquiry is clear in the close inspection of how he treats the passage of time in Part V of The Waste Land<\/em>. He breaks the confines of the \u201cbeginning, middle, and end\u201d narrative style, employing instead a speaker who transcends temporal and <\/em>physical human restrictions, moving around time as humans move through space. These questions are also posed in the opening of \u201cThe Four Quartets,\u201d as we presumably see into the speaker\u2019s mind as he or she muses on the nonlinear nature of time and the meaning of its restrictions for humans living inside it. Eliot does this to communicate that although we are bound to the restrictions of time, there is, nonetheless, a part of the soul that is able to see beyond these restrictions. We experience a profound longing for freedom from time that is intrinsic to the human experience.<\/p>\n

The Waste Land <\/em>focuses on concrete objects and frames descriptions that are easily pictured by the reader. For example, the speaker references \u201cRock and no water and the sandy road\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>332) and \u201cdoors of mud-cracked houses\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>345), real objects that evoke images of the tangible world. The speaker similarly incorporates descriptions of real-world civilizations in references to \u201cJerusalem Athens Alexandria\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>374) and \u201cLondon Bridge\u2026 falling down\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>426). However, the speaker does not use tangible references to study the actual objects of these civilizations, but uses these things to enable us to clearly see the abstract ideas and emotions he really wishes to present. The objects presented in this poem are of this world, but the ideas presented\u2014destruction, pain, and finally rebirth\u2014transcend the particular locations or objects used to communicate them. Eliot goes beyond the concrete literality of any of these references in exploring the pure concepts of death and birth without any \u201cfilters,\u201d or context and preexisting knowledge, to limit the exploration.<\/p>\n

This use of concrete objects to describe abstract concepts is seen in Eliot\u2019s use of many contrasting and seemingly disconnected references. For example, he speaks of Eastern and Western cultures side by side, referencing \u201cVienna London\u201d as \u201cUnreal\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>376) alongside references to Datta, Dayadhvam, <\/em>and Danyaya<\/em> (Eliot, WL <\/em>401\u2013418), which are Sanskrit words associated with giving and compassion. He also works with sound in the contrast of \u201cfrosty silence in the gardens\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>323) to \u201cPrison and place and reverberation\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>326). While all these references are of this world, they are, at first glance, disconnected. What connects them is the emotion they evoke, specifically the emotion of resolution after destruction, which is not specific to any one location or object. This emotion transcends the confines of space and time, an abstract concept made reachable by tangible references.<\/p>\n

With his explorations of abstract ideas and pure emotions, Eliot is widely considered to be one of the great \u201chigh modernist\u201d writers. He is often associated with contemporaries Ezra Pound and E. E. Cummings, both of whom make extensive use of imagism, pinpointing a single instant in space and time and studying the emotions that arise only in that moment. However, The Waste Land<\/em> differs in that Eliot does not explore a single instant; instead, the work moves around in time. The poem opens describing April as \u201cthe cruelest month\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>1), and then describes that \u201csummer surprised us\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>8) and that the speaker goes \u201csouth in the winter\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>18). This first stanza introduces the way Eliot works with time, moving from one time to another in an unstable and unpredictable way and rejecting the traditional narrative style with a beginning, middle, and end.<\/p>\n

However, Part V begins with the word \u201cafter\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>322). While Parts I through IV lack a traditional narrative form, Eliot suggests that the events of Part V exist \u201cafter\u201d\u2014or outside of\u2014what was described before. Within Part V is a self-contained narrative. It begins with the tension presented by the stream-of-consciousness style phrase that begins \u201cHere is no water but only rock \/ Rock and no water and the sandy road\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>331). Here the speaker introduces the ideas of scarcity and need. However, when the speaker goes on to describe that \u201cThen<\/em> a damp gust [came] \/ Bringing rain\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>393, emphasis added), suggesting that there is a movement of time, we find a before and after. \u201cThe black clouds \/ Gathered far distant\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>396\u2013397), and suddenly there is movement, tumult, and a fundamental change.\u00a0This change from the tension of \u201cbefore\u201d and the reviving clamor of \u201cafter\u201d suggests the progression of time within Part V.<\/p>\n

Not only does Eliot move around in time throughout The Waste Land<\/em>, but he does so in a highly fragmented manner. In Part V, a speaker erratically describes a landscape with \u201cno rock \/ If there were rock \/ And also water \/ And water \/ A spring \/ A pool among the rock\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>347\u2013352) using short and frequent lines that repeat sounds and words, giving an impression of desperation, fragmented thinking, and an experience bordering madness. The way the speaker weaves his description is analogous to spinning us around so we lose our orientation, or any sense of the period in which the events described are taking place. The speaker goes through similar verbal exercises, with the fragmented and disorienting phrases \u201cFalling towers \/ Jerusalem Athens Alexandria \/ Vienna London \/ Unreal\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>373). In \u201cT. S. Eliot’s Concept of Time and the Technique of Textual Reading: A Comment on \u2018Cross\u2019 In The Waste Land<\/em>, Line 175,\u201d Sukhbir Singh explores the meaning of the fragmented style of thought Eliot employs in Part V, claiming that \u201cEliot invites the reader to order the \u2018fragments\u2019 he has \u2018shored\u2019 against his \u2018ruin\u2019 into a \u2018coherent whole\u2019 by working out their possible relationships with each other\u201d (38), and goes on to describe that this fragmentation allows the reader to interpret the movement of time in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n

It is important to note that this fragmentation plays an important role in the interpretation of time in this poem, but instead of allowing the reader the flexibility to choose his or her interpretation, it actually necessitates the interpretation of the fragmentation of time itself. The fragmentation is used in a way that makes it difficult to see the progression of the narrative, and can most clearly be seen in the questions posed by the speaker at different points in Part V: the speaker asks \u201cWho are these hooded hordes swarming \/ Over endless plains\u2026 What is the city over the mountains \/ Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air \/ Falling towers\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>368\u2013373). These questions emerge as if the mind that produces them is working erratically, creating short, disconnected phrases, and the questions posed are not tied to any specific time. The city could be any city, and the hooded swarms are not identified with a particular period.\u00a0By these questions, Eliot creates the illusion that time is at least fragmented and discontinuous, and at most, absent.<\/p>\n

It is then important to ask whether these communications refer to the past or the future. It is possible that Eliot has in mind a setting either long ago in the past or far out into the future; that is, periods no living person has experienced. As the fragmentation within Part V suggests a broken or absent sense of time, Part V does not occur in the past or the future, but simultaneously both and neither. Eliot communicates using tangible places and objects\u2014he works within the confines of space\u2014but he works outside of time, leaving in intentional ambiguities and communicating ideas as suspended in time. Charles M. Tung comments in \u201cModernist Contemporaneity: Rethinking Time in Eliot Studies and \u2018The Waste Land\u2019\u201d that Eliot\u2019s narrative of a population is \u201ca static one whereby present and past are united in an eternal stasis\u201d (381). The usage of the word \u201cstasis\u201d communicates quite well the way Eliot works with storytelling. He does not tell a story by concatenating events as first, second, and third; instead, he pulls ideas from this history and develops them alongside concepts related in ways other than time, as the history is \u201ceternal,\u201d and something infinite has not a beginning, middle, nor end. This experimental narrative style configures The Waste Land <\/em>as a unique aperture through which we see the timeless effects of long-term change, destruction and reconstruction, and death and life. This strategy allows us to experience these concepts out of context\u2014even the seemingly inescapable context of time\u2014and develop an emotional response to the concept itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Four Quartets\u201d provide a complimentary perspective on the nature of time and our relationship with it. In Part I, \u201cBurnt Norton,\u201d Eliot explores time as a malleable concept\u2014something that can be examined and manipulated just like a physical object\u2014rather than a fixed characteristic of existence. The speaker muses on the nonlinear nature of time in this part, and here Eliot refrains even from using objects, places, or people to communicate these thoughts, as he does in The Waste Land<\/em>. Instead, he directly addresses these thoughts, calling Time by its name in a hypostatization of the abstract quality. The speaker muses that \u201cTime present and time past \/ Are both perhaps present in time future, \/ And time future contained in time past\u201d (Eliot, FQ <\/em>1\u20133), and it seems he speaks of these ideas as an informal proposal rather than a definite statement (as seen in the use of the word \u201cperhaps\u201d), vocalizing a spontaneous and unfiltered thought process. The speaker notices that the linearity of time is just an abstraction; time is not a true restriction of the universe, but merely an illusion, as seen in the speaker\u2019s suggestion that time present, past, and future really coexist with each other in the same plane of existence. Humans must be able to get out of time\u2014or at least see around it\u2014in some way, and time is not an impenetrable wall, but instead a translucent sheet that vaguely obscures what is behind it.<\/p>\n

The speaker goes on to suggest that \u201cWhat might have been is an abstraction \/ Remaining a perpetual possibility \/ Only in a world of speculation\u201d (Eliot, FQ<\/em> 6\u20138), reinforcing his initial thought that time is truly an abstraction and adding that there are other possibilities that exist in other \u201ctimes,\u201d where humans cannot reach them. He does this by mentioning the \u201cperpetual possibility,\u201d suggesting the stasis instead of the movement of time, which means that this possibility must exist in some higher plane of reality. While apparently human and consequently bound by time, the speaker strikes us as quite enlightened\u2014he notices that there may be a way to see beyond time. He notices the translucency of the sheet. Christopher Ricks points out that \u201c[t]he confused distinction which exists in most heads between \u2018abstract\u2019 and \u2018concrete\u2019 is due not so much to a manifest fact of the existence of two types of mind, an abstract and a concrete, as to the existence of another type of mind, the verbal, or philosophic\u201d (257), suggesting that the enlightenment of the speaker\u2014his verbal, philosophic mind\u2014is vital to the development of these thoughts. Ricks also reflects the space the speaker imagines in his description of the speaker\u2019s mind. In his comment that the nature of the speaker\u2019s mind is not abstract nor concrete but philosophical, he implies that the speaker is not exploring any dimension of this world, but rather that of another world. If he lives in a two-dimensional page, the speaker does not look left or right, but out of the page.<\/p>\n

Having come to this conclusion, the speaker begins to think about his own role as a temporal being. \u201cIf all time is eternally present,\u201d he says, \u201cAll time is unredeemable\u201d (Eliot, FQ<\/em> 4\u20135). He suggests that if all time exists eternally\u2014if time is fundamentally static instead of moving\u2014then time must have no meaning. In \u201cKnowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley,\u201d Eliot himself comments on these lines by pointing out that \u201cthat which is purely in time cannot be said to exist at all\u201d (110) articulating the speaker\u2019s real-time realization by concluding that time itself is a construct, specific to this plane of existence, and therefore has no meaning outside of the universe in which we are bound.<\/p>\n

The speaker goes on to ask \u201cto what purpose \/ Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves \/ I do not know\u201d (Eliot, FQ<\/em> 16\u201318). The speaker begins to question his role in a temporal existence, asking what his purpose is here, whether it is merely to \u201cdisturb the dust,\u201d if he is bound by an illusion to begin with. The reference to dusty rose-leaves, a bowl of potpourri, brings to mind Henry Austin Dobson\u2019s poem \u201cPot-Pourri,\u201d in which a speaker \u201cplunges [his] hands among the leaves: \/ An alien touch but dust perceives \u2026 memory of the vanished days \/ When they were roses\u201d (1\u20136). These few lines magnify the emotion the speaker of \u201cThe Four Quartets\u201d implies in his reference to dried rose-leaves. His mind is occupied with death, dryness, and lack of meaning. The dried leaves imply empty purpose and an absence of opportunity, and \u201cdisturbing the dust\u201d (Eliot, FQ <\/em>17) suggests a totally meaningless existence. He makes this statement with a slightly sarcastic and questioning tone, and coupled with his musings on the meaning of time, the speaker\u2019s greater suggestion is that there must be a way to break out of this lower, time-bound plane of existence and into a higher one where the true possibilities of the universe are not obscured. What purpose do we have here? he asks, and concludes that he does not know, suggesting that there must be something more meaningful to which we may aspire.<\/p>\n

The question of what exactly this more meaningful purpose is not necessarily the question at hand. The point is that while the speaker is bound by time and may not be able to see beyond it, he is, nonetheless, able to sense that there is something <\/em>beyond it. Furthermore, he longs for it. This longing can be seen in the speaker\u2019s tone as he disparages the actions of his life, \u201cdisturbing the dust,\u201d and senses something more meaningful beyond time. He questions the meaning of his own existence as he realizes that there must be some higher plane of being.<\/p>\n

Having established that \u201cWhat the Thunder Said\u201d <\/em>concludes a story told with a fragmented or completely absent sense of time and suggests a profound tension stemming from destruction and desolation, and that \u201cBurnt Norton\u201d <\/em>presents an account of longing for an existence outside of time, it is necessary to study the narrator of both poems. The disconnected manner in which the story is told and the deliberate choices of the speaker of The Waste Land <\/em>to disorient the reader and remove any previous bias suggest a speaker who goes beyond the confines of time and space. The speaker must take on a god-like omniscience. \u201cWhat the Thunder Said\u201d necessitates this type of storyteller because only a god-like figure could tell the story like this. Only this figure could know of a state beyond time and communicate the resolution that would pertain outside of these confines. Some of the last lines of The Waste Land <\/em>illustrate the position and state of this omniscient speaker, as he recounts that \u201cI sat upon the shore \/ Fishing, with the arid plain behind me \/ Shall I at least set my lands in order?\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>423) The speaker looks behind him at the fallen world he has recounted, and implies he has the power and responsibility to \u201cset the lands in order.\u201d The speaker communicates a resolution to the concepts of destruction near the end of the work, a resolution that does not exist in this plane of being, but one outside of time.<\/p>\n

The speaker of \u201cBurnt Norton\u201d creates a sharp contrast with the god-like speaker of \u201cWhat the Thunder Said.\u201d Instead of being omniscient, the speaker is very much bound by time. The speaker vocalizes a feeling of restriction, especially in his recounting of the passing day, as he says that \u201cTime and the bell have buried the day, \/ the black cloud carries the sun away\u201d (Eliot, FQ <\/em>130\u2013131). These lines not only provide a look into what the speaker sees\u2014the steady passing of time, unreachable by his own hands\u2014but they also provide insight into the speaker\u2019s emotional response to the passing of time. He feels powerless and caged, \u201cburied\u201d like the day, living in darkness as black as the clouds overhead, restricted and limited by the passing of time. This evidence necessitates a temporal, human speaker who notices the restrictive nature of time but is unable to change or go beyond it.<\/p>\n

Throughout Parts I through VI of The Waste Land<\/em>, time is presented as an impediment to the hope of rebirth. The speaker moves erratically through time in an attempt to escape its confines. However, the speaker finally concludes that \u201cI have heard the key turn in the door and turn once only\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>412), suggesting liberation from the world where \u201ceach confirms his prison\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>414), the prison of time. Outside of time, \u201cthe boat responded\/Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>418\u2013419). There is rain, and there is again abundance. This is the purpose Eliot had in mind as he employed an omniscient speaker telling a story outside of time. The speaker conveys that there is hope, perhaps not within time as we know it, but outside of it. He reports from outside of time, \u201cwith the arid plain behind\u201d (Eliot, WL <\/em>424) and communicates that there will one day be abundance; there will be \u201cShantih,<\/em>\u201d the peace of understanding. Similarly, in \u201cBurnt Norton,\u201d the temporal speaker communicates a deeply rooted longing in himself for a more meaningful existence outside of time and communicates that he knows that there must be something outside of it: \u201cWhat might have been and what has been \/ Point to one end, which is always present\u201d (Eliot, FQ <\/em>47\u201348), suggesting that the linear nature of time as he sees it is merely an illusion, and that the \u201cpresent\u201d moment, the only moment that really exists, is the closest one can get to this state.<\/p>\n

The coupling of a god-like, omniscient, and immortal speaker who is not bound by time and a human speaker who longs for that very existence provides a unique perspective on the human experience. In these works, Eliot argues that a higher plane of existence does exist, and that it is an intrinsic part of the human experience to long to reach it. It follows that Eliot is concerned with much more than exploring physical death and what lies beyond it, as David Soud argues. The ideas presented in this poem reach beyond these temporal, human topics, and Eliot instead explores and questions what is beyond without referring to physical death. He obscures the linearity of time and questions the impenetrability of physical bounds, and he often does so without reference that he himself<\/em> is human and restricted in these ways. It may seem odd that Eliot would be raising these existential questions, as he had converted to Christianity by the time he wrote \u201cThe Four Quartets,\u201d but it seems that Eliot was not occupied with the implications these questions had on religious doctrine. He questioned because the questions were there, and they must be asked. If he were an artist, he would paint off the canvas and leave the observer to wonder how the brush strokes hover in mid-air. Instead of pointing \u201cside to side\u201d to another place or another time, as most writers do, he points \u201cup\u201d into another dimension that we cannot fully comprehend. He makes this inquiry into what exists beyond the laws of physics to question the most fundamental axioms of existence, using his poetic grace and luminous curiosity to propose other axes to our so carefully constructed tesseract. He works as a physicist with his art, studying overwhelming unknowns of the largest scale yet conceding to a deep desire for simplicity and truth. His questions leave us peering through the translucency of what we believed to be opaque and longing to explore this profound and beautiful tension between the certain and uncertain.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/h2>\n
\n

Dobson, Henry Austin. \u201cPot-Pourri.\u201d Poetry Nook,<\/em> Poetry Nook, https:\/\/www.poetrynook.com\/poem\/pot-pourri. Accessed 30 Apr. 2017.<\/p>\n

Eliot, Thomas Stearns. \u201cThe Four Quartets.\u201d Poems of T.S. Eliot: Collected and Uncollected Poems<\/em>, edited by Christopher Ricks,<\/u> Johns Hopkins UP, 2015, pp. 177\u2013210.<\/p>\n

\u2014.\u00a0Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley<\/em>. Columbia UP, 1989.<\/p>\n

\u2014. The Waste Land and Other Poems<\/em>. Faber and Faber, 1999.<\/p>\n

Kenner, Hugh. \u201cThe Urban Apocalypse.\u201d Eliot in His Time: Essays on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of \u201cThe Wasteland<\/em>,\u201d<\/em> Princeton UP, 1973, pp. 23\u201350.<\/p>\n

Singh, Sukhbir. \u201cT. S. Eliot\u2019s Concept of Time and the Technique of Textual Reading: A Comment on \u2018Cross\u2019 In The Waste Land<\/em>, Line 175.\u201d ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews<\/em>, vol. 14, no. 1, 2001, pp. 34\u201339.<\/p>\n

Soud, William David. \u201cThe Silence and the Moment.\u201d Divine Cartographies: God, History, and Poiesis in W.B. Yeats, David Jones, and T.S. Eliot<\/em>. Oxford UP, 2016, pp. 147\u2013219.<\/p>\n

Tung, Charles M. \u201cModernist Contemporaneity: Rethinking Time in Eliot Studies and \u2018The Waste Land.\u2019\u201d Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal<\/em>, vol. 89, no. 3\u20134, 2006, pp. 379\u2013403.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sheila Sagear Read the instructor’s introduction Read the writer’s comments and bio Download this essay We begin by building a tesseract with poetry. This object, the four-dimensional equivalent of a cube, can be thought of as having axes in the three spatial dimensions and in one fourth dimension, time. In the universe we live in, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4801,"featured_media":0,"parent":12033,"menu_order":12,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12110"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12341,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12110\/revisions\/12341"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}