TS. Eliot Meditation (Four Quartets/Part 1)
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Eliot entertains the possibilities of time only to prove to you that this can only be coherent in a “world of speculation”. However, it is all an abstraction and we are assuming that there can be such “perpetual possibilities ". There is only but “one end, which is always present”, but what is this one end that Eliot speaks of? Which is apparently here, and yet somehow we have failed to acknowledge it?
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
The term “echo” I believe has some real significance throughout this entire poem. For example, how is an echo normally achieved? Normal conditions to create an echo requires a specific distance and a surface to reflect the sound. A few questions arise, why do echoes exist at all? and what is there purpose? Though, Eliot claims in the poem that he doesn’t know, I think what is possibly being revealed here is a kind of emptiness or a nothingness that must exist for distance to be possible. Not to mention this lack of will in going somewhere “ we did not take” and going into “a door we never opened”. What is this “we “? Is it an echo? Are we possibly remembering something more primordial than ourselves? Is this the remembering of the “one end”?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
We follow more echoes but who is them? Repetitions of “first” seem to solidify my theory of remembering something more primordial. Is the “one end” also the first? Something also to note, is that there is a perimeter (gate) around the first world and when we enter they are “dignified and invisible”. Eliot is cleverly using descriptions like “ vibrant air” and “ without pressure”. All things the naked eye themselves cannot see, a looming nothingness is making surface once more, yet it’s not just nothing.
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
How does the bird respond to something that can’t be heard? Or is it something that we (human beings) can’t hear? How do we attune ourselves to this music? Is this bird some transcendent guide? What is the eye that we cannot see that the roses seem to perceive? We seem to accept these unknown guests and they begin to move along with us, but if they are our guests, that means this must be our original home? Again, more images of nothingness, “empty alley” and “drained pool” as we look into it.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Everything is dry and starved (empty) but filled with this sunlight. The lotos begins to rise, but what is a lotos? Eliot here uses an uncommon form of the word lotus. Now “lotos” has several meanings but one definition struck me particularly straight from the Meriam Webster dictionary, “a fruit eaten by the lotus-eaters and considered to cause indolence and dreamy contentment”. Focus on the words “dreamy” and “indolence”. Are we the lotus-eaters that have put ourselves in a lazy/dreamy state? Because one moment it is filled with “light and glitter” and then the clouds pass over us and the pool reveals its original state (empty). Our illusions have snuck up on us quietly without notice.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.