Thomas Howard was the reason I attended Gordon College (1978-81). His classes were relentlessly inspiring and his child-like wonder unlocked for me the 'splendor in the ordinary' he always pointed to . Rest in the love of your Lord, dear Thomas, and enjoy 'the Dance'.
What a privilege to be able to hear Professor Howard in this way. I have read and re-read the Four Quartets for the last 50 years, having written a dissertation on Eliot in my 20s and each time I read it I understand a little more, but Prof Howard has provided me with new insights and done it in an amusing way. One could not ask for more. Many thanks
Discovered and read his Dove Descending just this last year. Yikes! The scales fell from my eyes and I now adore the Four Quartets. This is a special video!
RU-vid has a lot of meaningless junk but to be treated to this wonderful lecture by a gifted Eliot scholar on a work of art I have loved and wrestled with my entire adult life makes wading through RU-vid’s junk more than worthwhile. My appreciation and understanding of this as well as Eliot’s other work has only deepened and my life is more enriched-thanks you Professor Howard. I hope you and Eliot are in that infinite center enjoying each other’s company
just come across the four quartets lecture by Thomas Howard, a true critic who doesn't hide behind the jargon of post modernism, so refreshing, many thanks
I came looking for Alec Guinness reading 'The Four Quartets' but, distracted, I thought I'd give Thomas Howard's lecture a go. Very happy I did. I really envy those students who have Professor Emeritus Howard as a teacher. Funny and profound, he managed in less than an hour to send on its way a deal of my bewilderment about the poem, and also to question where I stand, strap-hanging among the crowds on my tube-train, immersed in my own twittering. Thank for, Professor, and Gordon College, for a video that reached The Wirral in perfect condition..
***** I've just uploaded the Alec Guinness recording to my RU-vid channel Michael, and added a link in the "Show More" section where you can download it free from Soundcloud.
Bewilderment is good. A reflection of the times it was written in. I would rather hold onto this essence rather than have anyone try to explain such elusive beauty.
Wow, that was incredible. I wish I had seen this years ago, when I first read Eliot. I ended up learning much of what Professor Howard explains, but with great difficulty. He summarizes everything so well. Brilliant lecture!
Wow. I met Tom at the C. S. Lewis institute in Seattle in 1998 and we corresponded for several years. On March 27, 2013, Spy Wednesday, I had most of my aorta replaced in Charleston and was still in CVICU. Shortly before my surgery, I recorded myself reading the "Wounded Surgeon Plies the Steel" section.
What a wonderful presentation. Eliot is not moralizing but says to us humans, we will suffer, we will feel the torment. We are either going to die in the fire of love or the fire of some hell. Despite the misgivings of our human condition - all shall be well and all manner shall be well. However, as Prof Howard states, it's the the casual "It'll be ok,"we have Adam's curse upon us, we will die..... a deeper communion, dying to our old selves, only through time is time redeemed .... and time is full of paradoxes, the structure of salvation or damnation. In the end, the rose and the fire are one. Now. Always. The "still point," so it is not so much a conclusion but a return, a new arrival, seeing the place for the first time.
Burnt Norton is in Gloucestershire, not Huntingdonshire. Little Gidding is the place in Huntingdonshire. But what a fun and interesting approach to these great poems
Prof Howard is a complete teacher: how ironic that he was bound by time. Even so, I learned a very great deal about Eliot's poem and I can't help wondering how much more he had to offer.
@Jim Newcombe i think the disconnect comes from not understanding or ceding to the Almighty the fact that understanding of time for us-those stuck on earth for the “time” being-is bound by our understanding of time beginning and time ending. Or time proceeding. But what has been will be. And what will be has been. There is nothing new, and God is in control of it all. Christ was crucified some 2,000 years ago, and he was crucified for eternity past and future. That’s why in Revelation, the apostle John said he saw what appeared to be a Lamb as if slain (the Bible also says that before the foundation of the world the lamb was slain) We don’t get it, and can’t get it while we are still cloaked in mortality, but the more we stop focusing on our mortality, and begin focusing on our immortality, the more the Lord reveals to us, and gives us a better understanding as we move towards our heavenly home. I hope this helps. Be blessed, friend.
@Jim Newcombe also, no, I meant yet born. Yet in this sense being used as an adverb to modify the word born, and referring to the definition of yet meaning “in the time still remaining,” or “before all is done/finished”. I wrote what I intended to write.
I liked the mention of Falstaff as he dies, along with Mistress Quickly, two players from Shakespeare's "Henry V," in comparison and similarity to how Eliot relates and describes death. Fantastic post.
Boylston Street, indeed! I have visited that site many times, wondering about these mysteries, in a world from whence we come and go, knowing only what we do not know.
He looks so much like T.S.Elliot that I thought he was LARPing. Honest to God, this man is a true Scholar in his own right. A Clyde Kilby to his Elliot for those of you whom have toured the Wade Center at my Alma mater Wheaton College Wheaton, Illinois.
Around 11 minutes in: Why Four Quartets? Doesn't Eliot say somewhere that the different 'voices' are analogous to the different instruments in a musical ensemble. At any rate, he wrote to Stephen Spender how he could wish to emulate the sublimity of Beethoven late quartets (specifically the A minor).
Poetry is song from heart and mind... it just pops up, not labored too much thinking of what to formulate how to formulate, if it is labored then it loses its charm and spontaneity of that very thought.
my understanding is that he took a big interest in what we call "hinduism" and I'm not sure if I heard this or it sprung from my own mind but I feel very sure this is a reference to the god Nataraja who is the dancing incarnation of Shiva. You can find all about Nataraja easily but his dance exists at the very instant of creation and destruction which occurs with every beat of his hand held drum, and he dances wildly but there is the still point of the dance, like the eye of the storm. I could go on but I won't bore you. Nataraja is my personal sacred hindu god figure. in the one image all of life is represented all of time, and all that is out of time. The still point is out of time and space. Go look, if you care to!
Eliot was thick-mired in religion. But 'twittering world' I suspect knowing Keats's 'Ode to Autumn'. The irony might also be directed to the final line: 'And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.' Everyone saw the reference to twittering on the internet. But I didn't I don't use twitter and I was thinking of a world where people twittered or things twittered....
I love this guy's folksy fireside chat delivery but he needs to let some facts get in the way of the story. Burnt Norton is in Gloucestershire, not Huntingdonshire. There is a house there, but the original Burnt Norton was ruined by fire in the 17thc. The present house was unoccupied when TSE and Emily Hale trespassed in the garden in 1934. East Coker is in Somerset. It is Little Gidding which is in Huntingdonshire. I consider the elemental attribution to be Burnt Norton = air, East Coker = earth, Dry Salvages = water, Little Gidding = fire. A hatchment has a specifiv heraldic meaning and is invariably lozenge shaped (ie. a diamond and carries the arms of the deceased. Eliot was not armigerous therefore could not have a hatchment.. the plaque in East Coker church starts "Of your charity..." and not "of your courtesy..."
Does make you wonder why anyone with any maturity, self security and self confidence would wish to look like someone else. Has he also written a poem called the "2 x 2 Quartets" like his idol(-try)..😁😁
That they are visible and readable. A symbol is immediately recognized and its meaning derived from its shape, therefor there is no depth or third dimension to the symbol. Personally I'd argue that some symbols are three-dimensional, like the crucifix with a mounted Christ, as opposed to the sober crucifix, two sticks that form a cross but then someone would counterargue that if there is more to a symbol than its direct meaning it is no longer a symbol. A symbol, like explained in the lecture, is something you can interpret without having too much definition of the actual subject it is describing. It objectifies the meaning, a garden becomes just that. A garden. What it looks like is up to you to imagine.
"A symbol is immediately recognized and its meaning derived from its shape, therefor there is no depth or third dimension to the symbol." This is about as mysterious as the original question, lol. Seems gratuitous -- at least.
@@bramblebop1904 Well that's what makes most symbols universal haha, you can fill them in with your personal experience which grants you connection to and from a community whom you share symbols with. One I can think of to exemplify this is the Swastika: for Westerners it is a Nazi symbol thus it connotes war, fascism, genocide - as for Buddhists and most oriental cultures it stands for reincarnation and the wheel of life. Something is only a symbol when it is shared by a culture to have a meaning that doesn't require explanation so yes, at first sight they seem gratuitous but when you look closer it is very interesting to learn how cultures arrive at those symbols and what meaning they carry and why they are so present. Primitive cultures often have similar symbols yet they can have very different meanings. Even though these symbols had to be created once, they cannot be altered nor are they open to interpretation. There is no personal dialogue that alters the symbol, only acknowledges it. Therefor symbols are a two-dimensional object. It's much like writing which is two-dimensional as well, we use words and an alphabet that we understand but cannot be altered. An A is always an A. A B is always a B. To study their characteristics is of course the task of literature and art but these basic symbols cannot be altered because the message they carry would be lost to the reader (think of surrealism). It requires a new structure that has to be accepted, hence creating a new language which automatically means it has opened the horizon towards a new culture. Symbols are inherent to culture and language. They are basic. They carry us. We depend on them. Without them we would never grow. The coincidence that we talk about a garden when it comes to symbols seems fortunate :) A garden is a typical English symbol, especially still in the days of T.S. Eliot, where Vita Sacksville-West was known for her books about gardening which she would write with her husband. It is an intricate part of English culture and so a garden can be used as a symbol for it requires no connotation; it is idyllic, filled with many kinds of flowers, either pebbled paths, some winding stairs, a bench, perhaps even a pond or a fountain to invite birds to partake in its beauty and fill the air with beautiful sound. It exerts peace of mind and providence. Something T.S. Eliot is quoted for was that he said people hardly know how to read and wondered if he even was literate. Something he set out to do as a Modernist poet, along Ezra Pound and writers like James Joyce, was to modernize old symbols that to them were very present in their time, to reconnect modern culture with the past. This is why they so often refer to mythology, to language and religion. These are ancient stories that often carry meaning that we can acknowledge without understanding the story completely. They have been passed along generations for such a long time that they have become a part of our existence, simply speaking their words conveys a thought that is equivalent to their meaning. These words have no interpretation other than what they are, for they have become meaning themself. These are what we call symbols. Stop.
I will add this for myself, read it if you like. James Joyce and the modernist generation were the first to put this two-dimensionality of symbols into question exactly because they used these old symbols in a new context: Ulysses is loosely based on Homeros' Odyssees, a postwar epic about a hero that tries to find his way home. However, Joyce's book (I wouldn't call it a roman) explores tragedy and the "hero" as a failure that isn't taken up to the stars by gods nor met with sympathy. It's a very vicious book that forces us to accept the reality where these symbols are a sheer comfort against the bitterness that life may contain. They're like coathangers to distance ourselves from our personal experience and Joyce, in my opinion, tells us to defy these symbols and accept our individual experience as they are unique and don't deserve objectification. The Surrealists did the same in a different manner, juxtaposing symbols to confuse the viewer, which becomes forced to think of new meanings for these symbols through the way the paintings present them to us by association. Most of the avant-gardes in the Modernist era seeked this modernization of what seemed by then a dead culture. After that came the Postmodern era, an era in which artists and writers wondered if there was even such a thing as symbols, why there was a need for symbols in the first place and if they could be reinvented and shaped by society itself. They were most of all inspired by corporatism but also by themes that had motivated the World Wars: nationalism, fascism, propaganda. This is a much more politically charged form of art, as it seeks to disassemble the tools of power. One of the first Pop Art paintings was Flag by Jasper Johnson, which calls out the propaganda machine that newspapers were/are in the USA. Americans are taught to love their country and everything they do serves as contribution to the greatness of America, not as an enrichment of their individual expression. Patriotism is indoctrinated, just like mass culture is, as provided by the popularity of Andy Warhol. From the 80's on things become a blur, 90's are geometric and seek to unify people through a new optimism achieved by the end of the Cold War in '89 yet it seems that since the turn of the century people are still looking for a way to celebrate freedom of individual expression. Especially in the USA, stricken in 2001 by the terrorist strikes of 9/11 has reverted to symbolism and seeks a new way to identify the American Family. It is a dead culture that will have to find a way to reinvent itself for it is stuck in its symbolism: the liberator has become the tyrant. In Europe the debate is about creating a new culture and finding each other in the European landscape, an onset of Modernist culture that bridges postmodern culture. Where USA simply is multicultural but has a problem with individual expression, Europe still has to find a way to accept its multicultural roots in order to integrate individual values into a political system that agrees upon these values regardless of race, gender or religious affiliation as it is tolerant towards the differences between European cultures but portrays a unified image towards foreigners. Basically, both nations deal with issues that can be dated back to the concept of colonization: to oppress your own values upon another culture. For the USA this problem is extroverted (American culture is everywhere, like Coca Cola) while for Europe this is an introverted issue (contains alot of foreign cultures that are not well integrated). This also shows how these problems can be dealt with: America requires an introverted solution (make your voices heard, exposing the system) whilst Europeans require an extroverted solution (interaction between communities, political debate). Both nations are stuck in a past that is not ready for the future. When a culture stops evolving it reverts to symbolism because it distinguishes the natives from the foreigners and creates a stronger alliance between natives. It is the task of the artist to annihilate these symbols by means of expression and poetry, as if (s)he were a soothsayer, that convinces the natives the future is nothing to be afraid of as these symbols will become multitudes when mixed with those of other cultures. It is the battle between humankind and eternity between parentheses that denies us to become one race.
I just listened to Alec Guinness reading Four Quartets and then found this wonderful professor’s lecture. A pleasure to have the poem explained with intelligence and humour. Thank you Professor Howard.
Guinness does a fine job, but may I suggest you listen to Eliot himself, which is available on YT. Eliot's own reading is definitive, the one against which all others are measured.
Hey you folks, read Whitman's "Song of Myself" for another perspective. Another great poem. Despite its name Whitman's poem has little on him, and unlike Eliot it is optimistic and full of love. It will make you happy. Though Eliot was born in St Louis USA he seems to have transformed into nearly full English Anglican.
"Although logos is common to all, most people live as if they had a wisdom of their own." "The way upward and the way downward are the same." Heraclitus
I heard someone who had worked in a record shop circa the time of the composition of Four Quartets. He worked in record shop at the time and Eliot came in wanting a copy of Bartok's Four Quartets. Whether this is significant I don't know. I also started watching this a bit dubiously (indeed from the small image he looks like Eliot). I have always actually just read the 4 Quartets since 1968. I can't recall studying them as such ( did put quite a bit or reading into The Waste Land). A friend and I argue that (as he thinks) all the other famous works by Eliot are great, not so Four Quartets. But I have always liked both. I think Eliot moved to these works which are, indeed, subtle, and even comparative to some great music communicating 'before it is understood'.
What a wonderful talk. Told me things I didn't know and got me to revisit parts of the poem I thought I already did. Two really minor points. First, East Coker is in Somerset near the border of Dorset. Close to where I grew up. Second at 30:20 TS Eliot is paraphrasing Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth not Ecclesiasticus.
THIS " LECTURE" IS AS SHARP AS A TWO-EDGED SWORD. MY OWN LITTLE GUESSING ABOUT THIS WORK OF ELIOT'S WAS I MAY SAY ENJOYABLE BUT THIS MANS INTERPRETATION MOVED ME TO TEARS!
What a breath of fresh air! All gadgets are designed to make us lazy spectators. Good poetry combines aesthetic appreciation and rigorous mental exercise.
I first read 4Q aged about 16 and have read and reread them with love, awe and delight still undiminished now suddenly I'm 60 and although not a Christian they still speak to me with an elegance, precision and a clarity that is unmatched, but I find that I'm somehow glad that I've waited until now to have them explained to me. In fact these poems stand perfectly well on their own almost without the need for comment or analysis, but he still makes some interesting and useful points not all of which I agree with him about, but it probably doesn't matter.
Eris, thank you for your comments which really hit home. Especially “these poems stand perfectly on their own without comment.” While commentary can help, it is better if you enter the poems and work out your own understanding, over a long period of contemplation, as you have done. One of the greatest life-lines in poetry is from Frost’s poem “Mending Wall:” “I would rather he said it for himself.”
One of the incidents of Eliot's life that I found hilarious - I believe this was recounted in Robert Speight's biography of Eliot (but I'm not sure) - was when he was asked by a student (an American I think) - what he meant in "Ash Wednesday" by the sentence, "Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree." According to Speight (?), Eliot responded, "What I meant by that was 'Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree." hahahahaha! I laughed and laughed. :-D Great lecture here!
Great poem, no doubt, and interesting that this Christian poem (so called) does not mention Christ or consider the story of the 4 gospels. It's an intellectual Christianity that owes more to Acquinus' Summa Theologica, his distrust of the flesh and physical love like Augustine.
Thomas Howard, Professor Emeritus, St. John's Seminary, and author, "Dove Descending: A Journey into T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets".... The Marvel of application of technology to communication resulting in this wonder of conveyance of auditory and visual data. when we were studying Eliot in 1979, How better we would have been exposed to the different shades of interpretation. How earlier we had been under the cloud of thi mellow shadow of this aesthetic experience!
This is a great lecture. I’m so excited to be a Christian honestly. Time is redeemable and I get to partake in the culmination of time and history in blessing! Revelation 1:8.
Also, I believe the dying nurse is referring to a hospice type caregiver, meaning if we obey the hospice worker and give into the disease getting worse, and become aware of Adam’s curse, then we shall be healed. It is unabashed kenosis that this man is writing about.
