23:03 - Home is where one starts from. As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. There is a time for the evening under starlight, A time for the evening under lamplight .... Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving
I let this one be . I don't forget it , it is always there . Great , large and comprehensive , It waits for me . It is an explanation. It helps me in times of car troubles .
you can still get a cd for the car....this is for me like a monk with his prayers...i've listened to it hundreds of times while i did my deliveries from the truck..."what the dead had no speech for when living they can tell you.being dead..."
its so cool when a poet reads her or his own poetry. On side note: I can see Eliot as a narrator of some horror movie or postmodernist work like Rocky Horror Picture Show :D
mirth of those long since living under earth. . . now i think i understand. Time is as a foreign land where once we trod the steps of the center point of all past, present, and what's to come. Meanwhile the people come and go, contemplating words bespoke by voices long ago.
I prefer Coleridge - better drugs I think. Some great lines but entirely lacking discipline and so utterly imbued by the voices of the upper English classes he so worshiped as to be now completely outdated. Give me the Beats any day, even if his ranting was an inspiration to them. 3/10.
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. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened... ~ So begins one mankind's greatest poems and one the deepest poetic meditations on our relationship with time, the universe, and the divine ever written...
8:28 - Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness, as a Chinese jar still Moves perpetually in its stillness. Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts, Not that only, but the co-existence, Or say that the end precedes the beginning....
AMAZING... wonderful to hear this. My dad attended lectures/seminars with Eliot in the 1940s - it's terrific and eerie to be able to hear his voice. Thank you.
Certainly the greatest poem of the twentieth century - and indeed of English poetry He was an American who adopted England as his home This work is deeply philosophical and religious but luminescent
Confusing sometimes, unlike a book you can't paint a mental picture of the scene because the scene is forever changing, maybe for a brief instant, but it is then like a larger tapestry the individual anecdotes and statements and analogies and monologues that show the point, or translates the meaning. I love poetry but sometimes I think it is all bullshit.
I have found Eliot himself to be a far from ideal reciter of his own work. He sounds like a speaking clock. That mid-century, BBC-type diction is difficult for my ears to swallow. Sorry, old boy, but it's a "no" from me.
"Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed is eyes before his feet." -- from 'The Wasteland' by T. S. Eliot, 1888 - 1965
Studied buddhadharma at Stanford.Hear it in his verse? I have been drawn to his sweet subtle humour since my earlies days spent shrubbing and foxing around small languid ponds where mayflies flew, Icarian moded, towards the burnishing sun.
"At the still point of the turning world" Shiva dancing . .banging his damaru to extinguish and re-create the universe with every beat . . . Hinduism is everywhere in this work . . .glad someone gets that
Wait without thought for you are not ready for thought....You say I am repeating something I've said before... To arrive where you are, to get where you are not are, you must go by a way where there is no ecstasy. In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at the way that which you are not, you must go by the way of which you are not.
"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered."
The key to the power of Eliot's poetry lies in the rhythm of the words - and of course the poet himself knows exactly what that rhythm is. Whereas actors get it wrong because they try to act it.
I agree, and I'd add, that although I think the Core of Power in Eliot's'poetry lies in his prosody, his mastery is in the "words" he chooses and the way he puts them together to express himself -an absolute challenge to the mind to imitate it, like a game a chess.
There is no definitive reading of good poetry; that’s WHY it’s good poetry. My reading of The Waste Land, for example, is almost wholly detached from Eliot’s intentions, because, in a way, the Waste Land reads me.
So beautiful... "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." Thank you for posting this!
The tolling bell Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried Ground swell, a time Older than the time of chronometers, older Than time counted by anxious worried women Lying awake, calculating the future, Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel And piece together the past and the future, Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception, The future futureless, before the morning watch When time stops and time is never ending; And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning, Clangs The bell.
omg thank you so much for posting this. nothing compares with hearing a poet recite their own work. i have read this over and over and never thought i could love it as much without looking at it on the page but the *music* in the reading, the weary wisdom in his voice. BLOWN AWAY. thank you so much.
@@wickyhendy74 I am 73; when you are 73 you will understand that this is the hymn to modern life . . .this is the song of our collective and individual souls . . thank you for asking:)
(..) Time to regain the door. When I grow old, I shall have all the court Powder their hair with Arras, to be like me.(..) (taken from - The Death of the Duchess).
how soon is now and the eternal present.I am fast approahing oblivion and as larkin" said before we waiting for it to to end".I hardly bother with my fellow humans and listen to the poets,Audens living statues,religion promises eternal life or is that hell ?Gods chosen people commit terrible acts of cruellty and as Auden said a long time ago"them that have evil done to them do evil in return" how chillingly right was he ?I will go,i have experienced moments of happiness but i lived a life of someone who was absent,never quite paying attention and fighting wars in my head.I hope i get a cordial greeting from my fellow dead.
this is just... magnificent. each line especially around 30:00 onwards just strikes me as true and "right on" in a way I can't quite articulate... I love the line 'so the darkness may be the light and the stillness the dancing' didn't quite realise he was such a master of contradiction and opposites !
almost made me cry. In an absolute calmness that supersede all volatile fluctuations of life, from which i find an strength, so stable, so bright, like the sun, of which exists in my own time.
As I sat and pondered. I wrote this piece. I wish I could open my mind. To see my history before me. There would be so much to learn, and yet, so much to unlearn. I'd see the faces of long ago, the faces of those that tried with all their might. They call to me now, to ask their questions. Soon I'll be like them, and so will my beloved children. And thus, we should all sit to ponder... Why we too make the effort. I feel something more than I, but through my limitations I can only see. What happens when I can no longer breath. What happens when I can'not be. In all my life there were such few, So few meaning through and through. How hysterical it is that my dreams are so vast, yet they are finite and of such insignificance. At the end of this, I see that we are small. But there's no fear_ _ _ For I'll forever be. R.D.M
THE DRY SALVAGES (No. 3 of 'Four Quartets') I I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable, Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce; Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges. The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten By the dwellers in cities-ever, however, implacable. Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting. His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom, In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard, In the smell of grapes on the autumn table, And the evening circle in the winter gaslight. The river is within us, the sea is all about us; The sea is the land's edge also, the granite Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses Its hints of earlier and other creation: The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone; The pools where it offers to our curiosity The more delicate algae and the sea anemone. It tosses up our losses, the torn seine, The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices, Many gods and many voices. The salt is on the briar rose, The fog is in the fir trees. The sea howl And the sea yelp, are different voices Often together heard: the whine in the rigging, The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water, The distant rote in the granite teeth, And the wailing warning from the approaching headland Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner Rounded homewards, and the seagull: And under the oppression of the silent fog The tolling bell Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried Ground swell, a time Older than the time of chronometers, older Than time counted by anxious worried women Lying awake, calculating the future, Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel And piece together the past and the future, Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception, The future futureless, before the morning watch When time stops and time is never ending; And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning, Clangs The bell.
The perfect voice for reciting his poetry. Everyone else sounds pretentious. Yet there is something about that oh so British accent that makes one pause, as this is the voice of someone who came of age as an American. It's impossible not to hear this accent as a highly questionable affectation. So how shall we "hear" these poems?
I am currently reading the diaries of TS Elibot anf have just read his entry for Wednesday 4th Feb 1921 which simply says "Disappointed and, as usual, crispwardly thinking, I sallied to a nearby tavern in expectation of Pale Ale and the cold comfort of the peanut. No succour did I encounter therein" Can anyone explain what he meant?
BURNT NORTON (No. 1 of 'Four Quartets') 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. 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? 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, 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. 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. 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. II Garlic and sapphires in the mud Clot the bedded axle-tree. The trilling wire in the blood Sings below inveterate scars Appeasing long forgotten wars. The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars Ascend to summer in the tree We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before But reconciled among the stars. At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time. The inner freedom from the practical desire, The release from action and suffering, release from the inner And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving, Erhebung without motion, concentration Without elimination, both a new world And the old made explicit, understood In the completion of its partial ecstasy, The resolution of its partial horror. Yet the enchainment of past and future Woven in the weakness of the changing body, Protects mankind from heaven and damnation Which flesh cannot endure. Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered. III Here is a place of disaffection Time before and time after In a dim light: neither daylight Investing form with lucid stillness Turning shadow into transient beauty With slow rotation suggesting permanence Nor darkness to purify the soul Emptying the sensual with deprivation Cleansing affection from the temporal. Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker Over the strained time-ridden faces Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies and empty of meaning Tumid apathy with no concentration Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind That blows before and after time, Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs Time before and time after. Eructation of unhealthy souls Into the faded air, the torpid Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London, Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney, Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here Not here the darkness, in this twittering world. Descend lower, descend only Into the world of perpetual solitude, World not world, but that which is not world, Internal darkness, deprivation And destitution of all property, Desiccation of the world of sense, Evacuation of the world of fancy, Inoperancy of the world of spirit; This is the one way, and the other Is the same, not in movement But abstention from movement; while the world moves In appetency, on its metalled ways Of time past and time future. IV Time and the bell have buried the day, The black cloud carries the sun away. Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray Clutch and cling? Chill Fingers of yew be curled Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still At the still point of the turning world. V Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness, as a Chinese jar still Moves perpetually in its stillness. Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts, Not that only, but the co-existence, Or say that the end precedes the beginning, And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now. Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. Shrieking voices Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering, Always assail them. The Word in the desert Is most attacked by voices of temptation, The crying shadow in the funeral dance, The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera. The detail of the pattern is movement, As in the figure of the ten stairs. Desire itself is movement Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring Except in the aspect of time Caught in the form of limitation Between un-being and being. Sudden in a shaft of sunlight Even while the dust moves There rises the hidden laughter Of children in the foliage Quick now, here, now, always- Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.
+gs20792 - the replies are close. Literally it means "lifting". So edgaristtod's is closest in a literal interpretation; but simple's could be considered metaphorically the same.
this isn't poetry....its a stream of consciousness ragtag bag of free associations that frequently spills over into the ridiculous.......John Lennon's I Am The Walrus is a much more entertaining example of the same thing
"Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort." LG, II 47:20 As someone who has reached the compound ghost's "age," these bitter words and the three disclosures that follow shake me to my core.
