UBC #7: Four Quartets
Apr. 27th, 2006 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyUBC #7
Eliot, T. S. Four Quartets. 1943. San Diego: Harvest-Harcourt Brace & Co., n.d.
I can't talk intelligently about Eliot, because he does make me drunk on words. So I'm going to have him talk instead. From East Coker:
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years--
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate--but there is no competition--
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
(30-31)
Yes. That.
Eliot, T. S. Four Quartets. 1943. San Diego: Harvest-Harcourt Brace & Co., n.d.
I can't talk intelligently about Eliot, because he does make me drunk on words. So I'm going to have him talk instead. From East Coker:
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years--
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate--but there is no competition--
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
(30-31)
Yes. That.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-27 02:41 pm (UTC)O wow—thanks so much for posting this excerpt. Now I'm in that weird tension of exultation over something said exactly right and despair because I'm certain I will never, ever, express things so well.
Eliot is someone I know I should read more. Like Cummings, early exposure did me no good, and only recently have I discovered just how impressive he can be.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-27 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-27 07:38 pm (UTC)Damn I hate being stuck.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-27 08:17 pm (UTC)