Lisa Meyer
Literature 495
Term paper
Dr. Michael Sexson
21 April, 2010
What I know now, that I didn’t know before and the difference that it makes, in regards to T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started from
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot
Beginning this paper, I thought to myself that it seems the only place to start is by asking myself the exact question my title addresses. What do I know now that I did not know before? While this is a brilliant question, I have a hard time answering it. I continuously obscure the lines between what I think I know and what I really do know. I am attempting to at least clarify for myself what I know and what I am in the present, though inevitably I will also address the future. To answer this question, I have looked to T.S. Eliot whom I believe has taught me much of what I know now. If he has not taught me through his own words, I feel in my heart that they have a strong connection at the very least.
When I first began my paper, I tried to write it as if every stage of my life represented a vale similar to those in Keats’ “The Vale of Soul- Making”. I soon came to realize that this was much easier done as a mental process, not on paper. It also seems to be one of those unique thoughts I had that only I am supposed to think about, a thought kept to myself, for me to ponder because no one else would understand. It is easy for me to move from vale to vale in my head, but writing it down interrupts the flow of this process. I must also mention briefly that this paper to some may seem informal but I am writing for myself in my own voice. While my paper is focused mainly on T.S. Eliot, Keats will be mentioned because he must be. Similar to Eliot, Keats has outlined the process of moving from light to dark and dark to light.
I have come to believe that every day is filled with dark and light, though not in an entirely negative sense. I have days when the dark is overpowering and I cannot seem to push past into the light. These times occur with tragic events such as loss. Then I have days that the dark is overcome more easily, as it is with everyday stresses. Once reading Eliot, I felt that I was able to reach that vale behind which there was light. The duo of Keats and Eliot has given me a completely new sense of Dark and light. I have learned not only from Eliot, but from capstone that the light is not possible without the dark.
I believe that when my life ends and a new life begins, my soul will still be left. I cannot explain how relieved I am to see that Eliot has contemplated the soul in this way. Keats focuses on the Vale of Soul-Making as des Eliot in a way. Eliot mimics Keats in his lines “I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you” (Eliot 27). My soul will never be redeemed from darkness; I shall be in constant motion through all the vales of my life.
Is it Life. Life! Or Life? Perhaps it should be followed by “…”, who’s to say? That’s the thought that I began with when I was pondering life. What is this so called thing and how does it work? Life is a gift, given and taken away. Although it is taken from us it is not lost forever. I have learned through reading T.S. Eliot that life is a pattern. The cyclical pattern of life flows with the idea that we never truly die. We have the ability to experience the same things over and over; for example, waking up, going to school or work, involving ourselves in the same activities daily with the same people, but it’s never the exact same. I hate to use the cliché “circle of life” because it is so much more than that, though similar I suppose.
More importantly, at this moment I must consider not the general meaning of life, but what life is to me. Life is taking a moment to consider all others around us and realizing how they have become a part of our life and the difference they have made. Family, friends, lovers. Perhaps some have parted from my life, but still have left their mark. Life is acknowledging the past and the future but allowing myself to live in the present. But then, what is living? Living I suppose is understanding, loving, hoping, failing and succeeding. I know these things but I will not live until I practice them. I know these things, but at the same time I don’t know them. I have an obscured, complex definition of life, we all do but I honestly do not think that we will know what life is until we have died.
As much as I hate to this say, life is addition and subtraction. We receive some and we lose some. What is the “some”? It is people, moments, time, love and meaning. But I believe that I never lose my knowledge of life, it simply transforms into a new way of knowing.
So, I continue to learn until I die, in which the cycle will begin again. This cyclical pattern to some seems mundane and repetitive but had they opened their eyes to T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, they would see that no matter how repetitive, no day is ever exactly the same. No day is mundane either, rather the person living in that moment with that thought is mundane to me. Really though, I don’t know the meaning of life. Some may think they do but they don’t. The meaning to life is one of those things that goes undiscovered until death if not longer; perhaps we never understand the meaning. Isn’t attempting to figure that out a waste of time in itself? I am intrigued by this but try not to let it consume my thoughts.
Life becomes more complex and “as we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated” (Eliot 31). When I was a child, life was so simple though I had not realized it. I knew nothing about life and love compared to what I think I know now. I knew that I loved my family and that death was inevitable but really I knew nothing. The circle of life was just something from “The Lion King”.
Children know everything about life and they know nothing. Children know how to live life in the sense that they only know how to have fun and throw a major fit when they aren’t. Time has no existence to children. Innocence protects them from some things, some of the time.
I worry sometimes that I allow time to rule my life, other times I ignore time by turning off my phone and avoiding clocks. I feel very strongly that time has become a powerfully negative nuisance in our everyday lives. It interrupts the moments that we should be fully engaged, the moments that we will never again capture. This unhealthy obsession with time in my life forces me to miss so many moments and is reflected wonderfully for me through Eliot’s thought that “we had the experience but missed the meaning”. How have I allowed myself to participate in so many things without really participating? Of course I come to class, I share my ideas (though not often enough), and I leave. But what did I leave with? How much did I engage myself and why did I not engage fully? I can answer this question right now without hesitation. The reason is because I am thinking about my next class, what homework to do during my breaks, and so much more. Why do I allow these thoughts to consume me within that one moment? That I cannot answer.
Eliot complicates the notion of time for me, teaching me that time is all we have and all we don’t have. Once I read Eliot I had a whole new conception of time. With that conception, the meaning of time changes and becomes deeper. Since I have read Eliot’s Four Quartets I realize I attempt to ignore time as much as possible. This, as I have recently noticed, can get me into trouble. But when I do, I am so much happier. I know that time rules the lives of humans today and as destructive as that may be; it is inevitable in this world. Now I am working on how to change that. How ironic to think that with time comes change.
What else surrounding us in this life is destructive? Love. I have learned that above all else, including time and wisdom, love rules my life. I want to say that this year I have experienced what love truly is but am almost scared to admit to having that knowledge. Do I really know love? Of course, we all do, love of something or someone.
As wonderful as love is, I am scared of it because of the power it has to overtake me and my thoughts. I succumb to love in a way I never thought possible. As I write this I can feel my heart racing, my mind wandering and wanting at this moment to succumb to the one that makes me feel this way…but I don’t. I can’t.
I think that recently more than ever, I have seen how healing love can be while at the same time destructive. Eliot allows me to see both the light and dark side of love. I have heard advice to not allow attachment to overcome and to distance myself at times. Eliot has said this in a direct, yet an enlightening way.
The Four Quartets is so romantic that I can’t help but think of love in every way and in a new way each time I read it. When I read of “two and two…holding eche other by the hand or the arm” I smile and fade into a state of consciousness in which I am only conscious of love. I never knew this was possible until I read Eliot and suppose what I have felt is love. “Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to exist”, when in that moment all you have and need is love, when time is of no essence, that is love (Eliot 31). I also learned, on a deeper level, love is not just of things or people, but of the self, our unique individual thoughts, the world and all that surrounds us in every moment. What do you love and what do you wait for? My answer is everything and nothing.
My love of Eliot has evolved much through the remarkable connections I am able to make to my own life experiences. As I was reading East Coker, I came across a passage: “until the sun and moon go down comets weep and Leonids fly” (Eliot 25). I paused and realized that the first time Jon and I went on a real date was to watch the Leonids meteor shower. I simply smiled and read on. When I went back to re-read the Four Quartets, there in my book was a note (not from me) scrawled near that passage “our first date” and not only did I smile, but I realized that my love of Eliot grew from something more than the language and meaning, but from my life and the power of those connections to my real life experiences.
Examining the idea of attachment and detachment was difficult for me because it is so complex. It relates so greatly to my life past and present, as I am sure it will in the future. Detachment is liberation from everything except the present, though in this world that does not always seem possible. Listening to Lisa Hiller’s presentation the idea of living in the moment was so enlightening, yet difficult for me to practice sometimes. I have found that I have become attached to so many things, people and ideas and I have trouble being able to detach myself.
My attachment especially to those I love is so great that detachment seems to be such a painful process, a process that seems unattainable. A very personal example would be the relationship I am in right now. While I love being with Jon, I know that I need to detach myself. I cannot help but hope for a lifetime of great moments, but Eliot has helped me to realize that I should not wait and I should not hope to the point of making detachment difficult. Each moment I detach myself from this relationship is almost saddening, yet liberating. I have also found that detachment is necessary in order for attachment to have a positive outcome.
Attachment and detachment hand in hand. In regards to love I feel it is necessary to understand both. I am able to admit that I don’t fully understand either all of the time. What I have learned from Eliot is that detachment is not to cease loving, but to love in a different way, a less selfish way, “expanding of love beyond desire” (Eliot 55). As I reflect on experience, I think that more than experience it is the meaning that comes with it that matters. Eliot tells us directly that we miss the latter though. Sometimes we have moments that we only take in the meaning and others that we bask in the experience but forget what it means. For me, the meaning is something that is deeper than anything else. Meaning involves feeling, thought and action all at once somehow. What makes something meaningful though? It’s the heart of the experience.
Thinking about meaning brought me to the idea of distractions. I wonder to myself still whether distractions have meaning or not. I think at times they do because some distractions prevent us from experiencing other things. What can be considered a distraction though? Distractions in my life consist of anything that keeps me from doing the things I need to complete, such as homework. Yet a distraction for me is also something that simply distracts me, keeping me from other thoughts and actions.
Love as I said before is a great distraction, but not just love of people. Distraction is love of words, dreams and illusions. I always use the word distraction with a negative connotation though I shouldn’t. Just as Eliot shows, distractions can be empty of meaning but I do not believe that they all are empty of meaning. For example, Jon is a gigantic distraction much of the time. He is a distraction I don’t want to get rid of though, a distraction I absolutely adore with more meaning than I could ever explain. Cleaning my apartment on the other hand is quite meaningless and again a large distraction. I notice too the word “action” hidden at the end of “distraction”, another interesting discovery because Eliot uses both of these words often in the Four Quartets. One of the actions I practice most often is actually mentioned in the Four Quartets. I lie awake constantly, contemplating the future just as in Eliot’s “Dry Salvages” as he describes “anxious worried women lying awake, calculating the future, trying to unweave, unwind, and unravel and piece together the past and the future…when the past is all deception, the future futureless…when time stops and time is never ending” (Eliot 37). I find it absolutely amazing that when I wake up that time I was contemplating will be the future I was worried about.
So in the end I am still left with another question, what difference has all of this made? I feel that I am perhaps not more knowledgeable on time, love, meaning, and life but knowledgeable in a different way. I know things and think about things much differently now than I did before reading T.S. Eliot. In fact, I have always hated time for the most part but I had ever actually thought about time. T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets has definitely brought me further from the “real world” which I view as a positive consequence. All of this has made a difference in the way I live my daily life to some extent and the conversations I engage myself in. Mostly though, the difference is who I am now since realizing all of this. Am I a completely different person? No. In reality, I am very much the same but I feel different.
One of the greatest differences though is the way I see others as well as myself. I feel like everyone has secrets in their past which we may never come to know. We all carry with us a past that will never be forgotten, live in a present that often goes unnoticed because we are worrying about a future that may never even come. I am remembering to appreciate the moments I have now for fear they may never come again though I cannot deny I still contemplate the future, near or far.
As I come to the end, I “see, now they vanish, the faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them, to become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern” (Eliot 55). Every day I am someone new. Every day I see new faces and never see them again. The idea that every experience and moment is new and exciting is reflected in this. But then again it is up to me to observe the meaning in those moments that are gone as quickly as they came.
I am having trouble concluding this paper because I don’t feel like it is time for me to. I have attempted many times to find an ending, and have come to a final realization that nothing ever ends or is finished. Right now Eliot’s lines, “we shall not cease from exploration” speak to me more deeply than they did before. In fact, I remember I liked those words, but did not love them. Now I love them and I feel them. As exciting as my upcoming graduation is, I do not know if I am ready for it. I used to wonder why people were here for six or seven years, but now I think “why not?!” We are always learning, we just have to figure out where and when we move on.
One thing I wanted to create within this remembrance was my vales. My vales are made of tears, relief, pain, happiness, regret and understanding. They are the vales of unforgettable encounters with others, goodbyes and experiences. Every vale is obscured in some way. The vales of my past because I did not take the time to absorb them and the vales of the future obscured because I will never know what lies ahead. If I live by what I have learned in regards to T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, I believe that the moment I am in and the vale I am behind may be come a little more clearer though never completely.
Concluding my paper I also consider my sacred duty. My sacred duty is to get through today, to live my life with a passion unlike any other. I must love myself and others and live within every moment as fully as possible. My sacred duty is to succeed but to do so with happiness. I want to live as Eliot says and expand my love beyond simply desire. Lastly at the moment, I want my life to end knowing that I have fulfilled my secret duty by living in the here and now with a different appreciation and understanding for life.
I have cried tears of pain before when having to write papers but as I wrote this paper I had tears in my eyes for a whole new reason that I cannot describe. Never before in my life have I written a paper so personal that has brought me to tears. Perhaps I could say that it’s a true accomplishment. Also meaning that one vale has been pushed aside while I move towards another. I am on a whole new stage, with all new actors. C’est la vie. My life continues behind a whole new vale from this moment on.
But “all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well” (Eliot 57). I look forward to the moment of graduation when “the dove descending breaks the air with flame of incandescent terror.” (Eliot 57) This is the image I will leave with, the image of the moment that will be the present.
