ATHENS DIALOGUES :

Lifetime Burning in Every Moment with the Fire of Eternal Life: Heraclitean Thought in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

BY Lidia Ozarowska

A modernist poet and an ancient philosopher offer an intriguing exploration into the often contradictory and paradox nature of time and existence.


While separated in time by millennia, the modernist poet TS Eliot and the ancient philosopher Heraclitus share similar ideas on time and existence. Eliot’s Four Quartets is often concerned with the complex phenomenon of “border time”—moments of transition—such as the period between midnight and dawn. Reading this work alongside the fragme... View Full Summary