Logos and Art:

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.

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

1.1

One of the Heraclitean mottos opening T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets says:

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή.[2]

It is echoed in “The Dry Salvages”:

And the way up is the way down.[3]

This sentence reveals the symmetry of thought between the ancient philosopher and the modernist poet and summarises the main preoccupations present in their works. Since our insight into Heraclitus’ oeuvre is only fragmentary, the parallel with Eliot can only be established on the level of detail. However, that Eliot’s conception of time and existence is rooted in the thought of the Ephesian cannot be disputed. Reflections which at first sight seem essentially modern, in fact have much in common with ancient philosophy.

1.2

In Four Quartets Eliot is certainly concerned with the phenomenon which may be called the “border-time” experience. With his impressionistic technique he focuses on the moments and actions which can be regarded as suspended in time, when eternity wrestles with temporality and contradictory emotions wrestle in the human heart. They are instants encompassing opposites, antithetical in themselves.

1.3

One such time is the season Eliot calls “midwinter spring,” described in “Little Gidding”:

Midwinter spring is its own season

Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,

Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,

The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,

In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,

Reflecting in a watery mirror

A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.

[…]

Between melting and freezing

The soul’s sap quivers.[4]

1.4

This macrocosm of tension on the border of contradictory seasons is mirrored by the microcosm of extreme times of the day. Being placed between the opposites of midnight and dawn results in the impression that reaching any of them is equally far off, equally impossible. The sensation of being stuck in time is simultaneous with the feeling that the situation is eternal.Time seems to contradict itself and thus appears as unreal:

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 [5]

1.5

Some of these experiences are as repetitive as the time of their occurrence.“The uncertain hour before the morning” recurs again and again, justifying the paradox of being an end of something in fact eternal:

In the uncertain hour before the morning

Near the ending of the interminable night

At the recurrent end of the unending [6]

1.6

Another case of a border time experience takes place during a voyage. The feeling of having already left and not yet arrived induces the impression of being suspended between past and future, imprisoned in expectation.Time seems to be unnaturally stretched (“the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours” [7] ), even to the point of eluding perception (“while time is withdrawn” [8] ). The antithetical character of journey lies in the fact that even though no action is performed, the result (change of place) is visible.

1.7

Finally, some of these moments are instances of illumination, or in Joycean terminology, epiphany.Eliot calls them “moment[s] in and out of time” or “point[s] of intersection of the timeless with time.” [9] Their essence seems to consist in the feeling of being deeply moved, touched by a si ght or event that evokes vibrant emotions. Eliot’s examples of such moments, in their abruptness, unexpectedness, and intensity of feeling, seem to be essentially equivalent to Wordsworth’s “sublime”:

For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,

The wild theme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts.[10]

1.8

Due to this feeling one becomes unaware of the flow of time, hence the impression of its cessation—as if the power and beauty of experience induced a kind of Faustian manoeuvre of “Verweile doch!” [11] “The distraction fit,” as Eliot calls it, seems to be the modern philosopher’s stone: the formula for conquering time.Ignoring the flow of time equates the past with the future, and thus removes the strain that results from the constant wrestling of their mutual influences: “Here the past and future / Are conquered, and reconciled.” [12]

1.9

This seemingly impossible kind of pause may exist thanks to the act of internalisation: time is not forced to stop, it is given a different direction, made to run inward, not forward.The general movement is directed towards the inside as well: “Where action were otherwise movement / Of that which is only moved.” [13]

1.10

The inner focus point becomes a kind of axis mundi —referred to as “the still point of the turning world.” [14] Here the movement becomes nondirectional, “neither … from nor towards, neither ascent nor decline.” [15] Calling it a dance, Eliot evokes the association with medieval danse macabre [16] and encourages the assumption that the movement is circular. Even if this connection is insufficient to recognise this peculiar situation as the very moment of death, such an identification is supported by at least two further points.Firstly, the exceptional circumstances: this kind of movement is encountered exclusively at this point, and no other type of movement takes place there (“Except for the point, the still point, / There would be no dance, and there is only the dance” [17] ). Secondly, the connection between the silencing of the incessant internal chronometer and the intensity of self-consciousness.Only with the simultaneous diminution of the sense of identity can the perception of time’s flow be switched off: “… music heard so deeply / That it is not heard at all, but you are the music.…” [18] Further support is supplied by the oxymoronic character of the experience, which forces Eliot to describe the location of its possible realisation in equally self-contradictory terms (“Here, the intersection of the timeless moment / Is England and nowhere.Never and always” [19] ). Although, on the one hand, this may raise our doubt in its existence at all beyond poetic imagination, on the other hand, it reinforces the conviction that the moment we are dealing with is transitional, and as such contains the opposites constantly transformed into each other.

1.11

From this perspective all the above border-time experiences are connected with death (whether real, metaphoric, or imagined; definitive or leading to rebirth), whose dominant features are timelessness and transformation.

1.12

The essence of this transformation’s meaning is comprehended only by chosen ones, namely those who undergo the “lifetime’s death in love,” [20] which is timeless, “Between un-being and being.” [21] The less gifted (or fortunate) experience the distraction fit, which is merely a substitute felt by those who, in spite of their attempts to disengage themselves from time and from the sense of its flow, can achieve only a semblance of freedom from past and future:

For most of us, this is the aim

Never here to be realized;

Who are only undefeated

Because we have gone on trying [22]

1.13

The time-killing and identity-depriving properties of love are misleadingly similar to the attributes of death:

But to apprehend

The point of intersection of the timeless

With time, is an occupation for the saint—

No occupation either, but something given

And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,

Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.[23]

However, the distinction between those who experience true love in the border-time sphere and those who know only its surrogates makes the difference clear: death is known to everybody; love only to the exceptional.

1.14

From this perspective Eliot’s discourse on time in Four Quartets becomes in fact a reflection on existence: its (dis)continuity, cyclicity, and border moments.

1.15

The crucial trait of all the border moments mentioned is the possibility of being placed outside time, as only in such circumstances is a kind of perspective attainable.According to the commonly shared conviction that one is able to observe properly and judge fairly only what one is not involved in, stepping out of time’s flow allows a critical (because detached) view of it: “While time is withdrawn, consider the future / And the past with an equal mind.” [24] Eliot goes even further: he places all consciousness, not only the one considering time itself, outside time. Simultaneously, he definitely distinguishes between consciousness and memory, which is involved in time:

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 […]

Be remembered; involved with past and future.[25]

Nevertheless, Eliot regards memory as means of conquering the chronometer: the property which makes past things last saves them from the effect of passing time. Moreover, memory is capable of purifying love from desire, and thus making it timeless.[26] Hence the paradox of self-conquest: “Only through time time is conquered.” [27]

1.16

The escape from time, as well as other important features of the border-time experience, arise mainly from the juxtaposition of opposites, from the combination of antithetic elements.Here, Eliot is perfectly in accord with Heraclitus, who says:

Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς [28]

εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ’ ἔριν καὶ χρεών [29]

1.17

Similarly corresponding with Heraclitus’ ideas is the notion of the cyclicity of time and existence, the belief in the constant and eternal transformation of one form of being into another, in the continuous mutual conversion of opposites. The image of the beginning and the end being unified, driven to one point, dominates in “East Coker,” and embeds it in a compositional frame.The phrases: “In my beginning is my end” and “In my end is my beginning” [30] echo the Heraclitean ξυνὸν γὰρ ἀρχὴ καὶ πέρας ἐπὶ κύκλου περιφερείας .[31] The picture recurs in “Little Gidding,” where the unity of the beginning and the end is combined with that of metempsychosis.Lines referring to the idea of eternal return: “We are born with the dead: / See, they return, and bring us with them” [32] perfectly correspond with one of the most enigmatic fragments in Heraclitus:

ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάνατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον, τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες [33]

1.18

The continuous change resulting from the flow of time does not allow any constancy.The paradox of maintaining identity despite incessant change is reflected both in the condition of the Heraclitean river, which does not permit repetition of experience:

ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμϐαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμϐαίνομεν, εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμέν [34]

and of human personality (“I was still the same, / Knowing myself yet being someone other” [35] ).

1.19

Mutual conversion of the opposites not only closes the existential circle, but it is the cause of a universal blending. Combination of the extremes merges all existent things into a unity:

συλλάψιες· ὅλα καὶ οὐχ ὅλα, συμφερόμενον διαφερόμενον, συνᾷδον διᾷδον καὶ ἐκ πάντων ἓν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα .[36]

1.20

The counterpart of this process in Eliot’s Four Quartets is the phenomenon which may be called the merging of time. The past, the present, and the future intermingle and melt into an amalgam of “now.” Memories and expectations, regrets and hopes combine and co-create the unstable and ever-changing construct which we call the present time:

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future

And time future contained in time past.[37]

And all is always now.[38]

1.21

Instants never exist in abstracto ; their link with the previous and the subsequent ones determines them no less than the simultaneously existing circumstances, which permits the experience of a “lifetime burning in every moment.” [39]

1.22

The idea of cyclicity and blending of contradictions brings salvation from a definite and all-ending death, which Alcmaeon ascribed to those who are not able to match the beginning with the end, according to Aristotle’s words:

τοὺς γὰρ ἀνθρώπους φησὶν Ἀλκμαίων διὰ τοῦτο ἀπόλλυσθαι, ὅτι οὐ δύνανται τὴν ἀρχὴν τῷ τέλει προσάψαι .[40]

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