A Man of Words
Burnt Norton
The first of the Four Quartets is Brunt Norton, which is referring to a ruined house in Gloucestershire. Brunt Norton talks about time as if it doesn't actually exist, or in other words it is abstract. This can be seen when the poem reads "What might have been is an abstraction remaining a perpetual possibility." (Reidhead p. 395). In other words what hasn't happened in time is always a possibility in time. Time perception is presented in many different ways in Brunt Norton, and it can give insight into how Eliot himself perceived time. On page 397, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Brunt Norton reads "To be conscious is not to be in time." This meant that when a person is conscious, they're at a fixed point in time because they're in the present ("Four Quartets: “Burnt Norton”"). When a person is thinking about time and feeling time, they're not really experiencing it because they're aware of the present. According to the poem, the only way to experience time is through minor consciousness. This can be seen when it reads "Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness." (Reidhead p. 397). This means that the past and future are experienced with little awareness, and that's what allows people to experience time.
Another interesting point made by the poem was that people are slaves to time. People get stuck in time and they can't escape it because time doesn't stand still. On page 399, of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, it reads "Words strain, ... under the burden, under the tension, ... perish, decay with imprecision, ... [and] will not stay still." This means that time won't stop no matter what it does to people, it can't stop, and it won't stop. In fact the only thing that can conquer time is time itself, as shown through the line that reads "only through time time is conquered." (Reidhead p. 397). So, in conclusion, time can be seen as abstract, it occurs when their is little consciousness and it's always there, perhaps that is why time flies when people aren't aware of it.
East Coker
East Coker
The Four Quartets: Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding.
The second of the Four Quartets is East Coker, who's setting occurs in the village of Eliot's ancestors. This poem focuses on natural order and the cycle of renewal. The first part of the poem is centered on renewal and decay. The second part is on humility. The third section focuses on awareness through patients. The fourth section become a bit darker and talks about how anything worth something has to come from suffering. And the fifth section, the darkest of them all, has Eliot believing he is a failed poet and he promises himself to darkness and death. In East Coker, the main theme is the cycles of renewal and decay, and their time. One example of this is the line that reads "The time of milking and the time of harvest" (Gorman). Each year, generally in the fall, people get ready for a harvest. This is showing time at a specific point in time and most people know that there is a cycle that the harvest follows. So, in conclusion, East Coker is a poem that focus of the cycles of renewal and death, but it also uses the element of time to do this.
Burnt Norton vs East Coker
The Four Quartets are all connected by a common theme, but a important theme in Brunt Norton and East Coker was time. One of the things that really stood out was the language and format of the poems, which of course makes sense because they were written by the same person, but an example of this is the line that reads " In my end is my beginning." in East Coker, and the line that reads "What might have been and what has been." in Brunt Norton. Another similarity between these poems is the use of the element of time, although time is used in different manners. In Burnt Norton, time is abstract and continuous, but in East Coker the perception of time is different. In East Coker, everything had a certain time and it used time to focus on cycles. For example, one line of East Coker read "The time of the seasons and the constellations" (Gorman). This line shows how time is perceived in East Coker because from it the reader can tell that there is a specific time for the seasons and a specific time when the stars come out. East Coker uses time this way as a way to describe the cycles or renewal and decay. Overall, time plays an important role in both Brunt Norton and East Coker.