Summary
“Little Gidding” was the last of the Quartets to
be written. It appeared in print in 1942;
in 1943,
the four pieces were collected and published together. “Little Gidding,”
named after a 17th-century
Anglican monastery renowned for its devotion, is the place where
the problems of time and human fallibility are more or less resolved.
The first section describes a sunny winter’s day, where everything
is dead yet blazing with the sun’s fire. The poem considers those
who have come to the monastery, who come only “to kneel / Where
prayer has been valid.” It is here that man can encounter the “intersection
of the timeless” with the present moment, often by heeding the words
of the dead, whose speech is given a vitality by a burning fire.
The second section opens with a lyric on the death of the four elements
(air, earth, water, and fire) that have figured so prominently in
the previous quartets. The scene then shifts to the poet walking
at dawn. He meets the ghost of some former master, whom he does
not quite recognize. The two speak, and the ghost gives the poet
the burdens of wisdom: awareness of folly, a loss of perception
of beauty, and shame at one’s past deeds. The spirit tells him that
only if he is “restored by ...refining fire” will he escape these
curses. The spirit then leaves him with a benediction, and a horn
blows, which may be an air-raid siren. The third section is more
propositional in nature. The poet declares that attachment, detachment,
and indifference are all related; all three look alike but indifference
comes only through the exercise of memory to create abstractions.
The second part of this section asserts that, despite this, “all
shall be well.” As the poet thinks on the people who have come to
Little Gidding seeking spiritual renewal and peace, he realizes
that the dead have left us only “a symbol,” one that has been perfected
but is nevertheless still only a representation or an abstraction.
The fourth section is a formal two-stanza piece describing first
a dove with a tongue of fire, which both purifies and destroys;
the second stanza then considers love as the chief torment of man,
which can redeem as well as torture. Either way, we are caught between
two kinds of fire. The final section of the poem, and of the whole
of the Quartets, brings the spiritual and the aesthetic
together in a final reconciliation. Perfect language results in
poetry in which every word and every phrase is “an end and a beginning.”
The timeless and the time-bound are interchangeable and in the moment,
if one is in the right place, like the chapel at Little Gidding.
All will be well when the fires that both destroy and redeem come
together to form a knot and “the fire and the rose”—divine wrath and
mercy—become one.
Form
This is the most dramatic of the Four Quartets, in
that it is here that the language most closely approaches the rhythms
of everyday speech. The diction is measured, intellectual, but always
self-conscious in its repetitiveness and in the palpable presence
of the speaker. Certain sections of “Little Gidding” (“And all shall
be well and / All manner of thing shall be well”) borrow from liturgical
language to create the effect of attending an ideal religious service.
The fourth section, like the fourth sections of the other quartets,
is a sustained formal piece that serves as a sort of contrapuntal
melody to the rest of the poem. Although not as elegant as “Burnt Norton”
or as musical as “East Coker,” “Little Gidding” is perhaps the most
balanced of the quartets in its attention to imagery and language.
Commentary
Fire and roses are the main images of this poem. Both
have a double meaning. Roses, a traditional symbol of English royalty,
represent all of England, but they also are made to stand for divine
love, mercy, and the garden where the children in “Burnt Norton”
hide (they reappear at the end of this poem). Fire is both the flame of
divine harshness and the spiritual ether capable of purifying the
human soul and bringing understanding. The series of double images
creates a strong sense of paradox: Just as one seemingly cannot
exist both in and out of time, one cannot be simultaneously both
purified and destroyed.
This sense of paradox leads to the creation of an alternative
world, rendered through spiritual retreat and supernatural figures.
The dead, with their words “tongued with fire,” offer an alternative
set of possibilities for the poet seeking to escape the fetters
of reality. By going to a place “where prayer has been valid,” Eliot proposes
that imagination and a little faith can conquer the strictures placed
upon man by time and history; as the ghost in the third section
reminds the poet, escape is always possible. This is particularly
significant when we notice that the ghost’s words are actually generated
by the speaker (who “assumed a double part”), actually engaged in
a dialogue with himself. While the dead can offer us only a “symbol,”
symbols nevertheless give us an opportunity for interpretation and
exercise of the imagination. By allowing us a way to bypass the
realities of our world, they open up a spiritual freedom.
This poem, finally, celebrates the ability of human vision
to transcend the apparent limitations of human mortality. In a place
set away from the world, one can hear, if one chooses, the children
laughing in the garden. War, suffering, and the modern condition
have provided Eliot with an opportunity for spiritual reflection
that ultimately transcends external events and the burden of history.
While not an overtly optimistic work, “Little Gidding” and Four
Quartets as a whole offer a reasoned sense of hope. Poetry
may suffer from language’s inherent lack of precision, but it provides
the aesthetic faculty with an opportunity to disregard human limitations,
if only for a moment.
