Is Little Gidding modernist? Urgent!

[kelby_lake]

I would say that it is, primarily because of the language and the background of the war, but I can't find anything explicitly saying that it counts as modernist literature. I know that The Waste Land is a pretty famous example of modernism but I wondered whether it could be extended to Little Gidding.

And no, this isn't an essay question that I can't be bothered to answer.

[Transmodernism]

I don't see why it wouldn't be. I was under the impression that all Elliot's work was basically modernist.

The Four Quartets don't have the complete existential despair and angst commonly found in modernism. Nevertheless, they are grim.

Gidding seems to be the most religious of the Four Quartets, which were written during Elliot's later, more religious phase. It is filled with the fires of purgatory, and has a sort of grim optimism, as seen in the below two stanzas.


The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

Elliot says: "roast for all eternity or roast for a few centuries in purgatory. The choice is yours: 'fire or fire.' Have a nice life."

[JBI]

I do not want to impose such an overtly catholic impression on the poem - I think it has to do with a more literal cycle than with an actual purgatory - purgatory is figurative more than literal - his idea took Dante as a metaphor, and crossed it with St. John of the Cross and the Bhagavad Gita to create a sort of redemption for man outside of the war.

In terms of modernism - well, that is just a label - in truth, these poems follow closely to the conventions of Romanticism, as did the Waste Land in many places. You cannot also just talk about Little Gidding, as the Quartets are meant to be read all at the same time, that is 4 quartets, meaning each poem is read in light of the other 3 - with the other three in the background

[kelby_lake]

The question asks me to refer to a text you've studied- we only got an extract from Little Gidding, though obviously I'll read the whole thing- and talk about a key debate or topic. Although LG was part of our WW2 section, it struck me as being modernist, or at least, a good example of the elements I think are interesting in modernism. So it's not so much an analysis of LG as it is an exploration of modernism.

[Transmodernism]

They say modernism involves mistrust of established institutions (such as religion); and yet the Four Quartets seem to be somewhat Catholic.

As I said before, there is plenty of unhappiness and cynicism in them, especially in East Coker. But Little Gidding concludes the four with the thought that through some sort of purgatorial purification (whether real or figurative) human beings may attain salvation (albeit painfully). This isn't pure modernism.

Furthermore, modernistic poetry tried to move away from a poetry of meaning to a poetry of being (from epistemological to ontological poetry). Poetry wasn't supposed to necessarily mean something, but simply to be something that you experienced. Here too the Four Quartets diverge: if you read through them you realize they are very philosophical ("Time present and time past are perhaps both present in time future"; "desire itself is movement not in itself desirable; love is itself unmoving, only the cause and end of movement"). The Four Quartets have recurring motifs and ideas about time and salvation. They clearly mean something. This also isn't pure modernism.

On the other hand, Elliot was one of the leaders of Modernism, so maybe modernism should be whatever he wanted it to be.

[kelby_lake]

Modernist seems so broad as a movement.