Hello people, I'm very delighted to find such a forum at last. Actually, I'm one of Eliot's admirers. As a postgraduate student in literature, I wrote a comprehensive paper on Eliot's poetry last term as a requirement of my British Poetry course. This term, I intend to write an other paper on his masterpiece Murder in the Cathedral. I would love to contact whoever interested in the same flied: Eliot, Modernism, and Poetry.
Hiya,
Yeah I love Eliot! I just wrote a paper on Boredom in Eliot's poetry. Tried to start a thread on it here, but alas, no takers!!
I'm afraid I've never read Murder in the Cathedral, but I have read basically all of his poetry.
I'm obsessed with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and East Coker from the Four Quartets. Also, The Hippopotamus.
Other poets I'm currently reading are, e.e. cummings, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin and W.H. Auden.
'till human voices wake us and we drown.' aaahhh...
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
I am also an Eliot fan. I recently did a paper on Prufrock. There is just so much there, but I am now asking myself, do I dare disturb the universe? I feel so sorry for him.
The universe of Prufrock you mean??Originally Posted by motherhubbard
I think he is inevitably disturbed. At the end of the poem we realise that either Prufrock is awakened by the 'human voices' only to drown, or he is destined to go on measuring his life out in 'coffee spoons'. I guess the question is, do you want to live in the Matrix or don't you?
Either way you lose.
Well, maybe not, I mean, maybe there's a chance that when he wakes up he might still have a chance to swim to the surface. Eliot certainly implies that in his later poems, if not in this one.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
Im a huge Eliot poetry fan. I was "brought up"on him for A level many many years ago. I heard a recording by Sir Alec Guinness of The Waste Land and fell in love with Eliots style.
Prufrock is such a pitifully admirable and courageous character, I feel.
His style is pitifully beautiful itself.
I just love the stark honestly and reality of Prufrock - what we all hope we are not, but what we all know we are.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
At the end I think that Prufrock realizes that he could change his life, move past the falseness of his society and be himself. He just makes excuses because he is afraid. Any time you change there is something to fear. Failure, uncertainty, ridicule are all too risky for Prufrock and so he makes excuses that he doesn’t believe. He ends up loathing everything because he failed to liberate himself. It’s interesting to me to compare Prufrock, who has everything that most people think will make them happy, and say a poem like I Hear America Singing. The singing Americans have very little, but still can sing.
Hi All…
Just like you Auni-lion, I'm also obsessed with The Love song of J Alfred Prufrock. Definitely, there is a Prufrock dwelling inside each one of us. The question is: why do we identify ourselves so much with Eliot's lines and images.
In fact, I'm a poetess myself, and many times when people misinterpret my messages in poetry in their attempt to decode the hidden connotation, I just repeat what Eliot says: "That's not what I meant at all"!
When I wrote my paper, I had to read all his poetry to make a comprehensive final statement about his innovation in style and themes. My paper explores paralysis in Eliot's poetry. Poems like "A Portrait of a Lady," "Hollow Men," and "The Waste Land" are rich in their depiction of human hesitation, reluctance, and fragility to "stir the universe." The sense of despair during the post war years appear in Eliot's poetry with some recurrent themes of fragmented thinking, total depression, psychosocial disturbance, and inner anxiety that all result from the overall paralysis of modern man. For example, spiritual emptiness of the fallen modern civilization and it is effect on the mentality and the psychology of modern man is manifested through such paralysis. Therefore, paralysis in all levels, mental, verbal. psychological, physical, and social, is exploited deliberately in his poems.
If you did not read Murder in the Cathedral, a drama in verse, you may do it one day! Astonishingly, the play was first staged in Canterbury Cathedral on the memory of Thomas A Becket. I wonder how the Church could adopt such presentation of Sainthood as vanity. The play is more a condemnation than a celebration. The most striking line of the play is uttered by the women chorus when they say: "living and partly living!"
Arent we in fact "living and partly living!"....
Wow. That's so cool, I made paralysis one of my main points in my essay too. I used 'boredom' as a kind of umbrella under which also fell: paralysis, ennui, day to day mundanities and some other junk that I can't recall right now.
My thesis was about the idea that Eliot wants us to be bored. Or rather, that he portrays boredom as a necessary part of humanity. In East Coker, he writes:
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
That sentence did it for me: "You must go by a way in which there is no ecstasy"
Because what is boredom if not the opposite of ecstasy??
I thnk he wants us to closely examine and also experience the banality and paralysis of life, "Oh do not let us ask what is it? Let us go and make a visit" (that may not be an accurate quotation...)
Yay for Eliot fans. I'd love to read your paper Niroomi...
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
Count me in as an Eliot fan. My favorite though is The Four Quartets. They are difficult, but once you get it you will find that they are absolutely beautiful. It takes a while of reading it and re-reading it and finding some good commentary on it. I know i've got a lot more to go in completely understanding it.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
Which of the four is your favourite?? I love Burnt Norton and East Coker (see above) and I quite like Little Gidding but The Dry Salvages is.... I dunno, maybe it's beyond me but I don't exactly love it.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
I don't know which is my favorite. I felt the same about The Dry Salvages too, but it grew on me in time. Yes, the first two are probably my favorite as well. How about I post the openning ines of each for everyone's enjoyment.
BUIRNT NORTON:
EAST COKER:Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
THE DRY SALVAGES:In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
LITTLE GIDDINGI do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
You know, I have always wanted to do a group read and discussion on The Four Quartets. I just don't know if we could get three or four people to join in. Would you be interested? I'm a little busy with other books for the next two months but come summer time I could do it. Each of the Quartets is divided into three parts and i figured we could do a part per week and in twelve weeks go through the whole poem in detail.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.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
That sounds like a great idea Virgil. I would be keen as a bean.
I'm a bit of a newbie so I've never done a group reading thingie online, but I'd love to give it a try. When is summer for you?? I am in the Southern hemisphere.
Perhaps a group discussion would aid me in my quest to get The Dry Salvages....
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
Oh that's right, you're from New Zealand. Summer starts on June 20th here, which I believe is when winter starts for you. I can never imagine Christmas in the summertime as you have it. How does Santa Claus ride his slay with no snow?That sounds like a great idea Virgil. I would be keen as a bean
I'm a bit of a newbie so I've never done a group reading thingie online, but I'd love to give it a try. When is summer for you?? I am in the Southern hemisphere.
Right now I'm tied up with the May book club read, A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving and June will be a D.H. Lawrence novel to be selected and I love Lawrence so I will have to take part in that. But come July I would love to start the Eliot discussion on The Four Quartets. The way I envision it working is that I could post a section of the poem, say starting with Part i of Burnt Norton, and we can post on what we understand of it and I can also dig up some good commentary and by the end of the week we would have gone through a complete part. And then on to part II.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
Very sweatily (is that a word??)Oh that's right, you're from New Zealand. Summer starts on June 20th here, which I believe is when winter starts for you. I can never imagine Christmas in the summertime as you have it. How does Santa Claus ride his slay with no snow?
He just slides along the sand dunes maybe? This could be a whole thread on its own...
We usually celebrate Christmas here with a barbeque on the beach. Aahhh, life in the South Pacific.
Cool, let me know. Enjoy Owen Meany, that was the first Irving book I read and it's still my favourite along with The 158 Pound Marriage.Right now I'm tied up with the May book club read, A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving and June will be a D.H. Lawrence novel to be selected and I love Lawrence so I will have to take part in that. But come July I would love to start the Eliot discussion on The Four Quartets. The way I envision it working is that I could post a section of the poem, say starting with Part i of Burnt Norton, and we can post on what we understand of it and I can also dig up some good commentary and by the end of the week we would have gone through a complete part. And then on to part II.
Aunty.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
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