Janice Brown: "T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and the Tyranny of Time"

[@OakTree-rz3sv]

This is a superb lecture. It’s informative, but, also, retains the transformative quality of the Four Quartets. Beautiful.

[@olsenolga7185]

Thank you for this wonderful lecture

[@kristannharrigan2307]

Thanks for posting this lecture. It is clear and delightful. I am not a not a poet. More like a Philosopher. Something I have dedicated my life. Something I share with Eliot.

[@janmalaszek1459]

Brilliant, I've learned so much! Thank you. Also, I wish David all the best in his new appoinrment in the U.S.

[@evelyntaylor7899]

every time i listen i learn more -'-do not call it fixity' has been my refrain through over 50 years of research of our uniqueness & connectedness

[@jeffwood9728]

Like many people, I've been reading and teaching "Four Quartets" most of my professional life whilst having a very complicated tussle with a poem which is probably more impressive than any other produced in the C20th and also impossible to respond to uncritically: the very idea of the Catholic Church being for many repulsive. If Jacob Rees Mogg is a member of that club,most of us would never wish to be. Most articles on "Four Quartets" and students' essays are crippled by their own ingenuity and masses of undigested scholarship: they will confuse rather than help the normal reader. Not sure I've ever given an essay 20/20 but it would be churlish to award this one anything else. It is superb. Doesn't put a foot wrong. Never strays into the dogmatic or the narcissistic. Simply elucidates what is there, in language everyone can understand. Something wonderful in this being available free of charge to anyone interested in poetry and thinking and this endlessly rewarding and at times very irritating poem. Brown doesn't point out its blindspots as Leavis does so forensically but nobody could quibble with the way she gets the student into the text so he can begin to search for himself. Exemplary teaching! This plus Alec Guinness's reading is all the Eliot student needs.

[@jamesbunch8932]

Love the Canadian accent. So charming!

[@stewartconacher6552]

A very informative lecture.

[@cwspurgeon]

Beautiful, insightful, colourful, and inspirational presentation. Thanks! Dr Charles W Spurgeon

[@Borzoi86]

Thanks for this lecture! An undergraduate degree in English Lit gives only the briefest sampling of this great poet's body of work. Now, decades later, I'm diving deeply into Four Quartets and enjoying every exposure. Like Dr. Eliot, we are now earnest, traditional Anglicans.

[@terencemeikle534]

Eliot completed a doctoral thesis, but did not present himself to 'defend' it. A PhD was not awarded, therefore he remained a 'Mr'. (He did, however, receive no fewer than 13 honorary doctorates.)

[@Borzoi86]

@@terencemeikle534 Eliot did not present his 1916 PhD thesis at Harvard ONLY because he lived in England during WWI. Transit across the pond via ship was too dangerous at that time because of the German U-boat threat. I believe, decades later, he was awarded his PhD because by then his success was well established worldwide. But I won't quibble if you know different.

[@shotshotshot]

Wow, such a great lecture. I really appreciate it. It helps tremendously,

[@guiltandindustry]

😜

[@stevecarroll7545]

Superb exposition.

[@terencemeikle534]

A clear and engaging lecture. I must admit to having entertained a less than wholly appreciative attitude toward these late works of Eliot, sharing in George Orwell's view that they presented a falling off of inspiration. I'm nearing sixty, and have not looked at them in quite some while. Inspired by this lecture, I'm going to give them another go. So thankyou.

[@DejanOfRadic]

I listen to the Alec Guinness reading of Four Quartets while riding long distance bicycle treks.

[@RwakaendanaMambo]

This was insightful. Thank you.

[@titicoqui]

u r marvelous janice

[@yoyosuites7535]

Great lecture. Thanks

[@johnmclachlan3373]

Four Quartets refers to the late Beethoven Quartets such as opus 132. This work has five movements. Eliot is presenting four complete works in one book, but yes they also progress in order. The speaker here seems not to grasp that a single quartet is made of a number of movements from one to any number, and the word quartet refers to the number of performers, four.

[@jeffwood9728]

Eliot introduces and develops a number of themes in the way Beethoven does in his late quartets: some material and processes being common to all of them.

[@DejanOfRadic]

It is my understanding that the four instruments being played, as implied in the term "quartet", are Air, Earth, Fire, and Water......the four elements that play together in order to create life and time.

[@ThomasSimmons-u5x]

They didn't leave for an adventure. They were forced out. Still, I can enjoy a long forgotten Romantic.

[@c.s.hayden3022]

If time is irredeemable, as said in Burnt Norton, there’s a certain peace and tyranny that come with that. There’s a felt communion with the moment when you accept and surrender to it, but for Eliot the past and tradition make the overwhelming swell of the present. It’s true he believes that the individual can creatively react with his cultural context, but that context really dictates what we can work with. If past present future are all one then everything is contained in the present and time is irredeemable. Believing that would create more of a tendency to lean into the past because it at least can be studied.

[@c.s.hayden3022]

I love Eliot though. The best conclusion to draw from this would be one of a Zen togetherness.

[@Borzoi86]

@@c.s.hayden3022 Rubbish! God seized T. S. Eliot through the miracle of the Incarnation and the mystery of the Holy Eucharist. In 1927, Eliot abruptly turned from the barrenness ("Waste Land") of his Unitarian upbringing to the glowing, enervating realities of the traditional Anglican faith ("Ash Wednesday" and "Four Quartets"). Zen? Never in Eliot.

[@shortattentionspantheatre5075]

Nietschze's Eternal Recurrence?