Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.30 You Save: $4.70 (52%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.39 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Four Quartets
Book Review: T.S. Eliot for Sikhs
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a deeply religious Sikh living in America. The Four Quartets is to me a shining example of a man of deep understanding of God and reality. I have read this poem many times since I first read it back in college. It speaks directly to my soul. There is no passage, no phrase, which does not work for me.
I read some sections to my wife when we were first married, and she thought that it was an English translation of the Sikh holy texts.
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"
There is no better explanation of Eastern religion than this. I am eternally grateful for this work.
Book Review: The Warrior and the God: T.S.Eliot and The Four Quartets
Summary: 5 Stars
There is a line in Section III of "The Dry Salvages" that has bothered people: "I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant--" as perhaps being too overdone, or even unnecessary to the poem...but, the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna does give some insight into Eliot's comments on time and reality...when Arjuna is faced with the possibility of killing his own relatives in the opposing army, he can't handle it...Krishna then tells him that it doesn't matter....because of the immortal aspect of The Atman (man's inner spirit) which is not touched by our reality....no one really dies and so, only the doing is important:"Realize that pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, are all one and the same." And so, in relation to the poem, Time is looked at in much the same way...We have the illusion of leaving and arriving: "You are not the same people who left that station Or who will arrive at any Terminus"...it doesn't matter what you think or your regard for the fruits of your actions...the only important duty is to make the trip: "Not fare well,/but fare forward, voyagers." Being in the flow of time, living moment to moment, doing what is necessary is all....perhaps, at the quantum level, as another reviewer has suggested: normal perceptions are topsy-turvey, we're in the rabbit hole and if we can see that, then:"...the way up is the way down, the way forward is the/way back./You cannot face it steadlly, but this thing is sure,/That time is no healer:the patient is no longer here." When the insight is achieved, time disappears, all duality vanished and you are left with that still point of consciousness only seeming to act...so, what the hell?: "Fare forward." or as Krishna would put it: "That which is non-existent can never come into being and that which is can never cease to be."----Don Hildenbrand/Eugene, OR., USABook Review: What's left when time has gone!
Summary: 5 Stars
By far the crowning of T.S. Eliot's poetry. The evanescent equilibrium point between a whole set of couples of antagons. The present is such a point, but demultiplied by a myriad of other couples. Past-Future, Has-been-Might-have-been, and this point is movement, constantly moving between those antagons. It gives you a vertigo, the vertigo we feel in front of the present that is a constantly moving equilibrium point. Fascinating. Men are no longer hollow but they are unstoppable motion. They are some light, fine and fuzzy moving line between all the antagons of human nature, of nature as for that. Then a long and rich metaphor of life with the sea, neverending movement that ignores past and future but is pure present and nothing else. Men and women can only worship this everlasting present motion, time and place that is no time, no place and no motion, just unstable energy burnt in its own existence.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Book Review: a Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
All I can say is that "Burnt Norton" has had a very deep and profound effect on me "I can only say THERE I have been/I cannot say where" Exactly. This poem truly captures the essence of the meditative experience,expressing something that it seemed there were no words for.Book Review: buy it, of course; amazon review needs a competent copy editor
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't offer a review here - the book is of course great, and you should have it - I offer a comment on the Amazon.com review above. It does a terrible job quoting from Little Gidding! Is there a copy editor somewhere? There are many mistakes here. Read the poems for yourself, and don't trust Amazon's highly faulty quoting.