Any self-respecting Trinity arts and humanities student must well be aware of Lana del Rey’s iconic 2015 album, Honeymoon, and its interlude entitled ‘Burnt Norton’. Over a sweeping instrumental, del Rey begins to recite, “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past…” Despite del Rey’’s lyrical talents, these words are not her own composition. They are, indeed, the opening lines to the first quartet in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, written in the mid-1930s. Despite an eighty year time span, these words remain culturally, poetically and emotionally relevant. These paradoxical lines set out the eternal recurrence of human existence; our actions, words, poetry, music, literature running in a flat circle. 

“[Four Quartets] is a work that combines a lot of my interests, as a scholar, but also just as a human being” 

– Philip Coleman

There is a great deal of value to be found in letting a piece of literature wash over you in its entirety. This is perhaps the closest thing we can get to entering, and even transcending, the minds of their eminent authors. Yet, reaching this literary nirvana takes a great deal of time. Paraphrasing the words of Nobel Laureate Francois Mauriac, to truly get to the heart of a person we must consider not what they read but what they re-read. Indeed, there are people who devote lifetimes to studying great classics like Ulysses, or Crime and Punishment; Professor Philip Coleman understands this endeavour. If Crime and Punishment and Ulysses are marathons, some may be inclined to consider T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, at a mere forty-three pages, a sprint; something to be consumed in one hasty LUAS journey. Yet this is not the case. Professor Coleman asserts that despite its size, the poetry within the svelte covers of Four Quartets contains a magic which cements it as one of his favourite books of all time. Coleman first encountered Four Quartets sometime in the autumn of 1993, as a student studying modernist literature. The main focus of these undergraduate lectures, given by UCC’s Prof. Lee Jenkins and Prof. Alex Davis, were focused on what many would consider Eliot’s defining work, The Waste Land. Coleman says he had been interested in Eliot since he was about fifteen years of age. As a self-admitted “teenager who was kind of obsessed with poetry”, Coleman was “just blown away by [Eliot]. There was something about the directness of the language… the weirdness of the imagery…” Particularly, Eliot’s emphasis on “communication and how we engage with each other as people” felt relatable and important for Coleman. The strangeness, modern-ness and American-ness of Eliot’s work was revolutionary to Irish sensibilities: “Eliot was the first major, fairly radical, modernist poet I encountered… he was doing more innovative things with form in particular”. In college, Coleman found a lifelong love of Eliot’s peculiar landscapes : “that’s thirty years ago, and I’ve been revisiting it ever since… there are some books that I go back to again and again or recommend to people… this is one of those books, if not the book that keeps drawing me back”.

After teaching a class on Eliot in the centenary year of The Waste Land’s publication, Coleman remembers a handful of students coming up to thank him for introducing them to Eliot’s Four Quartets, which they had not otherwise read despite being acquainted with Eliot’s other work. One of the most interesting aspects of Four Quartets is how Eliot explores similar themes throughout the four sections “without ever grasping for any kind of conclusion or resolution”. Eliot’s approach to themes such as; “memory, how we think about time, how we relate to each other over time, place, poetry itself… the value of art…” seem to resist finality. Rather, they exist in a paradoxical “eternally present” place of “perpetual possibility”. Therefore, a final reading of Four Quartets can never be defined. It is a work which exists in constant correspondence with the reader. Each time it is read or adapted, another keyhole unlocks new mysteries of the work. There are timeless “religious and philosophical dimensions” to these poems, Eliot questions “our understanding of consciousness, what it means to think about the past, present and future … and how we might find an appropriate language to express these things which are so abstract”. Coleman recognises a palpable sense, in these poems, that the speaker is “reaching after these questions”, and yet there is no definitive answer: “The way it thinks about time, consciousness, being in the world, is so clear and profound… the diction is very straightforward yet he is talking about things that are very profound in terms of how we exist”. Eliot presents us with “the movement of thought” which is perpetually protean, evasive and paradoxical. For Coleman, “some of the greatest works of art, music, literature are things that you can never get in just one sitting, you have to live with them, it’s an ongoing conversation”. Yet the goal of this endeavour is never to solve or complete the text. Rather, “the mystery deepens with every re-reading”. Coleman says that each reading of Four Quartets evokes new realisations about images, sound patterns, phrases… it is a work that rewards re-reading”. 

Overall, Coleman says, “Four Quartets is a book that I know from the experience of having taught it, is a work that many students have been grateful to have been introduced to …I would come back to it again and again”. Great art often demands what Harvard professor Jennifer Roberts terms “immersive attention”. Whether that means standing in front of a painting for three hours, or reading a poem a hundred times, the true value of a piece of art is often revealed slowly. Coleman advises: “be patient with the work, it is so important”. As many of us may have a comfort show that we return to annually, or an album that we have loved since childhood, Eliot’s poetry rewards return customers. Four Quartets has something for everyone: “You’re reading a poet who is also a philosopher… some people might read it for that philosophical angle, some people might read it for the music, the images…” Eliot, himself, writes at the end of Little Gidding: 

“We shall not cease from exploration 

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know that place for the first time.” 

I hope myself and Prof. Philip Coleman have encouraged you to devote an afternoon to your first reading of Eliot’s Four Quartets. You never know what it may reveal to you now, or what revelations may arise upon a future re-reading. Until next time!