T. S. Eliot
(From Four Quartets –
0 dark,
dark, dark
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers (1), eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers (2).
Distinguished civil servants (3), chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords
and petty contractors (4), all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha .
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors (5),
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With
a hollow rumble of wings (6), with a movement of darkness on
darkness,
And
we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And
the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away
Or
as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And
the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness
deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think
about;
Or when, under ether (7), the mind is conscious but conscious
of nothing –
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the
waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the
dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring (8),
pointing to the agony (9)
Of death and birth.
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.
(from: Four Quartets – East Cocker)
I merchant bankers: uomini d'affari
2 rulers: governanti
3. distinguished civil servants: alti funzionari statali
4. industrial...
contractors: grandi industriali e piccoli imprenditori
5. Directory of
Directors: la guida delle società
commerciarli
6. with a hollok... wings: con un cupo rumore di quinte
7. under ether: sotto
l'effetto dell’etere
8. requiring: invitante
9 pointing to the agony: che richiama all’agonia
The passage quoted is
the third part of East Coker. Echoing
"The darkness of God" (l. 13), presented as
transitory experience is exemplified through the use of a three-fold simile:
a) the theatre, when
"the lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed" (l. 14);
b) the
train in the tube, when it "stops too long between stations
c) the mind "under ether" (l. 22).
Man is aware that something is being taken away ("rolled
away”) and is afraid of having "nothing to think about" (l. 21).
To face
this condition, the soul has once more to be still and wait, even without hope
and love, because hope and love are also limited in time and therefore
imperfect. Faith, too, like hope and love, is all in the waiting. So we must
learn to "wait without thought" (l. 27). If we accept it with humility
"the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing
" This new condition is also suggested by the images that follow: “whispers
of running streams ", "wild" plants "unseen
", a "garden " (ll. 29-31) reminiscent of the rose garden
already present in other poems, which is the most significant objective
correlative of Eliot's moment of revelation, the deep instantaneous intuition
of all time concentrated in one single luminous point. It is the basis of a new
conception of time and its relation to eternity". [1] These images appear
like flashes, sudden illuminations that "echo" moments of
"ecstasy", which are not "lost" but real, provided we,
remember that they cannot be parted from the "agony" of "birth
" (or rather "rebirth ") that will follow "death" (ll.
31-33).
The last
part of section three sums up, in the tradition of the mystics and, through
the use of paradoxes, the doctrine of the Negative Way of St. John of the
Cross, of which it is almost a paraphrase, i.e.: what we know and
own is
something earthly, material and impermanent, which stands between our temporal
limited world and the timeless life of the spirit. If we
want to possess the only thing that really matters, we
must choose the negative way, and give up all that prevents eternal
transcendence since, if we want our spirit to live, we must die to the world.