Little Gidding

Given the context of Four Quartets and the copious commentary T. S. Eliot provided about the poems’ genesis and their intention, there is little interpretative doubt that the speaker is Eliot himself, an intellectual, fiercely learned student of comparative religion; a passionate convert to Anglican Catholicism with an unshakeable conviction in the viability and reality of the transcendent Christian plane that provides meaning and hope to the material world; a man in late middle age beginning to understand the depth of the realities of mortality; and, perhaps most importantly, a naturalized British citizen horrified by the devastation of Nazi aggression and torn by doubts over whether Britain would even survive the nightly onslaught of the Blitzkrieg.

Of each of the Four Quartets, in “Little Gidding” Eliot speaks most directly, most emotionally, to the reader. The poetic line is not exactly conversational (after all, Eliot seeks here to articulate mysteries that are, by his admission in Section 2, beyond the reach of words). Eliot speaks to the reader with urgency and immediacy, despite layers of complex and dense meaning. The speaker then wrestles to share the paradox of Christian faith: hope in a dark time is possible only through the purification of suffering itself and the uncompromising embrace of the terrifying and beautiful energy of Christ’s inscrutable love.