T.S. Eliot’s "Four Quartets"

The interrelation between T.S. Eliot and music seems substantial. His first major poem was entitled “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was adapted into the hit Broadway musical, Cats, and his poetic works, as a whole, seem to be influenced by both musical structure and content. In addition, as an American-born poet in England, he embodies several unique transatlantic sensibilities, such as the combined influence of both classical and jazz music. Indeed, Ralph Ellison, in Shadow and Act, asserts of “The Waste Land,” “Somehow its rhythms were closer to those of jazz than were those of the Negro poets, and even though I could not understand then, its range of allusions was as mixed and varied as that of Louis Armstrong” (160). If, then, in “The Waste Land,” Eliot employs a jazz aesthetic, he returns to a much more classical one in Four Quartets.

As the title unambiguously suggests, the poem(s) are inextricably tied with chamber music, explicitly the string quartet. This is reflected in the structure, as well. Each “Quartet” is divided into five parts, or movements. Although written years apart, there are parallels between the movements of each respective “Quartet.” The first movement deals with one of the most overt themes throughout: the paradoxical nature of time. For instance, the opening lines of “Burnt Norton,” the first of the four poems, are: “Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in the future,/And time present contained in time past” (1-3). In addition to playing on the duality of meanings of the word present, Eliot appears to be suggesting that, in terms of time, both past and future are nonentities and only the present exists. This is accentuated in the next two lines: “If all time eternally present/All time is unredeemable” (4-5). Such is the case with music, also. When listening to a piece of music, it is inevitably sequential, with each note/chord following those that preceded it and precluding those to follow, ceaselessly and irrevocably approaching its impending end. The first movement in each of Eliot’s “Four Quartets” establishes this dynamic.

While the first movement is concerned with the metaphysical (time, memory, etc.), the second one in each makes a stark return to the corporeal, with an attenuation of nature, especially the natural elements and flowers. The second movements are especially interesting for their form. Each one begins with a specific, patterned rhyme scheme, and then abandons it for lengthy free verse. The rhymed sections, however, are quite complex and differ in each quartet. In the first instance, it is A-B-A-C-C-B-E-B-B-B-D-D-D-C. In the second, it is A-A-B-B-C-D-E-F-F-F-G-H-C-I-A-J-I. The third is perhaps the most impressive; there are six six-line stanzas, and each of the respective lines rhyme (all the first lines, second lines, etc. of each stanza). In the second movement of the final quartet, Eliot returns to a much more conventional rhyme scheme – three eight-line stanzas in rhyming-couplets. In returning to “nature” with the most contrived of structures in these sections, and then abandoning (somewhat) the rigidity of the rhyme scheme, it seems Eliot is calling forth the patterns in nature before burying them in the seeming “chaos.”

Somewhat ironically, the middle section seems to be the most preoccupied with death. However, it is not so ironical once one realizes that it is central to the piece, just as silence is essential to sound. In addition to death, though, movement three also has a strong sense of in-between-ness. For instance, in “East Coker” (#2), Eliot employs the metaphor of the theatre: “As, in a theatre,/The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed” (13-14). While this highlights movement three as a transition between the beginning and the end, it also reflects Eliot’s heightened sense of religious conviction from his earlier poems.

Like the second movements, the fourth ones are quite interesting, though much shorter. Consistently the briefest movement, the fourth also has complex rhyme schemes which differ in each. In “Burnt Norton,” the first, par example, movement IV is broken into two five-line stanzas with an overlapping rhyme scheme (A-A-B-A-C; D-E-C-D-E). “East Coker,” the longest of the fourth movements, has a more conventional pattern of A-B-A-B-B-B, C-D-C-D-D, etc., repeated through the five stanzas. The fourth movement of “The Dry Savages,” however, is the most anomalous. It sticks to the established pattern of five-line stanzas (three of them), but they are entirely unrhymed. Eliot returns to a more rigidly structured movement, though, in “Little Gidding” while diverging from all earlier ones as well. He has a mere two stanzas, but instead of five lines each, they are seven, with a rhyming couplet added to the end of the initial five lines to give the final pattern: A-B-A-B-A-C-C; D-E-D-E-D-C-C. In terms of structure, this nearly mirrors its opening equivalent, save for the rhyming couplets. This gives the quartets a sense of near-circularity, but not quite; it has grown slightly. These movements also possess an overt sense of religiosity, centering on themes of prayer, communion, doves, and (Pentecostal) fire.

The fifth, and final, movements return to the inevitability of time. The final movement to “Burnt Norton” begins with the statement that “Words move, music moves/Only in time; but that which is living/Can only die. Words, after speech, reach/Into the silence” (1-4). Like the opening movement, this reestablishes the parallel between the temporality of both words and music (and life) all approaching inescapable silence. He does, however, introduce a new theme to the final movements: the difficulty of creating a unique piece of art (and, by extension, living a unique life) with any sort of meaning. This is perhaps best expressed in the final movement to “East Coker”: “And what there is to conquer/By strength and submission, has already been discovered/Once or twice, or several times by men whom one cannot hope/To emulate” (11-14). While bleak, though, the quartets do not end at all pessimistically. Rather, Eliot returns to his religious bearings and the notion that the end is merely the beginning: We must be still and still moving/Into another intensity/For a further union, a deeper communion/Through the dark cold and empty desolation,/The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast water/Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning” (“East Coker” V 33-38).

The Contrapuntal Melodies of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf

Milan Kundera, reflecting on the history of the novel in his book-length essay Testaments Betrayed, claims “the nineteenth century elaborated the art of composition, but our own century [the twentieth] brought musicality to that art” (21). In looking at the works of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, I have to agree with Kundera’s assertion. Both authors seem to be interested in music, in structure, content, and the musicality of language (especially outside of traditional semantic relationships).

In “The Dead,” for example, Joyce utilizes music on many levels. It serves as a background for the party, mostly with Mary Jane playing “academy music” on the piano. It is used by Gabriel Conroy in his review of Browning’s poems (“One feels that one is listening to thought-tormented music” (34)). It is the source of some of the most touching moments in the story – namely Aunt Julia’s rendition of “Arrayed for the Bridal” and Bartell D’Arcy’s performance of “The Lass of Aughrim.” And, I would argue, he employs it in the structure of the story itself.

Throughout the story, there are two “melodies” to the plotline – that of Gabriel, and that of Greta. Gabriel represents an embrace of ideologies and sensibilities from “the continent” – he writes for The Daily Express, which opposes Irish independence, quotes Robert Browning in his speech, and, of course, acquiesces the trend of wearing galoshes. Greta, on the other hand, seems to embody more of the “Irish” susceptibilities – she has a connection with the traditional Irish folk song “The Lass of Aughrim” and thinks galoshes absurd. Although these two “melodies” run somewhat counter each other for the most part, they intersect at the end with Greta’s confession of her relationship with Michael Furey and Gabriel’s subsequent generous sympathy, resembling a literary appropriation of the musical modus operandi of counterpoint, a technique which Virginia Woolf employs also.

In Music and the Novel, Alex Aronson notes “the interplay of two voices singing in counterpoint” (55) in To the Lighthouse “when Mrs. Ramsay reading a story to her little son and thinking of something else discovers that the two, the narrative and her own thought complement each other, ‘for the story of the Fisherman and his Wife was like a bass gently accompanying a tune which now and then ran up unexpectedly into the melody (65)’” (55). This quote from the novel elucidates on the micro what Woolf appears to be doing on the macro, at least on one level.

The book as a whole seems to be structured as two separate-but-related narratives adjoined in the middle. Of course, Woolf is dealing with other structural variants, as well, most notably time, but the melody that is predominant in the first section (Mrs. Ramsay) and that of the third (Lily) are complimented, and to a large degree dependent upon, the counter: Mrs. Ramsay’s narrative is foregrounded in the initial section, and Lily’s painting takes “second fiddle;” whereas, in the closing narrative, it is Lily’s painting that is forefront, while the memory of Mrs. Ramsay pervades her thoughts. These two narratives, of course, intersect in the short middle section, or transition, in which they share relatively equal weight.

In addition to the “melodic” structure of the novel, Woolf gives it a driving rhythm section as well. The primary backbeat is the ubiquitous presence of the waves on the shore, as Mrs. Ramsay reflects: “the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature…, but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly…had no kindly meaning but, like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life…this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up with an impulse of terror” (15-16). This passage illuminates the rhythm like tendency of the waves to be comforting, familiar, and forgot in the background; however, it also reflects its potential to unexpectedly alter an entire composition by changing tempo or volume, resulting in an experience of dissonance, rather than measured familiarity, for the listener. One well-known example which seems to mirror Mrs. Ramsay’s latter sentiment about the unexpected cadenzas of the waves musically is Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” which employs changing meter, irregular tempos, and polyrhythm to create a cacophonous, thunderous effect.

In addition to the sonorous rhythm of the waves in the novel, Woolf also utilizes lyrical repetition and poetry to underscore the melody. Notably, poetry is only recited in the first and last sections, which have a slower, more rhythmical pace, as opposed to the transitory middle section, which covers ten years (including the First World War and the deaths of Mrs. Ramsay, Prue, and Andrew) in a few short chapters. One of the more memorable poems is Charles Elton’s “Luriana Lurilee.” It is a rhythmical poem somewhat reminiscent of a folk song. Mrs. Ramsay first hears Mr. Ramsay reciting it, and it resonates with her: “She did not know what they meant, but, like music, the words seemed to be spoken by her own voice, outside herself saying quite easily and naturally what had been in her mind the whole evening while she said different things” (110-111). This observation calls to mind Theodor Adorno’s assertion about music in “Music, Language, and Composition”: “the quality of being a riddle, of saying something the listener understands and yet does not understand, is something [music] shares with all art. No art can be pinned down as to what it says, and yet it speaks” (122). For Mrs. Ramsay, the poetic qualities of “Luriana Lurilee” contain this language-beyond-words, “like music,” and she later revisits the passage with which she is initially so struck, “And all the lives we ever lived/ And all the lives to be,/ Are full of trees and changing leaves” (119), before reading the opening line to William Browne’s “Sirens’ Song.”

In the final section, repetitive poetry is used once again to provide rhythm, while augmenting the themes of the novel. This time, it is the closing lines from William Cowper’s “The Castaway” that are repeated: “We perished, each alone,/ But I beneath a rougher sea,/ Was whelmed by deeper gulfs than he” (165-6, 191, 207). This section, particularly “we perished, each alone” is reiterated, usually murmured under the breath, by both Mr. Ramsay and Cam as they are on their way, finally, to the Lighthouse, and while it provides some unity between them, it ultimately highlights the isolation of our ultimate ends, “each alone.” Interestingly, Woolf seems to pick up on each of these themes (the multiple voices, the waves, the repetition and variation) and expand on them in The Waves. Instead of the two “melodies” I have argued To the Lighthouse contains, however, there are six (or perhaps seven, if one includes Percival as a “uniting” melody) distinct voices in the later novel.

Yes, the early twentieth century seems to have brought a certain amount of musicality to the novel, but not strictly the Classical or Romantic music which preceded it (and undoubtedly had no small influence): also traditional music in Joyce’s case, and the Modern music of composers such as Stravinsky in Woolf’s. And here I return to Kundera. In his chapter on “Improvisation in Homage to Stravinsky,” he discusses the composer’s willingness to draw musical inspiration from all musical epochs, such as twelfth century Gregorian chants, running contrary to a linear idea of “progress,” lingering from Enlightenment thinking, “that history is not necessarily a path climbing upward (toward the richer, the more cultivated), that the demands of art may be counter to the demands of the moment (of this or that modernity), and that the new…might lay in some direction other than the one everybody sees as progress” (Testaments Betrayed 63). Indeed, both Joyce and Woolf seem to mirror this sentiment in Modern literature, not just in the eclectic musical inspiration from which they draw, but also in their “compositions” themselves. Rather than a simple narrative with a lone linear trajectory, they provide another which runs counter to but intersects with and complements it “like a bass gently accompanying a tune which now and then [runs] up unexpectedly into the melody.”