Deep Meaning in Past Experiences and in T. S. Eliot’s Poetry

Courtesy of CUA’s English Department

By Trinity Ruiz 

Hosted by Professors of English Dr. Gregory Baker, Dr. Michael Mack, and Dr. Taryn Okuma, the third gathering of the department’s “Reading Together” series kicks off with T.S. Eliot’s third poem in his compiled Four Quartets, “The Dry Salvages.” 

This poem, not unlike the previous poems in the quartet, resonates personally with Eliot, as his family was from New England. The dry salvages are three rocks located in Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Born in the midwest and attending school both in Missouri and New England, Eliot spent most of his childhood missing the other when he was away, perhaps contributing to this theme of past experiences and endured suffering.

Okuma appreciatively pointed out that the English department has “the luxury to talk about literature in our classrooms.” During last Monday’s event, a group of undergraduate students and professors gathered to talk about the complexities of Eliot’s poetry. The verses below were contemplated most during the event. These verses, in themselves, exemplify Eliot’s most noteworthy themes in “The Dry Salvages.” 

“The river is within us, the sea is all about us.” (l.15)

In only the second stanza of the poem, Eliot makes this strong claim. Mack argued that,“if the river is within us and the sea is all about us, that makes up the land.” If we withhold the river and are surrounded by the sea, we are, in Mack’s words, in the “position of the earth.” 

There is brutality in Eliot’s description of nature in this poem; it is unmerciful. Moreover, in its lack of mercy and trustworthiness, the sea represents the tumult of human life and the calamity which men “choose to forget.” In response to Eliot saying the sea is “forgotten,” this verse serves as a reminder that if we are the land, how does one figure it is best to forget what makes us so significant: the sea. Mack said that the verse above “reverts back to the notion of the significant soil,” acknowledging the last line of the poem which reads, “The life of significant soil.”(l.233) 

“The tolling bell 

Mesures time not our time, rung by the unhurried” (l.35-36)

Junior English and philosophy double major, Javi Mazariegos, suggests that Eliott is implying “time older than time counted…it’s almost appropriate to call the bell-time ‘timelessness.’” It is assumed that Eliot is articulating that there was a time before time’s existence, a time that need not be measured, implying divinity. The bell’s time is juxtaposed with our time; we are the hurried who try to make sense of the past and future, while the bell represents liturgical time.  Mazariegos continued; “perhaps the role of the saint is to take bell-time and our time and put them together.” The occupation of the saint, mentioned in Part V of the poem, is to unite timelessness and our concept of earthly time. 

“People change, and smile: but the agony abides” (l.113)

The agony that abides is something we, despite our efforts, cannot suppress. Baker focused on Eliot’s attempt to illustrate the permanence of pain. Eliot writes that we purposely disown pain, that we deny the meaning within it, ceasing to embrace it for the sake of development. Though we change ourselves by means of denying past experiences, agony remains. Agony is something we cannot rid ourselves of, because, if nothing else, it gives our past experiences meaning. 

“These are only hints and guesses, 

Hints followed by guesses and the rest 

Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action. 

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.” (l.212-215)        

Eliot describes fallacies, such as astrology and fortune-telling, to satirize the means in which people attempt to understand time. But these are only that: misconceptions.  Mack described Incarnation as “freedom from suffering.” Eliot, in this verse, conveys that Christian redemption is healing to human suffering; it is the answer to suffering. 
The English department welcomes all to the fourth gathering of the “Reading Together” series in which Eliot’s fourth poem, “Little Gidding,” of the Four Quartets will be discussed. Join the department on Monday, March 14 at 8.00 p.m. in the Aquinas auditorium.