Eliot Weekend
Catholics, do not be narrow. Our Lord said
That sheep outside his fold have him as head.
The weekend seminar held here in Broadstairs at the beginning of
May on poems and plays of the famous modern poet, T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), was a
great success. Eliot is a writer difficult to understand, because he insisted
on making sense of the senseless modern world, but Dr David White’s six
lectures (in 36 hours!) inspired in his more than two dozen Catholic listeners
a real interest in Eliot. He was chosen as subject of the literary seminar
because he wrote part of his most famous poem, the Waste Land, in nearby
Margate. A high point of the seminar was an excursion to the seaside pavilion
where Eliot did the actual writing, and where Dr White recited the Waste Land
to seminar participants in front of a grey sea, beneath a grey sky – the
atmospherics were perfect!
Many Catholics object to writers who are not openly Catholic,
however famous they may be. But in the mid-1920’s, soon after writing the Waste
Land, Eliot nearly became a Catholic, and from then on until his death the
solution he presented in his writings for the modern world’s problems centered
around Our Lord Jesus Christ. This may not be obvious at first view, either because
he was writing for lukewarm Christians, or because he was still himself
wrestling with modernity, but let his real belief in Christ be illustrated by a
poem from his Four Quartets, singled out by Dr White for explanation, section
IV of the fourth quartet, “Little Gidding”:—
1. The dove descending breaks the air
2. With flame of incandescent terror
3. Of which the tongues declare
4. The one discharge from sin and error.
5. The only hope, or else despair
6. Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre –
7. To be redeemed from fire by fire.
8. Who then devised the torment? Love.
9. Love is the unfamiliar Name
10. Behind the hands that wove
11. The intolerable shirt of flame
12. Which human power cannot remove.
13. We only live, only suspire
14. Consumed by either fire or fire.
During the Second World war, Eliot was living in London, and at
night he acted as an Air Raid Warden, patrolling the streets to minimize the
danger and damage of German air raids. The first of the poem’s two verses is
like those plastic double images which contain two pictures, depending on how
you tilt the plastic. The second verse draws the tremendous lesson from the
double image.
Thus 1) the “dove descending” is both the Holy Ghost descending at
Pentecost and the enemy bombers coming down on London. 2) The “flame of terror”
is both the fire of the Holy Ghost and the enemy’s incendiary bombs. 3) The
“tongues” are both those of the Holy Ghost on the heads of the Apostles and
those of the fire-bombs, while 4) the “discharge” is both the Redemption by
Christ and the releasing of the bombs by human politics. 5) The first of these
is our only hope, the second is the hopelessness of war. 6) On which funeral
pyre do we choose to burn? 7) The fire of Redemption is to save us from the
fire of damnation.
Second verse: thus 8) it is God who designs World Wars to save us
from eternal fire. 9) He is not well known, but it is 10) his Love which is
allowing the politicians to cause 11) the torments of war, 12) which are
redeemable by Christ alone. 13) In conclusion, human life ends only 14) in
fire, either that of divine Love or that of eternal damnation.
The Third World War is coming. When it comes, how many Catholic
preachers are there who will dare to preach that it is the divine Love which
will have been behind its appalling sufferings, no less being necessary in
order to put us back, by God’s design, on track to Heaven? The non-Catholic
Eliot was saying it 70 years ago.
Kyrie eleison.
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