Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface to second edition
- Introduction
- 1 The growth of the poet's mind
- PART ONE 1905–1912 – AN INDIVIDUAL TALENT
- Oxford University Extension Lectures
- PART TWO 1912–1922 – ‘SHALL I AT LEAST SET MY LANDS IN ORDER?’
- PART THREE 1922–1930 – ‘ORDINA QUEST’ AMORE, O TU CHE M' AMI'
- PART FOUR 1931–1939 – THE WORD IN THE DESERT
- PART FIVE 1939–1945 – APOCALYPSE
- 9 Patriot of fire
- AFTERWORDS
- APPENDICES
- Notes
- Index
9 - Patriot of fire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface to second edition
- Introduction
- 1 The growth of the poet's mind
- PART ONE 1905–1912 – AN INDIVIDUAL TALENT
- Oxford University Extension Lectures
- PART TWO 1912–1922 – ‘SHALL I AT LEAST SET MY LANDS IN ORDER?’
- PART THREE 1922–1930 – ‘ORDINA QUEST’ AMORE, O TU CHE M' AMI'
- PART FOUR 1931–1939 – THE WORD IN THE DESERT
- PART FIVE 1939–1945 – APOCALYPSE
- 9 Patriot of fire
- AFTERWORDS
- APPENDICES
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The designs which haunt my imagination, when I think of what might be done – in this city which Providence has thought fit to visit with fire, and thus prepare for the builder
‘The last three of my quartets are primarily patriotic poems.’ Although something made Eliot cancel that remark after he had written it in the first draft of ‘The Three Voices of Poetry’, it comes as near as a single sentence could to providing the key to them. They have a quite different character from all the rest of his poems, including Burnt Norton; and their special quality has much to do with their having been written in the war of 1939–45. Eliot recalled that
Burnt Norton might have remained by itself if it hadn't been for the war, because I had become very much absorbed in the problems of writing for the stage and might have gone straight on from The Family Reunion to another play. The war destroyed that interest for a time: you remember how the conditions of our lives changed, how much we were thrown in on ourselves in the early days? East Coker was the result – and it was only in writing East Coker that I began to see the Quartets as a set of four.
What he was thrown in upon was his personal sense of the world crisis.
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- Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet , pp. 203 - 264Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995