East Coker (1940); Burnt Norton (1941); The Dry Salvages (1941); Little Gidding (1942); Four Quartets (1943)

Summary

*G. W. Stonier.

"Mr. Eliot’s New Poem."

New Statesman 20 (14

September 1940), 267–68.

[Review of "East Coker"]

It is five years since the publication of Mr. Eliot's last poem—a period occupied by criticism, two plays and a volume of light verse—but “East Coker” takes us back to “Burnt Norton,” in something more than title, as though scarcely a day had passed. Or rather, since Mr. Eliot is not a writer who repeats himself, it would be better to say that we resume from the earlier point. There is a similar cluster of experience: problems of time and eternity clutched at from the sliding second; the return to country scenes in childhood—a moment is held and then let go with a gesture of resignation; permanence sought in solitude and in art hung like a Chinese vase in time; the desire to escape from a twilit consciousness into bright daylight or darkness; the struggle to fix ever-shifting experiences with words which also break and slip. No need to remark, at this time of day, that the expression, the amalgamation of such attitudes is sharp and poignant, as final as Mr. Eliot can make it; or that the poem carries an authority which marks the work of no other living poet except Claudel. This authority has been compared more than once to that of Arnold, but it seems to me even more powerful and exclusive.