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The Meaning of Eliot's Rose-Garden

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert D. Wagner  and
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Affiliation:
Bronxville, N. Y.
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Extract

The imagination is the great discovery of modern self-consciousness. We have come to suppose that supreme moments of vision—whether these be the “shewings” of Dame Julian of Norwich or the “résurrections de la mémoire” of Marcel Proust—are the fruit merely of a human power to transform the ordinary appearances of daily life into transparent images on which the mind can rest. It could follow that all spiritual clarifications of reality, like great works of art, reveal no more than successful conjunctions of matter and consciousness.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , March 1954 , pp. 22 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954

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References

1 See Leonard Unger's essay, “T. S. Eliot's Rose Garden: A Persistent Theme,” in T. S. Eliot: A Selected Critique, ed. by L. Unger (New York, 1948).

2 Selected Essays (New York, 1932), pp. 234-235.

3 The shifting from “I” to “we,” implying a communion of moral and spiritual interests, is a key device in Four Quartets.

4 Saint Augustine's remarks on the use of memory (Confessions, Bk. x) are pertinent here. The influence of Bergson is also apparent in the opening lines; but it is quite clearly a negative influence. One might almost consider Bergson the “enemy” in Four Quartets, particularly in “Burnt Norton.”

5 See the essay on Pascal in Essays Ancient and Modern.

6 John Henry Cardinal Newman, A Grammar of Assent (New York, 1947), p. 64.

7 There is an echo of this in “East Coker”: “On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold, / And menaced by monsters, fancy lights, / Risking enchantment.”

8 Since the rose-garden not only represents a sort of pre-Cartesian innocence of self but suggests the Paradise of tradition as well, its loss is at once peculiar to the modern era yet common to all humanity living or dead. Original Sin has been reinterpreted, but it remains Original Sin.

9 J. J. Sweeney's analysis of this poem (in T. S. Eliot: A Selected Critique) has been helpful.