(Eliot visited East Coker in Somerset in 1937, and his ashes now repose there at St Michael and All Angels' Church.) Īs Eliot was finishing his second poem, World War II began to disrupt his life and he spent more time lecturing across Great Britain and helping out during the war when he could. This second poem, East Coker, was finished and published by Easter 1940.

Eliot decided to create another poem similar to Burnt Norton but with a different location in mind. The resulting poem, Burnt Norton, named after a manor house, was published in Eliot's 1936 edition of Collected Poems 1909–1935. While working on his play Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot came up with the idea for a poem that was structured similarly to The Waste Land. Overall, reviews of the poem within Great Britain were favourable while reviews in the United States were split between those who liked Eliot's later style and others who felt he had abandoned positive aspects of his earlier poetry. Later critics disagreed with Orwell's claims about the poems and argued instead that the religious themes made the poem stronger. Orwell believed religion was not a worthy topic. John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich.Īlthough many critics find the Four Quartets to be Eliot's last great work, some of Eliot's contemporary critics, including George Orwell, were dissatisfied with Eliot's overt religiosity. In describing his understanding of the divine within the poems, Eliot blends his Anglo-Catholicism with mystical, philosophical and poetic works from both Eastern and Western religious and cultural traditions, with references to the Bhagavad-Gita and the Pre-Socratics as well as St. The poems were not collected until Eliot's New York publisher printed them together in 1943.įour Quartets are four interlinked meditations with the common theme being man's relationship with time, the universe, and the divine.

They were first published as a series by Faber and Faber in Great Britain between 19 towards the end of Eliot's poetic career ( East Coker in September 1940, Burnt Norton in February 1941, The Dry Salvages in September 1941 and Little Gidding in 1942). After a few years, Eliot composed the other three poems, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, which were written during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain. The first poem, Burnt Norton, was published with a collection of his early works (1936's Collected Poems 1909–1935). Eliot that were published over a six-year period. Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T.

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