Kayleen Asbo, Ph.D
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Week Three

​fBurnt Norton
​

Context:
Written during the failure of his marriage with Vivienne, after Eliot’s conversion to Anglo-Catholicism and adoption of England as his country of citizenship. Eliot had  ound a lifeline from his depression and despair in a religious awakening, participating in daily services in his Anglican  church in London and frequently visiting Kelham Hall on retreat, a monastic community where he learned to chant psalms, pray the Angelus and spend long periods in silent contemplation.  

Eliot’s religious conversion results in the writing of a play, Murder in the Cathedral, about the martyrdom of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.  Eliot took a vow  of celibacy, which he almost immediately felt some regret about when a woman with whom he shared a college romance arrives to visit England. Emily Hale
was a gifted actress and drama teacher with whom he shared both intellectual passions and a deep spiritual  sensibility.  They visited Burnt Norton in 1934, a British estate in Gloucestershire, where they engaged in prolonged and profound conversations. This visit sets the backdrop for the poem.
 
Element: Air
Place: Ruined manoral estate
Mood; Regret, reminiscence, wistfulness
Voice of children hidden in the apple tree
Three ways of reading:  literal, a moral and mystical (after Dante)
Key symbols: Lotos rose, dry brown pool, birds, descent
 
Influences
St. Augustine’s Confessions
John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel  with the reference to  the “10 Stairs”
and the Dark Night of the Soul: “Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.”
Heraclitis and the concept of the Logos (divine pattern)
 
  
 
Comparison with Beethoven Quartet Op. 132: Structure of Five Movements:
 
1) Allusion to “sonata-allegro form” with its  focus on reconciling contrasting themes :
            Active/Reflective
            Masculine/Feminine
            Impersonal/Personal Voice
Time past/future
 
2) Lyrical and intensely imagistic
 
3) Hymn/Prayer leading into and through darkness and stillness
 
4) Short, rhythmic  movement with greater simplicity of language
 
5) Integrating Rondo, returning again to repeated phrases, passages
Weaves together dark/light ( Major/minor)
 
 
 
Recommended Reading and Listening:
 
Redeeming Time: T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Kenneth Paul Kramer
 
Links to recordings of Burnt Norton:
 
TS Eliot himself reading: 
 
Alec Guinness reading
 
Jeremy Irons reading
Contact Kayleen Asbo: mythicamuse@gmail.com
  • Home
  • Calendar
  • Magdalene
    • Magdalene Conference
    • Forty Days with Mary Magdalene
    • Rose Sangha
    • Passion of Mary Magdalene
    • Magdalene in Provence
  • Pilgrimages
    • Provence: In the Footsteps of Mary Magdalene
    • Provence: Mary Magdalene and The Black Madonna
    • Scotland
  • Music
    • Van Gogh
  • Poetry
  • About