Published in the fiery days of World War II, Four Quartets stands as a testament to the power of poetry amid the chaos of the time. Let the words speak for themselves: "The dove descending breaks the air/With flame of incandescent terror/Of which the tongues declare/The only discharge from sin and error/The only hope, or the despair/Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre--/To be redeemed from fire by fire./Who then devised this torment?/Love/Love is the unfamiliar Name/Behind the hands that wave/The intolerable shirt of flame/Which human power cannot remove./We only live, only suspire/Consumed by either fire or fire."


The New York Times Book Review, Horace Gregory
I submit this quotation as one of the finest lyrics written in our time ... I strongly recommend a reading of Mr. T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.


From AudioFile
The Anglo-American Nobel winner T. S. Eliot is one of the most important poets of the century. This essay (1943) brought him his first popular recognition. Described as an "austere and rigorously philosophic poem on time and time's losses and gains," it unified war-torn Britain by extolling Christian fundamentals. Ted Hughes, England's poet laureate, gives an appropriately austere reading in soft, mellifluous Yorkshire cadences. Like those of many poet-reciters, his intonations are mannered. One either likes this approach or doesn't. Still, the sense, as well as the beauty, of the lines shines through. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Book Description
The last major verse written by the Nobel laureate, including “Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding.”



The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Series of four poems by T.S. Eliot, published individually from 1936 to 1942, and in book form in 1943; the work is considered to be Eliot's masterpiece. Each of the quartets has five "movements" and each is titled by a place name--BURNT NORTON (1936), EAST COKER (1940), THE DRY SALVAGES (1941), and LITTLE GIDDING (1942). Eliot's insights into the cyclical nature of life are revealed through themes and images deftly woven throughout the four poems. The work addresses the connections of the personal and historical present and past, spiritual renewal, and the very nature of experience; it is considered the poet's clearest exposition of his Christian beliefs.

ANNOTATION

"Burnt Norton," "East Coker," "The Dry Salvages," and "Little Gidding."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The last major verse written by Eliot and what Eliot himself considered his finest work, Four Quartets is a rich composition that expands the spiritual vision brought out in The Waste Land. Here, in four linked poems, spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references from both Eastern and Western thought. Four Quartets is the culminating achievement by a man considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century and one of the seminal figures in the evolution of modernism.

FROM THE CRITICS

Horace Gregory