T.S. Eliot and Community: Part III of III

Miss Maria, feel free to read this post by the way. You may want to begin at the first post which is linked in the next paragraph.      rph2odbp@gmail.com

In the first post I focused on identifying the linguistic illness of scientific reduction in the modern community. The second post examined the deterioration of communication when language ceases to signify. Now I shall see if T.S. Eliot offers any hope on these matters.

Often with T.S. Eliot, readers have a hard time discerning how pessimistic he really is about society and the possibility for community. For everything T.S. Eliot writes about the fragmentation of language and the isolation of individuals that are representative of modern society, he still chooses poetry as a legitimate means to communicate this with his readers. Such a communication presupposes a common language and meaning by which we could understand T.S. Eliot’s insights. No matter how far Eliot indicates that the destruction of language and community has gone, the fact remains that he is able to indicate this to the reader. Thus even Eliot’s approach presupposes the possibility for a communal understanding and the ability of words to signify. While T.S. Eliot portrays extremes to validate the importance of his critique of culture and seeks to identify the real threats to community, at the deeper core of his writings comes a certain sacramental and optimistic view of reality. Eliot’s own poetical communication of his insights show a certain hope of intelligibility that is most explicitly expressed at the end of The Waste Land and The Four Quartets.

Nearing the end of the last section in The Waste Land and The Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot has composed a theory of renewal. By previously emphasizing a bleak view on the future of community, the destruction of genuine communication, and the despondency of language, Eliot seems to disallow for any possibility of renewal from within this fragmented community, but he does still allow for renewal. If renewal cannot come from within it must come from without, or it cannot come at all. Whereas man creates the wasteland, something else renews it. “In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust/ Bringing rain” [394-395]. The rain comes down as a gift to revitalize the land and offer the possibility of peace. This undeserved grace comes again in The Four Quartets. Eliot stresses the importance of history and past. “A people without history/ Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern/ Of timeless moments” (p.144). Only people with a history can be redeemed because they become aware of their folly and true nature. To ignore history is to ignore man’s beginning, his sin, and consequently his end. Renewal is on the horizon.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time (p.145)

Eliot identifies a certain cosmic narrative in which the beginning signifies the end, and the end signifies the beginning. This may be akin to Aristotle’s understanding of formal cause - what a thing is, and final cause - the end toward which a thing is acting. Community and its history stand at the center of this revelation, and the gift of renewal stands as its redemption.

Although not explicit in either work, humility seems to stand as the fundamental core to this renewal. This openness to possibility and language is what Alfred Prufrock lacks. The problem with the positivistic scientific movement is that it prevents a holistic view on reality because it has no internal means to recognize the mystery inherent in reality and our experience. Prufrock stands as a prime example of being intellectually prideful, at least in the sense that he presupposes the disaster of his possible interaction without actually interacting. In this sense pride leads to fear and cowardice, which leads to loneliness and hell.

Rational scientific knowledge cannot totally inform our worldview because only a willingness to accept mystery and approach others in humility will maintain a community that can both give and receive in an exchange of language. When language attains full representation, the literal and spiritual become one. This redeemed language signifies exactly what the individual means thus eliminating any dichotomy between the signifier, language, and the signified, meaning. Renewal cannot come only or primarily from within because the individual would have to impose the model of self onto the community. Rather than being based on the individual, the paradigm for renewal is that of gift and love within a community. The gift must be given, received, and continually reciprocated in much the same fashion that language between persons operates in the context of a conversation. Grace stands as the transforming power. In other words, maybe we must receive grace from without before we can truly renew the world from within.

T.S. Eliot and Community: Part II of III

Part I from last week.

In The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot furthers his description of the fragmented community. In the opening lines of The Waste Land, April is considered the “cruelest month” [1]. Rather than its traditional symbol of renewal and rebirth, April becomes an aching reminder of a better past in the midst of a wintery present. In other words April becomes an unfriendly reminder of the unhappiness that permeates the present. The past holds an account of our sins and acts as a conscience that brings man into contact with the true nature of the wasteland. The memory functions to make us painfully aware of the current ruins that surround us. But this experience has been deemed as cruelty because of the desire to be disconnected with the past. Accountability becomes unbearable. In turn this disconnection with the past has blinded man to his own nature and cut him off from the means of knowing and fulfilling his own natural end. Quite literally, the poem brings this image to life by showing people as ghost of their former selves.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winder dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. [60-64]

People surround each other, but there is no communication and no community. People are more dead than they are alive, but unable to recognize that lack of life because they are unable to recognize each other. As with Prufrock, they are stuck in the world of the self.

This isolation takes concrete forms in the two unloved women of The Waste Land. In section II the aristocratic lady waits hopelessly for love and human affection. However, even the bird of love becomes meaningless.

Yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
“Jug Jug” to dirty ears. [100-103]

The voice of the nightingale is nothing more than a meaningless cry that ceases to signify. The symbol of love no longer signifies love; in other words, the sign is not signifying. This action with no meaning personifies the hopelessness of the women waiting for love. On the other extreme, the description of the second lady shows another type of isolation even more discontenting. The lady dreads the return of her husband from war who only wants “a good time” regardless where he has to go for it. Her husband will not sexually leave her alone. Despite this physical intimacy she feels alienated and used by her husband. Both women are not really loved and these two antidotes juxtaposed together identify two perspectives on the disconnection between people.

In the poem The Hollow Men it seems the best we can achieve is communal meaninglessness.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Learning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar [part I]

Here Eliot indicates that language no longer signifies and communicates meanings. We are without substance and stuffed with learning that only gives off the semblance of communication. Language is depraved of its creative power to transcend the physical and inspire the soul. This fragmented culture is left with “Shape without form, shade without colour,? Paralysed force, gesture without motion” [part I]. These contradictory pairs show how the meanings signified by certain actions are being divorced from their sign. Common language is destroyed and communion becomes impossible. One by one all things begin to lose their meaning: education, relationships, the singing nightingale, love, physical intimacy, and eventually language.

So if Eliot's poetry is correct about the current state of language, where does this leave the possibility for meaningful communication? I will look at this question in the next post.