"If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always."
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Serviceable Substitutes for Wit
"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die." -G.K. Chesterton
2 comments:
That's the part I was thinking of!
I think that has something to do with why I pretty much only like to read dead authors. :)
That segment is so profound (hardly shocking for T.S. Eliot!).
For me, it doesn't really need to be understood at first glance in order to be appreciated; I find that I just need to read it.
At just the right moment, when all my words have vanished and all that remains is the unintelligible knowledge derived from some acquaintance I've had with some abstract reality; when I am helpless to express this awareness to any living thing; in the back of my mind I hear whispers of words that I never before understood. I find myself reciting poetry that I don't even recall having read!
It may seem funny, but I would apply to T.S. what Chesterton said about poets-
"'I don't deny' he said, 'that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.'"
"At just the right moment, when all my words have vanished and all that remains is the unintelligible knowledge derived from some acquaintance I've had with some abstract reality; when I am helpless to express this awareness to any living thing; in the back of my mind I hear whispers of words that I never before understood."
Mmm, that's very well put, and I don't believe it can be said any better. Poetry is very much part of humanity. T.S. Eliot said that "genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood," and I believe him!
Yes, I remember when ran across those lines in Manalive, and I couldn't help but smiling to myself. It very much applies to Eliot.
P.S.
Here's another quote for you to chew on:
"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings, which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves." -T.S. Eliot
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