Four Quartets: Structure and Surprise

Abstract

Structurally, each of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets presents a different conception of life in time, and a correspondingly different intimation of, or pressure towards, the timeless. Such deliberated structuring and the poem’s doctrinal affirmation might be thought of as inimical to the poetic intensity and ‘contemporaneity’ that characterises Eliot’s earlier poetry. The Four Quartets are, however, surprisingly open. Empson found ambiguity inherent in poetic complexity. More genially, John Ashbery sees ambiguity as ‘the same thing as happiness or pleasant surprise’. This essay tries to demonstrate the extent to which the Four Quartets afford ‘pleasant surprise’.