Mysticism and Sufism in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets

Abstract

This paper attempts to trace mysticism in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets with a special focus on the mystical elements in the poems with their relevant dimensions. It also aims at looking at different literatures around Eliot’s works which consider Eliot as an atheist poet whose earlier writings contain secularist ideas but that only his Four Quartets and ‘Ash Wednesday’ contain some differences to faith, with the aim of proving that Eliot was not an atheist writer. This paper also looks at the mystical aspects of Eliot’s Four Quartets which shift into a deeper aspect of life that is Sufism. No studies have been done on this significant aspect of his Four Quartets The study also aims at presenting the answer that Eliot proposes to the problem of the people in the twentieth century through analyzing the hidden meanings of his poems.