Indic Experience of Time and T.S. Eliot’s Four
Quartets
Arthita Chakraborty,
Ph.D. Research Scholar,
Department of English,
Rajiv Gandhi Central University,
Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Abstract: Indic
consciousness always illuminates broader dimensions of philosophical insights,
in terms of experiencing time and the nature of action. The major argument of
this paper is to examine T.S. Eliot’s Four
Quartets (1944) through the lens of Indian philosophical grounds.
Eliot’s works often portray meditative efforts to understand the nature of
time, action, and human thought. Through a comparative framework, this study
attempts to argue this interrelationship between time, action, consciousness,
and human responsibility. This particular idea not only underlines Eliot’s
individual vision but also resonates with his interest in philosophy. Moreover,
this scholarly approach posits interdisciplinary possibilities at the center,
demonstrating how Eliot’s works can be understood to define human experience
within the paradigms of Indian thought.
Keywords: Action, Consciousness, Indian philosophy,
Temporality, Time
Introduction:
Indian
philosophical thought provides the most extensive and rigorous understanding of
time and its conceptual categories. Instead of referring to time as a series of
events or mere action, Indian tradition locates its ontological aspects that are
largely determined by the cosmological existence and the principle of
causation. Indic view of time is not a mere aspect of chronology but is
something through which the whole universe is created and maintained. Unlike
the linear approach of Western historiography in which time is perceived to be
irreversible (past-present-future), Indian understanding conceives time (kala)
as regenerative and cyclical. In the Indian context, time provides the ground
where action takes place and provides meaningful existence, indicating the
process of being and becoming. Besides, Indian philosophy places this
temporality within the frameworks of samsara (cycle of birth and death),
yugas (ages), and rta(cosmological order). This cyclical process
also presents action as the central force in which individual existence is
shaped. The relation between time and human consciousness is also a significant
concern in T.S. Eliot’s works. In this context, Eliot’s Four Quartets
beautifully aligns with these conceptualisations and philosophical frameworks,
as Peter Ackroyd remarks, “Four Quartets was recognized as an
extraordinary tour de force, however, in which the balance between
stylistic adaptation, lyric statement and dramatic narrative had been
maintained throughout” (Ackroyd 269). The Writings of Eliot exemplify the
temporal categories of time, where time is not a mere chronology but is deeply
interconnected with the action of human beings. His poems always elucidate how
human beings are connected to the universe, anticipating the interrelation
between time and action.
Vedic philosophy
also articulates this vision, where both action and time are perceived and
contained in the principle of ṛta (cosmic order). As Anindita Balslev
remarks, “The Atharva Veda contains hymns dedicated to time. Here time
is described as that which is in contact with all that there is, as that which
regulates and controls all. Some lines describe time to be the cause of the
origin, maintenance and destruction of the universe” (Balslev 11-12). Human
beings are a part of this cosmic order and the rhythmic pattern of time. This
philosophy resonates in Eliot’s Four Quartets, where time is identified not
with the relationship between the past, present, and future, but also with the
doctrine of karma (action) of human beings. Eliot explains that lived
actions are interwoven with the temporal categories of time, which has a deeper
philosophical insight in relation to human consciousness and universal order.
This paper, thus, argues that Four Quartets can be articulated as a
literary expression of these philosophical paradigms in which time is a great
concern. Moreover, this study points out how Eliot contemplates temporalities,
consciousness, and human action, which aligns with the Indian philosophical
ideas of time, action, and cosmic order.
Literature
Review:
The literature
review critically engages Eliot with the broader frameworks of Indian
philosophical thought, temporal categories of time, and human consciousness.
This paper highlights the richness as well as the gaps in the research to reach
the intended conclusions.
In A Study of
Time in Indian Philosophy (1999), A.N. Balslev foregrounds that the Indic
view of time is not merely cyclical. Based on certain Indian classical texts,
Balslev provides a rigorous demonstration and argues that Indian philosophy offers
multiple ontological dimensions of time: Samkhya puts it as a way of
becoming, Advaita refers to appearance as maya, Nyaya-Vaisesika
treats time as objectively real, for Jainism, time is a separate substance, and
in Buddhism, time is referred to as ksanikavada (momentariness).
Balslev’s understanding becomes significant as her work connects the broader
Indian philosophical ideas such as causation, change, action, creation,
cosmology, and transcendence. Another significant work, Religion and Time
(1993), which is edited by A.N. Balslev and J.N. Mohanty together, offers an
interdisciplinary framework to understand the conceptualisation of time in
different religions. This study demonstrates how different religions experience
time in terms of history, myth, eschatology, and soteriology. As far as the argument of the paper is
concerned, these views are particularly useful to situate Indian philosophical
and theoretical concepts within the broader phenomenological and comparative
religious debates.
In The Art of
T. S. Eliot (1949), Helen Gardner provides a foundational understanding of
Eliot’s Four Quartets in terms of conceptualising time. Gardner explains
that Eliot’s philosophical view of time is blended with his poetic experience,
illuminating the artistic aspects as well as the trajectories of time. In another
work, The Composition of Four Quartets (1978), Gardner elucidates a
rigorous analysis regarding the composition of Eliot’s poems, addressing their
spontaneous nature and artistic dimensions. This work also remains influential
while considering an analytical study of time in Eliot’s works.
S.
Radhakrishnan’s Indian Philosophy (vol. 1-2, 1923) provides a critical
view of Indian thought (Vedas, Upanishads, etc). Rather than a set of
beliefs, the significance of this work lies in its valuable structure and
rigorous intellectual tradition to define Indian philosophy and its
interpretative frameworks. Radhakrishnan’s other significant work, The
Principal Upanishads (1953), posits the core idea of the Upanishads within
the interpretative and analytical dimensions of certain ideas such as
consciousness, reality, and knowledge. The writings of Radhakrishnan illustrate
the historical importance of Upanishadic principles and shape the definition of
contemporary philosophical and intellectual inquiries.
Peter Ackroyd’s
significant work T. S. Eliot: A Life (1984) presents a critical
viewpoint to understand the spiritual and intellectual dimensions of Eliot’s
works, especially Four Quartets. Ackroyd exemplifies the metaphysical
inquiry and meditative nature of time that is always reflected in the writings
of Eliot. He argues that Eliot treats time, temporality, spirituality, and
existential nature, especially in addressing the scenarios of the world war.
Therefore, this close reading helps to understand the foundational arguments of
Eliot and his synthesis of time in poetry.
Bibek Debroy’s
original translated versions of major Sanskrit texts offer a valuable and
comprehensible understanding of Indian classical thought. His translation of
the Bhagavad Gita (2019) critically engages with the ideas of action and
time that strongly reflect the various dimensions of Eliot’s poetry, whether it
is his masterpiece The Waste Land or Four Quartets. Debroy’s
comparative and philosophical frameworks function as a useful tool to
comprehend these literary texts rather than any excessive exaggerations. Even
his other work, The Holy Vedas (2011), which is based on the four Vedas
and their principles, contributes to analysing the Indic tradition. To
comprehend Eliot, Debroy’s translated versions serve broader intellectual
paradigms. Moreover, his rigorous works on the various Puranas also
remain significant to understand how Indian tradition is deeply engaged with
the cyclical process of time and the cosmological order. These frameworks of
Debroy, therefore, help to get a detailed view of the Indian philosophical
tradition and thought that illuminates the poetic engagements of Eliot.
S.N. Dasgupta’s magnificent work A History of Indian Philosophy (Vol. 1-5, 1922-1955) comprehends a rigorous and analytical study of Indian philosophical tradition and culture. Through the set of five long volumes, this work offers a ground for historical discussions and classical textual interpretations on theories such as causation, time, being, epistemology, and so on. Apart from the exhaustive work that Dasgupta does, Chandradhar Sharma’s Indian Philosophy: A Critical Survey (1960)serves as a compact, sophisticated, and systematic analysis of the major Indian schools of thought. These particular comparative frameworks become especially valuable to create the ground of conceptual orientations and the broader Indian philosophical dimensions.
Therefore, by
analysing Eliot through the lens of Indian philosophical perspectives, this
study allows rich dimensions to understand the temporal nature of time on one
hand, and human action and consciousness on the other. This comparative
approach locates Eliot’s meditative understanding of time within the domain of
Indic consciousness.
Methodology:
The research is
based on an analytical, textual, and comparative approach to focus on the ideas
of temporality, consciousness, and action. It reconciles Eliot’s thoughts within
the dimensions of the Indian philosophical understanding. The parallel
framework between Indian classical tradition and Eliot’s philosophy illuminates
integrated and critical structures to understand the trajectories of time.
Analysis and
Discussion:
I. Temporality
and ‘Burnt Norton’:
“Burnt Norton”,
the opening poem of Four Quartets, illuminates the ideas of time,
consciousness, action, and transcendence. In this whole collection, Eliot is
deeply connected with the Indian philosophical thought and classical texts such
as the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas, and so
on. The central inquiry of Eliot always revolves around the experience of a
human being with an apprehension of the idea of time and the timeless. This
lens adds light on how people experience the temporality and the utmost reality
that is timeless (brahman). As Anantanand Rambachan remarks, “At the
heart of every human quest is a search for brahman, the limitless. This
existential dissatisfaction … is a universal human phenomenon and reflection on
the limits of finite gains is the beginning of the quest for brahman”
(Rambachan 5-6).The poem opens with one of the most acclaimed philosophical
statements of Eliot:
Time present and
time past
Are both perhaps
present in time future,
And time future
contained in time past. (Eliot 8)
Through these
lines, Eliot attempts to dismantle the linear conceptualisation of time. The
idea regarding the past-present-future is not merely chronological; these are
the units of eternal temporal nature of time. Eliot tries to explain this
continuum through the Indian philosophical and ontological understanding of
time (kala) that rejects the Western linear view of time and thought.
Human beings are placed in the trajectories of action (consequential) that are
also interlinked with time:
If all time is
eternally present
All time is
unredeemable. (Eliot 8)
This idea of the
‘unredeemable’ implies the eternal now (at the present/for the present). It
also aligns with the karma doctrine, where consequences lead to actions
across time, manifested in the greater cosmic order:
What might have
been is an abstraction
Remaining a
perpetual possibility
Only in a world
of speculation. (Eliot 8)
Here Eliot
defines the difference between imagination and reality, indicating that
possibilities sustain as an abstraction. It connects the Advaita
tradition of mayaas appearance. Mind is something that forecasts
multiple possibilities related to action.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. (Eliot 8)
The
philosophical implication of this rose garden episode presents a space where
past and present mingle, and the mind goes beyond the chronological paradigms.
This meditative nature presents a vision of unperformed action that impacts
both the past and present state of consciousness:
Time past and
time future
What might have
been and what has been
Point to one
end, which is always present. (Eliot 9)
This particular
line takes a significant space in terms of Eliot’s philosophical arguments.
Though human beings desire truth but unable to maintain a connection with
consciousness and ultimate reality (brahman). In regard to Indian
thought, realising the brahman requires consciousness, and an ordinary
mind is always connected with attachments. Moreover, Eliot’s vision is to
understand the broader dimensions where the body of the human being remains as
a microcosm of the whole cosmological process. This idea specifically aligns
with the Indian thought where the self (atman) reflects the cosmic order
and reality (brahman). In such a place, both the microcosm and the
macrocosm help each other to illuminate:
At the still
point of the turning world.
Neither from nor
towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither
arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and
future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent
nor decline. (Eliot 10)
The phrase
“still point” becomes a conceptual center that reiterates the process of
becoming with the being, the meeting point between time and the timeless (past
and future). It aligns with the Upanishadic understanding of both the immanent
and the transcendent; the eternal ground of the temporal consciousness. The
still point stands as a place of action, which is also illuminated in the
teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. It introduces the doctrine of niskama
karma (desireless action) rather than advocating renunciation or opposition
to action. Eliot also admits that any kind of artistic expression is
inseparably tied to and enacted with the ideas of temporality:
Words move,
music moves
Only in time;
but that which is only living
Can only die.
(Eliot 15)
This idea
addresses the non-linear conceptualisation of time, found in the Indic
consciousness regarding the cosmological order (rta) and the eternal
process of creation and destruction (samsara). The ending and the
beginning are not opposites to each other, rather mutually enclosed to sustain
the larger cosmic order:
The end precedes
the beginning
And the end and
the beginning were always there. (Eliot 15)
These poetic
insights of Eliot rearticulate the principle of karma yoga, found in the
Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna profoundly influences Arjuna to do the
right course of action. At the same time, Krishna also underscores that people
should neither act to seek the fruit of it nor for any sake of reward, nor
should they attain inaction. Rather, people should always act consciously by
contextualising the ethical imperatives of action.
II. Cyclical
Order and ‘East Coker’:
The second poem of
Four Quartets, titled “East Coker,” similarly meditates on the Indic
philosophical dimensions of time and also fulfils the aspects of modern poetry
that Eliot specifically deals with. In his paper “Hindu Concepts of Time”,
Satish Reddy argues, “Time in Hinduism is considered to be cyclical rather than
linear. Time is viewed as vast cycles that repeat infinitely. Four fundamental
concepts of Hinduism - Samsara, Karma, Dharma and Mokshaintroduce
us to the concept of time in Hinduism. These concepts outline the Hindu
existential position and draw the trajectory of an individual’s life through
the vast cycles of time (Reddy 1). The first section of Eliot’s poem opens with
such lines:
In my beginning
is my end…
Houses rise and
fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed,
destroyed, restored… (Eliot 18)
The central
philosophical insights here lie in the cyclical nature of time, which Eliot
attempts to conceptualise through various imageries or instances. The life of a
human being is centred within the continuous process of creation, preservation,
destruction, and again creation. Every beginning marks its own destruction, and
every ending again marks a new beginning. In the context of Indian thought,
this is called samsara (the process of creation-destruction-renewal).
This cosmic order is also known as a triad rhythm: srsti-sthiti-pralaya
(creation-preservation-destruction). The very human existence is intermingled
within this cosmic process. As Eliot remarks in his lines:
Old stone to new
building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to
ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already
flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and
beast, cornstalk and leaf. (Eliot 18)
However, apart
from cyclical harmony, existential uncertainties also persist there. Eliot
foregrounds that experience can also lead to falsities because human beings do
not merely receive reality; they structure it according to their own way. In
the context of Indic thought, the brahman cannot be conceptualised
through empirical grounds since any conceptualisation remains partial and hence
incomplete. Therefore, Eliot significantly remarks:
The only wisdom
we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of
humility: humility is endless. (Eliot 21)
The above lines
reflect the ideas of the Bhagavad Gita that attribute humility as an
essential aspect of knowledge and wisdom. This dimension also resonates with
the mind and its meditative nature (dhyana) to get a rightful
understanding and knowledgeable insights. Eliot alludes to the Gita,
which always upholds the call to action without any desire for the outcome. As
Eliot intensifies:
…wait without hope
For hope would
be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would
be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith
and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. (Eliot 22)
Moreover, Eliot
refers to the ending as a new beginning, which does not mark a mere cyclical
recurrence only, but rather it reflects a transformed process altogether:
… and every
attempt
Is a wholly new
start.
… And so each
venture
Is a new
beginning …
For us, there is
only the trying. The rest is not our business. (Eliot 25)
This context
resonates the Gita’skarma yoga (commitment to one’s own action):
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥(chapter II,
Verse 47)
As Bibek Debroy
translates, “You have the right to action alone. You never have the right to
the fruit. Do not be motivated to act because of the fruit. But don’t be
motivated to not acting either” (Debroy 59). Therefore, this idea of karma does
not intend individual action only, but rather places action within a broader
field of responsibilities and cosmological process.
III. Time,
Eternity, and ‘The Dry Salvages’:
The third poem
of the collection, known as “The Dry Salvages,” also provides insights into the
temporal categories of time, interconnected with human action and
consciousness. By using images such as the sea and the river, Eliot presents a
ground where the individual existence (atman) meets the cosmic process (brahman),
and time intersects with eternity. Apart from Christian references, a
tremendous influence of Indian philosophical thought compels Eliot to think
that, rather than an escape, human consciousness very much lies within the
trajectories of time.
The references
to the river and the sea are not merely natural but somehow connected to the
broader manifestations of the cosmological process. It places human action
within the rhymes and rhythms of the universal order. The dialectic tone
underscores:
The river is
within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the
land’s edge also, the granite
Into which it
reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of
earlier and other creation … (Eliot 28)
Here, the ‘river’
as the first imagery refers to individual consciousness, while the second
imagery, as the ‘sea’, refers to the universal or cosmic order, in which every
individual ultimately mingles. This inseparability is further intensified by
Eliot:
The sea has many
voices,
Many gods and
many voices. (Eliot 28)
The phrase ‘may
voices’ indicates multiple realities where human existence cannot be understood
through linear perspectives or single narratives, rather it advocates a
recurrence and process-centric orientation:
The tolling bell
Measures time
not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a
time
Older than the
time of chronometers…
Between midnight
and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future
futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops
and time is never ending … (Eliot 29)
Therefore, this
temporal nature of time that Eliot indicates is much older than the
chronological view of time. In the Indic conception, this cyclical recurrence
is referred to as Kalachakra, which goes beyond the linear progression
of time. Eliot refers to the idea of samsara to foreground a historical
continuity of existence:
There is no end,
but addition: the trailing
Consequence of
further days and hours … (Eliot 30)
These lines of
Eliot beautifully align with the Indic view of action (karma), which is
largely consequential and shapes human existence:
There is no end
of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the
withering of withered flowers,
That the past
has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence –
Or even
development … (Eliot 31)
Here Eliot
exemplifies that the past time is not merely a series of events; it should be
understood as a conscious process where the triad of
creation-preservation-destruction takes place:
Time the destroyer
is time the preserver … (Eliot 32)
Eliot’s idea
frequently refers to Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita, where the karma
doctrine plays a central role, as Matilal asserts, “the word karma meant
also any action which has moral significance or any other type of consequence.
In the Gitä, therefore, the word karma had a double significance,
ritual acts and ethical duties …” (Matilal 124). Therefore, the literal meaning
of karma is not only centred on mere actions, but its philosophical
implications are also articulated through the doctrine of causation. It
describes how actions lead to consequences and vice versa. Human existence is
interconnected with the temporal categories of past, present, and future. The
meditative nature of Eliot unfolds this temporal vision to address the process
of being and becoming. He further intensifies:
I sometimes
wonder if that is what Krishna meant –
Among other
things – or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future
is a faded song …
Of wistful
regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
And the way up
is the way down, the way forward is the way back. (Eliot 33)
The reference to
Krishna indicates that progress does not intensify forward movement all the
time; sometimes, it requires a return to understand the historical process,
which is deeply embedded in time. Both the past and the future mingle in the
present (eternal now).
While time is
withdrawn, consider the future
And the past
with an equal mind.
At the moment
which is not of action or inaction
… “on whatever
sphere of being
The mind of a
man may be intent
At the time of
death”– that is the one action
And do not think
of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
Or whatever
event, this is your real destination.
So Krishna, as
when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of
battle.
Not fare well,
But fare
forward, voyagers. (Eliot 33-34)
In these lines,
Eliot deliberately refers to the conscious teachings of Krishna (especially niskama
karma) in which the soul goes through the process of becoming. This
consciousness formulates a continuous process, indicating the inseparable
relation between time and action. The final section of the poem also apprehends
the connection between temporal existence and eternal reality; atman and
brahman – the time and the timeless:
… But to
apprehend
The point of
intersection of the timeless
With time …
For most of us,
there is only the unattended
Moment, the
moment in and out of time,
The hint half
guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation. (Eliot 36)
Therefore, human
life is all about the process where individual existence touches the eternal
reality; where both the past and the future are reconciled, echoing the pivotal
concern of Indian philosophy and the conscious underpinnings of Eliot’s poetry.
IV. Historical
Time, Consciousness and ‘Little Gidding’:
The
philosophical dimension of the fourth poem, “Little Gidding,” similarly brings
out Indic conceptions of history, time, and action. Eliot explores these
categories with a special engagement with the Upanishads. His famous
poem “The Waste Land” foregrounds numerous references to Indic thought,
especially the triad of Datta-Dayadhvam-Damayata
(give-sympathise-control). These references elevate the understanding of
temporality, timeless reality, and cosmological order. Such references can be
drawn from the Maitri Upanishad and Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad, where
the notion of time conveys both processes of becoming and decay.
B.K. Matilal
asserts, “The world is in a sense said to be eternal or 'beginningless' (anädi)
there being no first creation, but only periodic dissolution and re-creation
through the intervention of providence … The ultimate constituents of matter,
the atoms, are indestructible and eternal …” (Matilal 360).In Eliot’s vision,
the soul of a human being must go through time to understand the process of
being and becoming in time (kala) with special emphasis on good or bad
action. Rather than any divine intervention, people’s destiny is shaped by
their own actions (karma).Through these trajectories of time, action and
its consequences also unfold (causation). Therefore, Eliot explicitly remarks:
… Either you had
no purpose
Or the purpose
is beyond the end you figured
And is altered
in fulfillment.
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.
Here, the
intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and
nowhere. Never and always. (Eliot 40)
These lines
bring out the central idea that timelessness itself is embedded within the
historical process and ethical inquiry: “The idea that the world is
beginningless, or that the self is unborn are based on the same philosophical
insight that being cannot come out of nothing and that the human situation is
incomprehensible without the idea of karma and rebirth” (Balslev and Mohanty
174). Here, Eliot implies that this temporality also foregrounds the inseparable
relation between ethical reflection and the conscious action of a human being.
Then Eliot refers to a picture of transience:
Ash on an old
man’s sleeve
Is all the ash
the burnt roses leave.
The death of
hope and despair,
This is the
death of air.
… This is the
death of earth. (Eliot 41)
In these lines,
the roses, which are burnt, indicate the process of destruction, impermanence,
and again the cyclical process of renewal. It resonates the Indic conception of
punar-sristi and punar-pralaya, which is also asserted in the
book Religion and Time as:“One of the basic tenets of Hindu thought is
the notion that no absolute beginning can be attributed to the world-process …
However, although the idea of absolute beginning i.e. creation out of nothing
is rejected, the notion of repeated creation (Punar-Srsti) and recurrent
dissolution (Punar-pralaya) is widespread” (Balslev and Mohanty 169).
Eliot tries to place this idea in order to understand a spiritual and moral
reckoning on the eve of World Wars:
… the rending
pain of re-enactment
Of all that you
have done. (Eliot 43)
These lines
resonate with the doctrine of karma, where human actions lead to
consequences according to their deeds and vice versa. In regard to Krishna,
Eliot also places the idea that human beings are embedded in the consequences
of action that ultimately lead them to wisdom (jnana) and prepare them
to make a conscious engagement with various circumstances of life. Eliot
further makes the most philosophically intrinsic idea through the lines:
History may be
servitude,
History may be
freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and
places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become
renewed, transfigured, in another pattern. (Eliot 44)
Therefore,
history is recurrence, and it repeats differently, consciously, and
responsibly. This idea compels the readers to return to “East Coker” where
Eliot intensifies the meeting point between the stillness and movement; time
and the timeless:
We must be still
and still moving
Into another
intensity. (Eliot 26)
The literary
expression at the end presents a distinctive cyclical rhythm that argues
against the very linear structure of time. This cosmological process also
rearticulates the Indic view of samsara and the essence of human
existence. As the most celebrated lines of Eliot unfold:
What we call the
beginning is often the end
And to make an
end is to make a beginning.
The end is where
we start from.
… 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. (Eliot 47)
These ending lines
capture the entire idea of the poem as well as the literary structure that
Eliot wants to foreground throughout Four Quartets. Aligning with the
Indic nature of thought, Eliot’s realisation does not intend to show a
particular destination, but rather a new vision of conceptualisation. It
resonates the Upanishadic view: Tat Tvam Asi (Thou art That or You are
That), where the self (atman) is identical to the ultimate reality (brahman).
Balslev also foregrounds, “…time cannot be isolated and disconnected from other
major philosophical issues of a specific system in a given tradition. It is
interrelated and interwoven with such basic concepts as those of being and
becoming, change and causality, creation and annihilation” (Balslev 15). Though
Eliot alludes to Christianity, his ontological and argumentative structure is
deeply ingrained in the Indian philosophical tradition and its very historical
process of realisation.
Conclusion:
The writings of
Eliot not only illuminate the temporal categories of time but also provide an
in-depth reflection on human life within the meditation of temporality. From
the perspective of Indian philosophical understanding (such as karma,
dharma, samsara, kala, rta, etc.), each and every poem of the Four
Quartets foregrounds a vision of action within the trajectories of time. It
resonates with the Bhagavad Gita’s assertion that teaches people to do
their duties, though imperfectly performed, which is still better than inaction.
Radhakrishnan adds, “The true interests of humanity, the deep passions of
religion, and the great problems of philosophy, have not been superseded as
material things have been. Indian thought is a chapter of the history of the
human mind, full of vital meaning for us” (Radhakrishnan 7). Eliot’s vision is
congruent with Indian thoughts that place life as a locus of conscious
activity. In terms of temporal contexts, the comparative framework of this
paper extends Eliot’s understanding through the lens of Indian ethical and
philosophical paradigms.
Indic conceptual
categories posit time as cyclical and transcendental, whereas action is
consequential. This idea provides a holistically sound framework and opens
further space within which every branch of Indian philosophy converges. In the
context of the Puranas, Vedas, Upanishads, and certain Indian schools of
thought, time is placed in the cosmic order where action leads to consequences
and consequences further lead to action (a cycle that goes on and on). In a
similar way, Eliot’s poems foreground the experience of time as a conscious
engagement. As Gardner also remarks on Eliot, “His subject-matter must have
universally recognized importance, and he must treat it with that imaginative
authority we call originality; he must have something at once personal and of
general relevance to say on important aspects of human experience” (Gardner 3).
This integrated framework not only unites The
Four Quartets with the
philosophical reflection of Indian thought but also addresses the
conceptualisation of time and the possibilities of transcendence.
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