T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and the Contemplation of Nature

Abstract

This thesis reads T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets as a dramatization of the progress of the spiritual life as elaborated within early Christianity, moving from praxis, where the soul engages in ascetical practice in an effort to cleanse itself of passions; through the contemplation of nature, which aims at an understanding of the created world in its cycles of generation and decay; to theologia, or the mystical union with God. The focus in this essay is with the second stage in particular and seeks to better account for Eliot’s representation of nature by grounding it in the ascetical and mystical traditions, primarily but not exclusively Christian, that he was most engaged with. It is argued that this deep spiritual structure undergirding the Quartets functions to make the reading experience itself a type of spiritual exercise, with the end of cleansing the doors of perception and the discernment of life and beauty amidst a universe of death.