A clue to the change in Hale can be found in Burnt Norton. During the month after Emily left, in December–January, Eliot is writing one of his greatest poems. He looks on Burnt Norton, in five parts, as the start of a ‘new period’ (along with the huge and unexpected success of Murder in the Cathedral on both sides of the Atlantic). On 13 January he calls it a ‘new kind of love poem, and it is written for you, and it is fearfully obscure’. Three days later the poem is done and on its way to Eliot’s New York editor, Donald Brace. It is ‘our’ poem, he repeats to Emily on 16 January, with a good deal ‘that you and no one else will identify’.
In retrospect the poet calls up the play of light on an empty pool so that it appears filled with water. This grants the visiting pair a moment of ‘reality’. It’s as ephemeral as sunlight in England. The moment passes: ‘Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind / Cannot bear very much reality.’ Yet it could last in memory as ‘one of the permanent moments’.
No comments:
Post a Comment