This column alone makes a subscription to The Free Press worthwhile (though all the other stuff is really good, too). Last week's column prompted me to secure my own copy of Eliot's Four Quartets, which I had not read before. I saved it for a cross-country flight, and spent maybe an hour wrestling with it: reading a bit, pausing, re-read…
This column alone makes a subscription to The Free Press worthwhile (though all the other stuff is really good, too).
Last week's column prompted me to secure my own copy of Eliot's Four Quartets, which I had not read before. I saved it for a cross-country flight, and spent maybe an hour wrestling with it: reading a bit, pausing, re-reading, pausing . . .
feeling a growing tension all the while, feeling on the brink of some new kind of understanding, until I reached the final stanza of the fourth Quartet.
I had been lost for weeks in a tangle of nostalgia and regret and longing and fear and hope and despair, overshadowed by the inexorable passing of time. I feared I had wasted the best years of my career as a teacher and a writer, that I could have been so much more had I done this a little differently, or avoided that pitfall, or . . . but also knowing that any other path would not have led me just here, and to some hard-won insights into the human condition.
And then I read this:
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
. . .
Quick now, here, now, always -
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well
And all manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowning knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Even now, having reread the poems several times, I'm not sure I can adequately explain what those closing lines mean, or what they meant to me in that moment, but I can explain the effect they had.
With that final stanza, something broke open; something cut through the knot of nostalgia and fear and regret, bursting it apart and dispersing it, leaving in its wake something like joy, something like simple relief, like when an droning, clanging sound that had gone on too long finally stops, and the silence reverberates. Something like gratitude.
I found myself sitting in the back rows of a 737, somewhere over Nebraska, struggling to hold back tears.
I had never responded to a poem quite that way before. To be honest, had I read the poem 20 years ago, or even 5 years ago, I would not and could not have responded that way. It was precisely the right poem at precisely the right moment.
So thank you, Mr. Murray, for helping us to remember such things.
Thanks for sharing your experience and break through. There is some comfort in knowing we are not alone in mourning the passage of time and feeling regret over the things we did or didn’t do.
This column alone makes a subscription to The Free Press worthwhile (though all the other stuff is really good, too).
Last week's column prompted me to secure my own copy of Eliot's Four Quartets, which I had not read before. I saved it for a cross-country flight, and spent maybe an hour wrestling with it: reading a bit, pausing, re-reading, pausing . . .
feeling a growing tension all the while, feeling on the brink of some new kind of understanding, until I reached the final stanza of the fourth Quartet.
I had been lost for weeks in a tangle of nostalgia and regret and longing and fear and hope and despair, overshadowed by the inexorable passing of time. I feared I had wasted the best years of my career as a teacher and a writer, that I could have been so much more had I done this a little differently, or avoided that pitfall, or . . . but also knowing that any other path would not have led me just here, and to some hard-won insights into the human condition.
And then I read this:
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
. . .
Quick now, here, now, always -
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well
And all manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowning knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Even now, having reread the poems several times, I'm not sure I can adequately explain what those closing lines mean, or what they meant to me in that moment, but I can explain the effect they had.
With that final stanza, something broke open; something cut through the knot of nostalgia and fear and regret, bursting it apart and dispersing it, leaving in its wake something like joy, something like simple relief, like when an droning, clanging sound that had gone on too long finally stops, and the silence reverberates. Something like gratitude.
I found myself sitting in the back rows of a 737, somewhere over Nebraska, struggling to hold back tears.
I had never responded to a poem quite that way before. To be honest, had I read the poem 20 years ago, or even 5 years ago, I would not and could not have responded that way. It was precisely the right poem at precisely the right moment.
So thank you, Mr. Murray, for helping us to remember such things.
It was my fourth time through that the light came on for me. And it gets a little brighter with every reading.
Thank you for your honesty, you brought tears to my eyes too by sharing your journey.
Thanks for sharing your experience and break through. There is some comfort in knowing we are not alone in mourning the passage of time and feeling regret over the things we did or didn’t do.
I am entirely touched by your comment. A “ tangle of nostalgia and regret”, yes.