"The Lotos Rose" : T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets and Eastern thought

Author

Kwang-Mi Lee

Date of Award

12-1991

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

B.J. Leggett

Committee Members

Norman Sanders, Richard Kelly, Stanley Lusby, Miriam Levering

Abstract

Along with the strong and continuing interest that the contemporary world evinces in T. S. Eliot is a growing awareness of the extent to which Eastern thought influenced his attitude and thinking. Using a religio-philosophical approach, this study attempts to assess the overall impact of Eastern thought on the aesthetics, insights and wisdom implicit in Four Quartets,/i>. As a comprehensive attempt to 'give equal weight' in Four Quartet studies to the East Asian and Indie traditions, we will explore Eliot's poem in terms of the world views of Hinduism, Buddhism (including Zen) and Taoism. The work is composed of three chapters in addition to an introduction and conclusion. Focusing on the existential problems of suffering and impermanence, the first chapter examines the sources of suffering as perceived by the poet, and his responses to the same fundamental perception that moved Buddha. The next chapter deals with the issues of detachment, askesis and love — with what Eliot believed to be tentative solutions to the fragmented psyche of modem man and to our disordered modem world. These issues, frequently presented in Eliot's later poems and plays, are the underlying concerns of the Oriental yoga of Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism. In this chapter is also explored Eliot's idea of the compatibility — synthesis — of divine grace and human effort. The poet's conjectures on ontological issues and on solutions to the problem of the human condition have their epistemological proofs in the Quartets. The last chapter therefore details Eliot's metaphysical resolution of the problem of fragmentation and separateness — and his arrival, thus, at 'salvation' through an epistemological understanding of the nature of reality. As it scrutinizes the function of the Absolute and the nature of reality on the bases of the Yin-Yang relation, this chapter too provides the logic for the poem's conclusion, in which Eliot's monistic vision culminates in the consummate union of the rose and the fire. Finally in the chapter, Eliot's concept of "the intersection of the timeless with time" as a metaphor for the still point and the 'here and now' is measured against the Jijimuge doctrine of the East Asian Buddhist metaphysics. As is central in Eastern thought, Four Quartets consists of diagnoses of spiritual problems and speculation as to how they may be solved. Eliot posits 'non-ego' cultivation and intuitive knowledge as ways to attain to a sense of unity and wholeness; he attempts to supplant ego with a sense of the interrelatedness of one with all being, while suggesting that detachment (from fruits of action), askesis (spiritual discipline) and love lead to fulfillment of the promise of enlightenment.