Burnt Norton from Four Quartets by T S Eliot (poetry reading)

[dukeofhearth]

Great voice!

[adamkadmon1977]

Um, Eliot was born in 1888, not 1988.

[NMMojavePoet]

I find it fascinating that by your reading of a poem, your pauses and tonality of voice, bring depth and emotion to mere words on paper. Thank you Tom. This poem has always reminded me of Buddhist Dharma and the circular nature of life, There is no ending, this no beginning, there is only the journey.

[paulpellicci]

yea, I know....but...I try....thanks for your fine work....

[paulpellicci]

I need to save this and listen again at a later time...I enjoyed it even though I can't yet master it....

[SpokenVerse]

@paulpellicci It's pretty-much impenetrable. I can't say that I thoroughly understand it. There are some parts that are memorable and sublime - and that really applies to Eliot's work as a whole.

[colourmegone]

Erhebung doesn't just mean an elevation, it can also mean "mountain" among many other things depending on its context, just as elevation can mean either 'to lift up' or 'a hill or mountain' in English. It is also a term used in statistics and it can relate to empirical knowledge.

[SpokenVerse]

@colourmegone What would you say it means in the context of the poem?

[colourmegone]

@SpokenVerse Quite a lot of poetry is subjective and much would depend on Eliot's knowledge and understanding of German. I THINK, from the context, that it's a pun combining both senses of 'elevation' as 'mountain' and 'lifting up'; since it's "without motion" it implies a paradox based on these two images. I THINK Eliot deliberately used the unfamiliar German word to highlight the dichotomy. But that's only my opinion.

[marmas58ink]

@colourmegone Funny enough, your description fits w/ one of the main things the poem 'says' to me... that there are realities that exist that the human mind may partake of, have partial awareness of, but can't do anything about, can't 'take to hand.'

Like a ritual that enacts, but can't break thru the divide of what it attempts to symbolize (or the symbolism attempts to get at).

Obviously the poem has much to do w/ time, how memory and abstraction alter concepts of time. ...