T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and St. John of the Cross
Hamdi Hameed Al-Douri
Tikrit University, College of Education for Women
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/jls.2.3.1
Keywords: -Four Quartets - John of the cross - mysticism - symbols
Abstract
Four Quartets (1942) is a sequence of four poems:
'Burnt Norton' (1936), 'East Coker' (1940), 'The Dry Salvages'
(1941) and 'Little Gidding' (1942). The main sources of the
mystical symbols in T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, Four Quartets,
are some of Saint John of the Cross's writings and this has not
been given its due of study. This paper aims at exploring St.
John of the Cross's influence on Eliot's Four Quartets,
especially his Dark Night of the Soul and The Ascent of
Mount Carmel. The downward movement, the descent into
the inner darkness and the symbols of ascending and
descending of the stairs in Eliot's poems were among the
outstanding mystical symbols used by John of the Cross. Eliot
also strongly echoes John of the Cross in his emphases that
one must die to self and undergo mortification of the body
before one can hope for the perfect union of the soul with
God. The paper attempts to investigate Eliot's use of these and
other symbols relating them to their counterparts in the works
of St. John of the Cross .
