142-447: The Dry Salvages is the third poem of T. S. Eliot 's Four Quartets , marking the beginning of the point when the series was consciously being shaped as a set of four poems. It was written and published in 1941 during the air-raids on Great Britain , an event that threatened him while giving lectures in the area. The title comes from the name of a marine rock formation off the coast of Cape Ann , Massachusetts, where he spent time at as
284-666: A clay cup found in Ischia , Italy, are the words "Nestor's cup, good to drink from." Some scholars, such as Calvert Watkins , have tied this cup to a description of King Nestor's golden cup in the Iliad. If the cup is an allusion to the Iliad , that poem's composition can be dated to at least 700–750 BC. Dating is similarly complicated by the fact that the Homeric poems, or sections of them, were performed regularly by rhapsodes for several hundred years. The Odyssey as it exists today
426-473: A Windy Night", and "A Song for Simeon" along with a 1942 lecture called "The Music of Poetry". Some critics have suggested that there were various classical works that Eliot focused on while writing the pieces. In particular, within literary criticism there is an emphasis on Beethoven serving as a model. Some have disputed this claim. However, Lyndall Gordon's biography of T. S. Eliot establishes that Eliot had Beethoven in mind while writing them. The purpose of
568-461: A child. The poem discusses the nature of time and what humanity's place is within time. Life is described metaphorically as travelling in a boat and humanity's fixation on science and future gain keeping the travellers from reaching their destination. Within the poem, Eliot invokes the image of Krishna to emphasise the need to follow the divine will, instead of seeking personal gain. Eliot began working on The Dry Salvages during World War II , at
710-794: A collection in New York in 1943 and then London in 1944. The original title was supposed to be the Kensington Quartets after his time in Kensington . The poems were kept as a separate entity in the United States until they were collected in 1952 as Eliot's Complete Poems and Plays , and in the United Kingdom until 1963 as part of Eliot's Complete Poems 1909–62 . The delay in collecting the Four Quartets with
852-467: A different location in mind. This second poem, East Coker , was finished and published by Easter 1940. (Eliot visited East Coker in Somerset in 1937, and his ashes now repose there at St Michael and All Angels' Church .) As Eliot was finishing his second poem, World War II began to disrupt his life and he spent more time lecturing across Great Britain and helping out during the war when he could. It
994-485: A fig tree. Washed ashore on Ogygia , he remained there as Calypso's lover. Having listened to his story, the Phaeacians agree to provide Odysseus with more treasure than he would have received from the spoils of Troy. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbour on Ithaca. Odysseus awakens and believes that he has been dropped on a distant land before Athena appears to him and reveals that he
1136-399: A garden, focusing on images and sounds like the bird, the roses, clouds, and an empty pool. In Part II, the narrator's meditation leads him to reach "the still point" in which he doesn't try to get anywhere or to experience place and/or time, instead experiencing "a grace of sense." In Part III, the meditation experience becomes darker as night comes on, and by Part IV, it is night and "Time and
1278-513: A leading role. Unable to hide his emotion as he relives this episode, Odysseus at last reveals his identity. He then tells the story of his return from Troy. Odysseus recounts his story to the Phaeacians. After a failed raid against the Cicones , Odysseus and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms. Odysseus visited the lotus-eaters who gave his men their fruit which caused them to forget their homecoming. Odysseus had to drag them back to
1420-496: A melancholy assent to doctrines now quite unbelievable. Over the past quarter of a century, most serious critics—whether or not they find Christian faith impossible—have found in the Quartets the greatest twentieth-century achievements in the poetry of philosophy and religion." Like Orwell, Stead also noticed a difference between the Four Quartets and Eliot's earlier poetry, but he disagreed with Orwell's conclusion: " Four Quartets
1562-450: A particular set form which I have elaborated, and the word "quartet" does seem to me to start people on the right track for understanding them ("sonata" in any case is too musical). It suggests to me the notion of making a poem by weaving in together three or four superficially unrelated themes: the "poem" being the degree of success in making a new whole out of them. The four poems comprising Four Quartets were first published together as
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#17327806510521704-631: A particular version of the text had become canonised. The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely copied and used as school texts in lands where the Greek language was spoken throughout antiquity. Scholars may have begun to write commentaries on the poems as early as the time of Aristotle in the 4th century BC. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, scholars affiliated with the Library of Alexandria —particularly Zenodotus and Aristarchus of Samothrace —edited
1846-478: A plan to ambush his ship and kill him as he sails back home. Penelope overhears their plot and worries for her son's safety. In the course of Odysseus's seven years as a captive of Calypso on the island Ogygia , she has fallen deeply in love with him, even though he spurns her offers of immortality as her husband and still mourns for home. She is ordered to release him by the messenger god Hermes , who has been sent by Zeus in response to Athena's plea. Odysseus builds
1988-512: A proper understanding of the past. Here, the narrator suggests that life is like "drifting wreckage" and a "boat with a slow leakage", emphasizing a sense of aimless persistence in the face of mortality and existential ambiguity. In the third section, the narrator invokes the Bhagavad Gita , wherein the wise creator god Krishna tells the uncertain warrior Arjuna that the divine will, and not future benefits or rewards, matters, comparing
2130-405: A raft and is given clothing, food, and drink by Calypso. When Poseidon learns that Odysseus has escaped, he wrecks the raft, but helped by a veil given by the sea nymph Ino , Odysseus swims ashore on Scherie , the island of the Phaeacians. Naked and exhausted, he hides in a pile of leaves and falls asleep. The next morning, awakened by girls' laughter, he sees the young Nausicaä , who has gone to
2272-455: A re-telling of the Odyssey set in Dublin , is divided into eighteen sections ("episodes") which can be mapped roughly onto the twenty-four books of the Odyssey . Joyce claimed familiarity with the original Homeric Greek, but this has been disputed by some scholars, who cite his poor grasp of the language as evidence to the contrary. The book, and especially its stream of consciousness prose,
2414-623: A series by Faber and Faber in Great Britain between 1940 and 1942 towards the end of Eliot's poetic career ( East Coker in September 1940, Burnt Norton in February 1941, The Dry Salvages in September 1941 and Little Gidding in 1942). The poems were not collected until Eliot's New York publisher printed them together in 1943. Four Quartets are four interlinked meditations with the common theme being man's relationship with time,
2556-516: A set. Eliot wrote the poem quickly and sent the first draft off on 1 January 1941 to John Hayward . After Hayward received the draft, the two began corresponding about edits and alterations to the poem. Geoffrey Faber joined in and then the poem was soon finished. It was published in the February 1941 issue of the New English Weekly . According to a note by Eliot under the title, " The Dry Salvages —presumably les trois sauvages —is
2698-534: A small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the north east coast of Cape Ann , Massachusetts . Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages ." The location is a place that Eliot knew, and the poem links the image of Cape Ann to Eliot's boyhood sailing at Gloucester Harbor . The Dry Salvages also invokes images of the Mississippi River and Eliot's childhood in St Louis . Originally, these images and
2840-441: A sort of opposite to the popular idea that The Waste Land served as an expression of disillusionment after World War I , though Eliot never accepted this interpretation. The poem focuses on life, death, and continuity between the two. Humans are seen as disorderly and science is viewed as unable to save mankind from its flaws. Instead, science and reason lead mankind to warfare, and humanity needs to become humble in order to escape
2982-399: A time when London was experiencing air-raids near the end of 1940. During the time, he moved around often and spent his time writing mostly lectures or tiny poems. However, he was able to find time to work on the third poem that would become part of the Four Quartets : Eliot envisioned that Burnt Norton , East Coker , The Dry Salvages , and a fourth, yet unwritten poem would be united in
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#17327806510523124-466: A type scene in the Odyssey. Two important parts of an omen type scene are the recognition of the omen, followed by its interpretation . In the Odyssey , all of the bird omens—with the exception of the first—show large birds attacking smaller birds. Accompanying each omen is a wish which can be either explicitly stated or only implied. For example, Telemachus wishes for vengeance and for Odysseus to be home, Penelope wishes for Odysseus' return, and
3266-409: A very specific type scene that accompanies it. Throughout the epic, the testing of others follows a typical pattern. This pattern is: Omens occur frequently throughout the Odyssey . Within the epic poem, they frequently involve birds. According to Thornton, most crucial is who receives each omen and in what way it manifests. For instance, bird omens are shown to Telemachus, Penelope, Odysseus, and
3408-436: A weakly sub-Whitmanesque fashion. Yet the writing suddenly picks up at the words, 'The river is within us,' and from there to the end of the section we have a magnificently sustained sequence". F. B. Pinion believed that "'The Dry Salvages' is a complicated, uneven, and rather prosy poem, in which Eliot continues to say the same thing, with some progression, mainly in maritime imagery". Four Quartets Four Quartets
3550-422: A wooden stake. When Polyphemus cried out, his neighbors left after Polyphemus claimed that "Nobody" had attacked him. Odysseus and his men finally escaped the cave by hiding on the underbellies of the sheep as they were let out of the cave. As they escaped, however, Odysseus taunted Polyphemus and revealed himself. The Cyclops prayed to his father Poseidon, asking him to curse Odysseus to wander for ten years. After
3692-491: A world beyond man and that influences the fact he cannot return home. These beings that are close to the gods include the Phaeacians who lived near the Cyclopes, whose king, Alcinous, is the great-grandson of the king of the giants, Eurymedon , and the grandson of Poseidon. Some of the other characters that Odysseus encounters are the cyclops Polyphemus , the son of Poseidon; Circe, a sorceress who turns men into animals; and
3834-441: Is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, Burnt Norton , was published with a collection of his early works (1936's Collected Poems 1909–1935 ). After a few years, Eliot composed the other three poems, East Coker , The Dry Salvages , and Little Gidding , which were written during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain . They were first published as
3976-427: Is able to describe a Christianity that is not restricted by previous views that have fallen out of favour in modern society or contradicted by science. Eliot reasoned that he is not supposed to preach a theological system as a poet, but expose the reader to the ideas of religion. As Eliot stated in 1947: "if we learn to read poetry properly, the poet never persuades us to believe anything" and "What we learn from Dante, or
4118-419: Is an attempt to bring into a more exact balance the will and the creative imagination; it attempts to harness the creative imagination which in all Eliot's earlier poetry ran its own course, edited but not consciously directed. The achievement is of a high order, but the best qualities of Four Quartets are inevitably different from those of The Waste Land ." Early American reviewers were divided on discussing
4260-433: Is discovered by the housekeeper Eurycleia when she recognizes an old scar as she is washing his feet. Eurycleia tries to tell Penelope about the beggar's true identity, but Athena makes sure that Penelope cannot hear her. Odysseus swears Eurycleia to secrecy. The next day, at Athena's prompting, Penelope maneuvers the suitors into competing for her hand with an archery competition using Odysseus's bow. The man who can string
4402-436: Is indeed on Ithaca. She hides his treasure in a nearby cave and disguises him as an elderly beggar so he can see how things stand in his household. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own slaves, swineherd Eumaeus , who treats him hospitably and speaks favorably of Odysseus. After dinner, the disguised Odysseus tells the farm laborers a fictitious tale of himself. Telemachus sails home from Sparta, evading an ambush set by
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4544-515: Is interested in the line and time of Christ, whose Spirit is his total flux. But I am not so sure about his imagination. Is it or is it not an imagination which is saved from time's nausea or terror by points of intersection? ... There seems little doubt that Eliot is attracted above all by the image and the goal of immobility, and that in everything he seeks for approximations to this goal in the human order." Lynch went on to point out that this understanding of time includes Asian influences. Throughout
4686-471: Is likely not significantly different. Aside from minor differences, the Homeric poems gained a canonical place in the institutions of ancient Athens by the 6th century. In 566 BC, Peisistratos instituted a civic and religious festival called the Panathenaia , which featured performances of Homeric poems. These are significant because a "correct" version of the poems had to be performed, indicating that
4828-399: Is more concerned with thematic development. He did fix many of these passages in revision. Critics have compared Eliot to W. B. Yeats . Yeats believed that we live in a cyclical world, saying, "If it be true that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, the saint goes to the centre, the poet and the artist to the ring where everything comes round again." Eliot believed that such a system
4970-542: Is not merely a building-up of an intricate poetic form on the foundation of experiences already over and done with, but a constant energy, an ever-present activity, of thinking and feeling." In his analysis of approaches regarding apocalypse and religious in British poetry, M. H. Abrams claimed, "Even after a quarter-century, T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets has not lost its status as a strikingly 'modern' poem; its evolving meditations, however, merely play complex variations upon
5112-410: Is not necessarily a fulfilment of these but merely a longing or discussion of them. The poem begins with two epigraphs taken from the fragments of Heraclitus : τοῦ λόγου δὲ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοί ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή The first may be translated, "Though wisdom is common, the many live as if they have wisdom of their own"; the second, "the way upward and
5254-654: Is similar to how Augustine of Hippo discussed it, in that memory allows one to understand words and life. The only way to discover eternity is through memory, understanding the past, and transcending beyond time. Likewise, in the Augustinian view that Eliot shares, timeless words are connected to Christ as the Logos and how Christ calls upon mankind to join him in salvation. The title Four Quartets connects to music, which appears also in Eliot's poems "Preludes", "Rhapsody on
5396-482: Is stuck within time. Eliot was influenced by Yeats's reading of Dante. This appears in Eliot's Ash Wednesday by changing Yeats's "desire for absolution" away from a humanistic approach. When Eliot wrote about personal topics, he tended to use Dante as a reference point. He also relied on Dante's imagery: the idea of the "refining fire" in the Four Quartets and in The Waste Land comes from Purgatorio , and
5538-529: Is supposed to connect to those like Stéphane Mallarmé , Edgar Allan Poe , Jonathan Swift , and W. B. Yeats . Time is viewed as unredeemable and problematic, whereas eternity is beautiful and true. Living under time's influence is a problem. Within Burnt Norton section 3, people trapped in time are similar to those stuck in between life and death in Dante 's Inferno Canto Three. When Eliot deals with
5680-402: Is that he will eat him last. Calypso also exemplifies poor guest-friendship because she does not allow Odysseus to leave her island. Another important factor to guest-friendship is that kingship implies generosity. It is assumed that a king has the means to be a generous host and is more generous with his own property. This is best seen when Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, begs Antinous, one of
5822-530: Is that religion must be a snare and a delusion, for instance, then it follows that Eliot becomes an enemy to be assaulted, rather than a pilgrim whose journal one may admire-even if one does not believe in the goal of that quest." Eliot's poetry is filled with religious images beyond those common to Christianity: the Four Quartets brings in Hindu stories with a particular emphasis on the Bhagavad-Gita of
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5964-414: Is the way in which these sequences are very carefully structured. They echo and re-echo each other, and one sequence in each poem, as it were, echoes its companion sequence in the next poem. . . The Four Quartets are poems about a nation and about a culture which is very severely under threat, and in a sense, you could describe The Four Quartets as a poem of memory, but not the memory of one individual but
6106-457: The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey . Both Odysseus and Gilgamesh are known for traveling to the ends of the earth and on their journeys go to the land of the dead. On his voyage to the underworld, Odysseus follows instructions given to him by Circe, who is located at the edges of the world and is associated through imagery with the sun. Like Odysseus, Gilgamesh gets directions on how to reach
6248-562: The Iliad , the Odyssey is divided into 24 books . It follows the Greek hero Odysseus , king of Ithaca , and his journey home after the Trojan War . After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey from Troy to Ithaca, via Africa and southern Europe, lasted for ten additional years during which time he encountered many perils and all of his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus
6390-547: The Mahabharata . Eliot went so far as to mark where he alludes to Hindu stories in his editions of the Mahabharata by including a page added which compared battle scenes with The Dry Salvages . Reviews were favourable for each poem. The completed set received divided reviews in the United States while it was received overall favourably by the British. The American critics liked the poetry but many did not appreciate
6532-476: The Bhagavad-Gita , or any other religious poetry is what it feels like to believe that religion." According to Russell Kirk , "Nor is it possible to appreciate Eliot—whether or not one agrees with him—if one comes to Four Quartets with ideological blinders. Ideology, it must be remembered, is the attempt to supplant religious dogmas by political and scientistic dogmas. If one's first premise
6674-430: The Four Quartets to be Eliot's last great work, some of Eliot's contemporary critics were dissatisfied with Eliot's overt religiosity. George Orwell argued that religion was not a worthy topic for Eliot's poems. Later critics disagreed with Orwell's claims about the poems and argued instead that the religious themes made the poem stronger. Overall, reviews of the poem within Great Britain were favourable while reviews in
6816-424: The Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently and that the stories formed as part of a long oral tradition . Given widespread illiteracy, the poem was performed by an aoidos or rhapsode and was more likely to be heard than read. Crucial themes in the poem include the ideas of nostos (νόστος; "return"), wandering, xenia (ξενία; "guest-friendship"), testing, and omens. Scholars still reflect on
6958-580: The Iliad , Alexander Pope began to translate the Odyssey because of his financial situation. His second translation was not received as favourably as the first. Emily Wilson , a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania , notes that as late as the first decade of the 21st century, almost all of the most prominent translators of Greek and Roman literature had been men. She calls her experience of translating Homer one of "intimate alienation." Wilson writes that this has affected
7100-616: The Odyssey alone spans nearly 2,000 oversized pages in a twentieth-century edition. The first printed edition of the Odyssey , known as the editio princeps , was produced in 1488 by the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles , who had been born in Athens and had studied in Constantinople. His edition was printed in Milan by a Greek printer named Antonios Damilas. Since the late 19th century, many papyri containing fragments of
7242-576: The Odyssey and the Iliad , published together in 1616 but serialised earlier, were the first to enjoy widespread success. The texts had been published in translation before, with some translated not from the original Greek. Chapman worked on these for a large part of his life. In 1581, Arthur Hall translated the first 10 books of the Iliad from a French version. Chapman's translations persisted in popularity, and are often remembered today through John Keats ' sonnet " On First Looking into Chapman's Homer " (1816). Years after completing his translation of
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#17327806510527384-590: The Odyssey have been found in Egypt, some with content different from later medieval versions. In 2018, the Greek Cultural Ministry revealed the discovery of a clay tablet near the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, containing 13 verses from the Odyssey 's 14th book. While it was initially reported to date from the 3rd century AD, the date is unconfirmed. George Chapman 's English translations of
7526-399: The Odyssey was in the 16th century. Adaptations and re-imaginings continue to be produced across a wide variety of media . In 2018, when BBC Culture polled experts around the world to find literature's most enduring narrative, the Odyssey topped the list. The Odyssey begins after the end of the ten-year Trojan War (the subject of the Iliad ), from which Odysseus (also known by
7668-497: The Times Literary Supplement dated 4 September 1941 stated that there was a "note of quiescence, even of bleak resignation" in the poem and that it "lost that spice of wit which was woven into the logic of the earlier poems". Later, Bernard Bergonzi claimed that " The Dry Salvages is the least satisfactory of the sequence, though at the same time it contains some of its best lines. The opening lines are poor, in
7810-399: The bard , performs a narrative poem for them. That night, Athena, disguised as Telemachus, finds a ship and crew for the true prince. The next morning, Telemachus calls an assembly of citizens of Ithaca to discuss what should be done with the insolent suitors, who then scoff at Telemachus. Accompanied by Athena (now disguised as Mentor ), the son of Odysseus departs for the Greek mainland to
7952-503: The eighth circle of hell , where Odysseus appends a new ending to the Odyssey in which he never returns to Ithaca and instead continues his restless adventuring. Edith Hall suggests that Dante's depiction of Odysseus became understood as a manifestation of Renaissance colonialism and othering , with the cyclops standing in for "accounts of monstrous races on the edge of the world", and his defeat as symbolising "the Roman domination of
8094-540: The "Dry Salvages" was part of the landscape his ancestor Andrew Eliot travelled to in 1669. Part of The Dry Salvages refers to Eliot's joining the Anglican Church and his personal pursuit of the divine. There are also many references to events and places that Eliot knew as a child. In terms of literary allusions, Eliot brings in Krishna's and Arjuna's discussion from the Bhagavad-Gita on acting according to
8236-486: The Holy Ghost upon the disciples. The revelation of eternity and time is of an intersection ... It seems not unseemly to suppose that Eliot's imagination (and is this not a theology?) is alive with points of intersection and of descent." He continued with a focus on how time operated within the poem: "He seems to place our faith, our hope, and our love, not in the flux of time but in the points of time. I am sure his mind
8378-606: The Homeric poems, wrote commentaries on them, and helped establish the canonical texts. The Iliad and the Odyssey remained widely studied and used as school texts in the Byzantine Empire during the Middle Ages . The Byzantine Greek scholar and archbishop Eustathios of Thessalonike ( c. 1115 – c. 1195/6 AD ) wrote exhaustive commentaries on both of the Homeric epics that became seen by later generations as authoritative; his commentary on
8520-683: The Islands". The war became central to Little Gidding as Eliot added in aspects of his own experience while serving as a watchman at the Faber building during the London blitz . The Four Quartets were favoured as giving hope during the war and also for a later religious revival movement. By Little Gidding , WWII is not just the present time but connected also to the English Civil War . Each poem has five sections. The later poems connect to
8662-468: The Latin variant Ulysses), king of Ithaca , has still not returned because he angered Poseidon , the god of the sea. Odysseus's son, Telemachus , is about 20 years old and is sharing his absent father's house on the island of Ithaca with his mother Penelope and the suitors of Penelope , a crowd of 108 boisterous young men who each aim to persuade Penelope for her hand in marriage, all the while reveling in
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#17327806510528804-555: The Spring 1943 issue of Scrutiny , discussed the Pentecostal image but would not discuss how it would relate to Eliot's Christianity. Although he appreciated Eliot's work, Paul Goodman believed that the despair found within the poem meant that Eliot could not be a Christian poet. John Fletcher felt that Eliot's understanding of salvation could not help the real world whereas Louis Untermeyer believed that not everyone would understand
8946-562: The United States were split between those who liked Eliot's later style and others who felt he had abandoned positive aspects of his earlier poetry. While working on his play Murder in the Cathedral , Eliot came up with the idea for a poem that was structured similarly to The Waste Land . The resulting poem, Burnt Norton , named after a manor house, was published in Eliot's 1936 edition of Collected Poems 1909–1935 . Eliot decided to create another poem similar to Burnt Norton but with
9088-438: The atmosphere of Tim Lutkin ’s design for the theatre. In 2023, the recorded recitation of Four Quartets was released by Kino Lorber . Odyssey The Odyssey ( / ˈ ɒ d ɪ s i / ; Ancient Greek : Ὀδύσσεια , romanized : Odýsseia ) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer . It is one of the oldest works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. Like
9230-474: The audience to "voyagers". The narrator urges the audience to “fare forward” without being bound by past or future, underscoring a timeless journey of self-realization where each moment holds potential meaning. The fourth section is a short, sixteen-line prayer to the Virgin Mary for fishermen, sailors, and the drowned. The end of The Dry Salvages starts with a discussion about how people attempt to see
9372-462: The bell have buried the day." In Part V, the narrator reaches a contemplative end to his/her meditation, initially contemplating the arts ("Words" and "music") as they relate to time. The narrator focuses particularly on the poet's art of manipulating "Words [which] strain,/Crack and sometimes break, under the burden [of time], under the tension, slip, slide, perish, decay with imprecision, [and] will not stay in place, /Will not stay still." By comparison,
9514-406: The bow and shoot an arrow through a dozen axe heads would win. Odysseus takes part in the competition, and he alone is strong enough to string the bow and shoot the arrow through the dozen axe heads, making him the winner. He then throws off his rags and kills Antinous with his next arrow. Odysseus kills the other suitors, first using the rest of the arrows and then, along with Telemachus, Eumaeus, and
9656-415: The cannibalistic Laestrygonians destroyed all of his ships except his own, Odysseus sailed on and reached the island of Aeaea , home of witch-goddess Circe . She turned half of his men into swine with drugged cheese and wine. Hermes warned Odysseus about Circe and gave Odysseus an herb called moly , making him resistant to Circe's magic. Odysseus forced Circe to change his men back to their human forms and
9798-557: The cannibalistic giants, the Laestrygonians. Throughout the course of the epic, Odysseus encounters several examples of xenia ("guest-friendship"), which provide models of how hosts should and should not act. The Phaeacians demonstrate exemplary guest-friendship by feeding Odysseus, giving him a place to sleep, and granting him many gifts and a safe voyage home, which are all things a good host should do. Polyphemus demonstrates poor guest-friendship. His only "gift" to Odysseus
9940-470: The celestial rose and fire imagery of Paradiso makes its way into the series. The Four Quartets abandons time, as per Dante's conception of the Empyrean , and allows for opposites to co-exist together. As such, people are able to experience God directly as long as they know that they cannot fully understand or comprehend him. Eliot tries to create a new system, according to Denis Donoghue , in which he
10082-511: The cowherd Philoetius, with swords and spears. Once the battle is won, Telemachus also hangs twelve of their household maids whom Eurycleia identifies as guilty of betraying Penelope or having sex with the suitors. Odysseus identifies himself to Penelope. She is hesitant but recognizes him when he mentions that he made their bed from an olive tree still rooted to the ground. She embraces him and they sleep. The next day, Odysseus goes to his father Laertes 's farm and reveals himself. Following them to
10224-428: The crew overriding Odysseus's wishes to remain away from the island. Zeus caused a storm that prevented them from leaving, causing them to deplete the food given to them by Circe. While Odysseus was away praying, his men ignored the warnings of Tiresias and Circe and hunted the sacred cattle. Helios insisted that Zeus punish the men for this sacrilege. They suffered a shipwreck, and all but Odysseus drowned as he clung to
10366-411: The cycle of destruction. To be saved, people must recognize Christ as their saviour as well as their need for redemption. Eliot began writing The Dry Salvages at the end of 1940 during air-raids on London, and managed to finish the poem quickly. The poem included many personal images connecting to Eliot's childhood, and emphasised the image of water and sailing as a metaphor for humanity. According to
10508-433: The design and motifs of Romantic representation of the poets educational progress." Late 20th century and early 21st century critics continued the religious emphasis. Craig Raine pointed out: "Undeniably, Four Quartets has its faults—for instance, the elementary tautology of 'anxious worried women' in section I of The Dry Salvages . But the passages documenting in undeniable detail 'the moment in and out of time' are
10650-465: The divine will along with allusions to Dante's Paradiso , the philosophy of Heraclitus , and the Book of Common Prayer . In regard to these allusions, Eliot would mark up his own editions of the works to note where he used quotes or allusions to lines within his work. In particular, his edition of the Mahabharata included a page added which compared battle scenes with "The Dry Salvages". A review in
10792-404: The earlier sections, with Little Gidding synthesising the themes of the earlier poems within its sections. Within Eliot's own poetry, the five sections connect to The Waste Land . This allowed Eliot to structure his larger poems, which he had difficulty with. According to C. K. Stead , the structure is based on: These points can be applied to the structure of The Waste Land , though there
10934-515: The end of the Odyssey . For instance, one example is that of Agamemnon's homecoming versus Odysseus'. Upon Agamemnon's return, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, kill Agamemnon. Agamemnon's son, Orestes , out of vengeance for his father's death, kills Aegisthus. This parallel compares the death of the suitors to the death of Aegisthus and sets Orestes up as an example for Telemachus. Also, because Odysseus knows about Clytemnestra's betrayal, Odysseus returns home in disguise in order to test
11076-439: The escape, Aeolus gave Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home. Just as Ithaca came into sight, the sailors opened the bag while Odysseus slept, thinking it contained gold. The winds flew out, and the storm drove the ships back the way they had come. Aeolus, recognizing that Odysseus had drawn the ire of the gods, refused to further assist him. After
11218-532: The eternal. Eliot invokes images of original sin and Adam's fall when talking about the past and points out that such events can be forgotten but can still affect mankind. Eliot brings in the image of Krishna to discuss how the past and future are related: Krishna, speaking to Arjuna, claims that death can come at any time and that men should always find the divine will instead of worrying about what their actions will bring. If an individual were to follow Krishna's words then they would be able to free their self from
11360-452: The farm is a group of Ithacans, led by Eupeithes , father of Antinous, who are out for revenge for the murder of the suitors. A battle breaks out, but it is quickly stopped by Athena and Zeus. The Odyssey is 12,109 lines composed in dactylic hexameter , also called Homeric hexameter. It opens in medias res , in the middle of the overall story, with prior events described through flashbacks and storytelling. The 24 books correspond to
11502-527: The form of "the wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning") and pushing the self towards redemption and the eternal life in the next world. By acting properly, one would be able to overcome life and move towards the next world. The central image of The Dry Salvages is water and the sea. The images are similar to the Odyssey but represent internal aspects. Humanity loses itself to technology and theories like evolution that separate mankind philosophically from
11644-454: The four seasons. As the first four parts of The Waste Land have each been associated with one of the four classical elements so has each of the constituent poems of Four Quartets : air ( BN ), earth ( EC ), water ( DS ), and fire ( LG ). However, there is little support for the poems matching with individual seasons. Eliot described what he meant by "quartet" in a 3 September 1942 letter to John Hayward : ... these poems are all in
11786-402: The future through various superstitious means. Then the narrator tries to convince the reader that resignation about death is necessary. Such resignation should be viewed as hinting at "the point of intersection of the timeless with time" or glimpses of the divine, leading one to become satisfied "if our temporal reversion nourish...the life of significant soil" (with a reference to East Coker in
11928-468: The future. The Jesuit critic William F. Lynch, who believed that salvation happens within time and not outside of it, explained what Eliot was attempting to do in the Four Quartets when he wrote: "it is hard to say no to the impression, if I may use a mixture of my own symbols and his, that the Christian imagination is finally limited to the element of fire, to the day of Pentecost , to the descent of
12070-569: The homeland of Odysseus, which may or may not be the same island that is now called Ithakē (modern Greek: Ιθάκη ). The wanderings of Odysseus as told to the Phaeacians, and the location of the Phaeacians' own island of Scheria, pose more fundamental problems, if geography is to be applied: scholars, both ancient and modern, are divided as to whether any of the places visited by Odysseus (after Ismaros and before his return to Ithaca) are real. Both antiquated and contemporary scholars have attempted to map Odysseus's journey but now largely agree that
12212-433: The host's home. Another theme throughout the Odyssey is testing. This occurs in two distinct ways. Odysseus tests the loyalty of others and others test Odysseus' identity. An example of Odysseus testing the loyalties of others is when he returns home. Instead of immediately revealing his identity, he arrives disguised as a beggar and then proceeds to determine who in his house has remained loyal to him and who has helped
12354-454: The household of Nestor , most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy , who resided in Pylos after the war. From there, Telemachus rides to Sparta , accompanied by Nestor's son . There he finds Menelaus and Helen , who are now reconciled. Both Helen and Menelaus also say that they returned to Sparta after a long voyage by way of Egypt. There, on the island of Pharos , Menelaus encounters
12496-456: The island of Thrinacia and that failure to do so would result in the loss of his ship and his entire crew. He then meets his dead mother Anticleia and first learns of the suitors and what happened in Ithaca in his absence. Odysseus also converses with his dead comrades from Troy. Returning to Aeaea, they buried Elpenor and were advised by Circe on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirted
12638-411: The king's palace and eating up his wealth. Odysseus's protectress, the goddess Athena , asks Zeus , king of the gods , to finally allow Odysseus to return home when Poseidon is absent from Mount Olympus . Disguised as a chieftain named Mentes , Athena visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father. He offers her hospitality, and they observe the suitors dining rowdily while Phemius ,
12780-463: The land of the Sirens . All of the sailors had their ears plugged up with beeswax, except for Odysseus, who was tied to the mast as he wanted to hear the song. He told his sailors not to untie him as it would only make him drown himself. They then passed between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis . Scylla claimed six of his men. Next, they landed on the island of Thrinacia, with
12922-412: The land of the dead from a divine helper: the goddess Siduri , who, like Circe, dwells by the sea at the ends of the earth, whose home is also associated with the sun. Gilgamesh reaches Siduri's house by passing through a tunnel underneath Mt. Mashu , the high mountain from which the sun comes into the sky. West argues that the similarity of Odysseus' and Gilgamesh's journeys to the edges of the earth are
13064-551: The landscapes, especially of the Apologia (Books 9 to 11), include too many mythic aspects as features to be unequivocally mappable. Classicist Peter T. Struck created an interactive map which plots Odysseus's travels, including his near homecoming which was thwarted by the bag of wind. Scholars have seen strong influences from Near Eastern mythology and literature in the Odyssey . Martin West notes substantial parallels between
13206-547: The last 548 lines of the Odyssey , corresponding to Book 24, are believed by many scholars to have been added by a slightly later poet. The events in the main sequence of the Odyssey (excluding Odysseus's embedded narrative of his wanderings) have been said to take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands . There are difficulties in the apparently simple identification of Ithaca,
13348-597: The letters of the Greek alphabet ; the division was likely made after the poem's composition, by someone other than Homer, but is generally accepted. In the Classical period , some of the books (individually and in groups) were commonly given their own titles: Book 22 concludes the Greek Epic Cycle , though fragments remain of the "alternative ending" of sorts known as the Telegony . The Telegony aside,
13490-589: The limitations of time. Even if it cannot be fully attained, the effort in attempting it is still important. The way for mankind to understand the divine will is through prayer and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Many of the images connect back to his earlier works. The images of life as boat adrift with a leak is similar to the "Death by Water" section of The Waste Land . Like images about old age and experience found in East Coker , this image reinforces
13632-490: The loyalty of his own wife, Penelope. Later, Agamemnon praises Penelope for not killing Odysseus. It is because of Penelope that Odysseus has fame and a successful homecoming. This successful homecoming is unlike Achilles , who has fame but is dead, and Agamemnon, who had an unsuccessful homecoming resulting in his death. Only two of Odysseus's adventures are described by the narrator. The rest of Odysseus' adventures are recounted by Odysseus himself. The two scenes described by
13774-437: The memory of a whole civilization." In a 2019 interview, conservative philosopher Roger Scruton stated that "...(T. S. Eliot influenced) my vision of culture. And that’s from school days: I came across Four Quartets aged 16 and that made sense of everything for the first time." American author Ross Douthat writes of the poem: "This is a poetic counterpart to Chesterton 's prose. Eliot's verse makes no argument, but distills
13916-457: The most successful attempts at the mystical in poetry since Wordsworth 's spots of time in The Prelude —themselves a refiguration of the mystical." Michael Bell argued for the universality within the poems' religious dimension and claimed that the poems "were genuinely of their time in that, while speaking of religious faith, they did not assume it in the reader." John Cooper, in regard to
14058-553: The narrative significance of certain groups in the poem, such as women and slaves, who have a more prominent role in the epic than in many other works of ancient literature. This focus is especially remarkable when contrasted with the Iliad , which centres the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War. The Odyssey is regarded as one of the most significant works of the Western canon . The first English translation of
14200-482: The narrator are Odysseus on Calypso's island and Odysseus' encounter with the Phaeacians. These scenes are told by the poet to represent an important transition in Odysseus' journey: being concealed to returning home. Calypso's name comes from the Greek word kalúptō ( καλύπτω ), meaning 'to cover' or 'conceal', which is apt, as this is exactly what she does with Odysseus. Calypso keeps Odysseus concealed from
14342-430: The narrator concludes that "Love is itself unmoving,/Only the cause and end of movement,/Timeless, and undesiring." For this reason, this spiritual experience of "Love" is the form of consciousness that most interests the narrator (presumably more than the creative act of writing poetry). Eliot started writing East Coker in 1939, and modelled the poem after Burnt Norton as a way to focus his thoughts. The poem served as
14484-614: The need to look at the whole of life and try to see things beyond the limitations of time. Men are supposed to progress, but they aren't supposed to focus on what they can gain in the future. The prayer to the Virgin Mary is intended to help guide the journey which would end with understanding eternity and the Annunciation. It is Mary who will guide the metaphorical sailors to their proper harbour. While connecting back to his earlier works, Eliot also connects back to his family's past;
14626-465: The old sea-god Proteus , who tells him that Odysseus was a captive of the nymph Calypso . Telemachus learns the fate of Menelaus's brother, Agamemnon , king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks at Troy: he was murdered on his return home by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus . The story briefly shifts to the suitors, who have only just realized that Telemachus is gone. Angry, they formulate
14768-454: The oldest works of extant literature commonly read by Western audiences. As an imaginary voyage , it is considered a distant forerunner of the science fiction genre, and, says science fiction scholar Brian Stableford , "there are more science-fictional transfigurations of the Odyssey than of any other literary text". In Canto XXVI of the Inferno , Dante Alighieri meets Odysseus in
14910-444: The opposite. He argued: "It is clear that something has departed, some kind of current has been switched off, the later verse does not contain the earlier, even if it is claimed as an improvement upon it [...] He does not really feel his faith, but merely assents to it for complex reasons. It does not in itself give him any fresh literary impulse." Years later, Russell Kirk wrote, "I cannot agree with Orwell that Eliot gave no more than
15052-423: The original Greek, the word used is hai , the feminine article, equivalent to "those female people". The influence of the Homeric texts can be difficult to summarise because of how greatly they have affected the popular imagination and cultural values. The Odyssey and the Iliad formed the basis of education for members of ancient Mediterranean society. That curriculum was adopted by Western humanists, meaning
15194-449: The other personal references were intended to be discussed in an autobiographical work that was to collect a series of essays about Eliot's childhood. The poem is described as a poem of water and hope. It begins with images of rivers and the sea, of water, and of Eliot's past; this water later becomes a metaphor for life and how humans act. The narrator compares rivers to a "strong brown god" that humanity tames especially in city life, while
15336-479: The past in The Dry Salvages , he emphasises its importance to combat the influence of evolution as encouraging people to forget the past and care only about the present and the future. The present is capable of always reminding one of the past. These moments also rely on the idea of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita that death can come at any moment, and that the divine will is more important than considering
15478-681: The past. According to Eliot, within each man there is a connection to all of mankind. If we just accept drifting upon the sea, then we will end up broken upon rocks. We are restrained by time, but the Annunciation gave mankind hope that he will be able to escape. This hope is not part of the present. What we must do is understand the patterns found within the past to see that there is meaning to be found. This meaning allows one to experience eternity through moments of revelation. Through Christ, we are able to overcome time unless we do not know him. Our corruption can be overcome and that we are able to join
15620-424: The poem states that humanity is given a choice between the bombing of London or the Holy Spirit. God's love allows humankind to redeem itself and escape the living hell through purgation by fire; he drew the affirmative coda "All shall be well" from medieval mystic Julian of Norwich . The end of the poem describes how Eliot has attempted to help the world as a poet, and he parallels his work in language with working on
15762-477: The poem's place within the historical context of World War II, described the aspects of the series appeal: " Four Quartets spoke about the spirit in the midst of this new crisis and, not surprisingly, there were many readers who would not only allow the poem to carry them with it, but who also hungered for it." In a more secular appreciation, one of Eliot's biographers, the critic Peter Ackroyd , has stated that "the most striking characteristic of The Four Quartets
15904-499: The poem, there is a connection to all of mankind within each man. If we just accept drifting upon the sea, then we will end up broken upon rocks. We are restrained by time, but the Annunciation gave mankind hope that it will be able to escape. This hope is not part of the present. What we must do is understand the patterns found within the past in order to see that there is meaning to be found. This meaning allows one to experience eternity through moments of revelation. Little Gidding
16046-406: The poems, the end becomes the beginning and things constantly repeat. This use of circular time is similar to the way Dante uses time in his Divine Comedy – Little Gidding ends with a rose garden image that is the same as the garden beginning Burnt Norton . The repetition of time affects memory and how one can travel through their own past to find permanency and the divine. Memory within the poem
16188-431: The poems. Many critics have emphasised the importance of the religious themes in the poem. Vincent Buckley stated that the Four Quartets "presuppose certain values as necessary for their very structure as poems yet devote that structure to questioning their meaning and relevance. The whole work is, in fact, the most authentic example I know in modern poetry of a satisfying religio-poetic meditation. We sense throughout it
16330-414: The popular conception of characters and events of the Odyssey, inflecting the story with connotations not present in the original text: "For instance, in the scene where Telemachus oversees the hanging of the slaves who have been sleeping with the suitors, most translations introduce derogatory language ("sluts" or "whores") [...] The original Greek does not label these slaves with derogatory language." In
16472-416: The problem with the poem was with himself and that he had started the poem too soon and written it too quickly. By September 1941, he stopped writing and focused on his lecturing. It was not until September 1942 that Eliot finished the last poem and it was finally published. While writing East Coker Eliot thought of creating a "quartet" of poems that would reflect the idea of the four elements and, loosely,
16614-429: The quartet was to have multiple themes that intertwined with each other. Each section, as in the musical image, would be distinct even though they share the same performance. East Coker and The Dry Salvages are written in such a way as to make the poems continuous and create a "double-quartet". Eliot focused on sounds or "auditory imagination", as he called it. He doesn't always keep to this device, especially when he
16756-546: The religious content of the work or that Eliot abandoned philosophical aspects of his earlier poetry. The British response was connected to Eliot's nationalistic spirit, and the work was received as a series of poems intended to help the nation during difficult times. Santwana Haldar went so far as to assert that the " Four Quartets has been universally appreciated as the crown of Eliot's achievement in religious poetry, one that appeals to all including those who do not share Orthodox Christian creed." George Orwell believed just
16898-527: The religious impulse and his own Christian hope to eloquent perfection." In 2021 Ralph Fiennes directed a theatrical production of Four Quartets . The production toured UK regional theatres and ran at the Harold Pinter Theatre , London, in November and December 2021. A film adaptation , directed by Sophie Fiennes , Ralph’s sister, was filmed in three days using one camera, preserving
17040-400: The rest of Eliot's poetry separated them from his other work, even though they were the result of a development from his earlier poems. The outbreak of World War II , in 1939, pushed Eliot further into the belief that there was something worth defending in society and that Germany had to be stopped. There is little mention of the war in Eliot's writing except in a few pieces, like "Defence of
17182-539: The result of the influence of the Gilgamesh epic upon the Odyssey . In 1914, paleontologist Othenio Abel surmised the origins of the Cyclops to be the result of ancient Greeks finding an elephant skull. The enormous nasal passage in the middle of the forehead could have looked like the eye socket of a giant, to those who had never seen a living elephant. Classical scholars, on the other hand, have long known that
17324-421: The sea is powerful, mysterious, and filled with many discordant "voices" that embody both creative and destructive forces of time and nature beyond human control. In the second section, the poem transitions into an image of a ringing bell and a discussion on time and prayer. Images of men drowning dominate the section before giving way to a brief insight into how science and ideas on evolution separate mankind from
17466-489: The seashore with her maids after Athena told her in a dream to do so. He appeals for help. She encourages him to seek the hospitality of her parents, Arete and Alcinous . Alcinous promises to provide him a ship to return him home without knowing the identity of Odysseus. He remains for several days. Odysseus asks the blind singer Demodocus to tell the story of the Trojan Horse , a stratagem in which Odysseus had played
17608-520: The ship by force. Afterward, Odysseus and his men landed on a lush, uninhabited island near the land of the Cyclopes . The men entered the cave of Polyphemus , where they found all the cheeses and meat they desired. Upon returning to his cave, Polyphemus sealed the entrance with a massive boulder and proceeded to eat Odysseus's men. Odysseus devised an escape plan in which he, identifying himself as "Nobody," plied Polyphemus with wine and blinded him with
17750-427: The soul or working on society. Eliot believed that even if a poem can mean different things to each reader, the "absolute" meaning of the poem needs to be discovered. The central meaning of the Four Quartets is to connect to European literary tradition in addition to its Christian themes. It also seeks to unite with European literature to form a unity, especially in Eliot's creation of a "familiar compound ghost" who
17892-531: The story of the Cyclops was originally a folk tale , which existed independently of the Odyssey and which became part of it at a later date. Similar stories are found in cultures across Europe and the Middle East. According to this explanation, the Cyclops was originally simply a giant or ogre, much like Humbaba in the Epic of Gilgamesh . Graham Anderson suggests that the addition about it having only one eye
18034-493: The suitors wish for the death of Telemachus. There is no scholarly consensus on the date of the composition of the Odyssey . The Greeks began adopting a modified version of the Phoenician alphabet to write down their own language during the mid-8th century BC. The Homeric poems may have been one of the earliest products of that literacy, and if so, would have been composed some time in the late 8th century BC. Inscribed on
18176-411: The suitors, for food and Antinous denies his request. Odysseus essentially says that while Antinous may look like a king, he is far from a king since he is not generous. According to J. B. Hainsworth, guest-friendship follows a very specific pattern: Another important factor of guest-friendship is not keeping the guest longer than they wish and also promising their safety while they are a guest within
18318-418: The suitors. Telemachus and Penelope receive their omens as well in the form of words, sneezes, and dreams. However, Odysseus is the only character who receives thunder or lightning as an omen. She highlights this as crucial because lightning, as a symbol of Zeus, represents the kingship of Odysseus. Odysseus is associated with Zeus throughout both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Omens are another example of
18460-442: The suitors. After Odysseus reveals his true identity, the characters test Odysseus' identity to see if he really is who he says he is. For instance, Penelope tests Odysseus' identity by saying that she will move the bed into the other room for him. This is a difficult task since it is made out of a living tree that would require being cut down, a fact that only the real Odysseus would know, thus proving his identity. Testing also has
18602-730: The suitors. He disembarks on the coast of Ithaca and meets Odysseus. Odysseus identifies himself to Telemachus (but not to Eumaeus), and they decide that the suitors must be killed. Telemachus goes home first. Accompanied by Eumaeus, Odysseus returns to his own house, still pretending to be a beggar. He is ridiculed by the suitors in his own home, especially Antinous . Odysseus meets Penelope and tests her intentions by saying he once met Odysseus in Crete. Closely questioned, he adds that he had recently been in Thesprotia and had learned something there of Odysseus's recent wanderings. Odysseus's identity
18744-399: The text was so much a part of the cultural fabric that it became irrelevant whether an individual had read it. As such, the influence of the Odyssey has reverberated through over a millennium of writing. The poem topped a poll of experts by BBC Culture to find literature's most enduring narrative. It is widely regarded by western literary critics as a timeless classic and remains one of
18886-592: The theological aspects of the Four Quartets . F. R. Leavis , in Scrutiny (Summer 1942), analysed the first three poems and discussed how the verse "makes its explorations into the concrete realities of experience below the conceptual currency" instead of their Christian themes. Muriel Bradbrook, in Theology (March 1943), did the opposite of F. R. Leavis and emphasised how Eliot captured Christian experience in general and how it relates to literature. D. W. Harding, in
19028-584: The universe, and the divine. In describing his understanding of the divine within the poems, Eliot blends his Anglo-Catholicism with mystical, philosophical and poetic works from both Eastern and Western religious and cultural traditions, with references to the Bhagavad-Gita and the Pre-Socratics as well as the Christian mystics , John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich . Although many critics find
19170-419: The way downward is one and the same." The concept and origin of Burnt Norton is connected to Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral . The poem discusses the idea of time and the concept that only the present moment really matters because the past cannot be changed and the future is unknown. In Part I, this meditative poem begins with the narrator trying to focus on the present moment while walking through
19312-660: The western Mediterranean". Some of Ulysses's adventures reappear in the Arabic tales of Sinbad the Sailor . The Irish writer James Joyce 's modernist novel Ulysses (1922) was significantly influenced by the Odyssey . Joyce had encountered the figure of Odysseus in Charles Lamb 's Adventures of Ulysses , an adaptation of the epic poem for children, which seems to have established the Latin name in Joyce's mind. Ulysses,
19454-460: The world and unable to return home. After leaving Calypso's island, the poet describes Odysseus' encounters with the Phaeacians—those who "convoy without hurt to all men" —which represents his transition from not returning home to returning home. Also, during Odysseus' journey, he encounters many beings that are close to the gods. These encounters are useful in understanding that Odysseus is in
19596-521: Was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. The Odyssey was originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BC and, by the mid-6th century BC, had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity , Homer's authorship of the poem was not questioned, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that
19738-496: Was during this time that Eliot began working on The Dry Salvages , the third poem, which was put together near the end of 1940. This poem was published in February 1941 and Eliot immediately began to plot out his fourth poem, Little Gidding . Eliot's health declined and he stayed in Shamley Green to recuperate. His illness and the war disrupted his ability to write and he became dissatisfied with each draft. He believed that
19880-464: Was invented to explain how the creature was so easily blinded. Homecoming (Ancient Greek: νόστος, nostos ) is a central theme of the Odyssey . Anna Bonafazi of the University of Cologne writes that, in Homer, nostos is "return home from Troy, by sea". Agatha Thornton examines nostos in the context of characters other than Odysseus, in order to provide an alternative for what might happen after
20022-416: Was seduced by her. They remained with her for one year. Finally, guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew crossed the ocean and reached a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrificed to the dead . Odysseus summoned the spirit of the prophet Tiresias and was told that he may return home if he is able to stay himself and his crew from eating the sacred livestock of Helios on
20164-448: Was started after The Dry Salvages but was delayed because of Eliot's declining health and his dissatisfaction with early drafts of the poem. Eliot was unable to finish the poem until September 1942. Like the three previous poems of the Four Quartets , the central theme is time and humanity's place within it. Each generation is seemingly united and the poem describes a unification within Western civilisation . When discussing World War II,
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