Why did ol' Tom write the Four Quartets?
To be famous? He already was. To secure his literary heritage? Nothing is less secure. To make some 'grand statement'? See the first two answers.
Without having read any major biographies or done any real research, I want to suggest an answer: he was afraid of moving back to London and helping people cope with the Blitz.
To me, Four Quartets lives under an umbrella of the poet's search for 'ultimate answers' in life and death -- hiding under the umbrella is Eliot's real-world fear of getting blown to bits by a buzz bomb.
He probably realized volunteering to work as an air raid warden would get him sent to the worst place in London -- an area surrounding an old Roman road that would have made an easy WW2-bomber target.
This road is in the poem. I'll let you find it. The road runs through the whole work -- sometimes quite literally, sometimes in bits, like a mosaic.
I am probably way off-base. (Online sources have him drafting Four Quartets while he was an air raid warden or watchman or whatever.) I usually am. But just think about it, anyway. Eliot may even have had a real, direct and personal motive for actually going and doing what scared him the most. Something that would have overmastered his fear.
Think about that, too.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
Afternote One -- Remember when I wrote "Jean-Louis"?
It's funny how one mention of the name "Kerouac" can bring out the PARRRRR-TAYYYY AAAANNNIMAL -- WOOO! in certain burnt-out cases around my age.
It seems people don't understand the guy any more now than they did back when he was alive. A 'regular guy' with a troubled past, a football injury that killed his college career when the term 'red shirt' meant something else, and a yen after that to find the truth wherever it lead him is what I think of when I hear the name, personally.
Maybe all the drugs and drink and vido loco in his poetry was necessary for him to find what he was looking for, and maybe it wasn't.
What this blog has been about -- all about, really -- is that, if it ever was necessary, it no longer is.
P.S.: That doesn't mean you won't suffer travails, neighbors -- just that you don't necessarily need to dive in looking for them.
___
After-afternote (11/28/12): I wrote the first sentence above never having read On The Road. Truly. I was only interested in Kerouac the poet, having heard years ago he was a mediocre novelist. Now that I've just finished On The Road (the standard prose version, looking for clues to his Blues), I know why the 'party animal' label sticks to him so securely, even after a half century.
As for his being a mediocre novelist, Kerouac may have had the last laugh: look at some of the longer prose poems of Baudelaire (one of Kerouac's more obvious forebears) and compare them to the allegedly awkward beginning and 'overwritten' sections of On the Road. Hmmm ... . Maybe the novel wasn't the point, after all.
It seems people don't understand the guy any more now than they did back when he was alive. A 'regular guy' with a troubled past, a football injury that killed his college career when the term 'red shirt' meant something else, and a yen after that to find the truth wherever it lead him is what I think of when I hear the name, personally.
Maybe all the drugs and drink and vido loco in his poetry was necessary for him to find what he was looking for, and maybe it wasn't.
What this blog has been about -- all about, really -- is that, if it ever was necessary, it no longer is.
P.S.: That doesn't mean you won't suffer travails, neighbors -- just that you don't necessarily need to dive in looking for them.
___
After-afternote (11/28/12): I wrote the first sentence above never having read On The Road. Truly. I was only interested in Kerouac the poet, having heard years ago he was a mediocre novelist. Now that I've just finished On The Road (the standard prose version, looking for clues to his Blues), I know why the 'party animal' label sticks to him so securely, even after a half century.
As for his being a mediocre novelist, Kerouac may have had the last laugh: look at some of the longer prose poems of Baudelaire (one of Kerouac's more obvious forebears) and compare them to the allegedly awkward beginning and 'overwritten' sections of On the Road. Hmmm ... . Maybe the novel wasn't the point, after all.
