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.
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