Burnt Norton by T.S. Eliot | Summary, Themes & Analysis
Abraham Thomas, Katherine Garner
Explore "Burnt Norton." Learn the background of T.S. Eliot’s "Four Quartets," read a summary of his "Burnt Norton," and study the analysis, themes, and symbols.
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T.S. Eliot's ''Four Quartets''
T.S. Eliot's ''Burnt Norton'' Analysis
T.S. Eliot's ''Four Quartets''
''Four Quartets'' is a sequence of four poems by the American–English poet T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Considered Eliot's masterpiece by many critics, it is a complex work that blends numerous religious and philosophical ideas into a meditation on humans' relationship with time. The four poems in the sequence are titled ''Burnt Norton,'' ''East Coker,'' ''The Dry Salvages,'' and ''Little Gidding.''The poems were originally published separately between 1940 and 1942, and were first published in a single volume in 1943 by Eliot's American publisher. The poems were written early in World War II, when Britain was being bombed by Nazi Germany's air force, and were partly inspired by those events. Eliot used the poems to express what he believed was worth saving in Western civilization, which at the time seemed to be on the brink of destruction.
''Four Quartets'' was also influenced by Eliot's Christianity. As a member of the Church of England, he adhered to the tradition of Anglo-Catholicism, or the ''high church,'' which emphasizes the Catholic heritage and identity of the Church of England while maintaining separation from the Roman Catholic Church. Elements of Anglo-Catholic theology are central to these poems. All four ultimately express the idea that civilization can be saved from ruin and humans from damnation by acceptance of Christ.
Eliot also associated each poem with one of the four classical elements: air for ''Burnt Norton,'' earth for ''East Coker,'' water for ''The Dry Salvages,'' and fire for ''Little Gidding.'' This conception of the elements, originating from ancient Greek philosophy, is one example of the poems' inclusion of philosophical and religious ideas other than those of Christianity
Summary of "Burnt Norton"
Like the other poems in ''Four Quartets,'' ''Burnt Norton'' is organized into five parts.
Part I:
''Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / and time future contained in time past.'' This sets out the poem's key ideas about time and humans' relationship to it.
''If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable.'' This crystallizes the poem's point about time. It cannot be ''redeemed,'' i.e. recovered; it can only be remembered (past), acted upon (present), or anticipated (future).
Even though the past cannot be recovered, it may haunt us: "Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden.''
However, the narrator and his companion do go into the garden, urged on by a bird, despite knowing that it is deceiving them. The garden is inhabited by ''other echoes'' (i.e. of the past).
The reason for going into the garden is that ''human kind / Cannot bear very much reality.'' Humans prefer to reminisce about the past, represented by the garden, or speculate about the future, rather than engage with the present.
Part II:
The place ''where past and future are gathered'' should not be called ''fixity.'' Since neither the past nor the future can be reached, they are not ''fixed,'' i.e. unchanging.
Instead, there is a ''point, the still point,'' without which ''there would be no dance'' — which is all there is: ''and there is only the dance.''
Achieving an ''inner freedom from the practical desire, / The release from action and suffering, release from the inner / And the outer compulsion'' will enable us to inhabit this ''still point,'' i.e. the present. We must escape ''the enchainment of past and future,'' since, unlike the present, they ''allow but a little consciousness.''
Part III:
The past and the future are both ''a place of disaffection,'' which is ''in a dim light.'' This light is neither bright enough to clearly see by, nor dark enough to allow for tranquility. This place is one of ''neither plenitude nor vacancy,'' and ''filled with fancies and empty of meaning''.
Rather than this gloomy, hollow realm, one can either descend to ''the world of perpetual solitude,'' devoid of ''sense'' and ''spirit,'' or one can instead engage ''not in movement, / But in abstention from movement''. In other words, one can inhabit the present, and thus try to take action, rather than idly reminiscing or speculating.
Part IV:
Continuing some of the ideas from previous parts, this part discusses the movement of the world, symbolized by a dark cloud covering the sun. In contrast, there is a light, which ''is still / At the still point of the turning world.''
Part V:
The poem concludes that the things with real value are those that are not constrained by time and their movement through it.
Key lines: ''That which is only living / Can only die''; ''Love is itself unmoving''; ''Ridiculous the waste sad time / Stretching before and after.''
These lines demonstrate the poem's ultimate point: things and people that are concerned primarily with ''movement'' through time, whether by trying to reclaim the past or leap into the future, will fail because the past and the future are beyond our reach. Only by stepping out of this movement and becoming ''unmoving'' and timeless can people enter into the present, i.e. the one part of time where we can do anything.
T.S. Eliot's ''BurntBurnt Norton'' Analysis
The main idea discussed in ''Burnt Norton'' is time and humans' relationship to it. Other ideas in the poem exist primarily to help develop this theme. These other concepts include air, birds, movement, stillness, and light, as well as some ideas from Christianity and other religions. Apart from Eliot himself, the person most associated with the poem is Emily Hale, a close friend of Eliot's, with whom he visited the Burnt Norton property in 1934. The companion whom the narrator refers to in Parts I and II is meant to be Hale, as the narrator represents Eliot.
Themes in "Burnt Norton"
One of the predominant themes of ''Burnt Norton'' is time and humans' relationship to it. In particular, it makes clear Eliot's view that concentrating too much on either the past or the future is something to be avoided. The poem articulates why this is: the past cannot be changed, the future cannot be reached, and the present is the only part of time one can affect.
Hence, the poem argues that a focus on the present is what one should have, even if one is more concerned with the past and/or the future. The opening lines declare the past and the present to both exist in the future, and the future to exist in the past; in other words, time is a cycle. On this view, although the present is the only part of time that one can directly affect, current actions may indirectly affect the past and/or the future, which is the only way to affect them at all.
The line ''All time is unredeemable'' is worth attention, since the word ''unredeemable'' may be confusing. In this context, it does not mean ''irreversibly bad,'' as it might in other contexts, but ''impossible to recover.'' What Eliot means is that no part of time can be retrieved or re-experienced. The past and the future are both beyond reach, and though the present is right now, once it becomes the past, it will also be irrecoverable.