3. COMPOSITION
Approximate dates of composition:
Burnt Norton late 1935–Feb 1936
East Coker Oct 1939–Mar 1940
The Dry Salvages July 1940–Feb 1941
Little Gidding early 1941–Sept 1942
Burnt Norton began with lines previously written. A version of the opening lines of Part I had been written for the Second Priest in Murder in the Cathedral (see Textual History description of tsMinC), and the opening two lines of Part II had been written for Lines for an Old Man. TSE later told John Lehmann how he adapted the dramatic fragments: “I thought pure, unapplied poetry was in the past for me, until a curious thing happened. There were lines and fragments that were discarded in the course of the production of Murder in the Cathedral. ‘Can’t get them over on the stage,’ said the producer, and I humbly bowed to his judgment. However, these fragments stayed in my mind, and gradually I saw a poem shaping itself round them: in the end it came out as Burnt Norton. Even Burnt Norton might have remained by itself if it hadn’t been for the war, because I had become very much absorbed in the problems of writing for the stage and might have gone straight on from The Family Reunion to another play. The war destroyed that interest for a time: you remember how the conditions of our lives changed, how much we were thrown in on ourselves in the early days? East Coker was the result—and it was only in writing East Coker that I began to see the Quartets as a set of four”, T. S. Eliot Talks about Himself and the Drive to Create (1953).
When TSE sent setting copy for Collected Poems 1909–1935 to his American publisher Donald Brace, 31 Dec 1935, it was “with the exception of one poem which is unfinished, and which I will forward if I can finish it within the next fortnight. This poem would come at the end in any case”. To Mary Hutchinson, 19 Jan 1936: “except that I can’t get the last four lines right, I think I have written rather a nice poem to conclude my Collected Poetical Works.” In his London Letter in the New York Sun for 28 Mar 1936, John Hayward writes that Burnt Norton was “completed only a month or so ago”.
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
Sylvia Beach wrote to TSE, 21 Mar 1936, requesting that he read at her bookshop in Paris: “Is it true that you are working on a new long poem, and would you consent to read from it? We would love to hear even a small piece of it.” 1936 appeared the following month, and TSE read at Shakespeare & Co. on 6 June, with Joyce, Gide and Valéry in the audience (NY Herald Tribune 15 June). According to Noel Riley Fitch’s Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation (1983), the reading included The Waste Land and “early written parts” of Burnt Norton.
Anne Ridler on her time as TSE’s secretary: “I have often wished that I had known, when I was working for him, and he wrote in that summer of 1937 to Sir Matthew Nathan at West Coker saying he would like to pay him a visit—I wish that I had known whether he had poetry in his mind. Of course it didn’t mean anything to me, it was just a letter proposing a visit. I think I knew that his family came from those parts, and I supposed he was perhaps going to do a bit of family hunting, but that was what gave rise to the poem · · · All this must have begun with a summer visit to Chipping Campden”, interview with Kieron Winn, 9 Feb 2000.
TSE to Stephen Spender, 5 Oct 1939: “This autumn, I am divided between the notion of a poem about the length of Burnt Norton, which has been at the back of my mind for a long time, and seeing whether I can devise a play suitable for Martin Browne’s project of a caravan company to play without scenery in small villages.”
To Hayward, 8 Feb 1940: “I hope I can get away in time to have a rest at the club, and to get on with my new poem in succession to Burnt Norton—the second of the three quatuors—provisionally entitled East Coker; of which I have drafted the first two out of the five sections—it may be quite worthless, because most of it looks to me like an imitation of myself, and as for the rest, well, Blake and Clough kept getting into it, and I have been trying to rub them out—I have got rid of the line ‘The Archer’s bow and Taurus’ ire’, which however did not look quite so silly as all that in its context” (presumably the first section of II). OED “quatuor”: “Mus. = quartet 1. [A composition for four voices or instruments, esp. one for four stringed instruments]. The current term in Fr., but not now in Eng. use. 1726 BAILEY, Quatuor (in Musick Books) signifies Musick composed for 4 Voices.” Last citation 1811.
Hayward to Frank Morley, Feb 1940: “I am relieved to hear that Tom has picked up his tablets again after all these months—almost a year—of silence · · · He now writes to say that he is making a little progress with a new poem in succession to Burnt Norton” (King’s).
TSE to Hayward, 20 Feb 1940, on the Christian News Letter: “my association with the C.N.L. is giving me a lot of subject-matter for another Tract for the Times · · · Federal Union, Rights of Man, Education, Mass Observation—enough cokernut shies to give 6s. of entertainment. And speaking of cokernuts, I enclose a Poem. I don’t know whether it is worth tinkering with or not: but you might keep it to yourself, and return it in a week or two in enclosed stamped envelope with the expected neat faint pencil marks. Part IV worries me: that kind of tour de force is always dangerous, because the only good phrases may prove to be reminiscences. It looks like quite clever pseudo-post-Benlowes; I can’t bother to re-read the whole of Saintsbury’s Caroline Poets, to say nothing of the major sources; but if your nose tells you that I have pinched a line without knowing it, let me know.” (George Saintsbury’s three volumes of Minor Caroline Poets, 1905–21, include Benlowes, Cleveland and Henry King.)
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
TSE to Frank Morley, 12 Mar 1940: “you may have noticed that I sent you last week a carbon copy of a poem · · · I am giving it to Philip Mairet to publish at Easter in the New English Weekly, and it has therefore occurred to me that if it is going to be printed here I ought to have it published in an American periodical as soon as possible, in order to cover the copyright. So would you be willing to undertake to pass it on to any suitable periodical that would care to publish it within the necessary period? I don’t know whether I can trust you in a matter like this, because your first impulse, if you think the poem good enough to print at all, would probably be to get as much money for it for me as you can. But one ought not to sell anything of this sort, whether it is good or bad. I would rather get it into a really respectable periodical, even if it could not pay, than be paid some derisory sum like 500 or 1,000 dollars by one of your disreputable reviews with money. My idea was something like the Southern Review or the Kenyon Review or that kind of heavy magazine, preferably published south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Definitely not Poetry or any magazine that makes a feature of poetry. Perhaps it doesn’t matter whether it is published or not, but in case you think fit to take any steps and have the time to do so, I enclose a sheet of corrections, which please incorporate in the text I gave you.”
To Morley, 18 Apr 1940: “I had in fact had in my head the notion of eventually printing these two poems and the unwritten one together in one book, and I am very glad that the idea has occurred to you. But if the third poem is to swing its weight with the other two, it is probably not due till 1943 at the earliest. These are, in that sense, time poems.”
Hayward sent a regular newsletter—“Tarantula’s Special News-Service”—to Morley in the US, keeping him abreast of British publishing and gossip. That of Apr 1940 urged Harcourt Brace to issue East Coker “separately in the manner of an outsize ‘Ariel’ poem”, adding that TSE would probably wish “to wait until East Coker, Burnt Norton and the two other pieces he has in mind to complete the series with” could all appear together. (The large paper issues of the Ariel Poems series are the same format as the 1937 pamphlet of Auden’s Spain, which in turn was the model for Faber’s pamphlets of the Quartets.) In the margin of Hayward’s letter, Morley noted: “I have suggested, TSE very pleased, that when the 3rd and/if 4th poem in the sequence is ready, we’ll make a book of them. A
m against publication of E.C. on its own.” Hayward was more successful with Faber, and he wrote to Morley in June: “Energetic intervention on my part has led to the Book Committee deciding to print East Coker at once as a separate piece. I hope you will follow suit. Tom has undertaken to write a third and concluding poem of about 200 lines, and all three poems will them be printed in small-book form—towards autumn, if we are spared.”
TSE to E. M. W. Tillyard, 6 June 1940: “what you say for yourself and others heartens me and encourages me in the project of writing a third poem in progression from Burnt Norton and East Coker.”
Writing to TSE on 20 June 1940, Hayward expressed the hope that the mood in which TSE had been able to write East Coker would return, “so that the third and last part of the work will be written”. TSE, 23 June: “If, after the Summer School in July, I find that conditions give me the right time and conditions necessary, I intend to try to write poem III. That might just be done: in these days one cannot look far enough ahead to contemplate the year’s steady work which a play would demand.” TSE to Morley, 15 July: “You are too reasonable, I expect, to hope for a third poem by any definite date. I shall be thinking about it and it is possible that I might write it this summer but very likely not. In any case you won’t count upon it for the autumn season.” Hayward to Morley, Aug 1940: “The third poem of the trilogy has not yet been written.”
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
The eventual title Four Quartets was hinted at by the announcement of East Coker among the Autumn Books for 1940: “This is a poem of the same length and in the same form—described by the author as a ‘quartet’—as Burnt Norton, which was published in his Collected Poems 1909–1935. These two poems, and at least one yet unwritten, are intended to form a kind of sequence.”
In autumn 1940, TSE changed his domestic arrangements, for reasons he explained to Richard Jennings, 25 Feb 1941: “I had to leave Kensington because I found being a warden there that I couldn’t keep my mind on literary composition during an alerte, besides I had to sit up two nights a week waiting for Incidents and was too sleepy in the daytime; and the only graceful way to stop being a warden was to leave Kensington: so now I live with some people in Surrey and with the Fabers in Hampstead when in town.”
To Morley, 9 Oct 1940: “I want to do another quartet—provisionally entitled The Dry Salvages (accent on the vages—see chart of Cape Ann).” This Anglo-American Quartet was to coincide with the Lend-Lease scheme enacted in Mar 1941. (The USA entered the war in Dec 1941.) When completed, the sequence comprised one Quartet named after an American place and three after English places. Although the title “Kensington Quartets” had been abandoned (see below, 6. TITLE), war may have affected the balance in the years since TSE wrote to Nelson Lansdale, 22 June 1938:
I have your letter of 13 June, asking me whether I am an American or an English writer. That is a very difficult question to decide, and I submit that I am in no better position to answer it than is anyone else in possession of the published facts. I take it that the question of legal status is not raised, but only that of literary status. If one is to appeal to the year books, I can point out that for several years I appeared in both the British and the American Who’s Who. The editors of the American Who’s Who eventually dropped me without any notification. Possibly their opinion on this vexed question might be of some value · · · It might be argued that this question is one which cannot be decided by itself, but is only a special case in a general category. Is Napoleon, for instance, to be considered as an Italian or a Frenchman? We know that his native language was Italian, and that his Corsican family were probably of Genoese extraction. His case however is not quite parallel to mine, because he changed the spelling of his name, which I have not done.
A case perhaps more pertinent is that of Cardinal Newman. Is Cardinal Newman to be considered an Anglican or a Roman writer? One notes of both these men that they are claimed or repudiated according to the disposition of the individual critic.
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
Hayward wrote to TSE on 9 Nov 1940 to say that Morley was “very anxious to know if there is any likelihood of the third poem being written before the end of the year, so that he can publish the trilogy in the Spring.” TSE to Hayward, 10 Dec 1940: “I have been working this morning at a poem to follow E. Coker, and on a first section dealing with Water, as the previous first section dealt with Earth, or with Autumn instead of Summer: and at this stage it seems to me very unpromising.” Hayward to TSE, “Christmastide 1940”: “I’m glad to hear that you’ve begun a sequel to West Croaker.”
TSE to Geoffrey Curtis, 31 Dec 1940: “I have just completed another poem to go with East Coker, and contemplate a fourth to complete the series. The unwritten one is provisionally, Little Gidding.” Hayward received “the typescript of the first draft of the third poem of Tom’s trilogy” on 1 Jan 1941, having had “No warning that it was even begun” (Hayward to Morley, Jan 1941). TSE to Philip Mairet (editor of NEW 1934–49), 5 Jan, sending The Dry Salvages: “I enclose for your private examination a copy of my new poem. Any criticisms will be appreciated. I may have other changes to make before releasing it for publication. I am least certain about the last section. I am also uncertain about the title—whether it will carry: so I won’t explain it as I wish to find out what kind of misconception it arouses. The word ‘groaner’ may be too obscure also.”
To Clive Bell, 3 Jan 1941: “Such encouragement as you convey is all the more welcome at a time when one needs encouragement, if one is to persist in this odd occupation of making patterns with words. It will require only a little more such flattery, however (so exquisitely concentrated) to persuade me to complete work on my scheme of a set of four. I may even take in hand the long neglected task of putting in order the epical ballad on the life of Chris Columbo (the famous Portuguese navigator) and his friends King Bolo and his Big Black Queen.”
Requesting that Geoffrey Faber have the typescript of The Dry Salvages copied and that copies be sent to Morley “by two different mails, so that he can get copyright in America”, TSE explained, 21 Jan 1941: “I never feel safe about a poem in these days until I get a copy safely evacuated to the U.S.A. Meanwhile you could help me by looking through it for any musical flaws, and any incorrect or inexact words. John Hayward is pretty good at the latter, and made some useful comments on Draft 2: but I trust hardly anyone nowadays to hear a poem and criticise it from that point of view. Neither John, nor Mairet who has seen Draft 3 (this is Draft 4) seemed to be bothered by obscurity. It is impossible for me to know about that myself; for the emotional charge comes from my last visit to that coast (where we had a seaside house) in 1915, after which I never saw my father again. Neither religious nor artistic treatment of past agony is, in my experience, a pain killer: they don’t let you off the rock—but they do make you get the vultures into some kind of pattern.” (For TSE’s vulture and Gide’s eagle, see note to Dans le Restaurant 20.) To Faber again, 3 Feb: “your criticisms are precisely what I want. I have marked seven of them for immediate change; some others I want to keep in mind and perhaps use after the N.E.W. publication, and two or three I have the satisfaction of rejecting with scorn. So what could be better?”
On 24 Feb 1941 TSE wrote to the Librarian of Magdalene College, Cambridge, offering the “manuscripts” of The Dry Salvages and future poems. His Harvard friend Harold Peters, with whom he had sailed the Gloucester coast, was injured in a boating accident and died in Feb 1941 (Soldo 80), but this is not mentioned in TSE’s known correspondence from that year (he wrote to Hayward on 8 Nov 1942 of receiving some news of “Lt. Commander Peters, who was a pal of mine at Harvard”). To Herbert Read, 1 Mar 1941: “I take it you see the N.E.W. I should be interested to have any comments on my salVAGES: especially as there is time for tinkering before we publish it” (as a Faber pamphlet).
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
To Anne Ridler, 17
May 1941: “I don’t think I want any of the three quartets [in A Little Book of Modern Verse] because they are to make a separate volume as soon as, and if, I complete the fourth. But authors must not make their own choice: one has too much tenderness for the little poems of one’s own which have always sat about in corners and never been asked for a dance by anybody.” To M. J. Tambimuttu, 21 June: “I cannot release East Coker for anthology purposes yet. You see, I am working on a fourth poem in the same form, and we intend to bring out the four as one volume, making, I hope, something like a coherent poem sequence, next year.” To Gerald D. Saunders, 25 Sept: “You see, the poem is designed as one of a sequence of four poems which Harcourt Brace will publish in New York as soon as the last poem is ready.” Henry Eliot, presenting The Dry Salvages to the Sawyer Free Library, Gloucester: “The poem has been published only in this form, and only in England, though later it will be published in a volume with three other poems, one of which is not yet finished” (Gloucester Daily Times and Cape Ann Advertiser 27 Feb 1942).
Hayward to Morley, June 1941: “Tom · · · wants if possible to complete the cycle with a fourth poem—Earth, Air, Water, Fire—and has got as far as making a rough, preliminary draft”.
Sending a draft of Little Gidding to Hayward on 7 July 1941, TSE wrote: “you will understand my being worried and diffident and depressed at this writing · · · If however I can wring victory out of defeat, the question will arise whether I should let them publish this separately uniform with the other three, and make a book after a season (i.e. autumn 1942) or not publish this separately, so as to have something new in the book.”
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 126
