Bonus: Malcolm Guite on T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets (Part 1)

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings. I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to season 10 of Turning to the Mystics, where we've been turning to TS. Eliot's poetry in four quartets. In this episode, Jim and I are being joined by a very special guest and expert on four quartets, Malcolm Guite. This conversation was so rich that we divided it into two episodes. Today, in part one of our dialogue, we'll focus on the first two poems from four quartets.

But before we get started, let me tell you a little more about Malcolm Guite. Malcolm Guite is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest and academic. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts. He is a life fellow at Gertran College, Cambridge. On several occasions, he has taught as visiting faculty at colleges and universities in England and North America. Guite is the author of five books of poetry as well as several books on Christian faith and theology. Now, on to the episode. Welcome, Malcolm. Welcome, Jim.

Malcolm Guite (1:30)

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

James Finley (1:31)

Yeah, very good.

Kirsten Oates (1:33)

So Malcolm, where are you joining us from?

Malcolm Guite (1:36)

So I'm actually in a little studio in the wonderful medieval city of Norwich, in the county of Norfolk. Norwich, of course, has its own little resonance with the Four Quartets because the great mystic Julian of Norwich flourished here in the 14th century and her shrine. The actual shrine is at a church right here near the city center. It was bombed in the war, but it was rebuilt just in exactly the same place. So you can walk down into Julian's shrine. And in fact, you know, you can hear, as it were, Eliot channeling her in, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. And they have a lovely thing. They have a little bowl there of hazelnuts gathered from the trees. And because of that wonderful moment where she sees the hazelnut, you can pick up a hazelnut and go and pray and contemplate. And then you can take it home with you, you know, in your waistcoat pocket and have it to remember. So I think Julian, in a curious way, still has a ministry in Norwich. That space is very special and many people visit it. And there's a deep silence there.

James Finley (2:37)

And you know, Malcolm, I was in Norwich a couple of times. I was in her hermitage. It was a very sacred space for me. And inscribed in the wall was her quote, thou art enough for me.

Malcolm Guite (2:48)

Yes, that's right. No, that is there on the wall. I was there only two or three weeks ago, actually, and it is a remarkable place. But when I was an undergrad at Cambridge, I came on a retreat here with the then keeper of the shrine, a guy called Robert Llewellyn, who wrote some very beautiful books on Julian. I've known that place since, I guess, 1979 or 80, yeah.

Kirsten Oates (3:12)

Wow. Well, beautiful. Thank you for bringing the resonance of Julian from your space, Malcolm. That's so lovely. Malcolm, you have a long history with Four Quartets, I understand. I'm wondering if you could share more about your personal connection.

Malcolm Guite (3:27)

I've loved the poems for a very long time. I first encountered Eliot really as a schoolboy. We had a very good English teacher who read Proof Rock and then read The Waste Land with us. But what was great was that he didn't come at it with all kinds of scholarly learning and show it to us bristling with footnotes. He said Waste Land was originally called, He'd Do the Police in Different Voices, and so we were all just given parts and it was a kind of drama for us. So that got me into Eliot and then I carried on and then I found Four Quartets by myself. It was a very different kind and style, but I found myself deeply drawn to it, so much so that eventually I visited, well I visited all three of the places that you could physically visit in England. And I had a friend in Massachusetts who could take me out to wear a place from which I could see the dry salvages as the trace of our, so I've kind of touched base with all the places. And of course the thing about, well one of the many things about the Four Quartets is that the poems remember themselves. The poems not only gather together the memory of many other writers like Julian and you know, and all passages from Bhagavad Gita or all the different things that he gathers in. But each poem kind of refers back to the poem before it and then the third re-backed. So it's a great, rich, resonant collections of recollections, which is very appropriate for a poem that is about the relationship of time and eternity. But what I find then is that there's a deeper thing. If you read this poem often enough that passages of it are in your mind and in your memory, then every time you return to the poem in another place or stage of your life, re-reading the poem gathers up where you were when you last read the poem. So the thing becomes more and more resonant. And every time you finish the poem, you know, that whole line, you know, to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. There's a sense in which you know that next time you read the poem, however soon or late that is, it's going to be fresh and new and yet it's also going to be richer for all those previous readings. I suppose I probably first read it when I was in the sixth form. So that would have been in 1975 or six. So it's nearly 50 years that I've left with this poem.