Eliot and Wm. Carlos Wms.
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Little Gidding by Thomas Stearns Eliot and Asphodel, That Greeny Flower by William Carlos Williams both treat sin as a necessary precursor to redemption. Both of the poems as well are uncertain that love has any kind of redemptive power. For Eliot says in Book IV of Little Gidding: “Who then devised the torment? Love. / Love is the unfamiliar Name / Behind the hands that wove / The intolerable shirt of flame / Which human power cannot remove. / We only live, only suspire / Consumer by either fire or fire” (Eliot 5). Williams, on the other hand, does acknowledge the power of love “There is no power / so great as love”, but also wonders if there is redemption through love left for him or if he has waited too long, “I cannot say / that I have gone to hell /for your love / but often / found myself there / in your pursuit” (Williams 7).Eliot’s poem is filled with existential angst over every beginning only representing a new ending. The speaker now understands that despite our inability to draw anything more than temporary moments of happiness out of life, this understanding makes him know how to live life more fully for the first time, “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time” (Eliot 6). In the beginning of the poem the speaker is lamenting the fact that mortality eventually and across-the-board makes a mockery of all human
. . .
uman nature) and darkness of mortality. As he says in Asphodel, “So let us love / confident as is the light / in its struggle with darkness” in reference to love. In reference to art, he suggests that it is the only light that can bring meaning and fulfillment to mortal existence, in fact it is the only manner of immortality to survive the thunder bolt of death:
In the controversy
touching the young
and the older Tolstoy,
Villon, St. Anthony, Kung,
Rimbaud, Buddha
and Abraham Lincoln
the palm goes
always to the light;
who most shall advance the light—
call it what you may!
The light
for all time shall outspeed
the thunder crack.
(Williams 40)
The speaker in Eliot’s poem subtly persuades us to seek redemption by outlining the sins of the past and the common future fate and past fate of all sinners. He also explains the process that occurs when we reach old age, one which is merciless regarding our past transgressions, “First, the cold friction of expiring sense / Without enchantment, offering no promise / But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit . As body and soul begin to fall asunder. / Second, the conscious impotence of rage / At human folly, and the laceration / Of laughter at what ceases to amuse, / And
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1266
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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