Elements inwards Eliot

An of import mass yesteryear Benjamin G. Lockerd Jr, Aethereal Rumours: T.S. Eliot's Physics together with Poetics, does for The Waste Land and the Four Quartets something of what Michael Ward does for the Chronicles of Narnia yesteryear C.S. Lewis inwards Planet Narnia. In his book, Michael Ward shows that each of the 7 tales of Narnia was intended yesteryear Lewis to jibe amongst 1 of the 7 astrological planets – taking these every bit spiritual symbols of perennial value (as he does inwards his academic plant on Medieval together with Renaissance literature, together with inwards the Space Trilogy). Similarly, Lockerd shows that Eliot was ever concerned amongst reconciling verse amongst science, together with dissimilar other modern poets "increasingly placed his verse quite consciously together with deliberately inside
the cosmos described yesteryear the ancient philosophical physics" of Heraclitus together with Aristotle. He was an admirer of modern science, merely non of scientism, pregnant the cult of a scientific discipline deemed purely "objective" inwards contrast to the "subjective" arts. He sought to overcome this faux dualism inwards his ain work, together with then was drawn to a "science of essences" that he did non believe had been superseded yesteryear modern chemical scientific discipline or physics. The Waste Land has 5 sections which jibe symbolically together with thematically to the 5 elements (including the fifth, aether, which Plato in Timaeus 55c associated amongst the 5th regular solid, the dodecahedron, on which the Demiurge embroidered the constellations). Each of the Four Quartets corresponds to 1 of the 4 earthly elements amongst the 5th acquaint throughout; especially, I would speculate, inwards the 5th department of each poem. Lockerd's mass was encouraged yesteryear Russell Kirk together with partly written at Piety Hill. It is a valuable contribution to the literature connecting ancient together with modern science, too every bit scientific discipline together with poetry.

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