TSE to Hayward, 7 July 1941: “I have wanted to call the book Kensington Quartets, but this may not find favour.” 3 Sept 1942: “The title I have always had in mind for it was KENSINGTON QUARTETS. I have had a fancy to have Kensington in it.” Hayward to Morley, 7 Sept 1942: “I’m afraid that ‘Kensington’ is too likely to suggest to the uninformed majority of readers a private joke of some kind or an allusive jibe at all that ‘Kensington’ is commonly thought to stand for—the decaying rentier, frayed respectability and the keeping up of outmoded conventions. (You remember me in Bina Gardens?)” TSE to Hayward, 9 Sept 1942: “I see your objection to KENSINGTON.” (To Virginia Woolf, 31 Oct [1933]: “I have not done much more about lodgings; but my present intention is to look at a room in Kensington (a district which I dislike) · · · while I am looking about elsewhere.”)
To Hayward, 3 Sept 1942: “How great is the resistance to ‘quartets’? I am aware of general objections to these usual musical analogies: there was a period when people were writing long poems and calling them, with no excuse, ‘symphonies’ (J. Gould Fletcher even did a ‘Symphony in Blue’ I think, thus achieving a greater confusion des genres). But I should like to indicate that these poems are all in a particular set form which I have elaborated, and the word ‘quartet’ does seem to me to start people on the right tack for understanding them (‘sonata’ in any case is too musical). It suggests to me the notion of making a poem by weaving in together three or four superficially unrelated themes: the ‘poem’ being the degree of success in making a new whole out of them.” (John Gould Fletcher’s The Blue Symphony appeared in Poetry Sept 1914; George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was first performed in 1924. Conrad Aiken’s The House of Dust, 1920, was subtitled A Symphony. For John Addington Symonds’s In the Key of Blue, see note to Goldfish I 13–15. On musical titles, see note to the title Preludes.)
Morley looked more favourably upon the use of “Kensington” than Hayward (Hayward to Morley, 8 Nov 1942, Composition FQ 26–27). On 7 Dec, however, TSE wrote to I. A. Richards: “I fear that ‘Kensington’ will have to go, as all the opinions taken have been adverse: but I can’t think of anything better, and they may have to go out plainly as Four Quartets—rather a pity, as a name might have given the impression of unity which I should like to establish.” Valerie Eliot, TLS 16 July 1971: “T. S. Eliot’s wish to call his four poems ‘Kensington Quartets’ is not so surprising as Mr Carswell seems to think (July 2). Burnt Norton and East Coker were written in the Royal Borough, in Grenville Place and Emperor’s Gate respectively, and contain local allusions—for example ‘a place of disaffection’ is Gloucester Road Underground Station. And in Little Gidding the line ‘We trod the pavement …’ is a reference to the surface of the Cromwell Road.”
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
TSE to Montgomery Belgion, 9 Feb 1943: “Frank is publishing the four quartets in one volume in the spring.” Although not as part of the title, TSE continued often to use the definite article: “the Four Quartets” (occasionally “the four Quartets”; also “my Four Quartets”, “these Four Quartets”).
7. MUSIC
To Pamela Murray, 4 Feb 1938: “What interests me is the dramatic, and I think that the chief interest in the best of my early poems is the sketching, however slightly, of character; you will observe a middle period (Ash Wednesday) in which there is no dramatic interest; and now I am chiefly interested in the theatre. But I am also interested (Burnt Norton) in possible approximations to musical form and musical effect.”
“The use of recurrent themes is as natural to poetry as to music. There are possibilities for verse which bear some analogy to the development of a theme by different groups of instruments; there are possibilities of transitions in a poem comparable to the different movements of a symphony or a quartet; there are possibilities of contrapuntal arrangement of subject-matter”, The Music of Poetry (1942); see Thomas R. Rees, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Autumn 1969.
To H. W. Heckstall-Smith, 25 Apr 1946: “There is no suggestion that my Four Quartets are intended for four voices or indeed for any voice except the author’s, as most lyrical poetry is. As soon as the author has a different voice in mind than his own the poem becomes to that extent dramatic. I meant simply chamber music with distinct themes and movements.”
In English Letter Writers (1933), TSE quotes D. H. Lawrence to Catherine Carswell, 11 Jan 1916: “the essence of poetry with us in this age of stark and unlovely actualities is a stark directness, without a shadow of a lie, or a shadow of deflection anywhere. Everything can go but this stark, bare, rocky directness of statement, this alone makes poetry, to-day”. TSE comments: “This speaks to me of that at which I have long aimed, in writing poetry; to write poetry which should be essentially poetry, with nothing poetic about it, poetry standing naked in its bare bones, or poetry so transparent that we should not see the poetry, but that which we are meant to see through the poetry, poetry so transparent that in reading it we are intent on what the poem points at, and not on the poetry, this seems to me the thing to try for. To get beyond poetry, as Beethoven, in his later works, strove to get beyond music. We never succeed, perhaps, but Lawrence’s words mean this to me, that they express to me what I think that the forty or fifty original lines that I have written strive towards.” (To Ford Madox Ford, 14 Aug 1923: “There are I think about thirty good lines in The Waste Land, can you find them? The rest is ephemeral”; see note to [V] 331–58.)
When J. Shepherd enquired why the five-part poems were not “quintets”, TSE’s secretary replied, 24 Aug 1961: “the form had originally been suggested to him by musical quartets, which are so called because they are scored for four instruments · · · and he had particularly in mind the late quartets of Beethoven.” When Brigid Brophy questioned what the four instruments were in each Quartet (New Statesman 23 Apr, 14 May 1965), Hugh Heckstall-Smith recalled writing to TSE in 1944 asking “what the four of his Quartets were four of, and he answered that it had nothing to do with anything except that ‘quartet’ suggested Chamber Music composed for close attention by a small audience who had a fair understanding of what they were listening to”, New Statesman 21 May 1965.
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
Musical influences. “Those of us who love Beethoven find in his music something that we call its meaning, though we cannot confine it in words; but it is this meaning which fits it in, somehow, to our whole life; which makes it an emotional exercise and discipline, and not merely an appreciation of virtuosity”, Poetry and Propaganda (1930). Howarth 286–89 suggests that TSE had read J. W. N. Sullivan’s Beethoven: His Spiritual Development (1927). For TSE’s acquaintance with Sullivan, see letter to Aldous Huxley, 8 Jan 1925. In 1927, however, TSE declined a request from the Beethoven Centennial committee that he write about the composer. To Frederick N. Sard, 15 Jan 1927: “Of course I am familiar as an ordinary listener with a great deal of his work, but I have no special knowledge of his chamber music or of his later work.”
To Stephen Spender, 28 Mar 1931, on Beethoven’s Op. 132: “I am delighted to hear that you have been at the late Beethoven—I have the A minor quartet on the gramophone, and find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly or at least more than human gaiety about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse once before I die” (Spender 128–29). Again, 30 May 1931: “I fear that you exaggerate the precision and detail of my knowledge of Beethoven: I am quite unconscious of any of the parallels you mention, and one or two of the works I do not know, or at least do not remember. I can claim nothing but a profound impression, mostly from the better known symphonies, sonatas and overtures, but dating certainly from an early time and my eldest sister was playing Beethoven incessantly before I was out of the cradle. But my theory of writing verse is that one gets a rhythm, and a movement first, and fill
s it in with some approximation to sense later.” Spender referred to Sullivan’s book in an essay on TSE in The Destructive Element (1935). His wife, the pianist Natasha Spender, played Beethoven to TSE in Aug 1942 and later recalled discussing the composer with him during the writing of Four Quartets (personal communication). TSE to Edwin Muir, 24 Feb 1943, of Little Gidding: “thank you very much for your kind and penetrating review in The New Statesman. You are quite right in supposing that the Beethoven late quartets were present in the background.” See notes to the title Coriolan and to East Coker V 12 and 31.
Kenner 261 claims that the string quartets most in TSE’s mind were Bartok’s nos. 2–6. Moody 198 compares Burnt Norton to no. 4 and Jones 265 proposes no. 6. Of these, the most probable influence is no. 4, which is structured as a chiasmus, of the kind for which Bartok is famous. In the Philharmonia pocket score, Bartok wrote: “The slow movement forms the kernel of the work. The other movements are stratified around it · · · the first and fifth movements providing the external layer, and the second and fourth, the internal layer.” (“In my beginning is my end · · · In my end is my beginning”, East Coker.)
Memo from M. I. Drage of Faber to Basil Douglas of the Apollo Society, 3 Feb 1967: “Mrs. Eliot says she hesitates to declare that any particular quartet, either by Beethoven or Bartok, could be held a preeminent influence in the writing of the Four Quartets · · · Eliot was especially fond of Beethoven’s 132nd [the A minor, Op. 132], but she would not like this one to be given any categoric position in his preferences” (Faber archive).
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
8. PUBLICATION
The announcement of Collected Poems 1909–1935 in Faber’s Autumn List 1936 calls it “The definitive edition to date, with a new long poem” (Burnt Norton). TSE to Paul Elmer More, 27 Mar 1936: “I am just sending you my volume of collected poems, which is due to appear next week. Having produced this book so close on the heels of the volume of essays makes me feel for the moment as if I had been preparing for a dignified retirement, or at least postponing further literary work until another janma.” (Essays Ancient and Modern had been published less than a month before. Sanskrit janma = birth, state of existence, lifetime; see note to The Dry Salvages V 1–12.)
To Louis MacNeice, 19 July 1935: “It never seems to me desirable to date poems at this stage [first book publication]. It might be desirable later with a large collected edition, although even in that case I think it is better to date poems in blocks according to what the author recognises to be the important periods in his development, rather than individually.”
The pamphlet of East Coker appeared in Sept 1940. Burnt Norton followed in a matching pamphlet in Feb 1941, Richard de la Mare having briefed the printers, 28 Nov 1940, that it was “the first of a series of four or five poems that Eliot is writing, of which East Coker is the second, and the others will also be published separately in pamphlet form” (Faber archive). (The colophon of the Burnt Norton pamphlet read “First published in February 1941”, with later impressions interpolating “in this form”.) The Dry Salvages pamphlet followed the first two in Sept 1941; Hayward’s copy was acknowledged on 5 Sept (although inscribed “for John Hayward whose suggestions somewhat altered this poem T. S. Eliot 10.ix.41”).
Little Gidding cost TSE the most effort. John Hayward wrote in his “Letter from London” published in Swedish in Bonniers Litterara Magasin in May 1942 that TSE “had hoped to complete by last autumn the poetic tetralogy of which only the first three sections—Burnt Norton, East Coker and The Dry Salvages—have been published. But the fourth and concluding poem—Little Gidding—has not progressed beyond a first draft. Fine as it seems to me to be, it has been laid aside until he feels that he can improve it.” (Later, believing that Bonniers Litterara Magasin had published a Swedish translation of Little Gidding without his knowledge—it was in fact The Dry Salvages—TSE wrote to George Svenson, 17 Apr 1945, in protest: “I am not prepared to acknowledge Mr. Warburton’s translation as authoritative · · · There must have been—at least there should have been—some places where he was not quite sure of what I meant: if I had been given the opportunity to explain any doubtful points, the translation would have been by so much the more faithful.”)
Little Gidding was published in NEW 15 Oct 1942, and as a Faber pamphlet on 1 Dec 1942, the date inscribed in Hayward’s copy. TSE to Hayward, 27 Nov 1942: “You shall have an advance copy next week: they are poorly bound” (in printed card covers, as opposed to the card with printed paper wrappers of the other three). To Alan Rook, 24 Sept 1943, declining his poem Green Mountain: “We simply cannot, especially in present times, undertake to publish single poems in this way · · · You may think that I am not myself in a very strong position to urge this consideration, but that is an exceptional privilege of mine and even for myself that would not have been possible for my firm to publish my poems in this way ten years ago.”
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
Four Quartets was published in the USA on 11 May 1943 and in Britain in Oct 1944. TSE to Hayward, 17 May 1943: “I hope Frank [Morley] has sent you a copy of Four Quartets. I haven’t received any myself; but I understand from the London office of Time that the book is out.” 21 May: “I gather that the first impression of Four Quartets was a mess, and that Frank has admitted to my brother (who always flings himself to the defense of my interests) that they would not have produced it but for having to preserve the copyright.” Hayward acknowledged his copy of the US edition on 4 June 1943: “It is, to judge by my copy, the most wretchedly printed book produced by a firm with all the resources of modern typography I’ve seen. Even the amateur Hogarth Waste Land is hardly worse. The choice of type on the cover and for the text is deplorable. The inking is bad. The lay-out is contemptible—just look at the spacing of the textual paragraphs. The imposition is appalling.”
Gallup: “There were two impressions of this book before publication. Only the first bears the words ‘first American edition’ on the verso of the title-leaf. In this first impression, the margins of many pages were incorrect because of faulty imposition of the formes as a result of the use of unskilled war-time labour. The entire impression would have been destroyed except that it was necessary to meet the announced publication date in order to preserve copyright, and consequently 788 copies for review and other purposes were distributed before the corrected impression was ready. On 5 May 1943, the 3377 copies then remaining of the first impression were destroyed and replaced by the second impression of 3500 copies. These do not carry the edition note on the verso of the title-leaf.” Many subsequent impressions are identified by code designations within brackets on the verso of the title-leaf (Archie Henderson, personal communication).
US 1943 jacket material:
These are four long poems, in a new form described by Mr. Eliot as ‘quartets.’ The first of the four poems is Burnt Norton, which was published as the concluding poem of Mr. Eliot’s Collected Poems, 1909–1935. Burnt Norton heralded a sequence; in due course it was followed by East Coker, which was published in this country in The Partisan Review in 1940, and by The Dry Salvages, published in the same magazine in 1941. The sequence has now been completed by Little Gidding, a fourth poem of the same length and in the same form, which appears in this country for the first time in this volume. A distinct phase of Mr. Eliot’s poetry, the product of the last seven years, is here presented.
To John Lehmann, 17 Aug 1944: “As for when my four Quartets will appear together, you, as a publisher, know as well as I do how undependable dates have become. The publication was originally fixed for last spring. Then it was altered to September 1st, and the date at the moment is September 29th Oct. 3!” Hayward to TSE, 18 June 1944, of the Faber edition: “I am very glad the Quartets are at last ready for publication · · · Thank you very much for the set of proofs which shall be treasured among ye Archives.”
[Poems I 177–209 · Textual History II 483–545]
The four poems which make up this volume have all appeared separately: Burnt Norton first in 1936, East Coker in 1940, The Dry Salvages in 1941, and Little Gidding in 1942. The author, however, has always intended them to be published as one volume, and to be judged as a single work.
This was later changed (removing the implication that four poems had been planned from the start, and warning purchasers of TSE’s Collected Poems that they were paying a second time for part of the contents), and from the 8th imp. (1950) to the 12th (1963) read:
The four poems which make up this volume—Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages and Little Gidding—first appeared separately in this order. The first of them, Burnt Norton, was included by the author in his Collected Poems, 1909–1935. But it led to three successors, and the author wishes the four poems to be judged as a single work.
The words on the Faber contents page, “I wish to acknowledge my obligation to friends for their criticism, and particularly to Mr John Hayward for improvements of phrase and construction” had been slightly different in the American edition (see Textual History). In The Cocktail Party (1949), TSE acknowledged his indebtedness to E. Martin Browne “And to Mr. John Hayward, for continuous criticism and correction of vocabulary, idiom and manners.” Hayward was also acknowledged in The Confidential Clerk (1954) and The Elder Statesman (1959). Collected Poems 1909–1963 included no acknowledgements: for this and other instances, see headnote to Prufrock and Other Observations, 4. TITLE, DEDICATION AND EPIGRAPH TO THE VOLUME.
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 128