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''Four Quartets'' is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, ''Burnt Norton'', was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's play ''Murder in the Cathedral''. After a few years, Eliot composed the other three poems, ''East Coker'', ''The Dry Salvages'', and ''Little Gidding'', which were written during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain. The poems were not collected until Eliot's New York publisher printed them together in 1943. They were first published as a series in Great Britain in 1941 to 1942 towards the end of Eliot's poetic career. ''Four Quartets'' are four interlinked meditations with the common theme being man's relationship with time, the universe, and the divine. In describing his understanding of the divine within the poems, Eliot blends his Anglo-Catholicism with mystical, philosophical and poetic works from both Eastern and Western religious and cultural traditions, with references to the ''Bhagavad-Gita'' and the Pre-Socratics as well as St. John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich. Although many critics find the ''Four Quartets'' to be Eliot's great last work, some of Eliot's contemporary critics, including George Orwell, were dissatisfied with Eliot's overt religiosity. Later critics disagreed with Orwell's claims about the poems and argued instead that the religious themes made the poem stronger. Overall, reviews of the poem within Great Britain were favourable while reviews in the United States were split between those who liked Eliot's later style and others who felt he had abandoned positive aspects of his earlier poetry. ==Background== While working on his play ''Murder in the Cathedral'', Eliot came up with the idea for a poem that was structured similarly to ''The Waste Land''.〔Ackroyd 1984 p. 228〕 The resulting poem, ''Burnt Norton'', named after a manor house, was published in Eliot's 1936 edition of ''Collected Poems 1909–1935''.〔Grant 1997 p. 37〕 Eliot decided to create another poem similar to ''Burnt Norton'' but with a different location in mind. This second poem, ''East Coker'', was finished and published by Easter 1940.〔Ackroyd 1984 pp. 254–255〕 (Eliot visited East Coker in 1937 and his ashes now repose there at St. Michael's Church.)〔 As Eliot was finishing his second poem, World War II began to disrupt his life and he spent more time lecturing across Great Britain and helping out during the war when he could. It was during this time that Eliot began working on ''The Dry Salvages'', the third poem, which was put together near the end of 1940.〔Pinion 1986 p. 48〕 This poem was published in February 1941 and Eliot immediately began to plot out his fourth poem, ''Little Gidding''. Eliot's health declined and he stayed in Shamley Green to recuperate. His illness and the war disrupted his ability to write and he became dissatisfied with each draft. He believed that the problem with the poem was with himself and that he had started the poem too soon and written it too quickly. By September 1941, he stopped writing and focused on his lecturing. It was not until September 1942 that Eliot finished the last poem and it was finally published.〔Ackroyd 1984 pp. 262–266〕 While writing ''East Coker'' Eliot thought of creating a "quartet" of poems that would reflect the idea of the four elements and, loosely, the four seasons.〔Ackroyd 1984 p. 262〕 As the first four parts of ''The Waste Land'' has been associated with one of the four classical elements so has each of the constituent poems of ''Four Quartets'': air (''BN'',) earth (''EC'',) water (''DS'',) and fire (''LG''.) However, there is little support for the poems matching with individual seasons.〔Pinion 1986 p. 219〕 Eliot described what he meant by "quartet" in a 3 September 1942 letter to John Hayward: ... 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 track 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.〔Gardner 1978 qtd. p. 26〕 The ''Four Quartets'' was first published as a series in New York in 1943 and London in 1944.〔Kirk 2008 p. 239〕 The original title was supposed to be the ''Kensington Quartets'' after his time in Kensington.〔Kirk 2008 p. 266〕 The poems were kept as a separate entity in the United States until they were collected in 1952 as Eliot's ''Complete Poems and Plays'', and in the United Kingdom until 1963 as part of Eliot's ''Complete Poems 1909–62''. The delay in collecting the ''Four Quartets'' with the rest of Eliot's poetry separated them from his other work, even though they were the result of a development from his earlier poems.〔Moody 2006 p. 143〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Four Quartets」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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