Timeless Moments: The Four Quartets Fanlisting

About this fanlisting

This is the fanlisting for Four Quartets, a series of four poems by T.S. Eliot. I first encountered these poems through extracts and quotations; lines from the poem seem to be quoted fairly often and some of its images, such as 'the still point of the turning world', may be familiar to people even though they may think they have never heard of Four Quartets. A few lines from the fourth poem, Little Gidding, made their way into the lyrics of the musical Cats, alongside the poems from T.S. Eliot's Book of Practical Cats.

I found some of these extracts very meaningful, and I have come to love the poems as a whole - when I studied English Literature at university, I chose them as the subject for my dissertation. I see them as a meditation on spiritual experience, reflecting the poet's ongoing struggle to understand the connection between the spiritual and everyday reality. Each of the poems moves through different phases, including both the 'moments of illumination' and the moments of doubt and disillusion. It isn't easy to offer a single interpretation of the poems. As the title Four Quartets suggets, reading them can be akin to listening to music and, as with music, each person may draw out different associations and images. They reward many re-readings, and I find that different passages stand out for me at different times.

What is a fanlisting?

As the name implies, a fanlisting is basically a list of people who are fans of a particular subject. It is open for fans from all around the world to join, and can be a way of finding others online who share your interests. For more information, visit thefanlistings.org, the original and ever-growing online fanlistings directory.