Books

DOVE DESCENDING: A Journey into T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, by Thomas Howard

Reviewed by Br Barry Coldrey

Contents - Sep 2009 - Buy a copy now Editorial: 2009 Fighting Fund launched - Peter Westmore USA: Anglicans fragmenting over homosexuality - Babette Francis News: The Church Around the World Christian Life: Courage and EnCourage: a chaste lifestyle for the same-sex attracted - Marie Mason Liturgical Books: The case for a new Missal translation - Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli Campus Life: Brisbane hosts 2009 Australian Catholic Student Association Conference - Br Barry Coldrey Priesthood: Reflections of a newly ordained Sydney priest - Fr James Mccarthy FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH: Sola Fide (by Faith Alone): is this sufficient for salvation? - Frank Mobbs The Reformation and England's changing Coronation Oath - Tom Johnstone Letters: Galileo - David Walker Letters: Ambiguities in Vatican II? - George Simpson Letters: Women priests - Name and Address Supplied Letters: Abortion evil - Diana E. Fox Letters: Ultrasound - Anne Lastman Letters: Religious freedom at risk - Tim Rebbechi Books: JOHN GERARD: Autobiography of an Elizabethan, trans. By Philip Caraman SJ - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Letters: Latin Course for Fluency Books: DOVE DESCENDING: A Journey into T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, by Thomas Howard - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Books: THE BOOK OF ALL SAINTS, by Adrienne von Speyr - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Poetry: 11 September, 2001: The Towers - Will Elsin Books: DEIFICATION AND GRACE, by Daniel Keating - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Books: This month's selection from AD Books Reflection: The centrality of the tabernacle - Bishop John M. D'Arcy

DOVE DESCENDING: A Journey into T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets,
by Thomas Howard
(Ignatius Press, 2006, 148pp, $29.95. ISBN 978-1-58617-040-0. Available from Freedom Publishing)

Dove Descending by Thomas Howard is essentially a line-by-line companion for T.S. Eliot's poem, the Four Quartets, and is intended to be read alongside it.

Thomas Howard has a background not dissimilar from that of T.S. Eliot: an American from an East Coast evangelical family who became a Catholic at the age of fifty, has taught in many tertiary institutions in the USA throughout a long academic career, and has written numerous books on both English literature and his own faith journey to Catholicism.

T.S. Eliot is considered by many to be the most significant and influential poet of the 20th century and Four Quartets is his finest poem, the work of his latter years.

Eliot's early poem, The Waste Land, released in 1928, made him the spokesman for a 20th century angst which was fashionable in the years between the two World Wars.

The background is World War I, which destroyed many of the best and brightest of a whole generation. In The Waste Land, modern men are dramatised as beleaguered, overwhelmed by the ambiguities of existence. This fitted the mood of the times.

Conversion

However, T.S. Eliot, the American agnostic from the East Coast Ivy League intelligentia, moved to England and converted to the Anglican faith, in its Anglo-Catholic wing. He was also politically conservative.

The Four Quartets was written after his conversion and draws the reader to the centre of the Christian mysteries. The once-agnostic T.S. Eliot, who had vast influence into the 1960s, extolled an unashamedly Christian vision of things and in an increasingly secular society he would become politically incorrect. The agnostic Eliot had been popular; the Christian Eliot was not.

As his change of stance gradually dawned on most academics, Eliot was 'exiled' from many tertiary English departments, especially in the United States.

Nevertheless, Four Quartets deserves a place alongside other great artistic monuments infused with the Christian vision: Dante's Divine Comedy, Chartres Cathedral, Johann Sebastian Bach's B Minor Mass and van Eyck's painting, "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb".

The poem is difficult and hence the commentary by Thomas Howard is a must for those approaching Eliot's work for the first time.

Dr Barry Coldrey taught in Christian Brothers colleges for many years and is currently a writer and lecturer and active in youth ministry.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 22 No 8 (September 2009), p. 17