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- [00:07]
Dr. Sean Riley
From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country. Being married actually makes a huge difference here, thinking about the amount of money that comes in and out of a given family, Right. And you have to make a budget and you have to sort of figure out, you know, what's important here and how do we do that over there, Right. And so it gives people a kind of agency and it trains them for these higher, higher things.
- [00:45]
Scott Bertram
This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. That was Sean Riley from Hillsdale College's Washington, D.C. campus. His recent essay is Mob Violence Is Fatal to Republican Government. We'll talk in depth with him about that in just a moment. Also later on today, Christina Lambert from Hillsdale's English department continues her conversation about T.S. eliot. First, we're joined by Dr. Sean Riley. He is director of educational programs and teaching fellow at Hillsdale in D.C. also the author of a recent piece at americanmind.org Mob violence is fatal to Republican government. Dr. Riley, thanks for joining us.
- [01:31]
Dr. Sean Riley
Thanks for having me.
- [01:32]
Scott Bertram
Appreciate it. In this essay, which again, people can find@americanmind.org how do you define mob violence and how might that differ from protests or civil disobedience, in your view?
- [01:47]
Dr. Sean Riley
Yeah, good question. I guess realizing I don't think I actually define it in the piece, but I guess I would say violence. I mean, mob violence differs from protest and civil disobedience largely by the fact that it's violence. Right. Hopefully protests. I mean, there are many, many ways to protest or engage in civil disobedience, to affect change or to express discontent with a particular political policy or political situation. But violence sort of changes the equation, right? Violence is what takes protest and turns it into something else. And when we add the mob apart, what we're talking about is violence that is sort of unconstrained by reason. Right. We could say that every war in certain, in a certain sense is a kind of political violence. Right? But wars, hopefully are constrained by a kind of reason and a strategic sort of outlook, tactical sort of thinking. Mob violence is a different kind of violence in that it is political violence that's directed or not directed rather by reason, but what the ancients might have called thumos, right. Sort of arises from the sort of lower part of the soul, and it's not directed by the rational part. And so it becomes quickly chaotic, quickly disordered, and as a result, quickly becomes unjust, sort of affecting people in ways that maybe they don't deserve, right, or destroying things that should be preserved. And this kind of thing, war, rightly understood, has a kind of, again, is constrained by certain objectives. And this kind of thing, mob violence, is different.
- [03:32]
Scott Bertram
You show that fears about mob violence were not an afterthought for our Founders. How would their concerns compare to the way that we talk about political unrest these days?
- [03:45]
Dr. Sean Riley
I think political unrest or violence, Political violence, mob violence even, is a perennial possibility within politics. Right. The ancients knew this. Our Founders knew this. Being good students of the ancients, having read their histories and their political theories and so forth. The difference, I would say what I argue in the piece is the difference and what makes today feel so acute to many is that usually when there is some kind of mob violence going on or some potential for this kind of disorder, when we are in a functioning society, you'll have elites that will sort of put a barrier, provide a barrier and constraint on the. On the possibilities, right. For that, that sort of violence, because there are elites. These elites are invested in the sort of order that exists. I think what today we see that's different is you have elites that, instead of being sort of invested in the order as it stands, you have elites that seem more interested in promoting or at least ignoring different kinds of political violence as it goes on because their interests are elsewhere, for whatever reason. I mean, for all kinds of reasons that we could. That we could talk about. So rather than, though, having a kind of authoritative sense of someone that sort of has standing within the community that can kind of rein it in, today, we sort of have a kind of shared backdrop of principles and ideas that can help to guide us and sort of give the elites, we might say, backbone to stand up to these kinds of actions.
- [05:33]
Scott Bertram
Talking with Dr. Sean Riley, his piece at americanmind.org, mob violence is fatal to Republican government. Shays Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion are both key examples in this essay. What lessons from those events might be most relevant to American. Sure.
- [05:53]
Dr. Sean Riley
I mean, again, kind of going back to what I was just saying, the reason why I bring them up, the context in which I bring them up, is that it's one illustrate, as I said, the Founders were very familiar with the possibility of political violence and rebellions that might cause chaos and disorder and threaten lives and property and so forth. What they didn't hesitate to do was to put them down. So in the case of Shays Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion. They were quickly responded to in the case of the Whiskey Rebellion by George Washington himself, who rode out to Western Pennsylvania and helped to put it down. There was no sort of hemming and hawing about, well, we should just, as we recently heard, you know, give them space to destroy or something like this, as we sometimes hear our elites say today. I guess that's several years old now. But nevertheless, they, they didn't hesitate because they understood the danger.
- [06:50]
Scott Bertram
Right?
- [06:50]
Dr. Sean Riley
They understood the danger. And Washington actually says about the Whiskey Rebellion that these things tend to smoke, snowball, right? And quickly get out of control. And one sort of disorder leads to the other, leads to another, leads to another, and they quickly magnify and get really out of control and threaten potentially the entire regime. And so they didn't hesitate to put them down. And again, by way of contrast with some of our elite responses today, what.
- [07:16]
Scott Bertram
About classical political philosophy? It's very much a Hillsdale essay. The Founders and Plato and Aristotle, how would they influence, how did they influence the founders fears about excessive democracy or mob rule?
- [07:31]
Dr. Sean Riley
Yeah, sure. So Plato famously having witnessed the execution of his beloved mentor and teacher Socrates, many of his writings, particularly in the Republic, display a kind of skepticism toward democracy as a political form. So in book A, the Republic, he talks about the declension of regimes, and it goes from the best regime and down and down and down to democracy, which then ends in tyranny, like the rise of a demagogue. So he was very skeptical of democracy and he associated it with really the appetitive part of the soul, the lowest part of the soul. And he describes a democratic man as one who just sort of acts on whim and goes from this to that thing and has no memory of the past, no vision for the future, and is very sort of unable to be self ruling, both in the kind of political sense, but also just in the very basic personal sense. Right. Unable to kind of rule his own appetites. Aristotle, sort of being taught by Plato, agrees with this to some extent, but he doesn't quite have such a, such a negative assessment of democracy. He thinks democracy can be fine in some ways and there are different kinds of democracy. There's extreme ones and less extreme ones. But his recommendation really is the mixed regime. Right. So the, the, the regime, the middling regime, he says is best one that's between the kind of high, the aristocratic, the kingly and the low, the democratic, what he would say, the base and this kind of thing. And so what his argument is is that as many things if you're familiar with Aristotle's moral philosophy, right. The mean, right. The middle is what you're going for, right? And so in the same way, the regime should also aim for the middle, and that's where kind of virtue resides. So the founders, looking at this and others, right, so Cicero, Polybius, others we can, that they were certainly reading and were influenced by, but they affected effectively a mixed regime, right? So they brought about a regime that has a kind of kingly element, we could say, in the president, the executive, it has a kind of aristocracy in the Senate and we could argue maybe in the courts and then a kind of more democratic part in the House of Representatives and then the various state governments that are more closely associated with the directly, you know, connected to the people themselves. And so, you know, so the, the, the concern from the age for the ancients is again always disorder, right? Disorder is again a perennial possibility within politics. So the question for them, or the really the question for Aristotle, Plato doesn't really deal with this. It's one of the kind of enduring problems, right, with students of political philosophy of Plato is that it turns out, you know, he doesn't really give us a kind of, a lot of how do we deal with what we have. Aristotle is much more, much more useful in that sense. And so affecting that mixed regime to sort of balance out the excesses both of monarchy and of democracy that can devolve into a kind of tyranny and mob rule. That's really what the founders, I think, took from that classical tradition and brought about in the American regime.
- [10:58]
Scott Bertram
Dr. Sean Reilly with us is PeaceAmericanMind.org, mob violence is fatal to republican government. You argue in here that political order requires public spiritedness, requires self control. What does that look like practically in today's hyper polarized politics?
- [11:20]
Dr. Sean Riley
Yeah, so we certainly do see hyperpolarized politics along partisan lines, but also just along kind of ideas about, about the world, right? About the nature of the world, the nature of reality itself. You know, our, our divisions go deep, right? To the core of things, right? We have debates about is there such a thing as a man and a woman? Things that, things that no human beings before, outside of maybe rarefied philosophical disputations would have even entertained. But here we are, right? So we have these, these deep divisions and then they're stoked even more by things like social media, right? So the founders in Federalist 10, Madison famously argues that, you know, look, the passions are certainly part of their problem for democratic governance or republican governance. But one of the things that he relies on to sort of help tame them is really the length that it takes, the length of time that it, that it took then for word to get out. So if somebody has a radical idea, well, we shouldn't be too worried about that because it's going to take a long time. And by the time everyone's, it's been disseminated everywhere, the kind of furor will have died down and you know, so we don't have that much to worry about. Well, in the age of social media that's all changed, right? So everything is instantaneous. I mean this is already the case obviously with telephones and tv, but social media really exacerbates that in a way that I think the founders couldn't have, have have seen. And so it's really hard, right, it's really hard for citizens now to kind of be able to be grounded in that kind of self rule and, and public spiritedness that the founders really relied on. I mean, you know, they were certainly aware even at their time, in their time and not having the benefit of foresight about the technology that would develop that, you know, this was very much an experiment, right. And it's unclear, it was unclear to them whether this nature would sort of allow this, this kind of regime to persist for very long. And I think we're very, we're blessed that it has been persistent now for 250 years. Right. As we celebrate semi quincentennial this year, I do think it's threatened, right, by all these different factors, the inability of people to kind of think deeply to self rule and to thereby gain self rule in their personal self, personal life and thereby self rule in the kind of political sense.
- [13:53]
Scott Bertram
What about our institutions, our schools, media, media outlets, political parties? Are they part of the problem here or can they be part of the solution?
- [14:06]
Dr. Sean Riley
Well, I think they certainly are part of the problem and I think that they can and should be part of the solution. I mean the question really comes down to how are they functioning and what kinds of things are they, are they promoting? I schools have for a long time been centered on the kind of Dewey and progressive education which really puts the, the individual at the center and sort of aims to develop them in sort of really a self centered way. Right. In a way that's not dedicated to the public. I mean, ironically, John Dewey had a lot to say about the public sphere and but to my mind they don't really match up his educational theory and his ideas about what should have happened, you know, how democracy should function. The Public kind of public spiritedness that he hoped to see in the, in the, in the public political parties also can help channel and guide these things. But I think that as the political parties have changed over time because they become more and more democratic, so a lot of the kind of the aspects of political parties that help to kind of vet candidates and help to sort of revise and enlarge the public sentiment, as the founder said, as Madison says in the, in the Federalist, that's going by the wayside, right? And so now we have direct primaries and this kind of thing and it just, and it sort of drives this, this race to the bottom, if you want. And so rather than sort of revise, refining and enlarging the views, it becomes a kind of race to the bottom. And of course the media, I mean again, social media, but also all print media and everything else, I mean it usually tends to because of clicks and this kind of thing, they're chasing clicks. So they tend to want to stoke the passions rather than tamp it down. But all that said, I think schools probably first and foremost is where this has to begin. And I think that the rise of the classical school movement, of which Hillsdale is obviously very interested and engaged, is hopeful because what's the classical tradition say, contrary to the progressive vision of education that most schools have been run on for the last hundred plus years? It says no, you begin with yourself. You begin by understanding yourself and your relationship to God and to nature and to your parents. You're embedded in a community. So you should begin with ingratitude and you should begin again with, with self rule, right? Children are unable to control their impulse. I have two and I have an eight year old and a four year old and another one on the way that'll be doing that'll be born in May. And so, you know, I'm very familiar with the sort of thinking of children, right. And it's, they have very low impulse control. The problem is, is that our schools largely fail to help children become true adults. Right. But the classical, I think the classical school movement is a hopeful sign that we can get there. As for media and political parties, I'm not sure. I mean they kind of, they kind of come and go. Media outlets obviously kind of come and go a bit and a lot of the traditional media has been undermined. Social rise of social media has created a whole new system ecosystem of media. So remains to be seen with that. And then political parties, I mean again, they sort of come and go. We've had a stable two party system now for the last, you know, 150 or so years. But obviously we had parties like the Whigs and we've had other parties that have popped up from now, now and then. And so, you know, that kind of remains to be seen. Maybe there will be one that emerges that could. Could be better at this. But no question, institutions are crucial, Right. To this, to this system, because institutions help us to channel our individual selves into this broader common project, but only if they are functioning as they should.
- [18:03]
Scott Bertram
How should citizens and leaders respond when there are some genuine disagreements about major moral or political issues, which always will happen? How do they do that without slipping into dehumanization and perhaps veering into violence?
- [18:19]
Dr. Sean Riley
Sure. I mean, so, I mean, first of all, obviously, civility and so forth. I mean, it's been said, it's easy to say, it's much harder to. Harder to do. But this is actually where institutions matter, right? So institutions. One of the things that institutions do is they help us, as I said, to channel ourselves into this kind of. Into these broader common projects. And they help mediate, right. Our. Our immediate responses to things that can lead to dehumanizing rhetoric and calls for violence or actual violence. And they help to sort of channel. Give us agency. Right. They help channel our actions into a kind of effective, hopefully effective activism action that enables us to sort of be. I think people engage in dehumanization and violence and things like this when they become frustrated, when they feel like they don't have a voice, they don't have an ability to affect the political community in ways that matter. And so, I mean, I think a lot of the sort of rise of populism in the last few years and this kind of thing on the left and Right.
- [19:25]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Right.
- [19:25]
Dr. Sean Riley
Has to do with this idea that we have these. This cadre of elites that really doesn't care about the people or what they think. And the people are very frustrated with what they take to be a situation which they have very little voice and very little hope to affect change.
- [19:43]
Scott Bertram
If you could recommend one or two civic practices or maybe even civic lessons that could strengthen republican order, reduce the risk of violence, what might they be?
- [19:57]
Dr. Sean Riley
Well, I mean, I think the place to start is the place that the founders certainly would have recognized and goes all the way back to Aristotle, the family and religion. And so part of the problem, I think, is that people are lonely, they are disconnected, they have difficulty sort of engaging in civic institutions because they don't know how. Right. And so being married actually makes a huge difference here. Every Member of a family. Every head of a family, parent in a family is a kind of co. CEO of a sort, thinking about the amount of money that comes in and out of a given family. And you have to make a budget and you have to sort of figure out what's important here and how do we deal with this problem and how do we do that over there. Right. And so it gives people a kind of agency and it trains them for these higher, higher things. I mean, the other, and there used to be all kinds of civic organizations that would also enable this kind of thing. I mean, it used to be a big deal. I'm a member, I'm a veteran of a member of the American Legion, Right. It used to be a big deal if you were the president of your local American Legion post, the commander, I should say, of your local American Legion post. And that really gave people a sense of standing right in their community. Those kinds of things have kind of declined over the, over the, over the years. But the one thing that stands is the family. And then the other one, of course, is religion, both as a civic institution. Right. So it helps people get connected, but also because it gives them a sense of the transcendent. So if you get involved, if you're, if you. I'm Catholic, I attend my church every week. And you know, I know the people there, and I'm able to get involved and have as much or as little, you know, responsibility as I, as I want. Obviously, sometimes they wish I would take on more, probably, but, but there are opportunities for, for engagement. Right. And to get to know people and get out of yourself and then, of course, to connect with the transcendent, which the founders certainly recognize. Both Madison, Jefferson, so well, even Jefferson, Washington recognized as an important part of ensuring that we can be moral and be able to engage in political, political order.
- [22:14]
Scott Bertram
Dr. Sean Riley is Director of Educational Programs and teaching fellow at Hillsdale in D.C. his essay can be read at americanmind.org Mob violence is fatal to Republican government. Dr. Riley, thanks for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [22:31]
Dr. Sean Riley
Well, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
- [22:33]
Scott Bertram
Up next, Dr. Christina Lambert, assistant Professor of English here at Hillsdale College. We'll continue our conversation about T.S. eliot this time, the Four Quartets. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [22:59]
Dr. Sean Riley
Classical music is one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization. It took 2,000 years and the work of the greatest philosophical, scientific, political and religious minds to properly tune the piano and make great music possible. But classical music can be intimidating. In Hillsdale College's new free online course, the History of Classical Chopin through Gershwin, you'll learn how to appreciate humanity's greatest musical accomplishments in the history of classical music. Concert pianist and Hillsdale College Distinguished Fellow Hyperion Knight explains how music has developed and what distinguishes the greatest musical achievements of Western civilization. To enroll today and secure your spot in this completely free online course, visit hillsdale.edu network. That's hillsdale.
- [24:07]
Bill Gray
Hi there, it's Bill Gray from Hillsdale College. Before you skip ahead, can I ask you a question or two? If you could teach 50 million Americans one thing, what would it be? Would you teach our great American story that this nation is unique, founded on self government and individual liberty? Maybe you would teach the truth about free enterprise, how hard work and opportunity allow anyone to rise? Or would you teach the gospel and the Christian faith that helps us live good and meaningful lives? At Hillsdale College, we're doing exactly that, teaching the best that's been thought and said. Through our free online courses, K12 programs in Primus, podcasts and more, we reach and teach millions every year with the principles of liberty that make America free. And with your help, we can reach even more. Your tax deductible gift today will help us teach millions more people to pursue truth and defend liberty. Just text the word give to 7 1844. You'll get a secure link to make your donation in seconds. That's give to 718 44. Thank you for standing with us. Now back to the show.
- [25:24]
Scott Bertram
Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertrand. Be sure to check out the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale. Edu or wherever you find your audio, including YouTube. We're joined by Dr. Christina Lambert. She is assistant professor of English here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Lambert, thanks for joining us.
- [25:46]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Thanks for having me.
- [25:47]
Scott Bertram
We continue our conversation as we dig into the work of T.S. eliot by talking about the Four Quartets today. Before we do that, we have to set the table a bit here. We talked back in our first conversation about T.S. eliot, religious imagery, his conversion, what works follow his conversion? How does his Christian faith begin to play a role in it?
- [26:10]
Dr. Christina Lambert
So probably the most famous or well known are the Four Quartets, but those definitely aren't the first ones. What's maybe most interesting after Eliot's conversion is he has, while his poetry remains difficult, turn toward accessibility in some respects. Between 1927 when he becomes when he joins the Anglican Church, between 1927 and the early 1930s, he writes a series of poems we call the Ariel poems. They're published like Christmas cards in little pamphlets with modern art on the front cover and inside. And Eliot's poetry. And the most famous of these are the Journey of the Magi, Song of Simeon, and my favorite, Marina. The very idea that you would kind of send to a friend, this little handout with this really difficult T.S. eliot poem inside speaks that Elliot hasn't changed since he converted. But he has this idea that poetry should be going out into the world, into people's houses. It should be read and understood and enjoyed. He writes a pageant play called the Rock to help raise money to build churches in London. He writes Murder in the Cathedral, and it's performed in Canterbury Cathedral, where Beckett was famously martyred. But he wants verse drama, right, the verse of plays to go even beyond church spaces. So he works really hard to write a Broadway success, which he does. The Cocktail party premiered in 1949. So I think in this later work, we see this interest of Eliot in bringing poetry into the regular lives of people, because he really does think it has something to offer them.
- [27:47]
Scott Bertram
And yet his Christian poetry is considered difficult to read, difficult to interpret. Why is that?
- [27:54]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Absolutely. I always think, as much as things change, things also stay the same. He is the same poet. But there's also something really important, again, content and form, this inseparable marriage. Here, Eliot really resents the idea that a conversion to Christianity is like settling into an armchair. He writes to a friend. He describes it instead as a long journey on foot. The difficulty of his poetry, I think, reflects that he didn't wake up a Christian and find that he didn't live in a world that looked like the Wasteland anymore? His new question is, how does perhaps this Christian belief speak to and change this world that's still full of lament and grief and the problems that were there before this period?
- [28:41]
Scott Bertram
We just talked last time out about the Wasteland. Now, the Four Quartets. How does this piece differ from the Wasteland in tone, in theme, in structure?
- [28:54]
Dr. Christina Lambert
So I always like to start by the ways they stay the same. They're difficult. Both poems, the Four Quartets, like the Wasteland, have these unattributed fragments, but you can get along a little easier in Four Quartets without knowing who these fragments are attributed to. And that changes the effect. These fragments aren't ironic, and you're not so much wondering, oh, how should I read this line from Ovid? They're kind of like philosophical principles. You can read them throughout the sections of Poetry and kind of trust their Authority a bit more like the Wasteland. These poems are addressing real places. So if you go to London today, you can visit the Church of St. Magnus Martyr that Eliot talks about in the Wasteland. The same goes for the Four Quartets. You can visit East Coker, Burnt Norton, Little Gidding and the landscape off of the coast of Boston at Cape Ann. Both of these sets of poems are responding to a war, first and Second World War. Eliot actually changes from writing plays to writing poems when the Second World War happens because people aren't attending theater during a blitz. And so he writes them both during a war. The ways that they're different is that while the Wasteland is five parts and one poem, these are in fact four separate poems that came to be known as one poem and published that way. And like I said, where the Wasteland offers disconnected fragments, these poems offer what scholar Jules Spears Brooker calls an incarnational pattern. So even as you see these different voices alongside of one another, the poems as a whole will offer a kind of answer or pattern, even though it still remains difficult. I love what Brooker says here. She says they are religious in the radical sense. That is, they function quite literally like rebinders, reunifiers. And I think that's a helpful difference between the poems.
- [30:59]
Scott Bertram
Talking with Dr. Christina Lambert here about the Four Quartets from T.S. eliot, what then does unite those four poems and enables it to be presented as a single work?
- [31:10]
Dr. Christina Lambert
So Eliot writes Berndt Norton and publishes it in 1935. Between 1940 and 1942, he releases, writes and releases the other three. It's really when he's writing those later poems that he starts to conceive of this as a unity. And each one of the poems is thinking about how do we live faithfully in time? How do you become a saint? And what's the difficulty of this? What's the difficulty of the incarnation of time and eternity meeting? We normally see just glimpses of how this works out in our regular lives. John Whittier Ferguson has a helpful remark here. He says, human history in the making is not the same as the unknowable pattern of our world In God's design. Four Quartets are all thinking about this question of how do we see the work of the transcendent while also living within time? They all start again from these real places, and that's a way of thinking through how the transcendent meets us in the material worlds that we live in. You could still go to England or to the coast of Boston and visit these locations, which is really Amazing. Each poem also has parallel structures, so there's five parts of each poem. It's going to begin with what scholars often refer to as the composition of place. It's going to paint a picture of the real place, like East Coker, which is where T.S. eliot's ancestors are from. Section 2 is then going to kind of give comments on the place and the questions raised in the first section. And this often has a lyrical section and a section in prosecution. Section three, a journey into darkness. Often a kind of earthly or horizontal darkness meets a vertical or spiritual darkness. And then section four is described as a brief lyric or prayer. And I like to think of these as the theological sections where doctrine or the words of the church break in and try to give a little ordering structure. And then section 5 is a recapitulation of all of these themes, thinking about the reconciliation that we might find in the Incarnation and how that translates into the problem of being an artist, a person, a saint, anyone who has to live in the in between.
- [33:28]
Scott Bertram
So clearly Eliot's Christian faith is going to help him shape Four Quartets.
- [33:35]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Right. I think that Russell Kirk's line here is really helpful. He describes Eliot as giving fresh forms for ancient orthodoxy. I think that idea of he's using his, you know, modernist techniques to create images that are unusual to us, to communicate truths that have you, right, existed in these creeds and in the rituals of the Church that Eliot believes in deeply. I think this is really nicely seen in Part four of East Coker. Eliot presents a figure of Christ as a wounded surgeon. So we're thinking of a battlefield doctor here. And the imagery is really visceral and a little grotesque. Even in its kind of art, archaic form, it's nicely rhymed. But you see this doctor elbow deep in the innards of a patient with bloody hands. I always try to force my students to think about just how unhygienic this image is. But it's the bleeding hands of this surgeon, who is Christ, that gives him the credentials to do the healing work that he is rendering on this patient. That's the fresh form Elliot's giving. He's shocking us to reimagine what it means in that Christ's death on the cross and resurrection gives him this power, then to save Souls.
- [34:53]
Scott Bertram
Talking with Dr. Christina Lambert about the Four Quartets, how does this work? Explore the tension between the past, the present and the future?
- [35:04]
Dr. Christina Lambert
So they all speak to this question beautifully, and it is one of the recurring questions of the Four Quartets, But I'm going to stick with East Coker, here to help us think through this. This is the second of the four Four Quartets. Who begins in my beginning is my end. In succession, houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place is an open field or a factory or a bypass. The opening stanza speaks to the cycles of time. Houses rise and fall, and they fall because of war. Right. I mean, we're thinking of Elliot writing during the Blitz. He was an air raid warden. He knows this experience intimately. But also houses fall because of time. Right? So it's about the passage of time. The stanza continues and says, old stone to new building, old timber to new fires. I think this is a central image for Eliot within this poem, because what he's trying to say is we have materials from the past, old stones, right? But we don't have the buildings from the past. And so we have to take those materials in our present and build new things, new buildings. Take that old wood that we've been given and, you know, throw it into the fire and use that energy to create something new. He's going to give an image of country folk dancing in a field in the next stanza. And it feels like this beautiful picture of life. But he warns, you can't come too close to that. You cannot return to the past. Later in East Coker, he'll talk about the wisdom of the ages, these great books that we read, Augustine, Dante, Homer. But these aren't houses. They're just bricks. They're materials. We can't live there. You have to build new things with the tradition. So I think that this is a really great poem to think through this relationship of past, present and future, and how the only work that human beings can do is work in the present using this, you know, these materials from the past.
- [37:06]
Scott Bertram
How do the poems address the process of sanctification?
- [37:12]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Yeah. So East Coker, after kind of this reflection on past and present, goes into section three, which, as I mentioned, is a going into darkness. It begins with a physical darkness. And Elliot gives two great images. One of being in the tube or subway when it's stops between stations. And you're a little anxious, thinking, am I going to get to the next station? The other of the darkness of a theater when scenes change. Neither one of those images are, you know, lasting darkness, but for that moment, the darkness feels real. He then goes into a kind of darkness narrated in the works of St. John of the Cross. And he talks about the darkness of God. Right. He asked the reader to rest in stillness. And this stanza that's really striking. Says, I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. There is faith, but the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready to thought for thought. So what's strange about this is these are all good things, right? Love, hope, thought. But these two are old building, so to speak. Why would hope and love need to be removed? Because maybe we hope for and love the wrong things. So in order to be sanctified, you have to let them go, go into the darkness. Once you let them go, you might be ready to meet this wounded surgeon. Right? That's part four of the poem, whose work is to heal. And so after giving up, releasing, going into this darkness, then you're ready for section four, where the surgeon comes in. Does this work on the patient? And then we learn that the whole earth is our hospital. So I think that Eliot describes this picture of sanctification as a process, something that's pretty painful. It's hard to let go of hope, love, and thought. But ultimately, this is the work of the saint in time.
- [39:10]
Scott Bertram
There is a meditative, almost musical rhythm to the four Quartets. Is this a work that demands to be read aloud?
- [39:22]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Absolutely. I mean, all poetry demands to be read aloud, in my opinion, for its musical quality. But Eliot is the master of this. Also. The very structure of the quartets is based off of a sonata form, and he's thinking of Beethoven specifically here. I think it's really helpful to read these poems aloud and let them wash over you. Enjoy the lines. And often what I tell people, because quartets are. They're really hard to read. They have these striking lines. Let the poetry wash over you and pick a favorite line and hold on to that. Even if you don't understand what's happening in the entirety of a section, you'll love the sound. You'll find a line. And these lines are something you can think on, meditate on, and I just think have a lot of formative power because Eliot's lines are incredible.
- [40:11]
Scott Bertram
If you have a little background in Christian mysticism or Dante or other philosophies, does it help to enhance your appreciation of this work?
- [40:22]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Absolutely. It's true for all of Eliot. This kind of background reading in the Great Books or the Tradition, it enriches your understanding of the text. It's awfully fun to meet a figure that is a lot like Dante in a section of Little Gidding it's wonderful to hear the lines of St. John of the Cross woven into Eden Coker or in dry salvages, you have the story of Krishna on the battlefield, and right after him, Mary the mother of Jesus. So thinking of these images side by side is really rich and fruitful. But knowing the fragments or the background to the fragments don't answer or solve the poem. You have to go through the lines and learn how to live. And I think, read in this kind of incarnational pattern that Eliot is depicting for us.
- [41:07]
Scott Bertram
Talking with Dr. Christina Lambert about the four quartets from T.S. eliot. There, of course, are a number of ways to approach something like the Four Quartets. Should we look at it as a deeply philosophical work, a poetic meditation, something else altogether?
- [41:25]
Dr. Christina Lambert
So deeply philosophical work, poetic meditation. The answer is absolutely yes. But as we think through, right, we have Elliot is a philosopher, he's an amateur anthropologist. He worked at a bank. All of these pieces are coming into play in his poetry. But I think the thing to remember is that poetry always demands our full attention. You can't just look for what is said because how it is said changes its meaning. So, you know, if you find Dante in the poem or a philosophical reflection, you have to think about where that exists in the space of the stanza and on a line to really understand the richness of how Eliot is transforming these images and then providing these theological and philosophical reflections.
- [42:14]
Scott Bertram
You told us a bit earlier, read it, grab a section, Find something you can grab onto. So what passage or passages in Four Quartets resonate most deeply with you?
- [42:27]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Hard to choose, almost impossible. But the last time I taught through, I thought this section in East Coker 5 was really striking, especially as I teach writing and am myself an academic. And we're always trying to put things in words. And here we have T.S. eliot, right, who's remembered 100 years later for his gift of putting ideas and images into words. And this is how he describes the experience of trying to say what you mean to say. So here I am in the middle way, having had 20 years, 20 years largely wasted, the years of Lantre du Guerre, trying to learn to use words. And every attempt is a wholly new start and a different kind of failure, because one has only learned to get the better of words for the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which one is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate, with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision and feeling undisciplined squads of emotion and what there is to conquer by strength and submission has already been discovered once or twice or several times by men whom one cannot hope to emulate. But there's no competition. There's only the fight to recover what has been lost and found and lost again and again and now under conditions that seem unpropitious, but perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
- [44:04]
Scott Bertram
Let's conclude with perhaps a strategy or recommendation for how to read Eliot.
- [44:11]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Yeah, I think jump in if you liked that section of Four Quartets, pick up East Coker, read it, enjoy it, read it again. And I can promise you, as you read and reread it, it's going to be a really fruitful process of finding images that you'll have to wrestle with over the course of your life. And actually, each time you encounter Elliot in different seasons of life, I think you understand what he's getting at in new and different ways. It's definitely worth it's very rewarding, the difficulty that it takes to read Eliot. And so I would pick up on one of his poems and stick with that poem, reading and rereading it and considering how Eliot's images exist side by side together.
- [44:54]
Scott Bertram
Dr. Christina Lambert, assistant professor of English here at Hillsdale College, as we conclude our short series on T.S. eliot, talking about the Four Quartets. Dr. Lambert, thank you so much for joining.
- [45:05]
Dr. Christina Lambert
Thanks so much.
- [45:06]
Scott Bertram
That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Sean Riley from Hillsdale College's Washington, D.C. campus and Christina Lambert from Hillsdale's English Department. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast at Podcast Hillsdale, Eduardo, or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Owl.