T. S. Eliot and the Presocratics: "Four Quartets" as Lyric Philosophy

• Autores: Leonor María Martínez Serrano
• Localización: Epos: Revista de filología, ISSN 0213-201X, Nº 40, 2024, págs. 158-178
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.5944/epos.40.2024.42213
• Títulos paralelos:
  • T. S. Eliot y los Presocráticos: "Cuatro Cuartetos" como filosofía lírica
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

    Cuatro Cuartetos, de T. S. Eliot, es una compleja obra maestra de filosofía lírica deudora del pensamiento profundo de los antiguos filósofos presocráticos. Burnt Norton comienza, de hecho, con dos citas extraídas de los fragmentos conservados de Heráclito. Lejos de ser un mero umbral a modo de paratexto, estas anticipan la indagación filosófica de los Cuatro Cuartetos. Este artículo explora de qué manera el pensamiento filosófico de Heráclito sobre el logos, el eterno fluir del mundo y la lucha de contrarios moldea la propia filosofía lírica de Eliot en torno a las múltiples facetas del tiempo (personal, ancestral, histórico y solar), marcada por la abstracción de la filosofía y el pensamiento sinestésico de la poesía lírica.

  • English

    T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is a complex masterpiece of lyric philosophy that owes much to the deep thinking of the ancient Presocratics. Burnt Norton is preceded by two epigraphs lifted from Heraclitus’s extant fragments. Far from being a mere paratextual threshold, they anticipate philosophical concerns that pervade all four Quartets. This article explores how Heraclitus’s philosophical thought on the logos, the eternal flux implicit in the world and the strife of opposites has a bearing on Eliot’s own lyric philosophy on the manifold facets of time (personal, ancestral, historic, and solar time), one that brings together the abstraction of philosophy and the synaesthetic thinking inherent in the lyrical.

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