Four Quartets에 나타난 기독교 사상

Christian Thought in Four Quartets

As a converted Anglo-Catholic, T. S. Eliot had earnestly yearned for the salvation of mankind from the waste land of corrupted European civilization with the conviction that “1f Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. The fruition of his deep meditation between the two W orld Wars brought f orth his masterpiece Four Quartets( 1943) -“Burnt Norton (1935) , “East Coker (1940), “The Dry Salvages (941), and “Little Gidding (1942). The two epigraphs in Greek Eliot quoted from Heraclitus fragments suggest unambiguously the theme of Four Quartets within the category of the Word (Logos). Not human time(Chronos) but divine time (Kairos), the Garden of Eden implicated as the rose garden, the Cross as an axle-tree, the Unmoved Mover (God the Father) or Incarnation as the still point are mentioned in detail in “Burnt Norton. In “East Coker Jesus Christ as a wounded surgeon, the Church as a dying nurse, and Adam as a ruined millionaire are symbolically depicted and the world is compared to an enormous hospital. Christ’s flesh and blood signifying the Eucharist are described as the only means of human re-demption. Annunciation as the perpetual angelus which transforms calamitous annunciations into eternal rebirth, intercession to the Virgin Mary for those who were and are in distress, and Incarnation half-guessed by men even through the revelatory grace are delineated in “The Dry Sal-vages. ln “Little Gidding, the Holy Spirit’s pentecostal fire, not purga-torial fire, in the form of a dove is dominant as the love of God. Sud-den glimpse of the Trinity, man’s inevitable sin and probable Atonement are also included. Harmonious reconciliation of the fire and the rose symbolizing supernatural divinity and natural humanity respectively will bring the hopeful salvation of human beings from this sinful world. ln conclusion, Eliot’s Four Quartets compri s all the Christian doc-trines, and therefore it may be called a magnificent poem of Christian thought.