Equilibrium of Spatial/Temporal Stillness of Dance in Four Quartets

Abstract

In Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot provides a scaffold for time, juxtaposing mobility of stillness and immobility of dance in terms of time. The poet illustrates why time is not chronological by placing the beginning and the end in the same spatio-temporal position. This essay examines how to approach time and why stillness is a pivotal term in Four Quartets. The poet dovetails what the movement has in space with what duration has in time. By virtue of structure of sonata, the analogy Eliot draws in the tile of Four Quartets implies a multiply folded structure of the poem. Creating a new whole, time is at once destroyer and preserver. This essay focuses on the idea that stillness depends on atemporal pattern in order to re-arrange the entire time. I illustrate that only through pattern, stillness shows us its mobility; its mobility belongs to dance. I explore the interrelationship between stillness and dance by describing what dance is in Four Quartets. In general, people consider dance as movement, excluding “pause.” However, for Eliot, dance includes not only movement and but also its pause. I argue that what he defines as a dance contains mobility of stillness and immobility of dance in terms of complete simplicity. In brief, spatio-temporal stillness of dance echoes the qualitative multiplicity of time.