Four Quartets: Contrapuntal Form

The Form, the Pattern

by Steven H. Cullinane

"...the sort of organization that Eliot later called musical, in his lecture 'The Music of Poetry,' delivered in 1942, just as he was completing Four Quartets: 'The use of recurrent themes is as natural to poetry as to music,' Eliot says:

There are possibilities for verse which bear some analogy to the development of a theme by different groups of instruments ['different voices,' we might say]; there are possibilities of transitions in a poem comparable to the different movements of a symphony or a quartet; there are possibilities of contrapuntal arrangement of subject-matter."

-- Louis L. Martz, from
"Origins of Form in Four Quartets,"
in Words in Time: New Essays on Eliot’s Four Quartets,
ed. Edward Lobb, University of Michigan Press, 1993

"... Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness...."

-- T. S. Eliot,
Four Quartets

Four Quartets

For a discussion of the above
form, or pattern, click here.

In reading that discussion, "Diamond Theory,"
keep in mind the following diagram of
Aristotle's four stoicheia (elements).

This diagram is related, by the "Plato's diamond" figure
in Diamond Theory, to the Stoicheia, or Elements, of Euclid.

The diagram is also related to Four Quartets
by Eliot's use of the four elements —
air, earth, water, fire —
as a unifying theme for the four sections of his poem.

This structure is elementary, then, in at least two senses
other than than the usual sense of simplicity.
That the apparent simplicity of the diagram itself
is only apparent is shown by the picture below.

This picture, done by the author in 1976, illustrates
Eliot's "possibilities of contrapuntal arrangement."

Each of the small figures is what mathematicians call
a "Latin square." The picture illustrates all 4x4 Latin squares
that can be made with four triangular half-squares.
Close examination will reveal certain contrapuntal arrangements.

S. H. Cullinane,
The Grid of Time
and
Theme and Variations

For a large downloadable folder
containing this and many related web pages,
see Notes on Finite Geometry.

Page created Sept. 20, 2003.