let us shift from the thirteenth century to the twentieth. T. S. Eliot composed his masterpiece, Four Quartets, by bringing together the inner sensus communis and the outer sensus communis, the whole consort dancing together in poetic synesthesia. Four tightly interlaced poems comprise the overall poem. each of these four poems has five movements, patterned after the five divisions of rhetoric, inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio.56 The first of the constituent poems, “Burnt Norton,” sets the scene as performing the historical level. it opens with:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory...
The second of the four sub-poems, “East Coker,” performs the allegorical role in Four Quartets. It opens with:
In my beginning is my end.57 In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place In an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf..
The next poem, “The Dry Salvages,” puts on tropology:
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable,
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget...
Finally, “Little Gidding” performs the level of anagogy, the mystical world between inner and outer worlds; it begins:
Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In a windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind but Pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year...
A major theme running throughout each of the four subpoems is the intersection of time (and the timeless) and place (announced in the titles): “Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” “Little Gidding”—each is a geographical locale. Further, each of the four constituent poems, each Quartet, plays its themes on the same four basic instruments, such as places and elements (respectively air, earth, water, and fire), and seasons. It is the intersection of a particular space and time that transforms and purifies:
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden.
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
In Book I of The Institutes of Oratory, Quintilian sets out the program for eloquence, which includes the study of languages and the cultivation of both Grammar and Rhetoric:
This profession may be most briefly considered under two heads, the art of speaking correctly and the interpretation of the poets; but there is more beneath the surface than meets the eye. For the art of writing is combined with that of speaking, and correct reading precedes interpretation, while in each of these cases criticism has its work to perform. Nor is it sufficient to have read the poets only; every kind of writer must be carefully studied, not merely for the subject matter, but for the vocabulary; for words often acquire authority from their use by a particular author. Nor can such training be regarded as complete if it stop short of music, for the teacher of literature has to speak of metre and rhythm: nor again if he be ignorant of astronomy, can he understand the poets; for they, to mention no further points, frequently give their indications of time by reference to the rising and setting of the stars. Ignorance of philosophy is an equal drawback.58
In Book III, following Cicero (who, in his turn, continued the program of Isocrates), he presents the divisions of rhetoric and their basic characters:
The art of oratory, as taught by most authorities, and those the best, consists of five parts: —invention, arrangement, expression, memory, and delivery or action (the two latter terms being used synonymously). But all speech expressive of purpose involves also a subject and words. If such expression is brief and contained within the limits of one sentence, it may demand nothing more, but longer speeches require much more. For not only what we say and how we say it is of importance, but also the circumstances under which we say it. It is here that the need of arrangement comes in. But it will be impossible to say everything demanded by the subject, putting each thing in its proper place, without the aid of memory. It is for this reason that memory forms the fourth department. But a delivery, which is rendered unbecoming either by voice or gesture, spoils everything and almost entirely destroys the effect of what is said. Delivery therefore must be assigned the fifth place.59
Both patterns are synchronic and simultaneous rather than diachronic or sequential. The simultaneity of the four senses as used by the grammarian constitutes the resonance of the logos, just as the five divisions, when used by the orator, constitute the presence of the word. This is what the linguists now call la langue, and what Eliot calls “the auditory imagination.” The auditory imagination includes both the four senses and the five divisions:
What I call the ‘auditory imagination’ is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end. It works through meanings, certainly, or not without meanings in the ordinary sense, and fuses the old and obliterated and the trite, the current, and the new and surprising, the most ancient and the most civilized mentality.60
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