Eliot and Rilke: A Comparative Study of Thought and Symbolism in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets and R. M. Rilke's Duino Elegies

Abstract

So much has been written on T. S. Eliot and Rainer Maria Rilke that the reason for writing this thesis may need some explanation. Very often criticism of Eliot and Rilke has given general estimates, but general estimates without careful textual study as a foundation. The results of this sort of criticism may be interesting, but they do not always convince us of their rightness, just because they are "interpretations of..." without the "evidence for..." Where close analytic study has been done, it has dealt with the poet's feelings more often than with his symbols and their meaning. To write about a poet's feelings is a tricky business, however: as often as not it reveals more of the writer's own feelings than of the poet's. This is not to suggest that a poem’s meaning is something that may be geometrically analysed or deduced. The meaning cannot be a lowest common denominator of interpretations. If the meaning of a poem stood by itself, if the poem were perfect esse subsistens, it would be “out-topping knowledge”: presumably, nothing more could be said. Yet the nearer a work approaches this state the more necessary it seems to say something. The Four Quartets and the Duino Elegies are striking examples of this.