Burnt Norton

"Burnt Norton" (2018 No.8, state 1), oil on canvas, 55.5x66 inches {"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." -T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"}

Drawing 09·09·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton (1935) is one of my favorite poems. "The philosophical basis for the poem can be explained since the discourse on time is connected to the ideas within St. Augustine's Confessions. As such, there is an emphasis on the present moment as being the only time period that really matters, because the past cannot be changed and the future is unknown. The poem emphasizes that memory must be abandoned to understand the current world, and humans must realize that the universe is based on order. The poem also describes that although consciousness cannot be bound within time, humans cannot actually escape from time on their own." (quote from Wikipedia)

The relevance of Burnt Norton to my work is great. I struggle to be here, creating myself and my art; I must deal with my past and the past that is art history. Art is like The Law, it is rich with precedent which must be respected, and assimilated, in order to move toward self-understanding and correctness. The first lines of Eliot's Burnt Norton are, "Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past." Am too ambitious with my Burnt Norton? I left my previous work (Along for Ride) with fear of failure. As I begin my newest painting I simultaneously leave the previous painting. Have I committed Original Sin? I am vainly trying to go places that cannot, must not, be exercised. In my new painting I will stay with the solidly known. I will not stray from my present day truth. To explain this better I quote Wikipedia again: "Eliot believed that Burnt Norton could benefit society. The poem's narration reflects on how humankind is affected by Original Sin, that they can follow the paths of either good or evil, and that they can atone for their sins. To help the individual, the poem explains that people must leave the time-bound world and look into their selves, and that poets must seek out a perfection, not bound by time in their images, to escape from the problems of language." I am not religious; this Original Sin thing is a stretch for me. T.S. Eliot was religious. The concept of Original Sin to me is simple recognition of the deceptive power of previous knowledge, previous success, previous failure. To be successful I must "leave the time-bound world and look into [myself]; [as an artist I] must seek out a perfection not bound by time in [my] images [In order] to escape from the problems of [the images from my past and those of art history]."

Yesterday's drawing is much the same. I am trying to codify the pictorial rules of my art.

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"Although logos is common to all, most people live as if they had a wisdom of their own."
"The way upward and the way downward are the same."
-Heraclitus


BURNT NORTON
(No. 1 of 'Four Quartets')
T.S. Eliot

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
Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world. There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting. So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,

To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
II
Garlic and sapphires in the mud Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood Sings below inveterate scars Appeasing long forgotten wars. The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving, Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered.
III
Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness Turning shadow into transient beauty With slow rotation suggesting permanence Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation Cleansing affection from the temporal. Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker Over the strained time-ridden faces Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies and empty of meaning Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs

Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London, Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney, Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.
IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still At the still point of the turning world.
V
Words move, music moves

Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts, Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The detail of the pattern is movement, As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always— Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.