Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty. The surface glittered out of heart of light,Īnd they were behind us, reflected in the pool. This is the final concrete statement of what 'Burnt Norton' is about but it recallsthe experience we have been given in a different rhythm and with different descriptiveaccompaniments in the second half of the first movement, as the sun for a moment shinesfrom the cloud, and the whole deserted garden seems to become alive:Īnd the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, This image occurs in a rudimentary form in 'TheHollow Men', along with a moving tree and voices heard in the wind:Īt the close of 'Burnt Norton' a 'moment of happiness', defined in 'The Dry Salvages'as a 'sudden illumination' is made concrete by the image of a shaft of sunlight whichtransfigures the world:
A simple example is the phrase 'a shaft ofsunlight' at the close of 'Burnt Norton'. As they recur they alter, as a phrase does when we hear it on a differentinstrument, or in another key, or when it is blended and combined with another phrase, orin some way turned round, or inverted.
Theserecurring images, like the basic symbols, are common, obvious and familiar, when we firstmeet them. One is constantly reminded of music by the treatment of images,which recur with constant modifications, from their context, or from their combinationwith other recurring images, as a phrase recurs with modifications in music. The more familiar we become with Four Quartets, however,the more we realize that the analogy with music goes much deeper than a comparison of thesections with the movements of a quartet, or than an identification of the four elementsas 'thematic material'.
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