Elves, Effort, and T. S. Eliot

I purchased this slim volume years ago – I think it was in England, though I may be wrong – and have carried it around with me in my purse almost continuously ever since. It’s lovely to have a bit of beauty one can slip into at a moment’s notice.

The acknowledgments portion of my first poetry collection, Songs in the Gate: Poems from the Borderland of Now and Not Yet, mentions T. S. Eliot – and with good reason. He it was who inspired me to launch out into the wide and wonderful world of free verse poetry, which is poetry written without traditional rhyme and meter.

I do not claim to understand more than approximately five percent of the gorgeous wonder with which that man gifted the world, but I love him anyway. His words seem to express the inexpressible, giving voice to the deepest sensations of the soul. Through him, I discovered that one does not have to understand poetry to enjoy it. Reading T. S. Eliot makes me feel like a Hobbit listening to Elven song:

“The singing drew nearer. One clear voice rose now above the others. It was singing in the fair Elven-tongue, of which Frodo knew only a little, and the others knew nothing. Yet the sound blending with the melody seemed to shape itself in their thought into words which they only partly understood.” ~ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Every so often, though, I come across something that I do understand – that speaks, directly and without imagery, to the heart of my experiences, past or present. A few weeks ago, I was reading “East Coker” – the second of the four quartets – and discovered this gem:

(. . .) And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to
     conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot
     hope
To emulate – but there is no competition –
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under
     conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

I was reading out loud, for I find that is the best way to encounter T. S. Eliot: letting the beauty of the words wash over me and soak down into the roots of my spirit. When I came to that bit, though, I had to stop. Tears and sudden recognition gripped me, and I grabbed a pencil to mark the passage and scribble in the margins:

“6 August 2018: renewal of vision and hope”

He was speaking, you see, of “trying to learn to use words”: that which I am seeking to make my life’s work also. I talk a great a deal about Tolkien, and Lewis, and how I long to follow in their fruitful footsteps – but, occasionally, I have to stop and wonder at the presumptuous audacity even of making such statements. If these two unassuming Oxford dons could hear me, would they be honored? Would they bless my efforts?

I have a sneaky suspicion their response would be something closer to:

“Who exactly does that cheeky American think she is?”

Since they are not around to speak thus, I occasionally do it for them:

“Who exactly do I think I am?”

But then, I read T. S. Eliot, and I remember:

. . . there is no competition –
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again . . .

I’m not trying to follow in your footsteps, Ronnie and Jack. I’d stumble before I hit the first plateau. I’m just trying to take my place in the ranks beside you – far, far down the line, of course, and separated by age and gender and years of cultural change (not to mention a disparance in intellectual rigor I cannot even aspire to overcome), but still seeking to recover the same ground.

I think they’d understand that.

I hope they would.

Besides, how can any of us hope to leap into the beckoning vastness on our own puny steam? As my upcoming novel, The Ancient, says over and over, we must first climb upon the shoulders of the giants who came before us.

Find your giants, friends.
Climb upon their shoulders.
Take a breath.

Leap.

In the words of another giant:

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.