Language: Dynamic and Mutable

As I read The Four Quartets again, I noticed that Eliot is very interested in language and how it changes with time. He references the dynamic nature of language in the following quote:

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…

…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, ore merely chattering,

Always assail them. (Buirnt Norton, V)

Eliot stresses in this passage that the meaning of language is not static, but constantly changes based on how people use it. Words “crack” and “break” because their meanings are assigned to them by a society that is constantly changing. As people use language, whether “shrieking,” “scolding,” or “chattering,” meanings change, and language cannot bear the “burden” of having objective meaning. However, the “words after speech,” which seem to refer to the unspoken words (for I’m not sure what else “words after speech” would be) are able to “reach into the stillness.” Their significance derives from their “form” and “pattern." These terms seem to be referring to the aesthetic characteristics of a text, what emerges when one studies a text in a vacuum – not against the backdrop of our world, but as one united text that only refers to itself. This view of a text allows it to break away from time and have objective meaning in a timeless world that consists only of itself.

Eliot describes the challenges he faces with spoken language, for he is

Trying to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

…

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language

And next year’s words await another voice (Little Gidding, II).

Again, language changes and what signifies something at one point does not mean the same thing shortly thereafter. However, at the end of the work, it seems that Eliot alters his perspective on language. Instead of focusing on its mutability, he approaches it at the level of individual phrases and sentences. He asserts that “every phrase / And sentence that is right” is defined as one that is meaningful in relation to its direct context in the text. In such a sentence,

every word is at home,

Taking its place to support the others,

The words neither diffident not ostentatious,

And easy commerce of the old and the new,

The common word exact without vulgarity,

The formal word precise but not pedantic,

The complete consort dancing together (Little Gidding, V).

The words in this “right” sentence make sense in relation to the words around it. Such a sentence, Eliot concludes, is “an end and a beginning” because it transcends time. Its language becomes objectively meaningful to the reader, contributing to the creation of human history, which is a “pattern of timeless moments.”