(Though Four Quartets appears to be driving toward expressing or defining a state of contentment, it seems to have a hard time getting there, as, perhaps, it ought to. The poetry has made it clear that, ultimately, contentment can come only through belief, which is itself not always forthcoming or when it is easily obtainable. If nothing else, then, the poetry can be admired, even if grudgingly, for what appears to be an unstinting honesty and integrity of purpose. One might well ask, nevertheless, echoing the speaker of another ostensibly bleak Eliot poem, when, if not whether, the dead tree of such an all-encompassing existential despair will give shelter, even if that be only from itself. 

( «Little Gidding» қарамаққа өзі алға қойған ой жеткізудің тәсілін тапқандай сәтті жүріс жүргенімен, оған шын мәнінде қол жеткізу оңай шаруа емес еді, қайта оны орындалмайтын мақсат, деуге де болатын. Бұл туынде өз әуенін табу үшін қалай да сенімге иек артуға тиіс, ал сенім дегенің көбінде оңай меңгеруге келмейтін дүние кені анық. Мақсаттың орындалмауының түп себебі де осында. Ал ол жоқ болса, жыр өзінің әуенін басқадан іздеуге тиіс болады. Одан туындайтын нақтылық пен тіке түйсікке тән дүниелердің шынайылығын ұстап тұру қиынның қиыны болмақ. Жұрттың онда ақынның өзіне тән әуені қайдан пайда болды, онда қалай да бір дүние бар ғой, тіпті ол Т.С.Элиоттың өзі болуы да мүмкін ғой, деп сұрауы мүмкін.)

Indeed, if readers of the Four Quartets wish to possess that biblical pearl of great value that costs nothing less than everything, perhaps it is Eliot’s intention to put his readers through the wringer before they find it. Nothing worthwhile comes easily, after all, especially wisdom. These readers have just heard the closing words of “The Dry Salvages,” which tell them that the best they will have for all their trying is the knowledge that they tried, and if they are really fortunate, they will thus be able, like the poet, at least to lie at last in a marked grave on dry land, unlike all those others for whom a watery grave was the final resting place. 

It would make perfect sense, then, that the reader, like the speaker, would be ready to take refuge in an isolated and ancient chapel in the English countryside. The chapel at Little Gidding is the sole remaining structure once used by a religious community which Nicholas Ferrar founded there in 1626. Gidding is one of the oldest place names in Huntingdonshire, where the settlement is located, and is derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root as giddy, which means to be carried away by music or dance or to be possessed by God. It might seem that the poet chose this chapel for those associations alone, so much do they relate to overall themes in the Four Quartets, with its emphasis on music and dance and patterns and structures, as well as on theological and spiritual considerations. 

( Осылайша, тақырыпқа орай оқырман мен ақынның басы ауылдағы мәлім бір ескі қыстақтағы медреседе қосылды. Осылай болуға тиісті де. Поэмада айтылған орын осындағы бүгінге жеткен ең байырғы құрылыс, 1626 жылы онда діндарлар өмір сүрген. Ондағы образдардың дені дінге қатысты. Ақын осы детальдарды қажет еткені үшін осы медрессені қалап алғаны анық. Бұлар «Little Gidding» түпкі болмысымен біте қайнасып жатыр. Олар әуен, би және сәйкестіліктен тұратын рухани, әрі діни түсі бар болмысты құрайды)

Those associations are merely fortuitous, however, for Little Gidding, like Burnt Norton, East Coker, and the Dry Salvages, is another locale chosen because of its personal associations for the poet. While it may never be known exactly why he visited that particular historical site, because no one, not even he, could then have known that the last of his four quartets would eventually emerge from the experience, Eliot came to this spot in May 1936. Five years later and in an entirely different world, Eliot was busily at work on “Little Gidding,” the poem.

The German air war against England was then at what would subsequently be regarded as its peak, although no one could have known that at the time, either. Indeed, England at that time, May 1941, was not doing well in the conflict. Her French 218 Four Quartets The chapel at Little Gidding. Eliot would visit the site in May 1936 and commemorate its significance to both his personal history and English history in “Little Gidding” I, the poem that closes the Four Quartets. (Courtesy of Russel Murphy) 031-494_Eliot-p2.indd 218 9/5/07 2:36:02 PM ally had fallen in June 1940, and Hitler would not take the pressure off the English by recklessly opening a second front with his invasion of Russia until June 1941. The United States did not enter the war until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the following December. The spring of 1941 must then have seemed like England’s darkest hour to many, Eliot among them. In any case, as he began work on the last part of the Four Quartets, he turned, for some reason, to the experience of that personal pilgrimage that he had made five years earlier to Little Gidding, whose historical associations are with another dark hour in English history—the 17thcentury civil war that had culminated, in January 1649, with the execution of King Charles I. 

During the long, complicated, and chaotic course of that distant war, which began in September 1642, Charles at one point had taken refuge at Little Gidding. He had already had personal contact twice before with the religious farm community there that Ferrar, son of a wealthy and influential London merchant, had established as a household of prayer with his extended family. The first time, in the early 1630s, involved Charles’s interest in a gospel concordance in Ferrar’s possession. The second time, Charles actually visited the community. This was in March 1642, within months of the outbreak of civil war. By that time, Ferrar had already been dead some four years or more, a victim of malaria. 

It is Charles’s second visit, when he arrived alone the night of May 2, 1646, that is particularly significant. At any rate, it is the visit to which Eliot directly alludes in the first section of “Little Gidding.” After continuous military setbacks, Charles’s cause had been all but defeated by the Parliamentary forces, and he was in the process of eluding capture when he arrived that May evening at Little Gidding. Indeed, John Ferrar, Nicholas’s elder brother and his hand-picked successor as leader of the community, was so anxious that pursuing troops would search the community compound that he removed the desperate king to a private home in the nearby village of Coppingford. Such measures were all to no avail, however. The king, who left the following morning, was captured several days later, on May 5, and as a result of their suspected assistance to him and allegiance to his cause, the Ferrar community was disbanded by force.

...

by Russell Elliott Murphy «T. S. Eliot:A Literary Reference to His Life and Work» кітабынан үзінді.