Perfect Stillness and Light in East Coker by T.S Eliot

In East Coker by T.S Eliot the speaker spins through a stretch of cyclical time in search of a moment of stillness and motion that can redeem him and bring some part of him through the cycle of birth, life, generation, dust , and rebirth. He finds that moment that stretches through time while still remaining static, influencing all of time and yet contained within itself, in the moment of crucifixion.
East Coker was Eliot’s ancestral home. He has ended up where his family line began. He opens with a description of the life of a meadow. A house is built, “dies” decays, the field lays fallow, and another structure is built. This description leads into a paraphrase of the verse from Ecclesiastes 3:2, “a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted”. The speaker shows that in time all substances become one, all rise and fall together, “Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth/ Which is already flesh, fur faeces,/ Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf”(ll.6-8). Line six also echoes the traditional funeral service, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Everything that is built or created by man will fall apart, the house rots and molders into the earth providing fertilizer for the field, which is eaten by the animals, who are eaten by men, who build more houses. Even art falls by the wayside, becoming, “tattered arras woven with silent motto.”(ll.13).
The second stanza of the first section begins with a reprisal of the first line, “In my beginning is my end”(ll.14). This helps cement the image of time as a spinning wheel, moving, but ultimately returning to its point of origin. The sun rises over an empty field, where, presumably, there was once a house. The speaker notes that while the house is gone, there are still signs of humanity, “leaving the deep lane”(ll.15). The second stanza moves from the vague, quickly cycling time of the first stanza into a more modern time. More detailed descriptions are given and the poem becomes more immediately personal, ”where you lean against a bank while a van passes”(ll.17), but the wheel has not stopped its “forward” progress, it has only slowed. Mentions of the van and, a few lines down, of electricity, date this section of the poem, rooting it deeply into one spoke of the wheel of time. Lines 21-23 bring the speaker back to the earth and ring with echoes of a more mythic time, “light/ Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone./ the dahlias sleep in the empty silence./ Wait for the early owl.” The rock stops and, in a way, preserves the light. In this sense the rock could be seen as a representative of Jesus Christ, the underlying bedrock that preserves, but does not change itself. The owl in line 23 is a reference to Athena, a mythic figure, preparing for the transition into pre-history that follows.
The speaker returns to the open field, but at a different turning of the wheel. The readers are distanced from the action at first, “If you do not come to close, If you do not come to close,”(ll.25), but are later drawn even closer in by the medieval diction the speaker uses to describe the wedding, which is in itself another reference to Ecclesiastes.
The readers are transported to a Celtic wedding, possibly the origin of the speakers family, where the images of circles, fire, dance, and death are again repeated, “And see them dancing around the bonfire”(ll.28). At this point the diction shifts, becoming at once more personal, and more alien, “In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie-/ A dignified and commodious sacrament.”(30-31). The Chaucerian diction allows the readers to become more fully engulfed in the action by allowing them to become more absorbed in the sense, the voice, of the time described. The speaker seems to pull back again in subsequent lines, while at the same time describing the action in a much more lively manner, “Round and round the fire/ Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,/ Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter/ Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes”(32-35). Images of circles, flames, death, and life are again repeated, more echoes of Ecclesiastes.
Section two begins with a traditional A, A, B, B rhyme scheme in heroic couplets that brings to mind the flavor of Dante. The first four lines of section two pass through all four seasons, ”What is the late November doing/ With the disturbance of the spring/ And creatures of the summer heat,/ And snowdrops writhing under feet”(2:1-4) a cycle unto itself. The order of the seasons is illusionary, fall becomes spring, which becomes summer, which melts into early spring again. Reflecting this disorder, the rhyme scheme breaks down, “And hollyhocks that aim too high/ Red into grey and tumble down/ Late roses filled with early snow”(2:5-7).
This stanza also presents us with an image of light and motion, “thunder rolled by the rolling stars”(2:8), but the rolling stars are just another symptom of the disorganization presented in this section. The constellations battle each other, “Scorpion fights against the Sun/ Until the Sun and Moon go down”(2:11-12), symbolizing the course of time until the second coming, as presented in the Revelation of St. John.
The second stanza in the second section begins with an abrupt change in tone and diction, moving from the abstract and cosmic, to conversational and very personal. The speaker ruminates to himself over his choice of words, “ That was a way of putting it- not very satisfactory:/ A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,”(2:18-20). There is an irony in referring to the description of the cosmic as “periphrastic”, or abbreviated. The “worn-out” fashion refers to the formalized, pre-modern layout of the poem. The introverted nature of the stanza continues in the next lines, “Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle/ With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter/ It was not (to start again) what one had expected.”(2:21-23). The speaker is describing the creative struggle, the desire to create art, while at the same time he devalues his own creation, “The poetry does not matter…”.
The speaker questions the value of looking forward, seeking the future that remains beyond reach, “What was the value of the long looked forward to,/ long hoped for calm,”(2:24-25). The “calm” is the moment of stasis, free from the movement of time. The problem is that to cease the movement of time is to cease to exist. There is no stasis in death, only the progressive movement back into life.
The tone of the poem becomes less personal, but more universal, “their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,/ Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God./ The only wisdom we can hope to acquire/ Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”(2:47-50). In the end, everything belongs to God, therefore the fear of loss is irrelevant, because they own nothing. They are afraid of being owned, but that fear is irrelevant because that ownership has always been the case. The end of section two serves as a return to the ideas presented in the first section, “The houses are all gone under the sea// The dancers are all gone under the hill.”(2:51-52). At this turn of the wheel all is decay. Even the soil has eroded from under the field that once raised up the house, the bones of the dancers that built fires before the house was built rest beneath the mounds.



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