QU4RTETS
T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is an epic four-part poem — a meditation on human mortality, time, and Christ’s redemptive love. The poem was published initially as separate texts during the years leading up to and during the Second World War. Each of the four sections of the poem relate to a specific geographic location, and the last section, “Little Gidding,” (penned during the Blitz in London) points to a small village in Cambridgeshire. Since the time of its composition, the poem has grown to be seen as a major milestone in Western literature.
A collaboration in art, music, poetry, and theology
The three artists involved in this collaborative project—painters Makoto Fujimura and Bruce Herman, along with composer Christopher Theofanidis—responded to Four Quartets from a similar faith commitment to that of the poet, i.e., from a desire to see how faith in Christ can continue to inform works of art, music, and poetry in the 21st century. Jeremy Begbie, theologian and musician, joined the artists bringing theological focus and insight to this artistic and musical undertaking.
The QU4RTETS exhibition and musical performance toured throughout the United States and internationally—at Gordon College, Yale University, Duke University, Baylor University, Westmont College, Carnegie Hall, Cambridge University, Hong Kong University, and Hiroshima University in Japan.
QU4RTETS No.1 (Spring)
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…
cf. “Burnt Norton” from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets
QU4RTETS No.1 (Spring), ©Bruce Herman, 2012, oil and gold/silver leaf on wood
In this passage from “Burnt Norton” — the first of the four poems comprising Four Quartets — T. S. Eliot offers an entry point for his reader into the “silence”, the “stillness” that allows us to reflect in memory and in hope on the possibility of real meaning to our lives. We all know that in order to achieve this “still point” of authentic meaning we must sometimes move beyond our neat definitions, our words and propositions. We must look at the beauty and simplicity of the world — much like a child looks — that is, without preconceived notions. As Jesus says in the Gospel of St. Matthew, “Unless you change and become as little children you will never enter the Kingdom of God.” I’ve tried to offer, in my first painting, an entry point towards the silence, the stillness, the simplicity of God’s perfect reign, where all is set to rights again, and where despite the fragmentation and brokenness of our lives true meaning is revealed — not in a sentimental idealization of childhood, but in an honest, hopeful gaze forward in the midst of the ruins. The model for this painting is my grandson, Will Herman — a frequent climber of trees and a boy wise beyond his years.
as the clock continues to beat like a heart, each moment following the last — yet time also ebbs and flows, speeds up and slows down as the story unfolds
QU4RTETS No.2 (Summer)
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At the still a of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is…
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
cf. “Burnt Norton” from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets
QU4RTETS No.2 (Summer), ©Bruce Herman, 2012, oil and gold/silver leaf on wood
Here, in another section of Four Quartets, also from “Burnt Norton”, the poet speaks of the internal motions of the human body “figured in the drift of stars” — as though our own heartbeats correspond directly to the orderly patterns of the heavens. Indeed, our body is aligned with the very seasons of the year, as the clock continues to beat like a heart, each moment following the last — yet time also ebbs and flows, speeds up and slows down as the story unfolds.
I’ve attempted in this second painting, Summer, to reveal the transition from childhood to youth, and something of the “dance” of nature, of life revealed in a young woman as she spreads out her arms, Christ-like, yielding to the Tree — itself a symbol of life, and in Christian tradition the central symbol of our faith — from the Garden of Eden to the Crucifixion of Christ. The very ambiguity of the Tree, as symbol, is embedded in all cultural traditions, and so our lives unfold before it, full of possibility/full of danger. Each of my paintings celebrates one of the seasons, one of the cardinal elements (earth, air, fire, water). In this case the element is Fire.
the poet gives us hope and fierce courage and curiosity in the face of nature’s power and the inevitability of death
QU4RTETS No.3 (Autumn)
The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite,
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men.
The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
From “The Dry Salvages”, T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
QU4RTETS No.3 (Autumn), ©Bruce Herman, 2012, oil and gold/silver leaf on wood
Continuing his exploration of nature’s pattern in the third section of Four Quartets, in “The Dry Salvages”, T. S. Eliot writes of the element of Water — in ocean and river imagery, evoking the passage of time and life amidst many waters. In my painting, QU4RTETS No.3 Autumn, I’ve attempted to get at the same sense of growing maturity and solemn courage I feel in Eliot’s poem. The poet gives us imagery of loss and wreckage, but also hope and fierce courage and curiosity in the face of nature’s power and the inevitability of death. Toward the end of Dry Salvages Eliot says “Not farewell/But fare forward, voyagers”, having quoted Krishna from Bhaghavad Gita in his final speech to Arjuna. My own sense of the Tree, as it unfolds in mid-life, is that it is generous with its fruit even as it sheds its leaves and moves toward the inevitably winter. There is yet much life to come in autumn.
in my end is
my beginning
QU4RTETS No.4 (Winter)
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from…
A condition of complete simplicity
Costing not less than everything.
cf. “Little Gidding” T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
QU4RTETS No.4 (Winter), ©Bruce Herman, 2012, oil and silver leaf on wood
In “Little Gidding” — last of the four poems comprising Four Quartets, the poet perfectly recapitulates the entirety of his four-part epic. “In my end is my beginning” is a refrain throughout the poem, and in my painting Winter I have attempted to evoke the very same sense that we have at the end of our lives: we begin anew, finding wisdom at last in the costly “condition of complete simplicity” that old age alone can give us. In “East Coker”, the second poem of Quartets Eliot says, “Do not let me hear/Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly” — by which I believe he means yet again the second innocence of true wisdom. In the element of Air, I find the wind of spirit, of wisdom and grace of a life well lived, of a death accepted without fear — and trust in the perfect providence of God. The model for this painting is the wise yet childlike linguist/acoustic engineer Osamu Fujimura, father of my friend and collaborator, Mako.
— Bruce Herman
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