Political Poems: ‘Little Gidding’ by T.S. Eliot

In the final episode of Political Poems, Mark and Seamus discuss ‘Little Gidding’, the fourth poem of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’. Emerging out of Eliot’s experiences of the Blitz, ‘Little Gidding’ presents us with an apocalyptic vision of purifying fire. Suggesting that humanity can survive warfare only through renewed spiritual unity, Eliot finds a model in Little Gidding, a small village that for a time in the 17th century served as an Anglican commune before its closure under Puritan scrutiny. Mark and Seamus explore how Eliot’s poetics heighten our sense of the liminal and mystical, and how, by ‘scrambling our brains’, Eliot’s brilliant rhetoric subsumes his bizarre politics. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecryt In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsyt Get in touch: [email protected] Further reading in the LRB: Frank Kermode: Disintegration https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n... Helen Thaventhiran: Things Ill Done and Undone https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n... Tobias Gregory: By All Possible Art https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n... ABOUT CLOSE READINGS Close Readings is a multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books which looks at different periods and themes in literature through selections of key texts, covering poetry, fiction, history and philosophy from Ancient Greece to the present day. LRB AUDIOBOOKS Discover audiobooks from the LRB, including Jonathan Rée's Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre: https://lrb.me/audiobookscip ABOUT THE LRB The LRB is Europe’s leading magazine of books and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world’s best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from culture and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance. As well as essays and book reviews each issue also contains poems, an exhibition review, ‘short cuts’, letters and a diary, and is available in print, online, and offline via our app. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to almost 15,000 articles in our digital archive. Our website features a regular blog and a channel of audio and video content, including podcasts, author interviews and highlights from the events programme at the London Review Bookshop.