From the moment I emerge from the bus into the misty veil of the morning, bundled in my jacket and scarf, the country air of Little Gidding breathes of peace. We seem to be in the middle of nowhere, our only company being a herd of sheep grazing in the verdant pastures. Little Gidding is, in fact, quite little—merely a cluster of houses in a hamlet, surrounded by miles and miles of gentle wilderness.
As we are welcomed into the visitor’s center, I glance through the windows and glimpse the shadowed outline of the chapel itself, overhung with mist and naked trees emptied of all but the last marcescent leaves. The sight is made stranger for its familiarity: I have seen this place before, framed in a photograph in the lounge of the English department at my college. I would walk past it every day last semester, and glimpsed the words of T.S. Eliot that captioned it: “So, while the light fails / On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel / History is now and England” (233-237).
For me, that photo always represented my someday goal of studying abroad in England, and all the many dreams that coloured that goal. Someday is here now, and yet for Little Gidding, nothing seems to have changed. The chapel looks the same now as it did in that photograph—it is this sense of timelessness that brings deeper insight into Eliot’s poem Little Gidding.
Perhaps what strikes me most about T.S. Eliot is that, despite being remembered as an English poet, he wasn’t born in England at all. In fact, he was born in Missouri on September 26th, 1888, and educated at Harvard University, where he began composing the first of his great poems. When he was twenty-six years old, he began postgraduate studies at Oxford University, fell in love with the legacy that imbued England, and soon settled in England permanently.
Eliot’s Four Quartets were written in the tumultuous period between 1936-1942, with all four being published together in 1943. Each of the four quartets is based on one of the four elements—air, earth, water, and fire, respectively. According to the website of Little Gidding church, the Four Quartets are “a sequence of poetic reflections on the importance of time and intersections of timeless moments. Eliot experienced such a moment at Little Gidding.” Little Gidding, the fourth and final poem of the collection, is based on this chapel.
As I make my way towards the chapel, the image of the photograph in the English department building comes to the forefront of my mind, juxtaposed with Eliot’s own words: “Here, the intersection of the timeless moment / Is England and nowhere. Never and always” (52-53). The trees grow and change colour and burn bright and fade. Clouds shift and mold and change in the sky. All the surrounding countryscape changes and alters, but in the midst of it all remains the chapel. It looks the same now as it did all those years ago, when on another study abroad program, another professor snapped that singular shot to be now remembered.
Within these walls, the tangible space feels altered somehow between the past and the present. This moment, as the way the light falls through the window at the altar and darkly illuminates the pews, is an intersection of a timeless moment into the existence of time itself.
T.S. Eliot first arrived here on the afternoon of May 25th, 1936. He was escorted by Reverend Hugh Fraser Stewart, with whom Eliot was connected as an honorary fellow of Magdalene College in Cambridge (“T.S. Eliot”). We do not know what Little Gidding meant to Eliot, only that he was notably impacted by it. Since the poem refers to “midwinter’s spring” (1), it is possible that he returned here in following seasons and reflected on the constancy of the place during all his visits.
The chapel at Little Gidding is a place of pilgrimage, to which people have traveled for prayer retreats over the centuries until the space itself seems permanently altered by prayer—a sort of “liminal space” between the past and the present. Consider these lines from the third stanza of Little Gidding, where Eliot encourages us to travel beyond a sense of doubt, towards an acceptance of things we cannot understand: “you are not here to verify, / Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity / Or carry report. You are here to kneel / Where prayer has been made valid” (43-46).
Since Little Gidding emphasizes the element of fire, it is notable that Eliot writes in three-line rhyming units known as terza rima, which is a close English model of the original form of Dante’s Inferno. Eliot found similar inspiration in classical forms by using techniques like set stanzas, internal rhymes, and a clear rhyme scheme. Though he follows classical form, he finds space for innovating with his imagery and new themes that resonated with him. Eliot refers to the fire of “incandescent terror” as a way of juxtaposing the Holy Spirit (with tongues of fire) and the devastation of the Blitz bombings in 1940-41.
While the rest of the world experiences war or change, Little Gidding is a place of solitude, a place where time ceases to exist, a sense of a “liminal space” where timelessness is found, tangible, in the air of that chapel. Eliot makes this point in the first part of Little Gidding: “If you came this way, / Taking any route, starting from anywhere, / At any time or at any season, / It would always be the same” (39-44). Whenever you come, no matter what season or time, Little Gidding will be found timeless.
I used to think I knew why I came on this semester abroad. I wanted to walk the landscapes that my favorite authors had walked, seen the places that shaped the stories I love, study poetry and find the words that struck chords in my soul. I wanted to come to places like Little Gidding and learn how these places shaped the words that shaped me. I wanted to make new friends, travel the world, and write pieces of my own to reflect all that I learned. All of these moments were the vision I had of my semester abroad.
While all of these moments have been worthwhile and valuable, I’m beginning to realize that they are not why I came. As early as Northern Ireland, when I heard the stories of my friends on this program, I realized that God brought every single one of us here on this semester for a purpose. No one is here by accident. But what of myself? Why did God bring me here, at this exact point in my life? Maybe I will never divine his end purpose and his goal. Why have I come here? While it is a question I wish I had the answer to, it is a question that was not known as a question until I came across these lines in Eliot’s Little Gidding:
And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. (29-32)
“Little Gidding” by T.S. Eliot, lines 29-32
For whatever end God meant me to be here on this trip, I am here. Whatever God’s purpose is, it is beyond the end that I supposed when I began. All of these powerful moments and experiences have culminated into a compelling four months of adventures, enriching conversations. I have learned how to ask questions—perhaps most importantly, I am learning to rest in the knowledge that not all questions have answers. But in the midst of my struggle to comprehend everything that has happened in the last months, I find these lines which pierce my own heart:
We shall not cease from exploration
At the end of all our exploring
WIll be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
“Little Gidding” by T.S. Eliot, lines 239-242
In less than three weeks time, I will fly across the Atlantic and leave behind me all the many roads I have traveled to get here: the liminal chapel of Little Gidding, the “dreaming spires” of Oxford, the bustling streets of London, and the gentle sanctuary of that dear Rostrevor, nestled in the Mourne Mountains. After four months of traveling and living all the moments I have dreamt of living, I will return home for Christmas.
There are many things I miss—my family, my own bedroom, my books, the comfort of home. But what I fear the most about going home again is the sameness, and the inexplicable constancy of this place that I have known all my life. But perhaps this is the end of it after all: the meaning of traveling is to return to where we began and see it afresh, with clear eyes, and to walk with new attention and new life in the old ways we knew and loved.
And perhaps, just as my visit to Little Gidding gave me clearer insight into T.S. Eliot, I will return home again with a better understanding of myself. Perhaps in returning, I will know my home for the first time.
