Customer Reviews

Dove Descending: A Journey Into T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets (Sapientia Classics)

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This is the first book I've found in the "Sapientia Classics" imprint from Ignatius Press (sapientia means wisdom), although at least one other title, Shakespeare the Papist is also out. T.S. Eliot, widely regarded as a (perhaps "the") modernist poet, was an anglo-Catholic. The anglo part has gotten much commentary; here the Catholic side comes into play.

Thomas Howard has essentially written a companion for Eliot's poetry cycle, "The Four Quartets," designed to be read alongside the poem(s)so one needs a copy of the poem to read along with this book. But many readers also find Howard daunting because of his large vocabulary (see On Being Catholic or Chance or the Dance), so one may also want a dictionary handy. Neither Howard's book nor Eliot's poem(s) are as hard to understand as George William Rutler's introduction, however, which is filled with brilliant insights and bon mots but--wink wink--assumes we have a lot of inside information on all things modernist and Eliotelian.

Thankfully Howard doesn't do that; rather he draws us in by drawing out the poem(s), which he finds is (are) about what Charles Williams called the via negativa or the negative way. You can find it in The Cloud of Unknowing or St. John of the Cross' dark night of the soul (an experience post-modernists readily relate to), but Howard finds it most of all in C.S. Lewis' friend and fellow Inkling, Charles Williams.

That's rather natural since Eliot and Williams were friends and Eliot wrote an introduction to Williams' novel, All Hallows Eve. Howard, who refers to Williams here and there throughout this book also authored The Novels of Charles Williams and took the book's title from Williams' The Descent of the Dove: A History of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Not that you need to read CW to understand Eliot or Howard, both of whom do a good job explaining and invoking the way of negation. But Williams also wrote of another way, the way of affirmation. Howard proves a faithful guide to both writers so that readers interested in both ways, having closed Dove Descending may move seamlessly to The Novels of Charles Williams.

Nothing anybody might say will prepare you for this book, a pilgrimage in itself--and most excellent Lenten reading. Eliot hated footnotes, so that's all I have to say.
Robert Bove
www.RobertBove.net