Burnt Norton

I keep going back to Burnt Norton this semester. Because it was the section of the Four Quartets that my group in capstone covered, I read it at least twenty times, maybe even more... (I only read it so much because I have based my capstone paper around it.) Anyways- I was going through my notes and realize how interested in the "point" and past, present and future I have been. I thought that I would share some of the things I discovered and thought was noteworthy.

-Time and conciousness are abstract principles.

-however expansive and infinite time is, it is controlled by the present. And whatever actions are done in the present control what happened and will happen in the past and future.

-past and future are always contained in the present.

-conciousness implies a fixed perspective while time is characterized by a transient relativity. (around the fixed point of the present)

-memory vs. temporal existance- which allows for the moments of greatest beauty.

-ruins are a symbol of the fultility of human aspirations and particularly the futility of trying to alter the natural order.

-coherence never existed at all. things did not once make sense and now seize to do so. Meaning and human experiene are necessarily mutually exclusive.

-only art is able to acheive transcendance over time.

-living for the future, while remembering the past- does this make it so a persons conscious is never completely in teh present?

-"the point" the one point that things never ascend, decline. from nor towards. it is still. it is in the complete present of consciousness.