T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets": Itinerary for a Lenten Journey
Wednesdays, March 1-29, 9:00-10:00 a.m.
Jubilee Hall, St. Ita Catholic Church (5500 N Broadway)
Classes will begin after the 8:00 a.m. daily Mass.
Led by Fr. Bob Sprott, OFM
T. S. Eliot’s last and perhaps greatest work is a series of four poems written before and during World War II. A “quartet” is a musical group, but it is also a type of musical composition, and that is how Eliot employs the term here. Each poem is divided into five “movements,” or sections, a structure that Eliot had used earlier in both “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men,” but which in this poem he brings to perfection and endows it with a greater musical quality. The theme is time and eternity, experience and wisdom, and how the redemption wrought by Christ has lifted up and transformed our very human nature. There is no better accompaniment to our Lenten journey than the music and poetry of this work.
“Four Quartets” is available in several editions and can be purchased on Amazon for about ten dollars. There are readings of it by Eliot himself, by Jeremy Irons, and by Paul Scofield. Although the poem is available as a Kindle book, it would be better to buy a “real” copy, since it is easier to write notes in the margins of a real book, and there will be many such notes. Among the recordings, the reading by Paul Scofield is especially recommended.
Free and open to the public. Please register by filling out the form below or by contacting Mark Franzen by email or at 773-561-3546.
Jubilee Hall, St. Ita Catholic Church (5500 N Broadway)
Classes will begin after the 8:00 a.m. daily Mass.
Led by Fr. Bob Sprott, OFM
T. S. Eliot’s last and perhaps greatest work is a series of four poems written before and during World War II. A “quartet” is a musical group, but it is also a type of musical composition, and that is how Eliot employs the term here. Each poem is divided into five “movements,” or sections, a structure that Eliot had used earlier in both “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men,” but which in this poem he brings to perfection and endows it with a greater musical quality. The theme is time and eternity, experience and wisdom, and how the redemption wrought by Christ has lifted up and transformed our very human nature. There is no better accompaniment to our Lenten journey than the music and poetry of this work.
“Four Quartets” is available in several editions and can be purchased on Amazon for about ten dollars. There are readings of it by Eliot himself, by Jeremy Irons, and by Paul Scofield. Although the poem is available as a Kindle book, it would be better to buy a “real” copy, since it is easier to write notes in the margins of a real book, and there will be many such notes. Among the recordings, the reading by Paul Scofield is especially recommended.
Free and open to the public. Please register by filling out the form below or by contacting Mark Franzen by email or at 773-561-3546.
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About Fr. Bob Sprott, OFM
Fr. Bob Sprott, OFM, is a member of the Order of the Friars Minor (Franciscans). He holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Chicago, and his work in ministry has led him to the American Southwest, working with Pueblo and Hispanic villages, the Canadian Arctic, working in the Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay, and Guatemala, teaching and providing spiritual direction at a minor seminary run by the Benedictine monks near the city of Quetzaltenango. In 2000 he returned to the U.S. and began ten years in Chicago, many of which were spent at St. Peter’s in the Loop. He has taught numerous adult education courses at the Newberry Library and at area parishes.
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