Why Read Four Quartets?

I am amazed to be the first to review this little gem of a book. Having always been intimidated by the Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot, I was drawn to it's title and bought it hoping that it might elucidate these mysterious poems. Brous takes us first to the physical places of the four quartets in a charming chapter called Literary Tourism. Then he elucidates Eliot's main sources in mysticism, Dante and the Bhagavadgita (a delight to have these difficult texts also revealed to us). Then he shows us the path the Eliot went on in his own conversion experience. He does all this in an elegant, simple direct writing style that is without cant and the obfuscating flourishes that academics are prone to. What Brous has done is to take us along on his own incandescent spiritual journey of thirty five years. It is a joy to read and now I will have so much pleasure in reading, and rereading, Four Quartets. I think this book should be in every library in America beckoning us all to explore this magnificent work.

The most important poem of the 20th century. It deals with Time, God and our place in the world. You cannot say you are educated until you have read this poem and some of the books devoted to understanding it.