Engaging with T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets as a Multimedia Performance

Abstract

This article explores a recent performance of excerpts from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets (1935/36-1942 entitled Engaging Eliot: Four Quartets in Word, Color, and Sound as an example of live poetry. In this context, Eliot's poem can be analysed as an auditory artefact that interacts strongly with other oral performances (welcome addresses and artists' conversations), as well as with the musical performance of Christopher Theofanidis's quintet "At the Still Point" at the end of the opening of Engaging Eliot. The event served as an introduction to a 13-day art exhibition and engaged in a re-evaluation of Eliot's poem after 9/11: while its first part emphasises the connection between Eliot's poem and Christian doctrine, its second part -especially the combination of poetry reading and musical performance -highlights the philosophical and spiritual dimensions of Four Quartets.