Time through Time Discourse: A Close Reading of T. S. Eliot's and Anna Akhmatova's Latter Poetry

Abstract

Thomas Stearns Eliot and Anna Akhmatova are considered to be among the most influential representatives of Modernism, Eliot - in Anglo-American Literature, and Akhmatova – in Russian. Modernism emerged in the beginning of the 20^th century and intended to point out the failure of modern people to maintain a culture based on spiritual values. This idea was central to the works of Eliot and Akhmatova, especially for their latter poetry. Two last major poems of these authors were to become Four Quartets and Poem without a Hero. This paper aims to present Eliot's and Akhmatova's perception of time and modernity, by applying the framework of discourse analysis to their poems, Four Quartets and Poem without a Hero. Both poems were written during World War II and were influenced by it. Faced with tragedy, Eliot and Akhmatova turned to reflecting on notions of time and history. Despite the difference in the poets' experiences, mentality, and background, Four Quartets and Poem without a Hero seem to bear a resemblance in many respects, and to express the common for Akhmatova and Eliot perception of time. A close reading of the poems gives us a chance to see how similar they are in terms of conceptual perspective and stylistics. The poets perceived time as the whole unit, where everything is closely interconnected. Time is a complex continuum, in which every element has its place and persistently interacts with all the other elements; thus, the past is present in our today's lives and shapes our destiny. This perception of time as of the indivisible whole implies that history also is not a sequence of events in the past, that has nothing to do with the present, but rather an active creator of every moment of our present lives. For Eliot and Akhmatova, the past, the present and the future are the one; hence, everything that happened in the past affects our present. Nevertheless, they consider the past unredeemable, as it cannot be erased and there is no way back. Establishing the immutable connection between the past, the present and the future, the poets remind their readers of the notions of sin, guilt and responsibility. Both Eliot and Akhmatova claim that the present world bears the weight of everything that all the previous generations of people have ever done. Their usage of language, on the contrary, seems to be rather different, which allows seeing how within common for the authors perspective on time and history, Eliot and Akhmatova manage to emphasize what appears more significant to each of them. Detailed analysis of their lexeme choice provides evidence that Eliot's major preoccupation were dimensions of the past and 'what might have been', whereas for Akhmatova the past is closely related to the feeling of guilt and regret so that the present becomes the centre of her attention.