“What a rum thing time is ain’t it Neddy?” - Charles Dickens
I first became aware of Burnt Norton after listening to an interview with Terry Waite soon after he was released from half a decade of captivity by Islamic Jihad Organization.
To pass the interminable hours in his windowless cell he would recite the poem silently in his mind.
This recording, read by Mark Arden, is how I imagine it may have sounded in Terry Waite’s head, day after day, week after week, not knowing if he would ever see light again.
Burnt Norton is an enquiry into how time relates to timelessness, history relates to religion, and how the individual relates to the infinite.
It is a deeply religious poem but despite Eliot being a devout Anglo-Catholic the first part of Burnt Norton is not specifically Christian. The meditative and mystical quality of the work could easily fit into the Hindu or Buddhist tradition.
Just a few weeks before TS Eliot was born Dr Friedrich Hermann Wölfert completed the world’s first engine-driven flight and as Elliot was being laid to rest in Somerset, Penzias and Wilson were publishing their theories about The Big Bang.
In between those two events came a couple of world wars, an economic collapse or two, a few empires crumbled and a pandemic raged and died.
What a time to be alive.
Technical note: All of the clock and watch sounds used in the rhythm track of the recording came from from timepieces owned by my grandparents.
The photos used in the video are of my family between 1913 - 1965.
Burnt Norton read by Amanda Holmes: HERE