Description
The Moment in the Rose Garden: A New Reading of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets by David Ashton is an intellectual and spiritual exploration of Eliot’s magnum opus. Ashton handles the Quartets with deftness and care, drawing on Eliot’s letters and contemporary scholarship whilst preserving the spark of his poetry. As the title suggests, The Moment in the Rose Garden offers time to reflect in a beautiful space. Yet it is not just another typical commentary; rather, it challenges assumptions about Eliot the man and his formative influences, including the significant women in his life.
Ashton’s line-by-line analysis is sensitive and perceptive, showing the relevance of the work beyond any specific religious tradition; he teases out key elements which enrich and broaden the reader’s experience. For those new to Eliot, The Moment in the Rose Garden is an accessible introduction to this deeply rewarding and challenging masterpiece; literary scholars, too, will find new insights in the work of this reflective writer, who has spent many years contemplating the profound philosophical and theological themes which inhabit Four Quartets – time, finitude and the eternal.
About the Author
David Ashton (BSc, MD, PhD) is a consultant physician and philosopher whose love of Four Quartets was kindled more than forty years ago. This book is the fruit of both his own long engagement with the poem and his rich dialogue with philosophers and Eliot scholars around the world. He is a regular contributor to The Journal of the T.S. Eliot Society.
Endorsements and Reviews
‘David Ashton’s passion and admiration for Eliot and Four Quartets shines through on every page of this superb book. His commentaries on the poems are deeply thoughtful and learned, but also accessible and readable. Above all, Ashton brings back into clear view Eliot’s spiritual struggle and quest in these challenging poems.’ Richard Capobianco, Professor of Philosophy, Stonehill College, US
‘David Ashton is a sensitive and acute reader and interpreter of both poetry and philosophy. These qualities are brought together in his illuminating and elegant study of Eliot’s Four Quartets. The Four Quartets, Ashton suggests, should not be read as a devotional work that presupposes a commitment to Christianity but rather as a work that that has “meaning for everyone who is willing to listen.”’ Paul Russell, Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia
‘The Moment in the Rose Garden offers not only a remarkably approachable way into Four Quartets for those new to these poems, but also a distinctively illuminating perspective on them. Through detailed yet unfussy commentary, it teases out their exploration of how apparent moments of illumination may bear on our sense of the intersection of the timeless with time, showing that the poetry does so in ways at once rewarding and disorienting for those of any religion or none.’ Martin Warner, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick
