ABSTRACT
The theme which Mr. Eliot treats in this poem – as in the three poems preceding it – is very difficult to state except in the form in which he has stated it; the vocabulary we are accustomed to use about time lacks the fitting terms; they have either fallen out of use or not yet come into currency. These poems contain probably the most essential and intimate poetry that Mr. Eliot has written, yet to those who accept the modern conception of time, the conception of development or evolution, it may easily appear remote and tenuous. For it goes beyond the idea of development and concentrates its main attention neither on the past nor on the future, finding no ultimate meaning in the one or ultimate hope in the other. It is concerned with a moment in and out of time … …transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in tim6, but not like a moment of time, A moment in time, but time was made through that moment, for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.
