ABSTRACT
The counterpart in Thomas Stearns Eliot to Rainer Maria Rilke's Tenth Elegy is 'Little Gidding' last of Four Quartets. Like the Tenth Elegy, 'Little Gidding' is the final poem of cycle, and is also concerned with the question of how to end. This chapter examines the relation between the Tenth Elegy and 'Little Gidding', considering the nature of Eliot's 'purchase' at the end of the Quartets. The thinker with whom Rilke is most associated is Friedrich Nietzsche. In Zur Genealogie der Moral, Nietzsche took up the relationship between vision and subjectivity, and connected it to God and the idea of suffering. The Sphinx is the climactic image of the Tenth Elegy. The 'architectonic' pattern of the Tenth Elegy is the same as that of 'Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes'. The Tenth Elegy is a post-Nietzschean poem, and it demands to be seen in the context of tensions which Nietzsche was in a unique position to formulate.
