[T. S. 엘리엇, 네 사중주] 세 번째 시에 대한 학습 참고서 읽기

cf. 일부 자료 발췌
cf. 일부 링크 메모
cf. 네 사중주의 일부에 대한 어떤 한국어 해설

※ 출처 1: https://www.shmoop.com/four-quartets/dry-salvages-section-1-summary.html

※ 발췌 (excerpt):

─ Epigraph:

The Dry Salvages─presumably les trois sauvages─is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, of the N.E. coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages. Groaner: a whistling buoy.

• ( ... ) The speaker gives his only explanatory note of the entire "Fout Quartets," telling us that "The Dry Salvages" is a rock formation off the coast of St. Ann, Massachusetts (where Eliot spent time as a child). ( ... ) Also, the speak explains that a "Groaner" is a type of buoy, and not a terrible pun or lame joke ( ... ).

─ Lines 390-394:

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god─sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.

• The speaker thinks that the rive is a type of "brown god" ( ... ) The image of a rive is appropriate, considering all the stuff the speaker has said about language and words not staying still in "East Coker." To clarify, meaning is like a rive to the speaker, always flowing. Like the Greek philosopher Heraclitus oce wrote, "You can't step into the same rive twice," ( ... )

• At the same time, the speak recognizes that the rive-god is "[p]atient to some degree," since it has allowed us to throw meanings onto it that have managed to stick for a century or two (after all, we're still using the periodic table, right?).

• ( ... ... ) What the speaker is getting at here is that we used to work with nature out of necessity. But in modern times, we build bridges over nature in order to avoid thinking about it. ( ... )

Lines 395-399:

The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities─ever, however, implacable,
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

• Once we've solved the problem of dealing with the dumb river (personified here as a "brown god") we build cities and pretty much forget about it─and about nature─altogether. That said, the river is still there, washing out roads every now and then with "his seansons and rages." In its ability to destroy roads, the river also reminds us of what we "choose to forget," which is that we're connected to the natural world and all of the stuff we build is going to go away someday, along with us (don't forget the message of "East Coker").

• We might go on worshipping technology and machines all we want, but the natural world─like the river─will always be waiting for us, lurking and watching as we grow old and our building eventually fall down. In the end, we might try to conquer nature, but we'll never succeed.

Lines 400-403:

His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

• Even when we're little children shut up in our nurseries, the river-god's "rhythm" is there with us. After all, we're still animals of nature, and we still have nature' rhythms inside us ( ... )

• The rhythm of the river is also present in the "rank ailanthus of the April dooryard / In the smell of grapes on the autumn table / And the evening circle in the winter gaslight." Basically, the speaker is saying here that all things, like the flower ailanthus or the smell of grapes, are connected to the river. ( ... )

Lines 404-410:

  The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.

• No matter how we try to deny the fat that we're connected to the natural world (which is always changing), "the river is within us." After this, the speaker switches to the image of the sea to show how inescapable nature is. ( ... )

• In addition, the sea is "the land's edge," which is true in the literal sense, but also in the metaphorical sense, if we think of the sea as the untamed wild and the land as the realm of human civilization.

• The sea (nature) is always reaching into our human realm, eroding things until they're gone and tossing "Its hints of earlier and other creation:/ The starfish, the horseshoe crab." In other words, nature reminds us of simple, unthinking organisms, and it might remind us that we're not so far off from those organisms, no matter how much credit we like to give ourselves.

• The sea also leaves tidal pools, which we can look into and find "The more delicate algae and the sea anemone." Here, the speaker is no doubt describing all of the things he might have found on the beach when he was a little boy vacationing in Massachusetts. But ( ... ) deep down, he's just a simple creature (like a starfish). ( ... )

Lines 411-416:

It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
                           The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir tress.

• Literally speaking, the sea destroys anything we might try to put into it, shattering our lobsterpots and breaking our oars and nets (a "seine" is a kind of fishing net). Metaphorically speaking, nature destroys any type of meaning or pattern we try to layer onto it. Lying at the bottom of the sea is "the gear of foreign dead men," which means that these men are made anonymouns by the swallowing power of the sea. Basically, the sea is like a god because it's so infinitely larger and more powerful than anything humans will ever be able to come up with.

• The sea is in fact so big that not only one god, but a whole bunch of gods live inside its waves. The sea, the speaker tells us, "has many voices," meaning that you can't pin it down by giving it a single name like Neptune or Poseidon. The sea gets into everything. Its salt gets into the air and settles on "the briar rose," while its fog rises off the water and gets into the "fir trees."

• These images show that the sea (and the natural forces it represents) are always pushing into the realm of human life (i.e., land), always remind us of the natural world.

Lines 417-424:

                   The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,
The menace and caress of wave that breakes on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning from the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:

• More and more groaning fills our ears, as wailing sounds seem to come from the sea in these lines. Yet they do not all mean the same thing. As the speaker says, "The sea howl / And the sea yelp, are different voices / Often together heard." Again, he's undercutting our desire to think that the sea is one giant entity with one voice. He's making it into a plural thing, which makes it tough for us to pin it down.

• Even the sound of buoys (which is meant to keep boats from hitting them) joins in this general wailing, which─if we remember "East Coker"─could also represent the wailing of our own mortality, since the devouring power of the sea ( ... )

Lines 425-431:

And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awke, calculating the future,

• The silent fog of the sea oppresses us by reminding us of how temporary and unimportant human lives are in the eyes of nature. Then we hear a "tolling bell," which could be the bell on a buoy out at sea. This bell "measures time not our time," which is the time of the natural world, which thinks in terms of thousand- or million-year periods unlike the minute- or day-long perionds we humans tend to think about.

• The time of nature is a time "Older than the time of chronometers" or older than human-made clocks, and older than the time "counted by anxious women / Lying awake, calculating the future." This last line makes it [seem] as though there's no real point at all to humans worrying about their futures, since these futures will all end up in the same place anyway, which is death. ( ... )

Lines 432-439:

Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the futre,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning which
When time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is was from the beginnign,
Clangs
The bell.

• The "anxious women" who represent human anxiousness in general are seen here "[t]ryig to unweave, unwind, unravel / And piece together the past and the future." This line could suggest that all human attempts to make sense of life will be useless until they come to terms with the fact that they are going to die someday.

• When we try to make sense of our lives on our terms─or in other words, on egocentric terms─we tend to come up empty. In this situation, all of our attempts to make sense of the past are "all deception," since it's just our own desires we're projecting onto the past. Further, our future is totally futureless because there are no plans we can make that will change the fact that we're going to die.

• Finally, Seciton 1 ends with the clanging of a bell, which is the sound that marks the end of our time here on Earth. This is the only thing we really need to focus on, ( ... ... )

II

Lines 440-445:

Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remainging motionless;
Where is there an end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?

• Here, the speaker's asking about when our suffering will end. When will we get past all of this wailing and wreckage? The rest of these lines continue in the same vein with images (wilting flowers, bone) associated with death─except for the last past about the "unprayable / Prayer at the annunication," which kind of comes a little out of left field.

• First of all, why would the annunciation (where the archangel Michael told the Virgin Mary she's going to give birth to Jesus) be a "calamitous" thing? ( ... ... )

• With all that said, it's good to know that, unlike "Burnt Norton" or "East Coker," Eliot was writing "The Dry Salvages" right smack in the middle of World War II, when the Nazis were bombing England on a daily basis. So here, the speaker might actually be wondering when the suffering of the war will end, but also wondering if the end of the war will bring about any kind of spiritual rebirth.

Lines 446-451:

  There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotions takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable─
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

• Well, it turns out that maybe there is no end to all of our suffering, only "addition" to it. After all, we can never forget or escape our pasts, just like we can't escape "the trailing / Consequence of further days and hours." Like a river, time is always flowing.

• But unlike a river, life keeps piling up memories and events that become part of us, and we have to deal with that.

• Why would this piling up be a bad thing? Because ( ... ). During this phase, you might grow cold in a way you can never escape, as "emotion takes to itself the emotionless / Years of living among the breakage." This breakage ( ... ) but the metaphorical breakage "Of what was believed in as the most reliable," meaning the symbols and beliefs that had significance in the past. Now we're right back in the rubble of "The Waste Land," picking our way through the shattered beliefs of the past with our old buddy T.S. Eliot, thw world's most sullen tour guide.

• That said, the speaker adds a final line here that would never fit with "The Waste Land," saying that all of the things we once thought we could rely on are "therefore the fittest for renunciation." Changing his tune from his younger days, he says we especially have to start letting go of the beliefs and values we prize most deeply, because it's only after losing everything that we might be able to start rebuilding our spiritual lives.

Lines 452-457:

  There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

• It's only when we have nothing that we're able to start over and create something good. The speaker thinks of our final loss as our "final addition" ( ... ) This "final addition" is therefore the failure of our pride and our resentment at "failing powers," or thing we once thought were powerful.

• More specifically, the speaker might feel resentment at the "failing power" of England for getting beaten up so badly by Germany. ( ... )

• Further, we need to "unattach" our devotion and almost start to look hopeless if we're going to hit rock-bottom ( ... ). In modern times we're all "In a drifting boat with a slow leakage," meaning that we're constantly stranded and sinking. And finally, we must continue to listen silently to the sound of the bell that reminds us that we're going to die ( ... )

Lines 458-463:

  Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanles
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.

• Again, the speaker asks, "Where is the end of it all?" Where is the end of all our sailing on stormy seas? We can't think of a time that doesn't have an ocean (an abyss of nature that conquers us way more than we conquer it). We can't think of a time when this void-like ocean isn't filled with the "wastage" of our failed and vain human projects.

• Never will we have a future that has a clear destinatin and purpose. All things lead to death, and for like the 138th time, the speaker implies that this isn't that bad of a thing. He's just trying to make us give up our conventional desires so we can replace them with more spiritual ones.

Lines 464--469:

  We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.

• If we think of ourselves as a bunch of folks on a leaking boat (and yes, the speaker wants us to do this) then we have to think of ourselves as "forever bailing." The work of trying to keep ourselves and our culture afloat is neverending, and there's no point in trying to make it end.

• We have to think of the fishermen (ourselves) as coming to shore to draw their money from their bank savings because they're losing money, or as drying their sails on the dock, a repetitive activity that they'll never escape having to to over and over again for as long as they live.

• What we can't do is think of ourselves as "making a trip that will be unpayable / For a haul that will not bear examination."

• These lines paint a metaphorical scene of fishermen going out to sea for a fishing trip they'll never be paid for, for a "haul" of fish that no fish buyer will ever examine. In other words, we need to find a way to embrace our neverending struggle without completely giving into feelings of hopelessness or giving up. Most peopel, implies the speaker, will probably give up instead of accept and endless struggle, but we must try to avoid this.

Lines 470-475:

  There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely payable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.

• ( ... ) There's no end to the sound of "voiceless wailing" that marks our suffering. There's no end to the withering of flowers, meaning that there's no end to death and decay.

• There's no end to the sense of drifting we get in our lives, the sense that we lack direction.

• There is no end to the prayer that our mortal bones make to Death, which is actually our God, since it haunts everything we do. The only end we could possible see to these things is the prayer we can just barely make to the "one Annunciation" of Christianity, which promises us that we'll get into heaven and have eternal life when we die. ( ... ... )

Lines 476-480:

  It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence─
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.

• As we grow older, we start to realize that history isn't just a story of ongoing progess. It "has another pattern," and isn't just some "sequence." This belief comes from our "superficial notions of evolution," which lead us to think that we're somehow improving ourselves as time goes on. But in the end, this is just a wasy of "disowning the past." If we believe in evolution, then we don't really worry about the past all that much, because all that matters are the improvements that evolution is always making on us.

• By forgetting the past, though, we turn away from the proof that we ^aren't^ getting better. If anything, suggests the speaker, history has just been one giant mess of suffering.

• History note: ( ... ... )

• Now on with our show. If we're ever going to make our lives better, says our speaker, it's not going to come from forgetting about the past or clinging to some idea of constant human progess. It's going to come from humility and from accepting the natural cycle of birth and death that we're all a part of.

Lines 481-487:

The moments of happiness─not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfillment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination─
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.

• Our moments of happiness have a deep meaning, but this meaning is something we miss if all we think about is our own happiness. For example, our moments of happiness don't just consist in the "sense of welling, / Fruition, fulfillment, security or affection, / or even a very good dinner." Rather, our feelings of well-being are basically just as temporary and superficial as our enjoyment of a good meal.

• What matters to the speaker is the "sudden illumination." We have had an experience of something deeper, he says, but we "missed the meaning" because we didn't look for it properly. Further, if we actually manage to approach this deeper meaning in our lives, this meaning completely brings back or "restores" our past experiences "In a different form." This new form is something completely different from anything we've experienced, because it's beyond "any meaning / We can assign to happiness."

• ( ... ... )

Lines 487-494:

I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations─not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

• ( ... ... )

• In our "backward look" to the past, we glimpse something beyond the normal, comfortable "assurance / Of recorded history."

• We see something scarier than what the textbooks tell us about the past. We can look on this directly, so we can only give it a "backward half-look / Over the shoulder." And the thing we end up looking on (without being able to express it) is a form of primitive terror. ( ... ... )

Lines 495-501:

Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.

• We also come to realize that, like our moments of happiness, our moments of agony stay with us in a nearly permanent way, becoming part of who we are. It doesn't matter what caused these moments of pain, whether it was a misunderstanding or "Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things." What matters is that we tend to gain an appreciation for how much agony changes people when we see it in others. We don't see it changing ourselves to the same degree. ( ... ... )

Lines 502-508:

For our own past is covered by the current of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple and the bite in the apple.

• We might not realize how much our pasts have changed us because in our own pasts, we tend to remember things that have happened and actions we have taken. Bue when we look to the "torment of others" we can see very clearly (probably more clearly than those people) how pain has shaped them, how it stays with them even after years of trying to get over it. People change, and we might see them smile when we meet them, but we know that "the agony abides" inside them.

• Even though the speaker's been talking about how time tends to knock down buildings and destroy all of our attempts to make something permanent, it also has a way of preserving the stuff that we'd like to get rid of: like pain. In this sense, "Time the destroyer is [also] time the preserver."

• The same is the case even for the river, which is a symbol of endless change, and yet the river still contains the history of allthe "dead negroes, cows, and chicken coops" it has washed away. In other words, the fact that the river is constantly washing things away doesn't wash away the fact that the Western world has a horrifying history of slavery, which the speaker alludes to with his comment about the "dead negores," who were once treated no bettern than farm animals like cows and chickens, or worse.

Lines 509-514:

And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In a navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the somber season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

• In the final lines of Section 2, the speaker appears to directly reference the formation of sea rocks that this poem is named for. They appear to be something that is totally unmoving even as the waters around them are "restless." Waves can wash over the rock all they want, and fogs can conceal it, but it's still there, sticking out like something that'll never change.

• It can sometimes serve as a monument "On a halcyon day," meaning that it can be a monument to happier and more youthful times, a halcyon being a type of kingfisher bird that─according to a legend─makes a nest that floats on the sea (checkout our analysis of the kingfisher in lines 136-139) 

• In "navigating weather" (or in other words, when things are going pretty well), this unchanging rock is a seamark that we can use to figure out what direction we want to head in. At this point, we should probably realize that the rock isn't just a rock, but a symbol for some unchanging principle in our lives that we can use to remember the past or to figure out where we want to go in the future.

• But when times are gloomy or violent, "in the somber season / Or the sudden fury," this rock is "what is always was," which is nothing except an unmoving shape in the middle of a restless sea. ( ... ... )

III

Lines 515-520:

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant─
Among other things─or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.

• The speaker continues to struggle with all of the contradictions that he faces when he tries to talk about something he knows is inexpressible. His energy starts to wane a little here, and he starts to wonder about the true meaning of something said by Krishna, one of the primary avatars of the Hindu god Vishnu.

• When it comes to wondering about what Vishnu meant, the speaker is wondering if everything he (the speaker) has said in Section 2 can be linked to the spiritual teachings of Krishna. For example, he wonders if "the future is faded song," meaning that it's just going to be a time of regret for those who aren't around (who haven't been born) to regret yet.

• He wonders if the future is actually a time of sadness that no one really cares about, "Pressed between the yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened." He further wonders if we truly wish to elevate our spirits, "the way up is the way down, they way forward is the way back." These questions actually bring us all the way back to the beginning of "Burnt Norton," where the speaker's second epigraph comes from the Greek philosopher Heraiclus, translating as, "The way upward and the way downward is one and the same." Here, we see the speaker continue to struggle with the unsayable meaning of life by talking in riddles and contradictions. He does this quite frankly because life itself is a bundle of contradictions, and the more he writes like this, the more the speaker wonders if he's just saying the same stuff that the Hindu religion said thousands of years ago.

Lines 521-527:

You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.

• Whatever it is that the speaker's been trying to get at (death, the rock, the inexpressible, etc.), he says "You cannot face steadily." But, in spite of this, one thing is sure, and that's that "time is no healer." Why can't time heal us? Well, because the person who needs to be healed no longer exists, because we're constantly changing in the flow of time. That's why he says that "the patient is no longer here," because, from moment to moment, the person we once were disappears and is replaced by another person, then another.

• The speaker uses the image of a train to once again symbolize the forward-moving, single-track way that most modern people approach their lives. We all get into a train in our own lives when we settle into our routines and focus on our personal goals.

• When we do this, we stop thinking about others in the same way that train passengers, after a moment of grief, relax "into relief" and settle into their snacks (fruit), entertainment (periodicals), and work (business letters). The overall effect of our routine, though, is numbness, and the speaker emphasizes this by showing that the train passengers relax into "the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours."

Lines 528-535:

Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrow rails slide together behind you,
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think "the past is finished"
Or "the future is before us."

• On the one hand, we don't escape the past as we move forward on the journey of our lives. Further, we don't escape into some completely different life, or into the future, even though we're never the same person we were a few minutes ago (when we left the station), and we're not the same person we'll be a few munutes in the future (when we arrive at any terminus). As we move forward, we won't be able to say that the past is finished or that the future is coming.

• As you might have already noticed, the speaker finds it much easier to say what the nature of life ^isn't^ ("Don't look ahead. Don't look back.") more than he can say what it ^is^. Every time he starts to say, "Well it's kind of like this," he has to backtrack and say the opposite. It seems like the closer we get to the heart of things, the more unavoidably contracdictory we get.

Lines 536-541:

At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
“Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.

• Now all of a sudden we're back to the nautical imagery. As we continue on our life's voyage (this time on a boat and out at sea), we can here the murmuring of a shell, which if you've ever heard it is like an endless, droning hum. The message of this wordless hum is pretty much the same as the speaker just told us: we're not the same person we were a moment ago (when we saw the harbour) or the people we'll be in the future (those who will disembark).

• In this sense, we only "think [we] are voyaging," although whether or not we're actually getting anywhere is uncertain. After all, if we're always changing from one moment to the next, can we really say that it's "us" who will arrive somewhere in the future? Think about it ( ... )

Lines 542-544

Here between hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.

• Between the moment you just left behind and the one that's approaching, says our speaker, make sure to consider both the past and the future in the same way, or "with an equal mind." There's no point in emphasizing the past with unnecessary nostalgia, or the future with unnecessary faith in progress. Just think of them both in the context of the moment you're living in ^right now^.

Lines 545-552:

At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: ‘on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death’─that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.

• In a moment where you aren't really acting or not acting, you can receive the great message that every single moment of your life is the moment of your death. Wha? This might sound really depressing, but what it really means is that your life is totally meaningful every second of every day because you might die at any moment. It's kind of like what people are getting at when they sayto live every day like it was your last. Well, that's what the speaker is saying here. He's telling you to live every minute like it's your last.

• This is what he means when he writes that "the time of death is every moment." He further says that realizing this truth is the only thing that will bring goodness to the people around us. We will "not think of the fruit of action" because we won't be thinking about ourselves so much anymore. The more we pay attention to the fact that we'll die, the less inclined we'll be able to do things for ourselves.

• With this piece of advice in our minds, the speaker tells us to "Fare forward" on our life's journey while trying to stay humble and connected to our own mortality. We're getting tons of advice here. We hope you're taking notes.

Lines 553-560:

              O voyagers, O seamen,
You who come to the port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgment of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.”
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
                        Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

• The speaker understands that all of us, like sailor, will suffer from a lot of hardship, just like "the trial and judgment of the sea." But no matter what happens, "this" is our "real destination." "This" probably refers to an experience in which we can be intimately connected to the moment (or at least realization) of our own death at every moment.

• Here, we also realize that we've been getting a straight quotation from the Hindu god Krishna since the single quotation mark back in line 546. The speaker has been quoting from the lesson that Krishna teaches Arjuna on the "field of battle" in Hindu Holy Scripture. What Krishna hopes to teach Arjuna in this quotation is the importance of acting without thinking about how one's actions will benefit oneself. Like Arjuna, we must all learn to act in a way that reflects our spiritual respect for death. If we do this, we will become humble, giving, and good people.

• At the end of the Section 3, the speaker is not promising us a pleasant journey, so he won't say "fare well." He'll only say, "Fare forward" as he keeps encouraging us to press onward in our spiritual education.

출처 2: http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/section9.rhtml

( ... ... ) The third section of the poem ruminates on words attributed to Krishna, advising humanity not to "fare well" but to "fare forward." This is an exhortation to give up aspirations─to stop seeking to do "well"─and to be satisfied with mere existence. ( ... ... )


출처 3: 영문학산책3[1].hwp


행동의 열매를 생각하지 말라, 앞으로 가라.
And do not think of the fruit of action. / Fare forward.
잘 가지 말고, 앞만 보고 가라, 항해자들이여!
Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers!

행위의 결과에 대한 집착을 포기하고
항시 만족하며, 아무것에도 의존하지 않는 사람은
행위에 관여한다 할지라도
아무것도 행하지 않는 사람이다.

Abandoning all attachment to the results of his activities,
ever satisfied and independent,
he performs no fruitive action
although engaged in all kinds of undertakings. (바가바드 기타. 4:20)

주어지는 대로 만족하며
모든 대립을 초월하여
선망 없이
성공이나 실패에 있어서 평등한 사람은
행위한다 해도 속박되지 않는다.

He who is satisfied with gain which coms of its won accord,
who is free from duality and does not envy,
who is equipoised both in success and failure,
is never entangled, although performing actions.


출처 4: T.S. Eliot: Poetry, Plays and Prose (Sunil Kumar Sarker. Atlantic Publishers & Dist, 2000 )

( ... ... ) In the third movement, Eliot asks men, the voyagers, the seamen, to remember the advice of Krishna to Arjuna, to get release from the pain of this world, and to receive salvation. The poet says that the past and the present are moving towards the future. Life is a flow, a non-stop flow, like the river. So, it is useless to wait for the things of the past or to desire things for the future, for the future will, in the course of time, become the past. He says that "the future is a faded song" and so one should not wait for time to get one's desires fulfilled. When one settles on one's seat in a train and the train begins to run for its destination, one can "relax from grief into relief", because he (somehow) as if resigns himself to the train. In the same way, one should resign oneself to the course of life, to the course of time. Lord Krishna ( ... ) said to Arjuna that whatever one thinks intently on at the time of his death, that he attains to after his death. It may be that he himself does not get that what he had been contemplating upon at the time of his death, but others may get the same thing for his intending. However, Eliot asks us, the voyagers, not to "think of the fruit of action" but to move on and move on, as Krishna persuaded Arjuna to do. Therefore, say Eliot, "Not fare well, /But fare forward, voyagers."

The third movement of 'The Dry Salvages' runs thus:

III

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant─
Among other things─or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settleed
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left the station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
‘Fare forward’, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
And the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: “On whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death”─that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of action
Fare forward.
                      O voyagers, O seamen,
You who come to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgment of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination’
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
                       Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

출처 5: T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot. Faber & Faber, 2011

III

    I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant─
    Among other things─or one way of putting the same thing:
    That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
    Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
    Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
    And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
    You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
    That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
    When the train starts, and the passengers are settleed
    To fruit, periodicals and business letters
    (And those who saw them off have left the platform)
    Their faces relax from grief into relief,
    To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
    Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
    Into different lives, or into any future;
    You are not the same people who left the station
    Or who will arrive at any terminus,
    While narrowing rails slide together behind you;
    And on the deck of the drumming liner
    Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
    You shall not think 'the past is finished'
    Or 'the future is before us'.
    At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
    Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
    The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
    ‘Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
    You are not those who saw the harbour
    Receding, or those who will disembark.
    Here between the hither and the farther shore
    While time is withdrawn, consider the future
    And the past with an equal mind.
    And the moment which is not of action or inaction
    You can receive this: “On whatever sphere of being
    The mind of a man may be intent
    At the time of death”─that is the one action
    (And the time of death is every moment)
    Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
    And do not think of action
    Fare forward.
                          O voyagers, O seamen,
    You who come to port, and you whose bodies
    Will suffer the trial and judgment of the sea,
    Or whatever event, this is your real destination’
    So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
    On the field of battle.
                           Not fare well,
    But fare forward, voyagers.