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A. Akhmatova's Poem Without a Hero and Ts Eliot's Four PHD IN ADVANCED ENGLISH STUDIES: LANGUAGES AND CULTURES IN CONTACT UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA Departamento de Filología Inglesa 2020 Doctorate Thesis CONQUERING TIME: A. AKHMATOVA’S POEM WITHOUT A HERO AND T.S. ELIOT’S FOUR QUARTETS Anna Kurasova SALAMANCA 2020 CONQUERING TIME: A. AKHMATOVA’S POEM WITHOUT A HERO AND T.S. ELIOT’S FOUR QUARTETS Directora: Dra. Viorica Patea Birk Anna Kurasova V.º B.º Departamento de Filología Inglesa 2020 The work presented in this doctoral dissertation is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original and my own work, except as acknowledged in the text. The work in this dissertation has not been submitted, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university. This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of PhD in Advanced English Studies: Languages and Cultures in Contact To Universidad de Salamanca By Anna Kurasova Date: 2020 Student’s signature: ________________________________ Approved Name of your supervisor: Dr. Viorica Patea Birk Supervisor’s signature: ________________________________ Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof Viorica Patea, for her dedicated support and guidance. She was the one to draw my attention to the topic and continuously provided encouragement alongside her expertise throughout the research project. I am grateful to my family, especially my father, Leonid, and mother, Svetlana, who, in their own way, have provided me with all the support imaginable. I am also grateful to my other family members who have supported me along the way. I would like to thank my friends for staying by my side throughout this long voyage. I am particularly grateful to Maria and our always insightful talks as well as Robert Murtagh for his encouragement. A very special gratitude goes out to my dog Tedsky, without him I would not have been able to complete this journey. With a special mention to Dr Gwyn Fox, who dedicated so much time and energy to my thesis as well as said some of the most valuable words to me. I am also grateful to the University of Salamanca for giving me this unique opportunity and introducing me to some of the most significant people in my life. Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1. The Same Era, Different Worlds .......................................................... 16 Chapter 2. Modernism in Modernity ..................................................................... 48 2.1 Modernism: Living History ................................................................ 48 2.2 In Search of Modernism ..................................................................... 54 2.3 In Response to Symbolism: Imagism, Vorticism, and Acmeism .............................................................................................. 60 2.4 Imagist and Acmeist Language........................................................... 69 Chapter 3. The Structure of Poem Without a Hero and Four Quartets ................. 75 3.1 Time of Composition .......................................................................... 75 3.2 Foreword, Epigraphs, and Dedications ............................................... 78 3.2.1 “In Place of a Foreword” .......................................................... 79 3.2.2 Kniazev, Sudeikina, and Berlin: The Three Dedications ........... 81 3.2.3 Heraclitus ................................................................................... 83 3.2.4 “Deus conservat omnia” ........................................................... 85 3.3 Space ................................................................................................... 87 3.3.1The Fountain House .................................................................... 87 3.3.2 Inter-spatial Journey of Four Quartets ...................................... 94 3.4 The Four Parts of Four Quartets ........................................................ 98 3.5 The Three Parts of Poem Without a Hero......................................... 100 Chapter 4. Change and Time ............................................................................... 103 4.1 “The fortress clock has struck” vs “Near the ending of interminable night”: Chronicling Changes ........................................ 104 4.2 “Terrible festival of dead leaves” and “The book never opened”: The Inevitability of Change ............................................................... 106 4.3 “Time the destroyer is time the preserver”: Two Faces of Change .. 110 4.4 Being towards Death: Death as Change and Transformation ........... 114 Chapter 5. Historical Time ................................................................................... 118 5.1 The Corridors of History................................................................... 118 5.1.1 Crossing the “dark waters” of the Past .................................... 119 5.1.2 Eliot’s Water out of Sunlight ................................................... 121 5.2 The Darkness of Four Quartets ........................................................ 123 5.3 Bearing Witness to History in Poem Without a Hero and Four Quartets ..................................................................................... 125 5.3.1 Troubled History in “The Year Nineteen Thirteen .................. 126 5.3.2 “Burnt Norton”: the “need for stillness” in the “noisy and angry time” ...................................................................... 127 5.4 “In my beginning is my end”: Two Perspectives on History in “East Coker” ................................................................................ 129 5.5 War and Peace .................................................................................. 131 5.5.1 “Burnt Norton” and “The years of l’entre deux guerres” ....... 131 5.5.2 “The death of hope and despair”: War in “Little Gidding” .... 135 5.5.3 War Between the Lines of “The Dry Salvages” ..................... 137 5.5.4 “What had turned to dust”: Life and Death in Poem Without a Hero ........................................................................ 139 5.6 “The Unhumanly Face of War” and Heidegger’s Living Historically ...................................................................................... 141 5.7 “At the threshold stands – Destiny”: The Role of History ............... 143 Chapter 6. The Ghosts of the Past and the Future ............................................... 148 6.1 The Compound Ghost of Four Quartets........................................... 148 6.2 The Masquerade of the Past in Poem Without a Hero ...................... 153 6.2.1 The Unwelcome Guests ........................................................... 155 6.2.2 The Prince of Darkness ............................................................ 158 6.3 The Masquerade of Poem Without a Hero and the Invisible Presences of Four Quartets ................................................................ 161 6.4 The Guest from the Future ................................................................ 164 Chapter 7. The Use of Memory ........................................................................... 170 7.1 Memory as the Cornerstone of Poem Without a Hero and Four Quartets ..................................................................................... 170 7.2 Creative Memory in Poem Without a Hero ...................................... 173 7.3 “Footfalls echo in the memory”: Memory and Imagination in Four Quartets ..................................................................................... 175 7.4 Memory and Love ............................................................................. 178 7.5 Individual and Collective Memory ................................................... 181 7.6 Memory and Two Kinds of Forgetting in Four Quartets ................. 188 7.7 Forgetting as a Failure to Remember in Poem Without a Hero ................................................................................................ 193 Chapter 8. Truth and Eternity .............................................................................. 198 8.1 The Duality of Time ......................................................................... 199 8.2 “Away with time and away with space”: The Intersections of the Eternal and the Temporal ............................................................. 201 8.3 “I turn to stone, I freeze, I burn”: Heraclitus’s Unity of the Opposites ...................................................................................... 203 8.4 The “invisible chorus” and “the constitution of silence”: Striving for Truth Together with the Others ...................................... 206 Chapter 9. Freedom through Time ....................................................................... 210 9.1 Freedom “From past and future” and “From behind barbed wire” .................................................................................................. 210 9.2 Freedom and Christianity ................................................................. 212 9.3 Humility as “the only wisdom can hope to acquire” and the Mystical Way ............................................................................... 216 9.6 “Sin is Behovely”: Reconciliation with the Imperfections of Human Nature .................................................................................... 221 Chapter 10. At the Still Point ..............................................................................
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