The singer Andy Williams died on September 25, the day before the 124th birth anniversary of T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965). Eliot’s poems are a world removed from Williams’ sweet, sentimental songs. But it’s possible to like them both. Maybe it shows a lack of discrimination, but we are what we are. I loved Love Story, both the movie and the book. And the theme song.
Maybe, it’s sappy, sentimental. But it touches a chord. Which is what writers and musicians try to do.
On Eliot’s birth anniversary I looked up Four Quartets, where he writes: “Words move, music moves”. Yes. More about that later.
But first look at the lyrics of Love Story. What’s not to like?
Where do I begin
To tell the story of how great a love can be
The sweet love story that is older than the sea
The simple truth about the love she brings to me
Where do I start
With her first hello
She gave new meaning to this empty world of mine
There’d never be another love, another time
She came into my life and made the living fine
She fills my heart
She fills my heart with very special things
With angels songs , with wild imaginings
She fills my soul with so much love
That anywhere I go I’m never lonely
With her around, who could be lonely
I reach for her hand-it’s always there
How long does it last
Can love be measured by the hours in a day
I have no answers now but this much I can say
I know I’ll need her till the stars all burn away
And she’ll be there
How long does it last
Can love be measured by the hours in a day
I have no answers now but this much I can say
I know I’ll need her till the stars all burn away
And she’ll be there
Back to Eliot, here he is writing about words in Four Quartets . This passage is from Burnt Norton, the first poem in Four Quartets:
Burnt Norton
V
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
I particularly like the passage up to the point where Eliot says:
“Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still.”
I may not understand each and every line of the poem, but this bit I know from personal experience. There are so many things lost in translation – so many times when we are lost for words.
