Poetical Concepts: Looking at T.S. Eliot

NOTE: This post is long. However, in order to look fully into the concept of "supernatural ecstasy" and how T.S. Eliot, in his own words, was in a state of it, we must go back in time.

In 2020, fifty years after the death of Eliot's muse, the scholar Emily Hale, the letters he had written to her were released at Princeton University's library. We now know with authority that she was the source responsible for his confession of "supernatural ecstasy" and his muse for more than 30 years.

Writing those letters during the 1930s -1950s was quite a daring feat. Risky business, in fact. So much so that the famous, yet reserved author wrote in his essay, "The Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919): "Poetry is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality." Eliot may have escaped from his personality in poetry, but the letters constitute a very different version of it.

Looking back we know historically, that humans who experience spiritual or supernatural ecstasy in the heightened sense of the word, have long been considered suspect. The subject itself is often considered taboo. Yet, ecstasy in general, can equally be seen as a desired delight.

Basic ecstasy can arrive out of the blue, in the throes of passion as a highly sought after desire. In dreams, ecstasy can be an unexpected surprise. Yet the concept of spiritual ecstasy which has been explored by scholars, theologians, and philosophers throughout history has been widely examined with suspicious eyes.

While many well-regarded thinkers refused to consider the verisimilitude of any type of otherworldliness and its associated attributes, artists, musicians, writers, and poets freely explored (and still do) this very construct with awe and wonder, with agony and ecstasy.

Take the words "spiritual," "supernatural," and "ecstasy" for instance. What ideas do they conjure? Do these opposing thoughts intrigue you or make you want to shudder?

Here's a better question: How does the concept of spiritual ecstasy fit into the vernacular of modern literature?

The idea of spiritual or supernatural ecstasy can be used as a creative device used during theme development, for story lines, subject matter, or for character development in a play, poem, or any work of art. Yet, when we look at the letters of T.S.Eliot to his muse, Emily Hale, we see it working as a state of mind, a landscape from which certain poems arrive, a possession which pushes the poets emotions to the fore.

The quartet in my new collection, Elemental, was inspired by many poems by T.S.Eliot, perhaps in some ways I had never considered until now. His poetic phrasing regarding this very notion somehow urged me to take a closer look but I knew not why.

So, let's look back in time to explore where this construct may have first derived.

The Greek word for ecstasy is ekstasis. It translates roughly to "standing outside’ - standing outside yourself when a god or spirit enters your body to possess and embody you. This particular experience is referred to as enthousiasmos or mania = having a god within you.

When this experience occurs, one might then be blessed with supernatural gifts or what they termed as charisma. The gods might bestow the gift of prophecy upon you or perhaps incredible strength, but they might also decide to curse or destroy you like the god Dionysus destroyed King Pentheus in Euripides’ play, The Bacchae.

The Greeks had a rather fearful attitude towards ecstasy, but they understood too, you couldn’t ignore it or banish it. It was what it was.

And while this experience may make for a wonderful storyboard in mythology, imagine what could happen if it happened to you. Read on...

In Christian culture, ecstasy had its recognized place. Tightly policed by the medieval Church, having an ecstatic encounter with God, Mary, or some other divine entity was quite risky. If so claimed, you risked punishment and were probably considered mad and/or demonically possessed.

Subsequently, you could have been recognized as a saint and subsequently this saintliness could have given you extraordinary authority. Think Joan of Arc or Carrovagio's painting of Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy. Their sacrificial identities made them immortal.

In the 17th century, materialist thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, attacked and dismissed "enthusiasm" and considered the entire notion of religious ecstasy as ‘letting your imagination carry you away." Spiritual Ecstasy was labeled dangerous and unruly.

Therefore, imagination itself was seen as politically and morally dangerous. Fast forward another 100 years.

During the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers saw this idea as ridiculous, ignorant, and indicative of a distinct lack of decorum. Morality judgements started to pile up.

By the late nineteenth century, psychiatrists such as Jean-Martin Charcot, whose students included Sigmund Freud, argued that religious ecstasy and demonic possession were actual symptoms of a brain pathology called ‘hysteria.’

By naming ecstasy as the pathology of hysteria, it marked it as a form of mental illness.

This notion conveniently intertwined with Europe’s history of imperialism, capitalism, and you guessed it, patriarchy-- thereby suggesting that only savages, the working classes, and women would have minds weak enough to be carried away by ecstasy.

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, ecstasy continued/continues to be pathologized by mainstream psychology. It's likely, even today, if you told your psychiatrist you were in communication with a god, a spirit, or The Almighty, or if you felt a case of spiritual ecstasy coming on, you might well be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

Is this what T.S.Eliot meant and experienced when he wrote about his love for Emily Hale? Was he in such an ecstatic state that he blamed it on Hale? Or was he using the term merely as metaphor? We now have evidence of his vulnerable admission that he, was indeed overcome by the uncontrollable nature of spiritual ecstasy and the proof lies in his own handwriting.

Let's take a look.

The pair met while both were studying at Harvard in 1912 and although the letters and their love was hidden from others, with the exception of their closest friends, Hale was the very inspiration for some of his most astounding verses, including the following lines from Burnt Norton, from the first poem of his Four Quartets.

“What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus, in your mind.”

We discover in his letters that they eventually opened the door to the " rose-garden," and the hidden love story of Eliot’s life is revealed. We read for ourselves that his feelings for her were incredibly intense. Supernatural, in fact.

Consider the phrasing he uses in these admissions:

“For the first and last time, praying that I have given no offense. For I see nothing in this confusion to be ashamed of – my love is as pure ... as any love can be.”

“If this is a love letter it is the last I shall ever write in my life. And I will sign it.”

Eliot wrote later in another letter that he had been in a “state of torment” for a month.

“You have made me perfectly happy: that is, happier than I have ever been in my life; the only kind of happiness now possible for the rest of my life is now with me; and though it is the kind of happiness which is identical with my deepest loss and sorrow, it is a kind of supernatural ecstasy.”

The interloper who possessed him was neither a god or a demon, but love, pure and simple, "as any love can be." Love was both culprit and conduit.

To find an escape into it or to become a witness of love we need not look far. The mere number of torrential love stories in verse and form are astounding. However, it's the larger than life, otherworldly, ecstatic ones that really haunt us.

Love's power and mysterious grandeur is closer than we think when we discover letters like T.S. and Emily's. Despite the supernaturalness of it all, their love was ultimately and heartbreakingly thwarted. Like many great love stories, we sadly discover that love can be all encompassing, ecstatic, charismatic, enthusiastic, even traumatic.

It can bewitch and beguile us. It can become an all encompassing and a powerfully frightening phenomena, especially if we sense a loss of control in ourselves or in others.

Love then presents itself as manic.

Eventually, even supersized love changes shape and form. We see this firsthand through our own personal experiences, by hearing stories, listening to songs, reading novels, newspapers, and through poetry. We witness love's super power and see it can be both possessor and destroyer as it delivers heightened emotions to the emotional body while being fully present in the physical body.

Which in the end, according to the letters of T.S. Eliot, falling madly in love can result in a spiritual, supernatural ecstatic experience. It also led to some of his best poetry. If supernatural ecstasy could happened to him, a man who by all accounts was a very serious, pious, and complex individual-- and at one time or the other, a banker, a teacher, an editor, all the while being a poet-- it can happen to anyone.

In an unexpected turnabout and personal shapeshifting, the poet denounced his romantic feelings as nothing but youth's folly after hearing about Hale's letter donation to Princeton. He attempted to change his own narrative by writing a statement, deposited into the Eliot Collection at Harvard in 1960, to be released on the same day when letters to Hale were to be released at Princeton.

His statement depicts their relationship as purely platonic and appears to many critics as an egotistically driven cover-up and attempt to save face after the truth of their passing years together which would finally come to light by his very own hand. But, I'll let you be the judge:

From the letters:

"And there are times when I desire you so much that neither religion, nor work, nor distraction, and certainly not dissipation, could relieve it. It is like a pain that no sedative will deaden, or an operation without an aesthetic- nothing to do but sit still and wait. At other times I feel glorified and transfigured through you."

From "The Wasteland" (1922):

Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

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