A Twenty-First Century Masterpiece: Micheal O'Siadhail, The Five Quintets

Frank Armstrong calls it “the most important book of English language literature published so far this century,” while prominent public figures, including Nobel laureates, leading scientists and theologians including N. T. Wright, Stanley Hauerwas, Peter Ochs, David Ford, and Jeremy Begbie, not to m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Christianity & literature 2019-06, Vol.68 (3), p.498-505
Main Author: Jeffrey, David Lyle
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
American literature
British & Irish literature
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861)
Centuries
Consciousness
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns) (1888-1965)
English literature
Literary criticism
Literature
Modernism
Modernity
O Siadhail, Michael
Poetry
Poets
Politics
Review Essay
Sonnets
Spirituality
Theologians
Theology
Time
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Summary:Frank Armstrong calls it “the most important book of English language literature published so far this century,” while prominent public figures, including Nobel laureates, leading scientists and theologians including N. T. Wright, Stanley Hauerwas, Peter Ochs, David Ford, and Jeremy Begbie, not to mention public figures such as Jean Vanier and Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland, have chimed in, each commenting from the perspective of their own métier or discipline. Stream of consciousness and fitful dreams characterize the work of Jones and Auden; in Eliot’s “Little Gidding,” fourth of his quartets, though beginning as one “suspended in time,” the poet’s persona seeks to make use of memory, in particular of spiritual history, to announce a breakthrough of the apparent prison of ever-recycling time—a kairos of the Holy Spirit into which grace he can yield up his time-bound fears. The result is a searching, brilliant analysis of modernity, neither fully an apologia nor entirely a critique, but in the end a Catholic and ecumenical vision of that history as it might appear to one who took his criteria from the benign overview of O’Siadhail’s patient God, an all-pervading muse he invokes as Madam Jazz (we have to wait for nearly 300 pages to be sure of her identity). In his summons our poet explains why: A rich pre-modern mind allows you mix Rife thoughts with things so up-to-date In science, art or purse and politics, The cosmos in your seedbed city-state.
ISSN:0148-3331
2056-5666
DOI:10.1177/0148333119846217