The private conversion of a public man: Timeless presence and disparate linking in T.S. Eliot's poetry

Abstract

This essay explores the way incarnation allows T.S. Eliot to renegotiate and redistribute themes of time, age, life, and death from his pre-conversion to post-conversion poetry. The incarnation, especially its dispensation of time, is a paramount part of Eliot's conversion. I posit that incarnation drove Eliot to Christianity because incarnation represents a divine disruption of time. This disruption bridges time and timelessness, here and there ,and life and death. Eliot's eventual rest in the Chalcedonian form of incarnation, therefore, provides a resolution of and not a divergence from his poetry previous to his conversion.