Paul-Eerik Rummo: T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

Four Quartets is one of the most famous works by the classic of modernist poetry, T. S. Eliot. The roots of this book, published in 1943 and made up of four poems with religious undertones, date back to 1936, when the poem ‘Burnt Norton’, dealing with time and eternity, was published. The remaining three metaphysical poems were written during the Battle of Britain: ‘East Coker’, ‘The Dry Salvages’ and ‘Little Gidding’, which also look at man’s relationship with time, eternity and the divine. Characteristic of his other works, Eliot uses classic literature of various cultures in the cycle. It is no accident that Eliot’s work is brought to the festival audience by Paul-Eerik Rummo (1942), who is not just a living classic of Estonian poetry, but also a remarkable translator, having translated the poems of Dylan Thomas and Alexander Pushkin among others. As a reminder: one of Rummo’s most important translations is T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece ‘The Waste Land’. Rummo will be performing his translations, accompanied by Krista Citra Joonas on bamboo flute.

The event is in Estonian.