• man
• modernism
• nature
• Thomas Stearns Eliot

The aim of the following thesis is to illustrate the relationship between man and nature in three poems by Thomas Stearns Eliot: The Waste Land (1922), Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943). After a brief introduction, where the necessary coordinates about the poet’s life and the theme this work will deal with are explained, the chapters steadily detect the manners in which man and nature mutually influence each other, exhibiting how an initial disordered situation, where human condition does not match the organic surroundings, can later evolve into a restored, proper regulation, mystically achieved in an unreality which includes both spheres. Starting from the devastated world of The Waste Land, where the scenery clearly shows a corrupted macrocosm where man is not in harmony with nature, where his selfish individualism separates him from the environment, and where his sterile ideals uniquely provoke a self-destruction, the individual can however find a resolution through a purgatorial path. Ash Wednesday, indeed, halfway between material reality and phenomenal realm, strives to guide man towards a reconciliation with both nature and God, by displaying an expiatory itinerary which might allow man to detach from his debauched values and to reach a new, pure dimension where a connection with the saving principle can occur. Here man is suspended between an earthly world, which keeps tempting him through futile vanities and alluring dreams, through a prosperous nature whose elements nonetheless are only deceptive, and a transcendental world, which appears like an Edenic paradise but whose revelation requires a penitential, difficult way. A way which is developed and synthesize in the final work, Four Quartets, where the craved reunion between human being and Divinity takes place, in a natural harmony where time and space are completely cancelled, and where each element – air, water, earth and fire – is integrated within the universe. Here, in fact, a cosmic nature pervades history, humanity and its space-time coordinates, and every entity must be in perfect sync before recomposing the lost order: the single individual, together with his whole experience (his time and his place), is called to explore an affirmative path, made of joyful glares and positive achievements, and a negative way, made of sorrow and contrition, aware that both the roads will lead him to the only true point of intersection, the unique Love that transcends time and space, aligns each cosmic component, and ensures the perfect communion between man and nature. Presented as an ascetic, ascendant route, which progressively develops from the contemporary, barren world, and, through a median and spiritual detachment, reaches its point of arrival in another dimension, a sacred one, the relationship between man and nature has been studied keeping in mind the personal journey that the same poet undertook, both artistically and privately, beginning from a work fully imbued of mundane features, towards a composition where humanity is visibly redeemed from any form of temporality, where man is elevated above false and evanescent illusions, and where celestial grace can permit him to purify his soul, to be renewed.