Burnt Norton

Burnt Norton is the first poem of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. He created it while working on his play Murder in the Cathedral and it was first published in his Collected Poems 1909–1935 (1936). The poem's title refers to a Cotswolds manor house Eliot visited. The manor's garden served as an important image within the poem. Structurally, the poem is based on Eliot's The Waste Land with passages of the poem related to those excised from Murder in the Cathedral.

The central discussion within the poem is on the nature of time and salvation. Eliot emphasises the need of the individual to focus on the present moment and to know that there is a universal order. By understanding the nature of time and the order of the universe, mankind is able to recognise God and seek redemption. Many reviewers of Burnt Norton focused on the uniqueness and beauty of the poem. However, others complained that the poem does not reflect Eliot's earlier greatness and that the use of Christian themes harmed the poem.

The concept of Burnt Norton is connected to Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral; he worked on the poem while the play was being produced during 1935. The connection between the poem and the play is deep; many of the lines for the poem come from lines originally created for the play that were, on E. Martin Brown's advice, removed from the script. Years later, Eliot recollected:

There were lines and fragments that were discarded in the course of the production of Murder in the Cathedral. 'Can't get them over on the stage,' said the producer, and I humbly bowed to his judgment. However, these fragments stayed in my mind, and gradually I saw a poem shaping itself round them: in the end it came out as 'Burnt Norton.'

Like many of Eliot's works, the poem was compiled from various fragments that were reworked over many years. To structure the poem, Eliot turned to the organisation of The Waste Land.

In 1936, the poem was included in Collected Poems 1909–1935, of which 11,000 copies were published; the collection symbolically represented the completion of his former poems and his moving onto later works. "Burnt Norton" was Eliot's only major poem to be completed during a six-year period as he turned to writing plays and continued with his work on essays. The poem was re-published as an independent work in 1941, the same year "East Coker" and "The Dry Salvages", two later poems of the Four Quartets, were published.

The actual Burnt Norton is a manor located near the village of Aston Subedge in Gloucestershire that Eliot visited with Emily Hale during 1934. The original Norton House was a mansion burned down in 1741 by its owner, Sir William Keyt, who died in the fire. Even though Eliot was married, he spent a lot of time with Hale and might possibly have become involved with her had he not been married. Even after their time at Burnt Norton, Eliot stayed in close correspondence with her and sent her many of his poems. The actual manor does not serve as an important location within the poem. Instead, it is the garden surrounding the manor that became the focus.

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