Godzenie skończoności i eschatologii u Rilkego i T.S. Eliota
Balance of Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Rainer Maria Rilke and T.S. Eliot

Summary/Abstract: This text takes up the relation of the modernist lyric (Rainer Maria Rilke and T.S. Eliot) to Martin Heidegger’s existentialist conception of time and the naturalistic anthropology it has spawned. Building on that, I argue that Rilke’s Duino Elegies not only anticipate central motifs of existentialism but, in qualified ways, part ways with that outlook. I then take up the second of Eliot’s Four Quartets to show that, more emphatically than Rilke, Eliot maintains that poetry of any substance can only be written insofar as it is grounded in an eschatological framework. East Coker in particular shows Eliot’s seeking to balance the apocalypticism of a world once again mired in global warfare with a hope, however, subdued, for mankind’s eventual redemption.

• Details
• Contents