Learning to Observe in the Writing of T.S. Eliot and Simone Weil

In Four Quartets and especially in that work’s final poem, “Little Gidding,” T.S. Eliot presents a picture of learning that fits with, yet differs in important respects from, Simone Weil’s ideas of decreation and attention. Weil says a human being must decreate herself, or let go of her own ideas and plans so she can attend to the people and things of the world and thereby attend to God. Eliot agrees he must empty himself of what degrades his attention to reality, but he admits he cannot long endure emptiness and the solitude it requires. Inspired by saints’ absorption in God, yet aware that perfect attention is beyond his powers, Eliot learns to observe practices by which non-saints such as himself can join together to face the divine. For Eliot, observance is a keyword with a double meaning; to learn to observe means to learn both to pay attention and to perform acts that connect you to others in a pattern of life open to ultimate reality. Eliot’s mode of observance, the essay concludes, can help students resist distraction and ground themselves in living traditions, secular or religious.