{"id":3397,"date":"2025-08-05T09:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T23:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/?p=3397"},"modified":"2025-08-05T09:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T23:42:09","slug":"the-lost-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diane.eklund.abolins.net\/blog\/the-lost-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Life, Steven Carroll, Australia, 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

Towards<\/span><\/span><\/span> the end of <\/span><\/span><\/span>The Lost Life<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>, Carroll\u2019s first book in his T.S. Eliot Quartet, Miss Emily Hale says to eighteen-year-old Catherine: \u201c<\/span><\/span><\/span>We must grasp our moments as they arise (\u2026) never, never assume that they will come back. People may come back into our lives, but not the time or the moment. And, in the end, not even the people either, for they will be changed. They will not be the same\u2026<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the early part of the twentieth-century, Miss Emily Hale meets Thomas Stearns Eliot at Harvard where they are both studying. They become firm friends though they are never romantically involved, and then in 1915, while in England, Eliot marries Vivienne Haigh-Wood (the focus of Carroll\u2019s fourth book in the Quartet). Although Eliot and Vivienne have a <\/span><\/span><\/span>strong<\/span><\/span><\/span> creative connection, Vivienne is mentally unstable and the marriage breaks down <\/span><\/span><\/span>completely<\/span><\/span><\/span> in 1933. <\/span><\/span><\/span>The Lost Life<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>, set in 1934, centres <\/span><\/span><\/span>on<\/span><\/span><\/span> Eliot and Emily Hale <\/span><\/span><\/span>as they spend<\/span><\/span><\/span> a few summer weeks \u2013 side-by-side more than together – in the south of England;<\/span><\/span><\/span> the relationship has never been anything but platonic, and Emily is forced to face up to what her life could have been and what she has irretrievably lost.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Burnt Norton (The Daily Mail)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The book opens at Burnt Norton, a deserted manor house in Gloucestershire, where a fictional couple, Catherine and Daniel, the antithesis of Emily Hale and Thomas Eliot, secretly observe the middle-aged couple\u2019s innocent, <\/span><\/span><\/span>and somewhat peculiar,<\/span><\/span><\/span> rendezvous in the rose garden. <\/span><\/span><\/span>The two young people, poised on the cusp of studies and new places, have only recently discovered each other, and <\/span><\/span><\/span>Catherine <\/span><\/span><\/span>is juggling her infatuation with Daniel with a summer job,<\/span><\/span><\/span> cleaning the house where Emily is staying.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Steven Carroll (Words on the Waves)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sometime l<\/span><\/span><\/span>ater, Hale, unaware that Catherine ha<\/span><\/span><\/span>d<\/span><\/span><\/span> observed her <\/span><\/span><\/span>and her friend<\/span><\/span><\/span> in the garden, confides to the young girl that her relationship with her \u2018special friend\u2019 is different, and Catherine understands that by \u2018different\u2019 Hale means spiritual rather than physical. <\/span><\/span><\/span>Nevertheless,<\/span><\/span><\/span> unable to ignore the immediacy of Catherine and Daniel\u2019s relationship, Emily wonders if \u2018different\u2019 is what she really wants, and seeks a strange kind of satisfaction for her romantic, unrequited yearnings through providing a space for Catherine and Daniel to spend time together on their own. Emily Hale\u2019s life may have been shaped by her disappointment and her longing, but parallel feelings of loss can also be detected in the opening<\/span><\/span><\/span> lines<\/span><\/span><\/span> of T.S. Eliot\u2019s poem <\/span><\/span><\/span>Burnt Norton, <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>published in 1935<\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/i>(the first of his <\/span><\/span><\/span>F<\/span><\/span><\/span>our Quartets)<\/span><\/span><\/span>: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Time present and time past<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Are both perhaps present in time future,<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

And time future contained in time past.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

If all time is eternally present<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

All time is unredeemable.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What might have been is an abstraction<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Remaining a perpetual possibility<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Only in a world of speculation.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What might have been and what has been<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Point to one end, which is always present.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Footfalls echo in the memory<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Down the passage which we did not take<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Towards the door we never opened<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Into the rose-garden <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(<\/span><\/span>\u2026<\/span><\/span>)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
T.S.Eliot (Britannica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the poem its obvious inspiration, this is a book about loss, misguided expectations and what could have been. It is beautifully written; nothing is superfluous; everything matters. Although focused on Emily Hale, Carroll\u2019s description of Catherine\u2019s meeting with Vivienne in London is haunting in its depiction of a love that goes beyond the ordinary to something that, while being furious, distraught and insane, knows no limitations. <\/span><\/span><\/span>I<\/span><\/span><\/span>t is suggested that Hale may have been Eliot\u2019s muse, <\/span><\/span><\/span>but <\/span><\/span><\/span>Vivienne was obviously the fire that kindled his creativity, and in spite of the relationship being both destructive and traumatic, it resulted in some of Eliot\u2019s greatest work. When he was informed of his wife\u2019s death in 1947, it is said that he<\/span><\/span><\/span> buried his face in his hands before crying ‘Oh God, oh God.’\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Vivienne Eliot (Alchetron)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the key scenes in the novel is a performance in the village church of Beethoven\u2019s <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>S<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>tring <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Q<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>uartet <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>No. 15<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> in A minor. Gustavo Dudamel (conductor and violinist) describes the quartet as \u201cone of the most famous and deeply personal movements in all of the quartet literature\u201d, and it is not difficult to imagine Carroll selecting it both for its sublimity and its complex connection with the different anxieties <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>and joys<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> experienced <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>individually <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>by the four characters in his novel. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Catherine and Daniel, mirroring (in Emily\u2019s mind at least) what could have been, give the story a <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>sense of freedom<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> while offering a contrast to Emily\u2019s restricted life with its regret and self-inflicted sadness. Although Eliot exists only as a shadow figure at the furthest edge of the stage, his presence <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>strongly <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>permeates the story \u2013 both real and fictional \u2013 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>joining <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>the <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>many conflicting<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> experiences<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>. The beautiful prose, the thought-provoking images and ideas, <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>(<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>against<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> the imagined sounds of Beethoven\u2019s string quartet<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>, make this a book <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>not only a book <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>to be <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>remembered but also one to be pondered over<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Emily Hale (tseliot.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The four books of Carroll\u2019s Quartet are: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>The Lost Life, A World of Other People, A New England Affair, Goodnight Vivienne, Goodnight<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Towards the end of The Lost Life, Carroll\u2019s first book in his T.S. Eliot Quartet, Miss Emily Hale says to eighteen-year-old Catherine: \u201cWe must grasp our moments as they arise (\u2026) never, never assume that they will come back. People may come back into our lives, but not the time or the moment. And, in … <\/p>\n

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