Figures of Speech Theatre

In February, Colby College will present “Words Move/Music Moves,” a recitation from memory of T. S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” by John Farrell paired with a Performance of Beethoven’s “String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132” performed by the world-class DaPonte String Quartet.

Click here to purchase tickets online.

This unique program – a recitation from memory of T. S. Eliot’s poetic masterwork together with a performance of the Beethoven string quartet that inspired Eliot’s poem—offers audiences a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience in close succession the crowning artistic achievements of these peerless masters.

An unquestioned masterpiece of 20th-century literature, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is a complex, deeply moving meditation on time, memory, and human striving toward the divine.

Eliot completed Four Quartets in 1941, as Britain slid into the abyss of World War II, and he feared that civilization itself might perish in the coming years. Writing at the height of his artistic powers, Eliot packed into the four long poems a summation of his views on poetry and art, on mystical experience, and on humankind’s relationship to history and time.

In 2011, with rarely granted permission of the Eliot Estate, John Farrell committed to memory the one-thousand lines of Eliot’s masterpiece and prepared them for performance. John’s recitation of Four Quartets affords audiences an opportunity to immerse themselves in these gorgeous lines of poetry, spoken from memory, and renew their understanding of one the 20th century’s most exceptional poets.

Please visit our new Four Quartets website for information on the poems, the performance, and more.