Illumination, Transformation, and Nihilism: T. S. Eliot's Empty Spaces.

T.S. Eliot's poems "The Hollow Men" (1925) and the Four Quartets (1943) extract the generative potential from images of empty space. In these poems, the empty spaces contain a productive capacity that exists on a continuum from latent expectation to the catalysts of a renewed reality. To shape his consideration of emptiness, Eliot draws upon a tradition of nihilism before Nietzsche: an "old" nihilism that views nothingness as generative instead of destructive. This old nihilism facilitates Eliot's search for metaphysical answers in a broken world, a process that ultimately saw him simultaneously profess his faith passionately in front of the Pietà yet continue to exercise the values of old nihilism in his poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]