예이츠와 엘리엇은 둘 다 작품을 통하여 현실 또는 현 상태에 대한 원망을 토로하고 영원을 갈망하는 모습이 공통적으로 보인다. 이 모습이 예이츠에게는 존재의 통일이라는 개념으로 나타나는 반면에 엘리엇에게는 정점으로 나타난다. 예이츠는 대립과 갈등의 상태에서 벗어나기 위해 비잔티움이라는 도시를 성(聖)화 시켰으며, 자연생물인 백조의 이미지를 사용하고 있다. 반면에 엘리엇은 정점을 나타내기 위하여 로고스—만물의 중심점—를 사용하거나 춤의 이미지로 형상화 시키고 있다. 전후 시대상에 대한 불만을 토로하기 위해 현실의 상태에서 벗어나고자 했다는 점에서는 이 둘 모두가 공통적인 입장을 지양한다고 볼 수 있다.

After conversion, T. S. Eliot’s religious phrase generates a new kind of experimental form like an unfinished two-part poem Coriolan. The first fragment, “Triumphal March” shows the distance and juxtaposition of the two worlds: the worthless secular world of common people and transcendental reality of war hero Coriolan symbolized as “the still point of the turning world.” In the second fragment “Difficulties of a Statesman,” Eliot describes an anguish soldier-statesman Coriolan facing difficulties of leading public after the war. In this respect political leader Coriolan craves spiritual redemption for his desperate emotional emptiness as a result of rootless human relationship with his people and losing his real identity of “the still point of the turning world.” Coriolan study in terms of Christian symbol of “the still point of the turning world” contains important echoes of poems such as Ash Wednesday and Ariel Poems. It also foreshadows Eliot’s later recurrent images used in Choruses from The Rock and Four Quartets as well as his poetic dramas.

We can find that the whole of his works is one poem and it has a consistent developing theme. The theme is no other than a union with an Absolute, that is, a pursuit of salvation. Eliot finds aesthetic means to express the moment of the union with God; the means is 'objective correlative'. One of the 'objective correlatives' is the 'still point', which is the most important and significant of all the imagery for the moment of salvation, and for the union with an Absolute. The purpose of this thesis is to study the meaning of the 'still point', its character and the process of reaching it, and to clarify the relation with the concept of criticism and philosophy which Eliot had studied. We can find the concept of 'still point' in the 'logos' of Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, and in the 'Sunyata' of Madhyamika made by Nagarjuna, an Indic Buddhist priest. 'Logos' represents the character of the central-point and Sunyata represents the unification and removal of boundary for two different concepts. The way in which 'still point' is extracted can be discovered in Eliot's criticism and philosophy. 'Immediate experience' which is the essential concept of Eliot's philosophy and 'objective correlative' are very similar to the 'still point' in that they are the harmony, balance and unification of two opposites. 'Tradition' which he makes much of in his criticism is related to the 'still point' is also related to 'objective correlative', for 'objective correlative' is the product of the unification and reconciliation of two aspects. The significant symbols for 'still point' are 'Mandala' and 'wheel'. The circle in the middle of it and a square outside it signify the power of God. The wheel schematizes the tension and unification of spirit We can discover many other models of unification of 'still point' through the union of love and fire, word and Word, beginning and ending, exploration and revelation, etc. They are the examples of showing similarity that things of different nature can be unified. The 'still point' is achieved by intellectual perception of the 'Incarnated Word' in "Burnt Norton", by passional participation in 'Atonement' in "East Coker", by volitional response to the 'Annunciation' in the "Dry Salvages", and by 'Pentecostal Purifying' in "Little Gidding".