Sárospataki Füzetek 12. (2008)
2008 / 2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: A reading of T. S. Eliot's Ashwednesday
A READING OF T.S.ELIOT’sASH WEDNESDAY We find here the typical repetition of Eliot, the varied cadence through different length of lines, and the paradoxical statements.« Which way are we turning? Are we striving not to strive? What is it that we do not hope, but then in our turning, now hope? Another characteristic of Eliot is the use of references, more or less to the saturation point. ‘This man’s gift and that man’s scope’ rings of a line from Shakespeare^ It is used here by Eliot to signify the high achievements of human culture. It is noticeable that this poem, as can be said of many of his poems, is fragmentary, which helps demonstrate the general theme (the fragmentary soul in a fragmentary civilization). This was part of the trauma situation of the postwar generation which was existentially seeking to overcome their feeling of a breakdown of culture.4 * 6 7 Like others, Eliot was influenced by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which exposes the barbarian heart of modern culture. The 1920’s had many “elegant sceptics” but Eliot shows in Ash-Wednesday that he has moved beyond the scepticism of his own Waste Land, which had attracted so much attention.7 Eliot uses many voices in his poems in order to catch the variety of directions and meanings that are opening or closing for the ‘lost soul’. This present poem adds new flavour to his work, and we feel there is an inner reality here of the changing self. The T is no longer the individualist and ironic outsider, as in Prufrock, for example, who is bored with life and mocks himself. The new T in Ash-Wednesday is a serious pilgrim. The neurosis and fragmentation of life found in The Waste Land (completed in 1922) are in the present poem (1930) turned into a spiritual struggle to find a better way. The Waste Land deals with the temporal city, and Ash-Wednesday turns toward the eternal city, reminding us of Augustine’s concepts of civitas terrena and civitas dei. As we enter into more details of the poem it is good to remind ourselves that the purifying steps of world-negation are not a final goal in themselves. When Eliot denies the gifts and scope of human cultural possibilities, he is setting limits to human endeavours; this negation is to be raised to something better through new affirmations. It of course remains to be seen for all such conversions, whether they result in a dualism (not knowing how to relate the transient and the eternal), or whether they become more wholesome. The emphasis on the spiritual aspect is not meant to turn away from the good things of the world, but rather to turn away from the ‘world’ 4 ‘Because I do not hope to turn again’ is a quote from the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti (1255-1300). The meaning and setting in Cavalcanti are different: ‘Because no hope is left me, Ballatetta,/Of return to Tuscany’ - but Eliot liked to use such references and give them another ‘Umwelt’. For basic notes on the poem, see Michael Herbert, T.S.Eliot - Selected Poems (York Notes - Longman York Press: Essex, England, 1982), p.4iff. s In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 he uses the word ‘art’ rather than ‘gift’. Once again, Eliot takes a reference and uses it in his own way. 6 Cf. Stephen Spender, T.S.Eliot (New York: Viking Press, 1975), 108. 7 Cf. Hugh Kenner, The Invisible Poet: T.S.Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959), reprinted in Harold Bloom, T.S.Eliot (Chelsea House Publishers ‘Modern Critical Views’, New York: 1985). 67
