Sárospataki Füzetek 12. (2008)
2008 / 2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: A reading of T. S. Eliot's Ashwednesday
Frank Sawyer renewal for Elijah (I Kings 19:1-8).18 The poem is a struggle for renewal, even though T who am here disassembled/Proffer my deeds to oblivion’, indicates a desire to rest in death. Who is the Lady, so dominant throughout the poem? The first reference suggested by most commentators is “Beatrice, agent of Dante’s salvation, and devoted attendant on the Virgin Mary in Paradise”.19 Others suggest Dante’s Matilde. Knowing Eliot, there could be multiple references, such as recalling Lady Philosophy in Boethius’ The consolation of Philosophy. This also fits, since Eliot likes to combine philosophy, mysticism and theology. By the end of the poem the Lady becomes: ‘Blessed sister, holy mother...spirit of the garden....’ This is a feminine counterbalance to the desert, rocks, sand and abstract conflicts of the soul. Eliot needs the symbol of Lady, sister, mother, in order to personalize the poem. Much of his poetry is highly intellectualised, dealing with ideas, and one of the ways he balances this is to introduce persons as symbols, and conversations as representative of different views and ways of dealing with the conflicting choices, and as possible ways of restoration. On this point, it can also be said that the Lady is partly his wife Vivienne, and indeed the poem was originally dedicated to her. Eliot had great feelings of sorrow, despair and failure, at this time as he saw no way to help her psychological state and save their marriage. He is both turning away from a Lady and turning toward the help of the Blessed Virgin, but he knows he is in the utmost ambiguity as to his personal path in life. His basic values and lifeview are at risk. This is a prayer and an urgent one at that. The poet continues in a litany of his own paradoxical style while focussing on the ambiguity of the lost soul, as well as the hope of salvation: Lady of silences Calm and distressed Torn and most whole Rose of memory Rose of forgetfulness Exhausted and life-giving (etc.) Eliot’s use of such paradox is found throughout most of his poetry. He wants the reader to imagine more than one possibility, to admit that we know little and that life is always in flux. In this particular focus on the Lady, who sooner or later is not Beatrice or any other symbol, but the Virgin Mary herself, we have the religious paradox of Virgin and Mother (of God). We have the further religious paradoxes of salvation through the suffering God, the way of the pilgrim as the way of arriving, the way of faith as the way of knowing, and the importance of the ‘via negativa’ as preparation for moving from our torn condition to wholeness. Eliot uses the empathy of the Lady (sister, mother, etc.) 18 Another reference is to a juniper tree in the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales where a murdered child’s bones under such a tree are miraculously restored to life. 19 Herbert, op.cit., 42. 72
