Sárospataki Füzetek 12. (2008)

2008 / 2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: A reading of T. S. Eliot's Ashwednesday

A READING OF T.S.ELIOfsASH WEDNESDAY

I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones,

That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.

But in Tennyson we also have the heaviness of the road upwards (In Memoriam section IV):

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world’s altar-stairs That slope thro’ darkness up to God.

We have all these elements in Eliot’s Ash-Wednesday: a turning from our ‘dead self, the upward path of stepping stones, the weight of the cares of the world, the darkness (‘veil’), as well as the higher dream, and a new song.

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down Redeem the time, redeem the dream

Given the religious setting in a garden this could remind us of the conversion of Augustine, who heard a voice in the garden like that of children singing ‘tolle lege’, which he interpreted as telling him to ‘take up and read’ the Bi- ble.2s The symbol of a fountain in the desert (garden) refers to life, especially to the new life of faith. At the beginning of the Bible the garden is a symbol for paradise, the good creation where Adam walked with God. At the end of the Bible we find a redemptive symbol in which the ‘tree of life’ appears as given for the ‘healing of the nations’ (The Revelation to John, ch.22).

There is a line in the poem here from ‘Salve Regina’ of the Roman Catholic vesper liturgy which speaks of our troubles in ‘this valley of tears’, and says: ‘turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us....’ This means that there is our turning to God, as well as the divine turning toward us — a fountain of mercy springs up. In Christian theology it has always been said that God first turns toward us; and therefore we should return toward God. 25

25 This is found in Augustine’s account of his conversion in Confessions, book VIII. Even the details are similar, for Augustine was struggling with the cares of the world, the desires of the flesh, and the text for his conversion was found when he read Paul’s Letter to the Romans 13:13, 14. This talks about clothing ourselves with Christ as a new identity (and by Augustine’s time could mean the new robe of baptism) and turning away from the desires of the flesh, listed by Paul as including drunkenness, lewdness, quarreling and jealousy.

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