Sárospataki Füzetek 12. (2008)
2008 / 2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: A reading of T. S. Eliot's Ashwednesday
A READING OF T.S.ELIOT’sAsU WEDNESDAY with Eliot, such as Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Tillich. Just as the poet here, they emphasised the dialectics of human alienation and divine grace, as well as the misunderstanding and misuse of God’s ‘word’. The phrase ‘unstilled world’ contains the thought of ever-moving, but also ever-rebelling against God. ‘Unstilled’ is the opposite of the stillness to which the poet repeatedly refers, as a condition for hearing the voice of God. Eliot further plays with the idea of the revelation of the word, which may at times be wordless.2? This could remind us of the prophecy applied to Christ: “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). Eliot essentially says that we are too busy to hear the word of God: No place of grace for those who avoid the face No time to rejoice for those who walk among the noise and deny the voice Part of this section is notably full of rhyming, including internal rhyming within lines, such as: ‘found/resound, mainland/rainland, place/grace/face and rejoice/noise/voice. This creates a musical quality, a background song of hope even though the words are often sombre: ‘lost, spent, unheard, darkness,’ and so forth. The mixture of despair and hope continues throughout the poem and its music ‘...is capable of making an instantaneous impression purely through the beauty of its sound.’27 28 To express the idea that people - and Eliot includes himself - neglect and reject God, he writes: Will the veiled sister pray for Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee This could be a question, as to whether the sister is willing; but it is also a petition: will the sister please pray for...and the poet adds several categories. These include ‘children at the gate’, who are perhaps those close to the gate of the heavenly kingdom, but who ‘will not go away and cannot pray’. They are the innocents. Then there are also those who ‘offend’ and those who are ‘terrified’ and those who do not know how to ‘affirm’ their faith. The scene ends speaking of ‘the desert in the garden the garden in the desert’. This is the dialectic of doubt and faith, the struggle between choosing and opposing, and what he refers to as being ‘torn on the horn(s)’ of a dilemma. We do not know how to avoid the temptations in the world, nor how to properly honour God. There is not only the pilgrim’s progress (John Bunyan), but also the pilgrim’s regress (C.S. Lewis). 27 Here we find word-plays also used by Bishop Lancelot Andrewes. Cf. Eliot’s essay, ‘Lancelot Andrewes’ in Selected Prose ofT.S.Eliot, 185. 28 F.O.Matthiessen, The Achievement of T.S.Eliot: An Essay on the Nature of Poetry (Oxford University Press, 1958), 114. 79
