Sárospataki Füzetek 12. (2008)
2008 / 2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: A reading of T. S. Eliot's Ashwednesday
A READING OF T. S.ELIOT’S ASH WEDNESDAY This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply. Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden, Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still Even among these rocks, Our peace in His will And even among these rocks Sister, mother And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated And let my cry come unto Thee. The ‘lost heart’ and the ‘weak spirit’ try to turn back to the joys symbolized here by the sea and flowers and past memories. This is the ‘although’ with which section six begins. He turns both to recall the past but also to hope for a more spiritual life. This is letting go in order to go forward. The past joys were not all wrong; but he must be willing to go beyond them. He must for a time be world-negating in order to affirm the highest values. But Eliot does not compromise here; he wants to say that the pilgrim road is very difficult. We may feel that layer by layer Eliot is peeling away the onion of life and leaving us with nothing. But this is an exercise in repentance, a point of turning, and not yet the whole vista. ‘Let the other yew be shaken’ could be read as ‘the other you’. There is the danger that we let ourselves be mocked with ‘falsehood’. We like to fool ourselves without really undergoing a conversion of our heart and life. We must learn, as he showed earlier, that we are ‘hollow men’. The ‘blind eye creates...gates’ refers to false dreams which entice us, hopes, plans and ideas in which we seek an alternative salvation not communicated by the divine word. ‘Three dreams’ could be any three choices in which we seek our life meaning, such as family, work, or pleasure. Or in this poem the three dreams could be past, present and future, or even earth, purgatory/hell and heaven. The order is reversed: dying is followed by (new) birth. The reference to ‘spirit of the river, spirit of the sea’ is rooted in Eliot childhood since he lived near the Mississippi and spent summertime by the coast of Massachusetts. ‘Suffer’ in older English had the meaning of ‘allow’ or ‘permit’. So in the King James Bible we read: ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me...’. ‘Our peace in his will’ is found in various classical theological references and in Dante. ‘Suffer me not to be separated’ is found in an ancient hymn.3° ‘And let 3° The hymn called Amma Christi, cf. Herbert, 47. 81
