In Eliot’s Own Words: Ash Wednesday
I am now venturing to send you herewith for inspection and return a copy of most of a group of poems I have been working on. I am not sure whether their weakness is a question of detail, or whether they are fundamentally wrong. They seem to get feebler towards the end too. No. 2 was published in the Criterion, No. 1 in Commerce; the rest are unprinted.
(to I. A. Richards, 28 September 1928)
艾略特原話：聖灰星期三
我冒昧地將我正在創作的一組詩歌的大部分副本寄給您審閱，並退還給您。我不確定它們的缺點是細節問題，還是根本錯了。它們似乎在結尾也變得更加薄弱。第二首發表在《標準》雜誌上，第一首發表在《商業》雜誌上；其餘的都未刊印。
（致I. A. 理查茲，1928年9月28日）
這封信只是想告訴您，其他董事和我一樣，並不反對您在《島嶼》雜誌上重印《Perch'io non spero》的全部內容。如果您能省略這個標題，並且如果可能的話，不加標題地印出來，我將不勝感激，因為我稍後會重印這首詩，沒有這個標題，只是作為第1首。這是六首詩中的一首，我暫時稱之為“六首詩”，但想稱之為“聖灰星期三音樂”（但我非常想听聽您對這個標題的坦率看法，我對此表示懷疑）。
This is merely to tell you that the other directors see no more objection than I do to your reprinting the whole of ‘Perch’io non spero’ in Islands. I should be glad if you would omit that title, and if possible print it without any title, because I am reprinting the poem later without that title, merely as no. 1 of a sequence of six which I have called provisionally ‘Six Poems’, but think of calling ‘Ash Wednesday Music’ (but I should like very much to have your frank opinion of that title, about which I feel doubtful).
(to Walter De la Mare, 18 October 1929)
I feel that you are disappointed in Ash-Wednesday; and I am disappointed too; because I fancy that parts IV and V of it are much better than II (Salutation).
(to A. L. Rowse, 14 May 1930)
I shall send you my Ash-Wednesday, which is merely an attempt to do the verse of the Vita Nuova in English, so that you may have me at your mercy ...
(to Laurence Binyon, 16 May 1930)
Do not worry at being unsure of the meaning, when the author cannot be sure of it either. The Vita Nuova might give you some help; but on the other hand it is much more obscure than I have the talent to be. If you call the three leopards the World, the Flesh and the Devil you will get as near as one can, but even that is uncertain.
(to Philip Parker, 17 May 1930)
… if the three leopards or the unicorn contain any allusions literary, I don’t know what they are. Can’t I sometimes invent nonsense, instead of always being supposed to borrow it?
(to Charles Williams, 22 May 1930)
I hope [René] Hague will not call Ash-Wednesday religious or devotional verse – it is merely an attempt to put down in words a certain stage of the journey, a journey of which I insist that all my previous verse represents previous stages.
(to Algar Thorold, 23 May 1930)
I leave Ash-Wednesday in your hands with confidence, to interpret to Oxford. But please don’t let the young men call it ‘religious’ verse. I had a shock on reading The Granta to see stated categorically that it was ‘the finest religious poem in English since Crashaw’. If it was, it wouldn’t be; and anyhow it was I who told them of a poet named Crashaw; and such assertions can only do me harm. I don’t consider it any more ‘religious’ verse than anything else I have written: I mean that it attempts to state a particular phase of the progress of one person. If that progress is in the direction of ‘religion’, I can’t help that; it is I suppose the only direction in which progress is possible.
(to Rev. M. C. D’Arcy, 24 May 1930)
My only original contribution is possibly a few hints about the Vita Nuova, which seems to me a work of capital importance for the discipline of the emotions; and my last short poem Ash-Wednesday is really a first attempt at a sketchy application of the philosophy of the Vita Nuova to modern life.
(to Paul Elmer More, 2 June 1930)
I am pleased that you like the verses. As for obscurity, I like to think that there is a good and a bad kind: the bad, which merely puzzles or leads astray; the good, that which is the obscurity of any flower: something simple and to be simply enjoyed, but merely incomprehensible as anything living is incomprehensible. Why should people treat verse as if it were a conundrum with an answer? when you find the answer to a conundrum it is no longer interesting. ‘Understanding’ poetry seems to me largely to consist of coming to see that it is not necessary to ‘understand’.
(to Geoffrey Curtis, 17 June 1930)
I am very much pleased by what you say of AshWednesday. Most of the people who have written to say that they couldn’t understand it seemed to be uncertain at any point whether I was referring to the Old Testament or to the New; and the reviewers took refuge in the comprehensive word ‘liturgy’. It appears that almost none of the people who review books in England have ever read any of these things! But you would be shocked yourself to learn how much of the poem I can’t explain myself. Certain imagery – the yew trees, the nun, the garden god – come direct out of recurrent dreams, so I shall abandon them to the ghoulish activities of some prowling analyst. The three leopards are deliberately, however, the World, the Flesh and the Devil; and the whole thing aims to be a modern Vita Nuova, on the same plane of hallucination, and treating a similar problem of ‘sublimation’ (horrid word). However pathetically it falls below that amazing book, the comparison is useful, in making clear that this is not ‘devotional’ verse. That can only be written by men who have gone far ahead of me in spiritual development; I have only tried to express a certain intermediate phase.
(to Rt. Rev. George Bell, 20 July 1930)
… between the usual subjects of poetry and ‘devotional’ verse there is a very important field still very unexplored by modern poets – the experience of man in search of God, and trying to explain to himself his intenser human feelings in terms of the divine goal. I have tried to do something of that in Ash-Wednesday.
(to W. F. Stead, 9 August 1930)
If a poem of mine entitled Ash-Wednesday ever goes into a second edition, I have thought of prefixing to it the lines of Byron from Don Juan:
Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of this land,
And trace it in this poem, every line.
I don’t pretend that I quite understand
My own meaning when I would be very fine;
But the fact is that I have nothing planned
Except perhaps to be a moment merry …
There is some sound critical admonition in these lines.
(The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, 1933)
‘To relate art to the life of moral values’! Certainly, there you have Corneille and Racine with you, except that they were not aware of any unrelation to be made relation. I haven’t myself any awareness of Art, on the one hand, and (my) moral values on the other, with a problem set: how to relate them. My own ‘art’ (such as it is) has always been at the disposal of my moral values. Ash-Wednesday for instance, is an exposition of my view of the relation of eros and agape based on my own experience. I think and hope that I have overcome any desire to write Great Poetry, or to compete with anybody. One has got at the same time to unite oneself with humanity, and to isolate oneself completely; and to be equally indifferent to the ‘audience’ and to oneself as one’s own audience. So that humility and freedom are the same thing.
(to Stephen Spender, 9 May 1935)
I thought my poetry was over after ‘The Hollow Men’; and it was only because my publishers had started the series of ‘Ariel’ poems and I let myself promise to contribute, that I began again. And writing the ‘Ariel’ poems released the stream, and led directly to Ash Wednesday ...
(‘T. S. Eliot Talks About Himself and the Drive to Create’, New York Times Book Review, 29 November 1953)
I am afraid that my mind was very empty of allusions when I used the phrase ‘agèd eagle’. It just came that way. I was afterwards upbraided by Edmund Wilson for referring to myself as an agèd eagle at the age of forty or so, but I suppose I was turning myself into a dramatic character. After all, I wrote a poem when I was twenty-two which contains the line ‘I grow old … I grow old’.
(to Warner Allen, 25 May 1960)
T.S. Eliot's Ash-Wednesday is a significant "conversion poem" published in 1930 that chronicles the speaker's spiritual journey from doubt and despair toward faith and salvation after Eliot's 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Divided into six sections, the poem uses rich symbolism, including a spiraling ascent, to depict a process of shedding worldly attachments, accepting human helplessness, and finding hope in a surrendered relationship with God.
Context and Themes
Post-Conversion:
The poem is Eliot's first major work after embracing the Anglo-Catholic faith, marking a shift from his earlier, more secular poetry.
Spiritual Struggle:
Ash-Wednesday explores the difficulty of moving from intellectual sterility and spiritual barrenness toward a true religious belief.
Dantean Influence:
The poem draws inspiration from Dante's Purgatorio, using its framework to explore themes of repentance, hope, and the journey toward the divine.
Key Imagery and Symbolism
Spiritual Ascent:
The central metaphor of a man "toiling up a spiral staircase" represents spiritual progress and the difficult journey to salvation.
Bones and Dry Bones:
The imagery of bones, particularly the Valley of Dry Bones, symbolizes spiritual death and the speaker's hope for resurrection through faith.
The Lady:
References to a mysterious "Lady" or "the Lord" connect the speaker to themes of hope, spiritual wisdom, and even the Virgin Mary.
Rejection of Worldly Desires:
The speaker deliberately turns away from earthly pleasures and "worldly diversions" to embrace a life of faith and repentance.
Structure and Style
Six Sections:
The poem is structured into six distinct parts, each contributing to the narrative of the speaker's spiritual transformation.
Melodic and Contemplative:
The style of Ash-Wednesday is more casual, melodic, and introspective compared to Eliot's earlier works.
Allusions:
Eliot uses a tapestry of literary and biblical allusions, including references to Dante and the Bible, to enrich the poem's themes and spiritual depth.
Reception
Controversial:
The poem was met with both praise and criticism, with some secular critics discomfited by its strong grounding in orthodox Christianity.
A Turning Point:
Despite the controversy, Ash-Wednesday is widely recognized as a pivotal work, reflecting both a turning point in Eliot's own life and a broader shift in Western thought before World War II.
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