Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is a poem in six parts by T. S. Eliot. It was published in 1930, although parts of it appeared earlier in periodicals. Part II was published as “Salutation” in December 1927, followed a few months later by Part 1, “Perch’io non Spero” (“Because no hope is left me”) and Part III, as “Al som de l’escalina” (“The summit of the stairs”) in 1929. Ash Wednesday is an important date on the Christian calendar. It is the first day of Lent, taking place six and a half weeks before Easter. For Christians it serves as a reminder of death and the need to be reconciled with God. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday is sometimes known as his “conversion” poem, since he became a member of the Church of England in 1927, and this poem marks a sharp change in theme from his earlier work. The poem’s speaker traces a journey from a dispirited state of mind to an acceptance of religious faith and the hope for salvation.

Poet Biography

Poet, dramatist, literary critic, and editor Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. His family had roots in New England, and after Eliot graduated from Smith Academy in St. Louis he attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts. He entered Harvard in 1906, from which he received a B.A. in 1909 and an M.A. in English Literature the following year. In 1910-11 he studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, before returning to Harvard.

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Eliot traveled to England, where he took up a scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, studying philosophy. Eliot taught English at Birkbeck, University of London, and Highgate School, and in 1917 he began working for Lloyd’s Bank, a position he held until 1925. After that he joined the publishing firm Faber and Gwyer. In 1929, when the firm became Faber and Faber, he became a director, a role he continued until his death. As editor at Faber, he was responsible for launching or advancing the careers of many young poets.

Eliot’s Modernist poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” was published in 1915. It later appeared in Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917. His most famous poem, The Waste Land, was published in 1922. In densely symbolic and allusive verse, it described the fragmentation and decay of Western culture. In the same year, Eliot founded the influential quarterly journal The Criterion, which he edited until it ceased publication in 1939.

Eliot was also a literary critic who wrote reviews for the Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. His collection of essays, The Sacred Wood, was published in 1920, and another collection, Homage to John Dryden, appeared in 1924. As a critic, Eliot was a force to be reckoned with both in Great Britain and the United States; he played a highly influential role as an arbiter of taste and excellence for both poetry of the past and modern poetry. He was known as a champion of the 17th-century English Metaphysical poets, whose work had been neglected for over two centuries. His Collected Essays appeared in 1932.

In 1927, Eliot became a British citizen and joined the Anglican Church. Ash Wednesday was the first poetic fruit of this conversion. Over a decade and a half later, in 1944, Eliot published Four Quartets, which also explored spirituality, focusing on the intersection of time and eternity.

Eliot was also a dramatist. His first play, Sweeney Agonistes, was first performed in 1934, followed a year later by Murder in the Cathedral, about the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. The latter is generally considered to be Eliot’s best play. In 1949, he achieved popular success with The Cocktail Party (1949), which ran for 409 performances on Broadway starting in January 1950. Two later plays were The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958). In 1948, Eliot was awarded the Order of Merit by Britain’s King George VI as well as the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Eliot married Vivien Haigh-Wood in 1915. By all accounts, it was not a happy marriage. After 1933, they lived apart but did not divorce. Haigh-Wood died in 1947. In 1957, Eliot married Valerie Fletcher. They enjoyed eight years together before Eliot died on January 4, 1965, in London, of emphysema.

Poem Text

Eliot, T. S. “Ash Wednesday.” 1930. FamousPoetsandPoems.com.

Summary

In Part 1, the speaker states that he is no longer interested in the things he used to enjoy doing and he does not expect to regain any interest. He knows that everything is transient; all things pass. Having renounced worldly ambition, he must now find something else on which to build his life. In Part II, he imagines himself dead, killed by three leopards. His bones are scattered around. At the scene there is a Lady (the word is always capitalized) who has many divine attributes, and the bones sing in praise of her and the Virgin Mary. In Part III, the speaker begins his spiritual ascent, symbolized by a spiral staircase. Part IV suggests a spiritual experience mediated for the speaker by the Lady, whose exalted status is close to that of Mary. The Lady says nothing, but her presence is restorative; she redeems time by presenting it in the light of a higher realm. In Part V, the speaker states that the divine Word is not found in the world, which means that people exist in a spiritual darkness. He asks whether the revered Lady will pray for them. In Part VI, the speaker feels life quickening within him again, in contrast to the aridity he felt in Part I. He prays both to the Lady and the Virgin Mary that they will teach him to discover inner peace by accepting the will of God. He asks that he should not be separated from the divine.