- Hello, I'm Victor Strandberg. Concluding our studies in
the poetry of T.S. Eliot. In this session, we're going
to look at Ash Wednesday, Eliot's first major poem, after his conversion. Ash Wednesday, in the Christian calendar is a day of repentance and humility. And for T.S. Eliot, humility
was a supreme virtue, necessary to become a Christian. He said in one of his
essays, on Shakespeare, that humility is the hardest virtue to achieve. Nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself. On the other hand, he also said, in Four Quartets, much later, that humility is the only wisdom. And it was his final answer to the crisis to believe. Now by the same token, pride, the 7th and deadliest sin in the medieval tradition, was T.S. Eliot's particular obstacle, to the Christian conversion. In order to become a Christian, Eliot in particular, had to renounce three forms of pride. The first that I would
cite is pride of intellect. Which is to say that Eliot, because of his intellect, his studies in modern science, in secular thinking, in the naturalistic philosophy of life, because of all that he
ended up as a hollow man living in The wastelands. He would have to renounce his intellect in order to become a Christian. I'm going to come back to that in a moment but let's move to the second mode of pride that he would have to renounce to become a Christian. This would be social pride. During The wasteland
period, Eliot had taken conciliation from his superiority to the low-class rabble that show up in his poems. The Sweeney's, the Bleistein's,
the Rachel Rabinovitch's, the Poles and Greeks, and other such. Eliot of course knew that
this was a false value and giving up that form of pride would not be too difficult, although living in England, T.S.
Eliot did, I think, retain some satisfaction about his place in the social hierarchy. Perhaps it was a little too much to ask him to extirpate all of his sense of social superiority. But we'll have to say that he tried, that he never treated his social inferiors with the contempt that he had shown during the earlier phase of his life and poetry. In fact, he tried to make amends
to Sweeney, in particular, by writing a sort of
tragic take on Sweeney. He called it Sweeney Agonistes. Sort of like Milton's poem and though this play was not,
in the end, completed, nonetheless he did try
to turn a Christian eye to the object of previous
contempt, Sweeney. The third and most difficult form of pride for T.S. Eliot to overcome was his pride as an artist. That was the one real conciliation through The Wasteland period, to be the king of poetry, the acknowledged leader of the poetic revolution of the 20th century in English and to be honored and celebrated around the world for
his poetic achievements. He would have to renounce that too, to become a Christian. Now I want to come back for a moment to Eliot's pride of intellect. The first of these three forms of pride that I cited as something he would have to renounce. In our Western civilization, we think of the mind as semi-autonomous, it goes wherever it pleases, we cannot really have full
control of our thinking. There's something involuntary about the way the mind
moves from one thought to another, from one subject to another, one memory to another perhaps. And there's nothing we can do about it. Here I think, T.S. Eliot's
studies in Buddhism come into play. If we remember The Fire Sermon, the Buddha advised his monks to
renounce the physical body, the five senses are on
fire, and to renounce the mind, which is also on fire. If they could do that, suppress both the body and the mind,
then they would have access to the deepest, truest eternal self, the Atman, which thereupon would be free from the wheel of
rebirth and it could join permanently the universal
soul which Hindu's call the Brahman, that is B-R-A-H-M-A-N, the eternal soul that
pervades all of reality and that goes on forever. In Buddhism, one would lose
ones conscious identity, one's separate self in
joining that universal soul. But the separate self,
the conscious identity was a burden and even a sin. And so, we might say, to escape all that into nirvana, was the greatest blessing in the Buddhist view of life. Now Eliot turned away
from these metaphysical features of Buddhism,
nirvana, the universal soul, which the Atman joins at
the time of ones death, but he did retain the
Buddhist set of ethics. He overcame the fires of the body when he was baptized and at the same time, took a vow of celibacy. That's an odd thing for
a married man perhaps, certainly nothing neither the Christian or Hebrew tradition would require that, but I think it was, you might say, that Buddhist heritage he turned to, to overcome his body and I
think in the same fashion, he overcame his mind, disciplined the mind through something akin
to the way the Buddhist holy man or Hindu holy man concentrates, closes out the world around
him, fastens exclusively on access to the eternal, to the Atman, to that part of himself
which may be obscured by the body and the mind
if we cannot discard those distractions. Eliot's form, I think, or
his parallel to this Buddhist function of spiritual
discipline was his way of worship in the Anglican church. Which is to say he was
extremely punctilious. One of his practices when he taught at Harvard in the early 1930's for a year or two, was that he would show up every morning at the Anglican chapel near Harvard and an acolyte, a student at Harvard who served with the Priest
in that Anglican church remarked that every morning, early, Eliot would show up, frequently
as the only parishioner to take part in the Anglican Eucharist which our Catholic's call the Mass, and would always be extremely careful to observe the form of worship exactly, smiting his breast at
exactly the same time, falling on his knees at
exactly the right point in the liturgy and so forth. And so I think he was able to, in the end, discipline his intellect sufficiently so that he could cast aside the powers of the mind that had led him into The Wasteland that had overridden his religious desires in poems
like, The Hollow Man, The Wasteland, and Gerontion. I want to turn to the
poem proper at this point and we'll take up section one. This section of Ash Wednesday recounts T.S. Eliot's
psychological or spiritual death so that he could become
a new man as a Christian. This is a section where
he renounces his pride as an artist. The master metaphor of Ash Wednesday is of a man toiling up a spiral staircase, perhaps going up a tower,
maybe even a church steeple. Now the spiral is quite
different from a wheel. When a wheel turns, we come
back to where we started, meaningless repetitions. In a spiral, you begin at point A and you end up quite
differently at point B. And so as he turned to
the Christian faith, this metaphor changes from the wheel to the spiral staircase to show a sense of spiritual progress being possible. "Because I do not hope to turn again", means that he will not go down the spiral staircase. He will never go back to The Wasteland point of view, that spiritual desert. "Because I do not hope," presumably hope is too fragile a thing. That he has to get beyond
both hope and despair as he says later in this
poem, in order to toil up the staircase. What he really needs is faith and he seems to have found that to keep him moving up
that spiral direction. Now it's interesting,
"Because I do not hope to turn desiring this mans gift and that man's scope." That's a fascinating
excerpt from Shakespeare. In one of his sonnet's, Shakespeare the greatest master of
language who ever lived, expressed this envy of other artists, "desiring this man's gift
and that man's scope." and T.S. Eliot now
renounces that artistic envy that even Shakespeare exhibited. "I no longer strive to
strive towards such things." He's given up his status as an artist. But notice in parenthesis
this marvelous little backlash, he can't help himself. In parenthesis, "(Why should the aged
eagle stretch its wings?)" Noe by calling himself the
eagle of modern poetry, the king of birds, it's
quite clear that he has not quite suffocated his pride
as an artist after all. "Why should the aged
eagle stretch its wings?" Everyone knows what I can do. I've shown my stuff, I don't have to strut my talent anymore. There is that kind of
an undertone even while he's struggling to achieve humility as an artist. We proceed with a similar
sort of a backlash in the next two lines. "Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?" The reign, he was the King of poetry, make no mistake about it. He wants everyone to know that he abdicated the throne voluntarily. He didn't have to do it and he can even abdicate the throne with a sort of dismissal of its importance. "The vanished power of the usual reign." It was not big deal
being the King of poetry. The second stanza of part one I think takes us into
the garden of the muses. "Because I do not hope to know again The infirm glory of the positive hour," that was the one source of strength, of value, of spiritual achievement back in his Wasteland period. "The infirm glory of the positive hour," is when his creativity was at full sail. "Because I do not think," and indeed he doesn't have to renounce his intellect in order to give up his role as an artist and of course, simply in order to become
a Christian believer. "Because I do not think Because I know I shall not know The one veritable transitory power," that is the power of artistic creativity which he is renouncing. "Because I cannot drink There, where trees
flower, and springs flow," that's the garden of the muses, which he is now departing. As we move on, certain themes that held such tremendous
importance in the past now lose their importance. One of them is the quest
for the meaning of time. "There will be time, there will be time", back in Prufrock's case, "hurry up please, it's time", in The Wasteland. Now as a Christian, time is reduced under the perspective of eternity. "Because I know that time is always time", merely time as a man now who rejects his own intellectual
quest of the past, he can accept his
limitations in not knowing the meaning of time, it doesn't matter. "And place is always and only place And what is actual is
actual only for one time And only for one place. I rejoice that things are as they are." That's an astonishing
statement for the author of The Wasteland. As you remember, Tiresias in The Fire Sermon, "By the waters of Leman
I sat down and wept," he certainly didn't rejoice back then and he's still living
in The Wasteland here, in Ash Wednesday, in the natural world, but now he can rejoice
that things are as they are because it is all subordinated
to his Christian faith. "I renounce the blessed face" he says, and renounce the voice." Now I think what most makes sense here would be the voice and
the face of the muses that would be the context of the rest of part one. "Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice,
having to construct something Upon which to rejoice." We go on with a prayer asking forgiveness, I think for his past poetry. Poetry that served as sort
of a Pied Piperous role leading other people into The Wasteland. But notice how as he
prays for forgiveness, he cannot resist using the Royal, we. When Queen Elizabeth heard a bad joke, excuse me I meant to say Queen Victoria, when Queen Victoria heard a bad joke she would say, we are not amused. And so here, Eliot prays. "And pray to God to have mercy upon us" and he prays for strength
to stop thinking. "And pray that I may forget These matters that with
myself I too much discuss." So the Buddhist discipline helps in suppressing his mind, but he also needs to offer a Christian prayer for additional strength
to achieve that purpose. "Because I do not hope to turn again," this is a permanent conversion, I'm not going back. "Let these words answer,"
in Ash Wednesday. "For what is done, not to be done again," I will not write that
kind of blasphemous poetry in the future. "May the judgment not
be too heavy upon us." We go back now to the earlier image of Eliot as the King of
poetry and as the eagle, the aged eagle no longer
having to stretch its wings. Now at the end of part one. "Because these wings are
no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now
thoroughly small and dry Teach us to care and not to care." Now that line I think is
the second contribution of Buddhism to this poem. The first being that Buddhist discipline to suppress both the mind and the body in order to become, not a
Buddhist, but a Christian in Eliot's case. And here "teach us to
care and not to care" is a Christian version of
the Buddhist middle way. The idea I think here as in Buddhism is that, if we do not care at all about the world's
sufferings, that is a sin. We think back to people like the young man assaulting the typist in The Fire Sermon. We think of Sweeney exploiting the woman in Sweeney Among the Nightingales. There are other Sweeney
poems where that takes place. We think of the young man, perhaps even abandoning the woman
in Portrait of a Lady. These men did not care at all and that is a sin. On the other hand, it is also a sin to care too much. To care too much leads to despair, to disbelieve, to the
anguish of Gerontion, " I have no ghosts," to
the anguish of Tiresias, "By the waters of Leman I sat and wept," and more obviously to the
amorosity of T.S. Eliot himself. So this then is a
beautifully crafted response to the sufferings of the world. There's nothing by way of
poetic pyrotechnics here. There's no flashy images,
no particular notable sound effect, though
certainly Ash Wednesday is full of beautiful sound effects, internal rhymes and the like. Nonetheless, descended to strip down to its absolute essence, "teach us to care and not to care." That's what it means to be a Christian. "Teach us to sit still." The end then for supplication on behalf of us sinners "now and at
the hour of our death." Going to part two. Here, T.S. Eliot sets his
physical annihilation. In part one he was a
psychological or spiritual annihilation as an artist. He would have to give up on that and assume a new identity altogether as a Christian artist with people saying, this is all folly, he accepted all that. His physical annihilation's
all so easy to accept. We're begin, I think
with a figure from Dante, lady, three white leopards
sat under a juniper tree. In Dante's, in his Divine Comedy, the very first thing that happens is Dante
awakens in the dark wood, half way through his life and he sees off into the distance, the
hill of salvation shining. He runs, he sprints at full tilt towards that hill of salvation. When he gets to the
bottom, the path is blocked by savage animals. A leopard, a lion, and a wolf. Those animals represent
Dante's propensity to sin. And for that reason, he
cannot go up the hill of salvation. He has to go by another way, through hell and purgatory before
he can climb that hill. Now in Eliot's setting of part two, the three white leopards
are in the cemetery. The juniper tree is an
evergreen that is often found in cemeteries, and these
animals have devoured Eliot's physical body. They "sat under the juniper
tree in the cool of the day having fed having fed to satiety On my legs, my heart,
my liver, and that which had been contained in the
hollow round of my skull." Now the reason why Eliot's
physical annihilation does not matter is
because he has now found a myth of rebirth. Which to Eliot is alive
and vital and valid and which he turns to as
the immediate next line. "And God said shall these bones live? Shall these bones live?" This is a reference to the prophet Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible who had a vision of a valley full of dry bones. And as he watched, a voice said, God's voice, "shall these bones live?" And as Ezekiel watched,
the bones came together as a full skeleton and
the skeletons put on flesh and then they assumed life
and stood up, fully alive. As we proceed in part two, Eliot describes himself
as here dissembled upon for hiding something but also for being disassembled physically. "I proffer my deeds to oblivion," again, having to contain through humility, he feels that nothing he did in life was really worthwhile. " I proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love to the
posterity of the desert." His love also was was
thought of imperfect. Particularly now that he's a celibate man, he can renounce sexual
love as something tainted and unworthy back in The Wasteland. "Let the whiteness of bones
atone to forgetfulness. There is no life in them. As I am forgotten and would be forgotten, so I would forget." Dealing I suppose with the agony he cited at the beginning of The Wasteland. "April is the cruelest month,
mixing memory and desire." Here now he is free from
both in the graveyard. "And God said prophesy to the wind," this is what he told
Ezekiel in the episode I just mentioned. "The bones sang chirping With the burden of the grasshopper, saying," and here we proceed into
the most lyrical section. A part to these very short lines, giving us a long list
of Christian paradoxes. Now another way to view these lines is through the prism of that great lesson of part one. "Teach us to care and not to care." Let us find the middle
way through resolving these paradoxes, his listing of opposites. He addresses then: "Lady of silences Calm and distressed Torn and most whole Rose of memory Rose of forgetfulness Exhausted and life-giving Worried, reposeful The single Rose," capital R, that would be the incarnation of Christ. That's why we have rose windows in the great cathedrals in Europe. To celebrate the incarnation. "The single Rose Is now the Garden," capital G, the garden of Christian faith. "Where all loves end." The end of the endless journey to no end." That word end has a double meaning. One meaning, of course,
is a final termination of something. But the other meaning
is a sense of purpose. As in the phrase, means and ends. In Four Quartets, a dozen
years in the future, T.S. Eliot would use
that particular reference to ends as a central basis of the poem. "Hear then the Christian faith, the Garden is the end of the otherwise endless journey to no end." We conclude part two, about
the physical annihilation of T.S. Eliot with Eliot's bones in the graveyard singing, happy to be dead. "Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining, we
are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other," back when Eliot was alive. "Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand, forgetting themselves and each other, united in the quiet of the desert." Eliot can't resist the pun, on a cemetery lot in the next line. "This is the land which
ye shall divide by lot. This is the land. We have our inheritance." Being dead and being as it were, grateful for the gift of death, you might say, an escape from The
Wasteland to a better life, shall these bones live. The next two sections of Ash Wednesday give us two kinds of mysticism. That was a chapter in
William James' varieties in religious experience
that Eliot has found of greatest interest. In Four Quartets, he cites
the Greek philosopher, a little before the time of Socrates, named Heraclitus who declared that the way up and the way down are the same. They come out in the same place. In section three and
four of Ash Wednesday, we have the way up, a
direct vision of glory and the way down, through
the dark night of the soul. They both come out in the same way. It's typical of Eliot, who liked to be comprehensive, to address
both forms of mysticism. Here in part three we take the way down through the dark night of the soul. Now, the metaphor that
is basic to the poem climbing a spiral staircase still holds as we begin part three. "At the first turning of the second stair I turned and saw below the devil of the stairs who wears The deceitful face of
hope and of despair." So he is toiling up the staircase but he is going through darkness at this phase of the journey. And what happens next
as he reaches a landing, At the first turning of the third stair and this landing represents the temptation to simply stay at this
part of The Wasteland, we'll call it, which
represents the world's beauty. As an artist, particularly
Eliot was susceptible to beauty in all its forms. And for many artists, this will suffice as a way to live a successful,
perhaps even happy life. To relish what the world
can offer by the way of a transcendent
experience of its beauty. Eliot himself had experienced this, listening to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde or in the episode with the Hyacinth girl. "I could not speak, my eyes failed. I was neither living nor dead looking to the heart
of light, the silence," back then. So, in this particular case, we have then, a glimpse through a slotted window of something beautiful out there. "At the first turning of the third stair Was a slotted window bellied
like the figs's fruit And beyond the hawthorn
blossom and a pasture scene The broad-backed figure
drest in blue and green Enchanted the maytime
with an antique flute. Blown hair is sweet, brown
hair over the mouth blown, Lilac and brown hair." We remember some of these images early on. The enticements of the worlds beauty. Now of course, Eliot's pilgrim has to keep toiling up the staircase. It cannot simply sit and
enjoy the world's beauty as though this were the answer
to the crisis he believes. Something similar as you remember in, Journey of the Magi, "there
were times we regretted the summer palaces on the slopes, the silken girls bringing sherbet." It would be so nice just
to sit back and enjoy this. So Eliot calls all that a, "distraction, music of the flute, stops
and steps of the mind over the third stair, fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair." I think that's his strength of faith. "Climbing the third stair." And with a close from the liturgy, "Lord, I am not worthy, Lord, I am not worthy, but speak the word only." And my soul shall be saved. Which he doesn't say but he implies. Section four gives us the way up. A direct vision of Christ. It's put in a form of
an interrogative format. "Who walked between the
violet and the violet." That image of the violet comes in from time to time, the
typist at the "violet hour" about ready to close up and go home. It seems to be a particularly
mysterious moment in the day in Eliot's treatments. "Who walked between the
violet and the violets, who walked between the
various ranks of varied green Going in" blue and white, excuse me, "white and
blue, in Mary's color." People "Talking of trivial things In ignorance and in
knowledge of eternal dolor, Who moved among the others as they walked, Who made strong the
fountains and made fresh the springs? The wastelands of lights made fertile. Made cool to dry raw, made firm the sand, sovegna vos." That's a line from Dante's Purgatory, and it's a line that means, remember us. "Remember us sinners in purgatory in your time on Earth, when you have time to think and decide about these sacred issues." He's speaking now about his life in the wasteland. I think the point is, we have to live on both levels, even after his conversion. We do now have the spiritual dimension of existence that did not exist back in the wasteland period. There is a metaphysical
answer to the burial of the dead. Eliot has climbed aboard
that raft of salvation and enjoys it immensely, but we also, so long as we have physical life on this Earth, must go on living on a naturalistic level, too. And I think that's what he's describing. "Here, the years that
walk between, bearing away the fiddles and the flutes." And nonetheless, offering,
because of this new perspective, a way to redeem the time, time which was irredeemable. It meant simply the approach
of old age and death in the earlier period of
Eliot's naturalistic thinking. Here, however, he speaks of, the new year's walk, restoring the years,
restoring with a new verse, the ancient rhyme." Certainly, with Eliot's new verse dedicated to the propagation of the faith. "Redeem the time, redeem the unread vision in the higher dream." I think that's the Christian faith. "While jeweled unicorns drawing by the guilded hearse." In my view, the gilded hearse is Eliot's previous poetry, and
here, even though he's struggling to retain
humility as an artist, he can't help but note that by golly, that hearse really was quite an excellent bit of craftmanship, a gilded hearse being drawn by jeweled unicorns. A pretty nice spectacle
even as it's drawn offstage. We turn now to the lady, the intercessor, a figure that probably, amongst others, represents Mary, the mother of Jesus. The intercessor, will the "silent sister veiled in white and blue,"
that's Mary's color, will she pray for us is
the essential question. And as we are now part four, a last view of this vision of glory, "the fountains sprang
up, the birds sang down, redeem the time, redeem the time. The token of the word unheard and unspoken till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew." The yew tree is another evergreen, it suggests the cemetery, but now with a sense of immortality attached to this landscape. The last line of part four, the way up. "And after this our exile." which is to say, the mystic vision eventually comes to an end, and we have to return to ordinary reality, our exile back to this ordinary world of time and matter and nature. A disappointing outcome,
but one we have to accept so long as we live on physically. Part five of Ash Wednesday is a prayer through people who are still trapped in the wasteland. And here, Eliot refers to
his poetry with a small w, the word. Now, in this service of
the word, with a capital W, the word of God and
indeed the word is God, according to the gospel of Saint John. The word was with God and the word is God according to that gospel. So, he has a play on that term, word, as we begin part five. "If the lost word is lost,"
small w is this poetry. "If the spent word is spent," and I think that's his earlier poetry, which is lost and spent as far as he's concerned. Still is the unspoken word, the poetry that he has yet to write
for the Christian faith. And the Word unheard, the capital W, the word of God, which is
unheard by too many people and it's up to him now to amend that. "And the light shone in darkness and against the Word," capital W, "the unstilled world still whirled." The turn of the wheel of time, the turning world, to no purpose except thought he Christian faith. And here, the Christian faith is described as what's at the center of the wheel, the still point at the
center of the turning world. So, "the unstilled world still whirled about the center of the silent word." The silent word of course being a reproach to the poet who now
needs to use his talents for this new purpose. We have a lament then on Eliot's part over the damage he's done to people through his earlier poetry. "Oh my people, what
have I done unto thee?" Here again, the struggle for humility seems to be a bit difficult, Eliot as though he has the voice
of a great prophet here, the leader of the people spiritually, which in a number of ways, he was, but it seems a little bit out of tune in this effort to be humble. "Where shall the word be found, where will the world resound," et cetera. And we move on then to the empathy for people still trapped
in a wasteland mentality, and a supplication to this lady to intervene for them. "Will the veil sister pray for those who walk in darkness, those who chose thee and oppose thee, those are torn on the horn between season and season, between hour and hour, those who wait in darkness? Will the veil sister pray
for children at the gate who will not go away and cannot pray?" That's sort of like
Eliot in The Hollow Man, lips that would form prayers, but they are prayer to hollow stone. "Oh my people, what have I
done to thee" once again. The prophet lamenting his false prophecies in the past. "Will the veil sister between the slender yew trees pray for those who offend her?" And now terrified and cannot surrender, cannot follow Eliot's path into the church of England in his case,
or into some branch of the Christian communion. "In the last desert between
the last blue rocks," and the rocks are always
a motif indicating the wasteland. "The desert in the garden,
the garden in the desert." There's the motif that
represents life on both levels. As a Christian, we may enjoy a garden in the naturalistic
desert, which on one level we have to continue as our environment for living. But we do have a garden in that desert, which it did not exist previously. On the other hand, even as Christians living in the garden
sometimes there is a desert in the garden, a time of despair, a time, perhaps, even of unbelief, a time of suffering, and we have
to simply try to live on both levels again, in both a garden and the desert. Turning now to the last
section of Ash Wednesday, section six, the theme here, I think, is that of Eliot's posture
of waiting for the end. He changes the conjunction
at the beginning of part six quite conspicuously. He's starting with, "because
I shall not turn again," that is, this is a permanent conversion. Now he says, "although I do not hope to turn again, although
I do not hope to turn." Now, I think the purpose
of that conjunction here is to indicate that he will not go back down that staircase to a
naturalistic view of life, but he does have another temptation, which he has to struggle against. And that temptation is to get out of the wasteland now,
I don't want to go on living all the years that I must in this sense of duality, of living both in the wasteland physically, and on this other level spiritually. So he goes on and describes this life in the wasteland, which
on one level continues, wavering between the prophet and the lost, yes that false value still matters on this level of existence. "In this brief transit
where the dreams crossed." I think the dreams would
represent the dimensions of time, past, present, and the future, which are dreamlike, given that no one has ever defined time successfully, not scientist, no theologian. All we know is that it is dreamlike. He speaks then of "the
dreamcrossed twilight between Earth and dying." That's our life in this
natural life world. Now, his imagery of escape from it, I think comes in two uses of metaphor, "bless me, father, though I do not wish
to wish these things." He cannot maintain total mental discipline as a Christian, and so
he has the image here of a ship leaving the wasteland. "From the wide window toward the granite shore, the white
sails still fly seaward." Seaward flying, he would sort of like to go with that ship. The next image inbroken wings is of a bird flying away, and he would rather like to get out of this environment now. "The lost heart stiffens and rejoices in the lost lilac and
the lost sea voyages. The weak spirit quickens to rebel." He goes on now further describing life in the wasteland on this level that he has to go on experiencing. This is the time of tension between dying and birth. Well, yes, between
dying as he grows older, and the new birth that
he's looking forward to. This is the place of solitude, solitude, there is still the sense of loneliness. Now, he overcame his
loneliness very largely by joining the Christian communion, that vast organization, we could call it, though it's more than that. That vast network or web of believers, which he could now feel solidarity with. Even so, in the natural world perhaps, there remains an experience of solitude. This place of solitude
where three dreams cross, past, present, and the future, between blue rocks, yes the
rocks are the wasteland. "When the voice is shaken from the yew tree drift away, let
the other yew be shaken and reply." And the other yew, I
think, would be the voices from the next world, the voices bespeaking immortality, maybe the same voices that we saw or heard in The Hollow Man, voices in the winds singing, more distant and more solemn than a fading star. I think those voices are more clear and more real to him now. "Blessed sister, holy mother,
spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden." We sum up now, the
lessons of Ash Wednesday. "Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood. Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still, to be accepting, even among these rocks." And that is living in the Wasteland. "Our peace and his will." Subordinating his own intellect, his own appetites, his entire being to His will, capital H. "Sister, mother, spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, suffer
me not to be separated," from God. Perhaps separated in other respects also, as he has joined the Christian Communion. We conclude then with a notable prayer. "Let my cry come unto Thee," Capital T. Previously, this expression of religious desire was suppressed. When he thought of an "infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing," he wiped away with a scornful laugh and preludes. Or in The Hollow Man, "this
is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper." A contemptuous description
of his own desire, his supplication of a dead man's hand "under the twinkle of the fading star." Now he can openly and honestly offer that same version of religious desire without any sense of embarrassment. Let it stand as his last word in our study of T.S. Eliot's poetry. Now, to conclude, I have tried to render a sort of bare bones analysis of T.S. Eliot's poetry. I think that if you follow the argument thus far, that you do
understand T.S. Eliot fundamentally. There is of course a
great deal more to learn. Many shelves of books have been written about the term, naturalism. Many shelves, likewise,
on the term modernism. Many shelves about T.S. Eliot's multitude of references to other
literature's from the past, to his thinking in so many subtle ways. And, I leave all that
to those in my listening audience who may wish to pursue further interest in T.S. Eliot. Now, as I close, I will
mention one other enterprise that I'm going to append to this work I've been doing, In a short time, a week or 10 days, I'm going to render one
or two more lectures on T.S. Eliot's literary
and cultural criticism, which were also of great importance to the literary culture of his own time, and even now, passing on to our time. We'll end our discussion there.
