Ash Wednesday (poem)

:"This article is about a poem by T. S. Eliot. For other uses of this term, see Ash Wednesday (disambiguation)."

Ash-Wednesday (sometimes "Ash Wednesday") is the first long poem written by T. S. Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930, this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.

Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", "Ash-Wednesday", with a base of Dante's "Purgatorio", is richly but ambiguously allusive and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. The style is different from his poetry which predates his conversion. "Ash-Wednesday" and the poems that followed had a more casual, melodic, and contemplative method.

Many critics were "particularly enthusiastic concerning "Ash-Wednesday", [Untermeyer, Louis. "Modern American Poetry" pp. 395-396 (Harcourt Brace 1950)] while in other quarters it was not well received. [http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/190_21.html "Britannica: Guide to the Nobel Prizes: Eliot, T.S." by Dame Helen Gardner and Allen Tate, accessed November 6, 2006.] Among many of the more secular literati its groundwork of orthodox Christianity was discomforting. Edwin Muir maintained that “Ash Wednesday is one of the most moving poems he [Eliot] has written, and perhaps the most perfect.” " [Untermeyer, Louis. "Modern American Poetry" p. 396 (Harcourt Brace 1950)]

Publication information

The poem was first published as now known in April, 1930 as a small book limited to 600 numbered and signed copies. Later that month an ordinary run of 2000 copies was published in the UK and in September another 2000 published in the US.

Eliot is known to collect poems and fragments of poems to produce new works. This is most clearly seen in his poems "The Hollow Men" and "Ash-Wednesday" where he incorporated previously published poems to become sectionsof a larger work. Three of the five sections comprising "Ash-Wednesday" had already been published earlier as separate poems:

* "Perch' Io non Spero" (part I of Ash-Wednesday) was published in the Spring, 1928 issue of "Commerce" along with a French translation.

* "Salutation" (now part II of Ash-Wednesday) was published in December, 1927 in "Saturday Review of Literature". It was also published in January, 1928 in Eliot's own "Criterion" magazine.

* "Som de l'escalina" (part III of Ash-Wednesday) was published in the Autumn, 1929 issue of "Commerce" along with a French translation.

(Publication information from Gallup [Gallup, Donald. "T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography (A Revised and Extended Edition)" pp. 39-40, 218, 219, 223 (Harcourt Brace & World 1969)] )

Dedication

When first published, the poem had the dedication "To my wife". This was referring to Eliot's first wife, Vivienne, with whom he had a strained relationship. In 1933 Eliot initiated a separation from Vivienne. The dedication no longer appears associated with this poem in his "Collected Poems: 1909-1962" although dedications to others do remain elsewhere in the book.

References

External links

* [http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-7/ash_wednesday_t_s_eliot.htm Ash Wednesday on msgr.ca]