My intention in this chapter entitled Transitional Period is to

shed light on the way T.S Eliots Ash Wednesday depends on Dantes
Purgatory thematically and structurally. More accurately, I will
investigate on the nature of the allusions used by Eliot to Dante to
include in his transitional poetry. Unlike The Inferno period where
Eliot borrows from Dante to reach an ironic effect, in this transitional
period, however, I will prove that the references and allusions to Dante
are less-ironic. In the first section I will shed light on the presence of
the Christian doctrine within the four parts of the poem. The second
section handles the analysis of the imageries borrowed by T.S Eliot
from Dante.

In this section, I shall examine first the image of

purification of the body in Ash Wednesday. The second part will be

devoted to the possible parallel between Dantes and Eliots image of
the Stairs. The third part of the second section sheds light on the
image of Beatrice in both Dantes and Eliots poem. Accordingly, at the
end of the chapter I will scrutinize the nature of this parallelism and
prove that although the allusions in Ash Wednesday appears to be
the same like in Dantes poem, T.S Eliot skilfully embodies ironic
elements to convey a different meaning.
Following the period of emptiness and sterile life in The Waste
Land a change of great depth took place in the consciousness of the
poet and in his poetry. Ash Wednesday is the expression of that
change. The persona of T.S. Eliot that experienced and tasted the
1

barrenness of the modern materialistic culture grew fed up and made

an intellectual commitment to go for the spiritualization of his self. The
poem Ash-Wednesday deals with a conflict between quest and
resolve for spiritual contentment and the attractions of the worldly life.
Ash Wednesday is the first long poem written by T.S Eliot after his
conversion to Anglicanism. Eliots new sensibility in this transitional
period initiates a new expression to his poetry. Accordingly, Eliot
himself declares in the Preface to For Lanceot Andrewes (1928) that he was
"classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion"1
Therefore, this move was explicitly depicted in the poems that
precede The Waste Land. In a thesis entitled Poetics of Transition in
T.S Eliots Ash Wednesday the scholars Amer Rasool Mahdi and Zainab
Hasoon Abd Al-Ameer claim that in Ash Wednesday the Biblical and
the literary legacy, which has been textually assimilated in his earlier
poetry, retain now its genuine suggestiveness in both form and
content.2 In this period, the poet started to write poetry with religious
sensibility in an attempt to redeem the modern life. Therefore, the poet
in Ash Wednesday seeks a prefiguration of the spiritual existence
into which all men must be initiated in their search for redemption 3. In
this poem, it is evident that the modern man is spiritually barren and in
1 Pauline McAllon, Wrestling with Angels:T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and the
Idea of a Christian Poetics (Montreal: Department of English,2006)p.7
2 Amer Rasool Mahdi and Zainab Hasoon Abd Al-Ameer The Poetics of Transition in
T. S. Eliot's "AshWednesday"p.208

quest for moral purification. Religion is the best possible solution for
him.

us4

Consequently I rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon

In this context, Ash Wednesday deals with the aspiration to move

from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. In other words,
if The Waste Land shows the world of the waste-Landers ending with
the tepid situation, Ash-Wednesday starts the process of rebuilding
that world with a positive act of faith. Within this context, Helen
Gardner pointed out that the change in Mr Eliots Ash Wednesday is
a Christian while the author of the Waste Land was not. 5 . As far as
the title of the poem is concerned, in the Bible and much of the
cultures ashes is usually associated with repentance, purification and
relief.6 Accordingly, unlike the psychological trauma and mental
3 T.Rodgers, Audrey. T.S Eliots Purgatoroi The Structure of Ash-Wednesday(Penn
State: Penn State University Press, 1970)p.99 http://www.jstor.org/stable/40467875

4 T.S Eliot, Ash Wednesday, Collected poems 1909-1962 ( London: Faber

Paperbacks, 1963)p.95
5David Summers, Paradise Deferred: Eliots Truncated Dantean Pilgrimage. T.S
Eliot, Dante : and the idea of Europe.Ed,Paul Douglass, (London: Cambridge
Scholars, 2011)p.75. Print.

6 F. Sawyer, A reading of T.S Eliots ash Wednesday(Sarospatak: Reformed

Theological Academy, 2008)p.2
3

collapse of the inhabitants of the waste land the suffering of the

speaker in Ash Wednesday is that of one in purgatory who chooses
the suffering for purifying himself/herself in order to get an ultimate
relief from suffering7.
The speaker in Ash Wednesday remains remorseful from the
degeneration of his era. Indeed, T.S Eliot realizes his sins and thought
that he was in a wrong path in the world then he feels unhappy for he
was neglecting God. Therefore, from the very first lines of the poem,
T.S Eliot divulges revelation and initiates the spiritual journey toward
resurrection.
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn (Eliot 95)

The above lines suggest that the pilgrim decides to give up the world
and turn to God. On their comments about this passage, many critics
claim that Ash Wednesday is a poem which highlights the theme of
turning. This theme is considered by critics as a major aspect of
Eliots transitional poetry. That is, in order to break up with the
emptiness of the Waste Land, T.S Eliot in Ash Wednesday feels the
need to seek redemption by turning towards God. Within this context,
F.Sawyer in his article entitled A reading of T.S Eliots Ash Wednesday
states that turning has two different senses which reflect turning away
7 Santwana Haldar, T.S. Eliot: A Twenty-first Century View (New Delhi: Atlantic,
2005)p.91

from repentance and turning towards renewal.8 In this respect,

similarly to the journey of Dante the pilgrim in Purgatorio, the pilgrim
of Ash Wednesday seeks resurrection and redemption form his early
sins.
I.

The Modern redemption:

1. Purification of The Body:

Moreover, in the second part of the poem entitled salutation

the poet introduces aspects of suffering. The speaker addresses a
Lady and refers to three white leopards devouring his body. By this
image Eliot duplicates the three savage wild beasts that represent
the major sins, in Dantes Inferno.
Lady, three white leopards sat under a
juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to
satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that
which had been
Contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God
said
Shall these bones live?(Eliot 97)

The speaker in these lines addresses his new "Lady" and appeals
for her to help him gain purification and new identity. Like the beasts
role in Dantes poem, the leopards in this passage may well signify the
agents of evil and fear. In fact, the leopards represent early sins of the
speaker. Eliot gives the leopards the colour white which symbolises
8 F. Sawyer, A reading of T.S Eliots ash Wednesday(Sarospatak: Reformed
Theological Academy, 2008)p.3
5

purity. In this context, F.Sawyer claims that the white leopards are
beautiful and the colour white in this poem makes them holy for their
work is to sanctify.9In other words, the association of the leopards,
which symbolise sins, and the colour white, which stands for purity,
Eliot implies that spiritual cleansing is awaiting and will be reached in
the garden where all love ends 10Therefore, like Dante who seeks to
purge the three sins because of which he suffers in purgatory:
distorted, defective, and excessive, Eliot in his way shows that his body
is consumed by three leopards i.e. the three major sins that need to be
purged. In fact, the pilgrim suffers as the leopards devour the body
which lost its organic unity as the leg the heart and the liver become
separated parts. In the next following lines Eliot employs an image
from the Bible when he says
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live?( Eliot 97)

In the book of Ezekiel 37:114, God directed his prophet Ezekiel to

a valley in order to prophesy the rebirth of the bones And he said to
me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O
Lord GOD, you know. Then he said to me, Prophesy over
these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of
the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will
9 Ibid. p.7
10 Dominic Manganiello, T.S. Eliot & Dante, The poetics of the Desert,
(London: The Macmillan Press LTD, 1989)p.71
6

cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.11 In these verses,
the prophet Ezekiel was to tell the bones that God would make breath
enter the bones and they would come to life again. In fact, in order to
portray the hope of salvation Eliot refers the Bible and to the promise
of God when He says to Ezekiel I will cause breath to enter you, and
you shall live. Therefore, unlike the unregenerate dry bones in The
Waste Land, in Ash Wednesday through a rhetorical question when
God say Shall these bones live? the poet suggests that after the
spiritual cleansing is finished, God revives the dead bones to live again.
Here, Eliot like Dante entails that the process to purify the sinned body
ends with spiritual cleansing. Unlike the early poetry where Eliot was
reluctant about the possible salvation, here in Ash Wednesday he
conveys his way towards redemption through his portrayal of spiritual
death by cleansing. Hence, as opposed to the eternal suffering in
Inferno period, this one is a temporal suffering that leads to
redemption. Therefore, like Dante in Purgatory, T.S Eliot in Ash
Wednesday refers to the suffering as way to purgation and cleansing
not the suffering of dolour like in The Waste Land.
2. The Stairs as Purgatory: ( The Modern Mountain )
Dantes pilgrim in Purgatorio ascends the seven stairs on Mount
Purgatory. The pilgrim enters Purgatorio through a gate at the top of a
11 http://www.gotquestions.org/valley-dry-bones.html accessed on 27-112014
7

three-step stairway. On each of the seven terraces, a specific sin is

punished and purified. Each sin is removed as the sinner submits to the
cleansing process of purgation. The ascent of the stairway leads to the
gate of purgatory and the three types of disordered loves: distorted,
defective, and excessive, that needs to be purged. Here the ascent of
the purgatorial staircase represents the suffering of the pilgrim in his
turning towards god.
In Ash Wednesday, the stairs image is also another recurrent
Dantesque-Eliotic motif by which the poets journey towards paradise
is conveyed12. Many critics claim that the staircase is a deliberate
reference to Dante climbing Mount Purgatory. Eliot borrows the concept
of the stairs from Dantes Paradiso in order to convey his new vision
towards redemption. Therefore, like Dante in Purgatory the pilgrim in
Eliots poem struggles with the suffering of the three stairs.
At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the
banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs
who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of
despair.(Eliot 99)

In these lines, the speaker describes his first turning where he

reaches the second stair of repentance. The stair is tough and the
12 Amer Rasool Mahdi and Zainab Hasoon Abd Al-Ameer The Poetics of
Transition in T. S. Eliot's "AshWednesday"p.214
8

pilgrim suffers from the vapour in the fetid air. The pilgrim evokes
the hollowness of his struggle with the devil of the stairs. The poet
conveys the difficulty of the first turning in which a harsh torment
takes place through the fetid air the devil and the deceitful face of
despair. Eliot like Dante, uses such images to portray the suffering of
the sinner pilgrim in his way towards redemption.
At the second turning of the second
stair
was

I left them twisting, turning below;

There were no more faces and the stair
dark,
Damp, jaggd, like an old mans mouth
drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agd shark.

(Eliot 99)

"At the second turning" the stair is dark and damp beyond repair. Here
the imagery goes dark There were no more faces and the stair was
dark. This image evokes the darkness and depression of the speakers
soul while climbing towards the third stair. Much like in the first stanza,
the turbulent and dark imagery persists here. Despite the pain and
struggle, the pilgrim bears the suffering and proceeds toward the third
stair.
At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the
figss fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom
pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue
and green
Enchanted the maytime with an
antique flute
9

Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over

the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops
andsteps of the
mind
over the third stair,( Eliot 99)

"At the first turning of the third stair" the pilgrim is about to reach total
purgation. At this level, the poet describes the landscape and the new
life of the repentant pilgrim. What is seen through the window of the
third stair is a promising image of the worldly desires after renewal.
The poet presents a natural scene where blossom, tree, lilac, music of
the flute, blown and brown present the temptations of physical beauty
which project the spiritual and the divine beauty of God. This scene is
an evocation of the successful journey of the pilgrim. By presenting the
concept of the stairs in Ash Wednesday the same way Dante
presents them in Purgatory, T.S Eliot imitates Dante to work out his
spiritual salvation.
In his thesis entitled T.S Eliots use of philosophy of time in his poetry
Lille dEamus claims that the stairs in Eliots early poems
accumulate the symbolic connotation of failure. Not until Ash Wednesday does
the movement on the stairs become meaningful and purposeful in teleological
time. Here the stairs symbolize the progress from the complete passivity of
the hollow men to the turning toward a vision of redemption. These are the
stairs of Purgatory; their ascent is the mode of realizing higher love and
understanding.13

13 Lille dEasum, T.S Eliot use of the philosophy of time in his poetry
(British Columbia: B.A., University of British Columbia, 1955)p.41
10

Hence, Lille dEramus states that unlike early poetry where the stairs
stand as a symbol of failure, in Ash Wednesday the image of the
stairs represents a vision of redemption. In other words, the stairs in
Ash Wednesday, just like in Dantes Purgatory, are used to purify the
sins of the speaker. Similarly to Dante in Purgatorio, Eliots pilgrim goes
through the three stairs of redemption. From the first turning of the
first stair to the first turning of the third stair Eliots pilgrim fulfils
the summit of redemption. This image recalls the process by which
Dantes pilgrim climbs the stairs of Purgatorio to reach a total
purgation. That is, T.S Eliot adapts the image of cleansing and
redemption from Dantes Purgatorio to include in Ash Wednesday.
3. The Eyes of Beatrice:
The conversion to Anglicanism and the intellectual shift of T.S Eliot
made a deep change in his consideration of women. Therefore, in this
transitional period Eliot shifts his vision of women from the threatening,
sexualized creatures women of the early poetry, to women of honour and goodness. In
other words, in this poem the image of women is different from the fatal woman of The
Waste Land or the death in life image in The Love Song. The allusions to Beatrice
in Eliot poetry are always associated with the theme of vision. Yet, in
Ash Wednesday Eliot departs from the consideration of vision
through the Eyes to the consideration of vision through the Lady as
both an earthly and divine character. In this context, Jushua Richards in
his thesis Eyes in the early poetry of T.S Eliots states that the
11

presence of Beatrice in the eyes of The Hollow Men and The Waste Land is the imagery
that eventually becomes the Lady in the sacred poems, especially Ash Wednesday.14
Within this context, in Ash Wednesday Eliots Lady like Dantes Beatrice
stands as a source of spiritual inspiration. A progression from temporal
earthly love towards eternal divine love takes place as she transforms
in the course of the poem from the lady of courtly love to the The Holy
Mother. At the same time, she epitomizes the principle of renewal and
restoration in the poem and provides for spiritual rebirth following
purgation.
In the second part of Ash Wednesday Eliot presents some of the
divine aspects of The Lady:
And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been
contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said
chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness.(Eliot 97)

In this passage, the poet describes the suffering of the body

which lost its organic unity, and only the bones are left. Therefore,
despite the torment of the leopards the pilgrim shine with brightness
due to the goodness of this Lady who stands as a saviour. The poet
presents the Lady as a symbol of hope because of her loveliness, and
because She honours the Virgin in meditation the bones shall live
14 Jushua Richards, MEIS OCULIS: Eyes in the early poetry of T.S
Eliots(Florida: Florida Atlantic University)p.12
12

again and revive after the spiritual cleansing. In addition, the same
way Dante sees Beatrices eyes shining as the sun in the mirror
which brings an intense light, Eliots Lady brings a luminous light to the
pilgrim by which his journey shine with brightness.

In fact, like

Beatrice, Eliots lady symbolises the beauty of life and the beauty of
The Garden i.e. paradise:
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
The single Rose
Is now the Gard
Where all loves end (Eliot 97-98)

This stanza takes the form of a prayer to the Lady. Here, the poet
compares the calm Lady to a Rose of Paradise where all loves end.
The rose stands as a symbol of life and love. Therefore, the poet
conveys that like Dantes Beatrice The Lady in Ash Wednesday is the
source of hope for salvation and renewal. In this context, F. Sawyer in
his thesis a reading of T.S Eliots Ash Wednesday claims that in the
poem the rose is the special agent of salvation within the rose
garden15. Therefore, as the journey of Eliots pilgrim progresses,
farther towards the end the poet sums up all these symbols
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the
fountain, spirit of the garden
Sister, mother

15 F. Sawyer, A reading of T.S Eliots ash Wednesday(Sarospatak: Reformed

Theological Academy, 2008)p.10
13

And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea

(Eliot 105)

Like in section II of the poem, this passage suggests a prayer

invoking the Lady who is considered as a Holy mother spirit of the
river and spirit of the sea. Here the poet addresses the Lady using
one of the many names of the Virgin Mary the star of the sea, or
stella maris. Therefore, Eliot, like Dante, associates the qualities of
his Lady to the Virgin Mary. Both Beatrice and the Lady play the role of
the harbinger and address and the pilgrim in his quest. In this context,
in a seminal thesis entitled Romanticism and dissociation of
sensibility the authors says that Eliots Lady is allied with Dantes
Beatrice and Virgin figures in being accompanied by imagery of
whiteness and light, and identified with symbols of Garden and rose16
Indeed, the new religious sensibility of the poet is well depicted in this
poem through the crystallized positive imagery of women. In this
context, in an article entitled T.S Eliot Purgatorio the structure of Ash
Wednesday the author makes a parallelism that shows how T.S Eliot
faithfully adapts the concept of Beatrice:
Like Beatrice, she symbolizes both divine love and divine wisdom. Like
Beatrice, whose historical existence prefigures the Beatrice of the Commedia,
permitting the one to signify the other and the second to fulfil the first, the
Lady is a figure in the poem. In her mystery, her transcendent power, and her

16 Angelika Maria Maeser, Romanticism and the dissociation of sensibility

(British Columbia: University of British Columbia, 1970)p.112
14

purity, she is a visionary image of the fulfilled spirit who "walks between the
violet and the violet" in Part IV of Ash-Wednesday. 17

This above claim reveals that Eliots Ash Wednesday relies on Dantes
Purgatory thematically and structurally. Therefore, unlike early image
of women, the image of the Lady in this poem is a duplicate of Dantes
Beatrice.
From the above analysis we have learned that Eliots imageries in
Ash Wednesday symbolise the same meaning like in Dantes poem.
Dante climbs his way to the Earthly Paradise up the stairways that
connect the seven terraces of the mountain of Purgatory. As Purgation
progresses, the climbing gets easier the higher he goes. Therefore, it
appears that T.S Eliot borrows the three imageries from Dante to
convey the same idea. The pilgrim in Eliots poem goes through the
same stages Dantes pilgrim took in order to fulfil the spiritual
redemption. That is to say, like the pilgrim in Purgatory, the quester
in Ash Wednesday purifies his sinned body; he climbs the dark stairs,
and finally reunites with his Lady. In this regard, in his theory of
influence Bloom called this process Apophrades. In his book the
Anxiety of Influence Bloom says that at a certain point the ephebes
poem becomes an identical copy of the precursors work to an extent
that the new poem's achievement makes it seem to us, not as though

17 T.Rodgers, Audrey. T.S Eliots Purgatoroi The Structure of AshWednesday(Penn State: Penn State University Press, 1970)p.8
15

the precursor was writing it, but as though the later poet himself had
written the precursor's characteristic work.18
However, even though the meaning and the allusion in Ash
Wednesday are comparable to Dantes Purgatory, eventually the
pilgrim in Eliots poem appears reluctant and hesitant about his
redemption. Earthly life is represented by a number of charming
images of the natural world that will distract his soul on from reaching
God.
II.

Nature and The Modernists:

In fact, being the first post conversion poem, Ash Wednesday breaks
the aesthetic standards of modernism. Unlike many modernist of his
age, Eliot in his post conversion works combines natural and religious
themes in his poetry. While the modernists, among them I.A Richards,
substitute poetry for science and religion, T.S Eliot condemns anyone
who tried to make a religion out of art. For Eliot, this attempt to
substitute poetry for religion is vain, because "nothing in this world or
the next is a substitute for anything else".19Here Eliot targets
particularly Matthew Arnold who, in his famous essay entitled "The
Study of Poetry", suggests that" religion and philosophy will be
18 Bloom Harold, The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford university
press, 1997)p.15
19 Pauline McAllon, Wrestling with Angels:T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and the
Idea of a Christian Poetics (Montreal: Department of English,2006)p.69
16

replaced by poetry20. Arnolds attempt to replace religion by poetry is

an echo of Shelleys seminal essay Defence of Poetry in which he
considers the poet not like any artist but a Divine Poet or what he calls
A poet Prophet21. Accordingly, in his influential essay Arnold and
Pater Eliot attacks both Arnold and Shelley for their substitution of
religion by poetry. He says that the effect of their philosophy is to set up
Culture in the place of Religion, and to leave Religion to be laid waste by the anarchy of
feeling. And Culture is a term which each man not only may interpret as he pleases, but must
indeed interpret as he can. 22Therefore, by this claims Eliot reacts not only against the

modernists but also against his predecessors the Romantics. Unlike the Romantics
who consider Nature as God and the poet as a prophet, Eliot believes
that Nature is a mean by which one can see the sublimity of God, and
the artist is a mean who communicates this divinity. While the
Romantics flee to nature as a mean to be in contact with the divine,
Eliot depicts nature only as a mean to acknowledge the existence of
divinity. Accordingly, William Wordsworth praises nature in his famous
poem The Lyrical Ballads. In this poem, he explicitly says that Nature
20 Matthew Arnold, "The Study of Poetry"
http://www.oberlin.edu/english/syllabi/fall03/388bff03.pdf

21 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Defence of Poetry, English Essays: Sidney to

Macaulay, (Harvard: the Harvard Classics, 1909-14)p.3
http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/A-Defense-of-Poetry.pdf

22 Peter James Lowe Christian Romanticism: T. S. Eliot's response to Percy

Bysshe Shelley(Durham: Durham University, 2002)p.29
17

is itself a divine. For him, the pleasure of the poet lies in the
acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe23. For
instance, in Tintin Abbey Wordsworth shows that his main interest is
landscapes and the natural world of the country side. He believes that nature
provides a good influence on the human mind. Therefore, in the lines below Wordsworth
like Shelley considers Nature as God and he is a worshipper.
We stood together; And that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love.
Eliot regrets that instead of regarding themselves as entertainers, the
Romantic poets become prophets, worshippers and the
unacknowledged legislator of the world24. Therefore, while Eliot
condemns treating poetry as a religion, he acknowledges that poetry is
affected by religion.25To summarise this idea, we may say that the
growth of the religious sensibility leads him to fuse religious and
natural themes within Ash Wednesday. By doing so, Eliot objects the
23Preface to Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems (1802), op. cit. p.19.

24 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Defence of Poetry, English Essays: Sidney to

Macaulay, (Harvard: the Harvard Classics, 1909-14)p.20

http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/A-Defense-of-Poetry.pdf

25 Pauline McAllon, Wrestling with Angels:T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and the

Idea of a Christian Poetics (Montreal: Department of English,2006)p.68
18

modernists claim mainly I.A Richards and Matthew Arnold that poetry is
a substitute for religion in one hand, and the Romantic claim that
nature is itself the divine.
III.

Nature as a distraction:

In his ascent of the third stair of purgatory the pilgrim in Ash

Wednesday

appears

sceptic

and

doubtful

about

his

possible

redemption. The charms of temporal life seduce him, and stop his
climb at the first turning of the third stair. In Purgatory Dante tells us
that to journey towards God is to keep looking forward and never turn
again to carnal desires.
Enter, but I make you ware that
he who looketh behind returns outside again.
( purgatorio )

In the opposite vein Eliots pilgrim once in the last stage of purgatory
remains hesitant and frightened whether to reach God or to come back
to carnal desires. Therefore, contrary to Dante, Eliot does not seem
ready for the final vision:
At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figss
fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a
pasture scene
The broadbacked 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
Distraction, music of the flute (Eliot 99)
19

Unlike Dantes, the ascent on Eliots poem appears to stop at

the first turning of the third stair since nature represents a kind of fear
which can distract the pilgrim from reaching redemption. The carnal
love is represented by Blown hair and brown hear over the mouth
blown. This line pictures how the speaker is captivated by these
scene. Hence, Nature does not lead Eliot for his destined spiritual path;
rather it distracts him from God and invites him to turn again. Even at
the beginning of the poem the mission of spiritual hope is exchanged
by worldly hope.
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow,
for there is
nothing again (Eliot 95)

These lines show that in his way toward redemption, the speaker
sacrifices earthly desires and human joys. He is frightened to miss the
beauty of trees flower, and springs flow He remains frustrated and
despaired from the journey and starts by foregrounding the blessing of
nature. The last line for there is nothing again implies that the
speaker fears the separation from temporal life and goes in a place
where none of this beauty occurs. In other words, in his way of
purgation the temporal life, represented by invocative imagery,
fascinates the pilgrim. Therefore, now that his soul is completely
purged the speaker becomes attracted by the natural scenes and
20

music that may distract him from reaching God. Therefore, the use of
the word distraction shows his willing to turn back and detour from
spirituality. That is to say, he portrays his attraction to art and music
of the flute and embodies romantic images like lilacs and sweet,
blown, brown hair, in order to foreground the joy of nature. In this
context, F.Sawyer maintains that Lilac may be the colour or the
fragrance that symbolises past loves... The blue, green, and brown of
part three are earthy colours, not the heavenly colours. 26 The charms
of colours, hair, flute and music are alternatives which can hold back
spiritual progress. It all adds up to the temptations of pleasures to lead
the pilgrim from the spiritual climb.
From these above claims, it becomes clear that Eliots alteration
of Dantes concept of redemption bring an ironic flavour to his verses.
Although

Eliot

incorporates

the

theme

of

redemption

in

Ash

Wednesday, like in Dantes poem, by the end of the cleansing process

the poet conveys that the pilgrim is hesitant and doubtful about his
redemption. In fact, T.S Eliot demystifies the Dantean standards of
reaching God, and implies that Nature and art can distract the soul to
fulfil the divine. Skilfully, Eliot succeeds to embody the principles of
Dante under the light of the modern context. That is to say, Eliot
reshapes Dantes imageries through the use of irony in order to convey
26 F. Sawyer, A reading of T.S Eliots ash Wednesday(Sarospatak: Reformed
Theological Academy, 2008)p.12
21

a different meaning. According to Bloom, this can be considered as a

process which generalize away the uniqueness of Dantes the
Divine

Comedy.

For

him,

this

process

of

influence

called

Daemonization permits the ephebe to move towards a personalized

Counter-Sublime, in reaction to the precursor's Sublime 27 Accordingly,
in Ash Wednesday T.S Eliot adapts Dantes imageries and then he
moves away to recreate his own personalized story. In this context,
Bloom says that The later poet opens himself to what he believes to
be a power in the parent poem that does not belong to the parent
proper, but to a range of being just beyond that precursor. He does
this, in his poem, by so stationing its relation to the parent poem as to
generalize away the uniqueness of the earlier work. 28 Thus, Eliots
counter sublime consists of the modification of the image of
redemption through the embodiment of Nature and Art as a mean s of
distraction.
To sum up, although many critics believe that Ash Wednesday is typical
to Dantes Purgatory, the use of Nature and Music are ironic elements
that refer to the possible failure of the redemptive mission. Therefore,
the climax of Eliots achievement in realizing the theme of redemption in poetry is

27 Bloom Harold, The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford university

press, 1997)p.17
28 Ibid.
22

reached in Four Quartets. Thus, the total absent of ironic elements in Four
Quartets will be our issue of analysis in the next chapter.

23