Ash Wednesday

1st edition (publ. Faber & Faber)

"Ash Wednesday" (sometimes "Ash-Wednesday") is the first long poem written by T. S. Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930 (see 1930 in poetry), 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",^[1] while in other quarters it was not well received.^[2] Among many of the more secular literati its groundwork of orthodox Christianity was discomfiting. Edwin Muir maintained that “Ash Wednesday is one of the most moving poems he [Eliot] has written, and perhaps the most perfect.”^[3]

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 have collected 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 sections of a larger work. Three of the five sections comprising Ash-Wednesday had already been published earlier as separate poems (years link to corresponding "[year] in poetry" articles):

• "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^[4])

Dedication

When first published, the poem bore the dedication "To my wife," referring to Eliot's first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, with whom he had a strained relationship, and from whom he initiated a legal separation in 1933. The dedication does not appear in subsequent editions.^[5]

References

External links

• Ash Wednesday on msgr.ca
• Commentary on Ash Wednesday from A Noble Theme
• Full poem written and audio (14 mins), On Being (Public Radio)

v t e T. S. Eliot Early poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Portrait of a Lady "Preludes" Gerontion The Waste Land The Hollow Men Ash Wednesday Ariel Poems The Journey of the Magi Later poems Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats "Bustopher Jones" "Gus: The Theatre Cat" "Growltiger's Last Stand" Burnt Norton East Coker The Dry Salvages Little Gidding Four Quartets Plays Sweeney Agonistes The Rock Murder in the Cathedral The Family Reunion The Cocktail Party The Confidential Clerk The Elder Statesman Prose Selected Essays, 1917-1932 "Hamlet and His Problems" "Tradition and the Individual Talent" The Sacred Wood "The Frontiers of Criticism" People E. Martin Browne Eliot family Valerie Eliot Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot Ezra Pound Jean Jules Verdenal William Butler Yeats Publishing The Criterion Faber and Faber