Ash Wednesday: The Purgatorio in a Modern Mode

Author(s): Sister M. Cleophas

Source: Comparative Literature , Autumn, 1959, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Autumn, 1959), pp. 329-
339
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the University of Oregon

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1768981

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SISTER M. CLEOPHAS, R.S.M.

Ash Wednesday
The Purgatorio in a
Modern Mode

OW THAT we may reasonably assume that the major portion

of Eliot's work has been completed, it is easy to see that Ash
Wednesday is a fulcrum for the whole corpus of his poetry. It looks be-
fore and after. Lacking the morbid enchantment of The Waste Land
and the lyrical historicity of the Four Quartets, it keeps a middle way,
attracting and holding readers with the limpidity of the verse and the
skill of the artistry.
One of the most direct means of realizing the status of Ash Wednes-
day is to examine briefly a few remarks Eliot made before writing it.
Because of the importance of the 1927 study on Dante for Eliot's critical
thinking, comparatively little attention has been focused on the 1920
essay on the same subject which appeared in The Sacred Wood. In this
early piece Eliot hints at the direction the whole course of his poetry is
to take. The essay is concerned with the defense of the last two parts of
the Commedia as poetry, rather than as theology or philosophy, with
occasional poetic asides. Eliot claims that one cantica or even one pas-
sage of Dante's poem cannot be judged without advertence to the whole
design. "The poem has not only a framework, but a form; and even if
the framework be allegorical, the form may be something else."' "The
mechanical framework, in a poem of so vast an ambit, was a necessity."2
This mechanical framework had to be present to carry "the emotional
structure within the scaffold." Only after this explanation are we in-
formed that "this structure is an ordered scale of human emotions."

1 T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (London, 1945), p. 165.

2 Ibid., p. 167.

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 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Eliot stresses this climactic point: "Dante's is th

and the most ordered presentation of emotion
made."3 He later adds, concerning the ordering of
tural framework, that "the poet does not aim to e
a test of his success-but to set something down
Here Eliot is pointing to what for him is a co
offers the ideal in an embodiment of poetry "rem
in language." He discerns that the framework
poem, characteristic of the Middle Ages, is inform
structure that moves from the most sensuous to the most intellectual and
spiritual references. The challenge for the modern disciple is: How may
the framework be transposed to a modern objective correlative while
keeping the matrix of Dante's structure?
Following the hint in the Dante essay and applying it to the body of
Eliot's work, I think it possible to perceive the transformation which
took place. "J. Alfred Prufrock" approximates the trimmer on the outer
rim of the Inferno; "Gerontion" is the "old man" of fallen human nature
who is completely submerged in the hell of his vices; The Waste Land
is a telescoped Inferno highlighting lust from the first circle and avarice
from the City of Dis. "The Hollow Men" follows as a presentation of
the late-repentant in Antepurgatory; and Ash Wednesday is a modern
conception of the Purgatorio.5
Commentaries on Ash Wednesday, while referring to the Commedia
in general and occasionally to the second cantica in particular, tend to
supply explications of individual verses and sources for the imagery
without pausing to consider the relation of part to part. Indeed, there
seem to be some misgivings as to whether the six parts of Ash Wed-
nesday are a unity.6 Yet, when writing of Joyce, Eliot was keenly aware
3 Ibid., p. 168.
4 Ibid., p. 170.
5 That Four Quartets is a modern Paradiso I have tried to show elsewhere. See
"Notes on the Levels of Meaning in Four Quartets," Renascence, II (1950), 102-
106.
6 Helen Gardner, The Art of T. S. Eliot (London, 1949), p. 113, is of the opinion
that Ash Wtednesday is "not... a single contiguous poem, but a group of poems on
aspects of a single theme." George Williamson in A Reader's Guide to T. S. Eliot
(New York, 1953) has explicated the parts of the poem as describing stages of
spiritual renovation with heavy reliance throughout upon the closing cantos of the
Purgatorio, but he nowhere discusses structure as such nor does he show how the
poem depends upon the Earthly Paradise section. Mario Praz in his "T. S. Eliot
and Dante," Southern Reviewz, II (1937), now in The Flaming Heart (New York,
1958), and D. E. S. Maxwell, The Poetry of T. S. Eliot (London, 1952), have con-
fined their observations to parallels rather than to structure. In an unpublished
master's dissertation, "An Explication of Part V of T. S. Eliot's Ash WVednes-
day" (Catholic University of America, 1953), Irene McCrystal interprets Part V
as the unifying element.

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 THE PURGA'TORIO IN A MODERN MODE

of the modern poet's need to rely upon some factor t

ing coherence, and it is hardly plausible that a writer a
values of Dante's structures should not have attem
some of these into his own work. In this paper I wish,
Ash Wednesday depends upon the Purgatorio, and to d
there is an underlying orderly progression in Eliot's p
Superficial indications of this progression may be g
opening words of the first and sixth parts. "Becau
turn again" was meant to be subtly contrasted with "
hope to turn again." Nor must one overlook the en
unification that lurks in the title. A poem bearing the
gical feria Ash Wednesday, and so designated responsi
presupposes a world of faith-faith in a Creator Who h
by personal acts. It connotes, moreover, a realization
necessary to restore the imbalance caused by the delib
of the soul's straying from the way of love. Ash Wed
cance for no special person alone. It designates the sta
a whole--man as a creature made from dust to which he will return
when death begins its work of dissolution. And as a corollary it inevita-
bly insinuates the question: Will the soul be subject to the same dissolu-
tion if it misuses "the time of tension between dying and birth"?
But before unweaving the pattern of Eliot's poem, let us recall some
of the more striking episodes of the Purgatorio so that the important
likenesses and differences of the modern counterpart may be more easily
observed.
Dante arrives at Purgatory proper in Canto IX. He has been borne
there by St. Lucy; Virgil very bluntly tells him "Tu se' omai al Purga-
torio giunto." They see
... una porta, e tre gradi di sotto
per gire ad essa, di color diversi
e un portier ch'ancor non facea motto.
(IX, 76-18)

Dante learns that he must go through this gate, and notes as he ascends
the steps that the first
... bianco marmo era si pulito e terso
ch'io mi specchiai in esso qual io paio.
(IX, 95-96)
The next

... tinto pii che perso

d'una petrina ruvida ed arsiccia
crepata per lo lungo e per traverso.
(IX, 97-99)

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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

The third
... che di sopra s'ammassiccia,
porfido mi parea si fiammeggiante,
come sangue che fuor di vena spiccia.
(IX, 100-102)

These steps have been variously interpreted, but the most pertinent in-
terpretation seems to be that they represent the three parts of penitence:
realization of sin, contrition, and satisfaction. Having walked up the
steps "di buona voglia" and having smote his breast three times, Dante
faces the angel of the gate, who inscribes on his forehead seven P's which
the angel tells him to wash away "quando se' dentro."
Dante's Mount of Purgatory proper is divided into three parts which
stem from the three errors of love: perverted love, defective love, and
excessive love. Perverted love generates pride, envy, and anger; de-
fective love is sloth; and excessive love produces avarice, gluttony, and
lust. At the summit of the ascent, Dante is accosted by Arnaut Daniel
who speaks to him in Provencal and bespeaks his prayers. Virgil cau-
tions Dante that he can go no farther unless he crosses through the wall
of fire. When Dante seems to be stubbornly resistant, Virgil persuades
him by saying: "Figliuol mio, / qui pu6 esser tormento, ma non morte"
(XXVII, 20-21). He adds that this is the only way by which he may
reach Beatrice. To achieve this happiness, Dante plunges into the flames
and emerges on the Terrestrial Paradise where Matilda greets him.
Telling him of Lethe and Eunoe she says:
L'acqua che vedi non surge di vena
che ristori vapor che gel converta,
come flume ch'acquista e perde lena;
ma esce di fontana salda e certa,
che tanto dal voler di Dio riprende,
quant'ella versa da due parti aperta.
(XXVIII, 121-126)

But before Dante can pass through Lethe, Beatrice arrives with the
pageant of the Sacrament and makes him confess openly that he has
turned away from her.
In the main, this is the section of the Purgatorio which Eliot has fol-
lowed. He has not rewritten Dante; he has composed his own poem of
shored fragments. The ultimate starry serenity which Dante reaches
"dalla santissim'onda" of Eunoe is far from being echoed in the modern
work. What Eliot has presented is a psychological journey of the soul's
struggle in the skeptical modern world. This he has expressed, not
through strikingly dramatic episodes that constitute a consecutive nar-
ration, but through a presentation in symbols of a meditative progres-

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 THE PURGATORIO IN A MODERN MODE

sion from complete confidence in self to a vivid awaren

total need of God. The speech of the modern poem is in
soliloquy which sets forth the slow advance of the soul f
acceptance of the necessity of turning to God to the rea
turning to God means-that difficult apprehension
world of spiritual reality. This state is slowly disclose
templative, part-supplicatory, part-quoted speech wh
characteristics of an interior monologue. This interio
the scarcity of punctuation marks and by the abrupt tr
descriptive sentences to supplications for prayers and
on the part of the speaker.
Parts I and VI of Ash Wednesday are prelude and e
of stasis; they encircle the four center sections which d
gressive spiritual realization the soul achieves-from haug
of sinfulness and the resultant freedom in that admissi
trition, made effectual by striving to free one's self fr
sin; to satisfaction, which is shown by personal penance
especially by union with Christ in His Passion as th
means of satisfaction for sin. The climax of the poem
The voice is consistent throughout. The use of the firs
lar gives the poem a dramatic quality of immediate u
not necessarily imply any specific person. In fact, in the
frequently merges with the impersonal plural. Other vo
notably in Part II, the most dramatic of the parts, w
and "that which was contained in the bones" chirps, and
In Part V the quotation from the Good Friday Reproach
voice of Christ.
Although Ash Wednesday in its intricate texture outli
sion, this is not a simple, linear movement from one se
to another. The poem begins in medias res. Part I is in t
Punctuation marks are infrequent so that sentences mer
though one thought overlapped another, and anacolu
By introspective stages the speech sets forth an action
taken, the turning, but the result of the action is steri
strive to strive towards such things"; "I rejoice that thi
are and / I renounce the blessed face / And renounce th
The reasons alleged for this negative attitude are a
"Because I do not hope"; "Because I do not think"; "
I shall not know." Out of forty-four lines, eleven be
I." The onus of the surrender is thrown upon the n
7 See Irene McCrystal, op. cit., note 6 above.

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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

turning from the Mardi Gras of sin has been accom

little joy, hope, or knowledge of the way to be fol
for prayers is perfunctory, full of condescension.

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still

-but this will be achieved by an act of the will rather than by the "air"
of divine inspiration.
The only link this section of Ash Wednesday has with the Purgatorio
is in the invocation from the "Hail, Mary" with which it concludes.
Throughout his second cantica, Dante poeticized the liturgy, to use Dr.
Hatzfeld's expression, by inserting appropriate psalms, hymns, and
canticles which symbolize the states of the souls who sing them. Eliot
has incorporated this device into Ash Wednesday. The prayers quoted
are snatches of familiar phrases which attain a powerful impact because
of their familiarity and also because they are used as entreaties of a soul
in travail. The quality of each particular part is summarized by the
prayer used; the progression of the poem is likewise shown by these
quotations, which are not so much happy conclusions or consoling for-
mulas as symbols which serve to chart the soul's position. In Part I the
literal meaning of the invocation has significance-spiritual help is
sought; but the metonymical character of the phrase is apparent; it be-
comes a symbol for the means whereby all spiritual help may be gained;
it is a symbol of Mary herself.
Parts II and III are written in the past tense; what they recount has
preceded the action of Part I. In point of fact they contain a description
of the turning just spoken of. The words "e vo Significando," which
appeared as the epigraph when this Part I was first published as a sepa-
rate poem and which is taken from Canto XXIV of the Purgatorio, ex-
plains the soul's necessity for recalling the past. Dante's speech to Bona-
giunta runs:

... I' mi son un, che quando

Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo
ch'e' ditta dentro vo significando."
(XXIV, 52-54)

The words are quoted from a context mainly concerned with the "dolce
stil nuovo," but in the modern poem they acquire a more personal im-
port. The voice of Part I, inspired by Divine Love, is recollecting within
itself the "story" of the turning and is now setting it forth.
When Dante comes to Purgatory proper, he is brought there by St.

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 THE PURGATORIO IN A MODERN MODE

Lucy, the figure of illuminating grace. She may b

saluted in the opening verse of the second section of
Dante moves up the three steps of penitence, the fi
scribed as

... bianco marmo era si pulito e terso

ch'io mi specchiai in esso qual io paio.
(IX, 95-96)

The voice in Part II of Ash Wednesday describes a "mirroring" too;

but it is an interior recognition that the dissembling of the self, caused
by the three white leopards (which may be sins of thought, word, and
deed), is a consequence of past evil; the acknowledgment of the cause
of this disintegration wins the grace of partial recovery. The soul can
view the separation of itself with equanimity, even with joyfulness. As
a result, the bones can sing. The burden which is chanted is full of ref-
erences to the Garden, but it is also full of contradictions. Still too im-
perfect to see spiritual things clearly, the soul sings a song of paradoxes;
but at least the final goal-the Garden-is discernible. And this part
concludes with the line from Ezekiel: "This is the land. We have our
inheritance." Having regained this knowledge, the soul has its inheri-
tance in sight; nothing else matters.
The second step of penitence is contrition. It implies sorrow, based
on responsible knowledge. As it is described in Canto IX, the step of
contrition is black, the color of mourning, "... ruvida ed arsiccia /
crepato per lo lungo e per traverso." The process of contrition, however,
does not stop here in either poem. The major portion of the Purgatorio,
Cantos X to XXVII, is a picture of the soul journeying through the
cornices of the seven capital sins, gradually sloughing off the attach-
ments to sin which remain even after they have been acknowledged.
Dante has schematized the sins of Purgatory as aberrations of love. As
such they fall into three divisions. Eliot has combined these two concep-
tions in Part III of Ash Wednesday. The use of the phrase "three
stairs" is ambiguous and misleading until one realizes that the three
strophes contain symbols of the three false conceptions of love: love
perverted, which includes pride, envy, and anger; love defective, which
is sloth; and love excessive, which contains avarice, gluttony, and lust.
The telescoping process which is possible with symbols is evident in the
three strophes of Part III. The soul has reached the second stair of con-
trition; but, on looking back to the first stair, it sees itself ("the same
shape") twisted with pride, suffering the fetid air of envy, and "strug-
gling with the devil" of anger who perverts by deception.
Still on the stair of contrition ("At the second turning of the second

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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

stair"), one meets the images of defective love

repulsive incompletion. Finally, as the soul is about
stair of satisfaction, the vices of excessive love coa
lurements which are skillfully marred by "bell
"blown hair," and "distraction."
It is worth while noting that Part III not only co
erence to the stair of satisfaction but also that
changed in the use of present participles. The ph
worthy," snatched from the prayer of the cent
humility which the soul is beginning to experien
process of "turning" from sin to God.
Having reached the summit of the stairway, th
to enter upon the third step which Dante descri
di sopra s'ammassiccia, / porfido mi parea si fia
sangue che fuor di vena spiccia." Theologically sp
twofold: to one's neighbor and to God. Part IV o
concerned mainly with satisfaction to the neighbor
The indefinite syntax of the indefinite who used
Part IV is resolved only with the plea taken fr
"Sovegna vos." Those who are supplicated are d
tense. The reason for their being besought is tha
ance while they were living ("Walked between th
let") ; they had hope ("walked between / The va
green') and faith and humility ("Going in white
colour"). Since they were virtuous while they liv
renewed the earth ("made strong the fountains
springs"), assistance is sought from them in thing
The recurring emphasis upon the theme of time
that walk between") and the insistence on "redee
on a plangency that sounds the value of the pres
covery, restoration, rescue, fulfillment, compen
the sensitive word "redeem." The use of "dream"
which will later come to pass is suggested in Canto
just before being taken to the Earthly Paradise,
che sovente, / anzi '1 fatto sia, sa le novelle." Th
because it is only in the "years that walk betw
bought. The higher dream, the story of man's rede
(in a world that ignores God) a gift which is unhea
tens to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit (wind
of time (the yew).
The concluding prayer, "after this our exi

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 THE PURGATORIO IN A MODERN MODE

thoughts to our Iady, the fruit of whose womb wil

next section.
Part V divides itself into two segments which are composed into a
unity by the phrase from the Reproaches, "O my people, what have I
done unto thee." The last phrase of the "Salve Regina" which closed
Part IV, "And after this our exile," looked forward and intimated that
the spiritual exile was nearing an end. The first strophe of Part V con-
centrates upon the Incarnate Word, Who, unknown and unheeded
by many, is still dwelling in the world. The skillfully inserted refrain
from the Reproaches immediately suggests the reason for the Incarna-
tion-the Redemption. Agitated questions and prayers to the "veiled
sister" characterize the remaining three strophes. They point up the de-
cisive choice that must be made by the soul in the modern world: either
accepting a state of complete spiritual sterility or bowing to a faith that
demands submission of reason. This dilemma reaches a climax when
the voice in the poem describes the division between faith and doubt in
the soul: "affirming before the world and denying between the rocks."
The coalescence of innocence and hardened attachment to sin is pictured
in the image

The desert in the garden and the garden in the desert

Of drouth ...

but the eventual victory of faith is confirmed with the repetition of "0
my people." To accept the redemption of Christ is to become part of the
people of God.
In the Earthly Paradise, reproaching Dante for his skepticism, Be-
atrice chides him by saying:
Ma perch'io veggio te nello 'ntelletto.
fatto di pietra, ed impetrato, tinto,
si che t'abbaglia il lume del mio detto...
(XXXIII, 73-75)

These psychological stones may very well have become the "blue rocks"
so prominent in the last part of Ash Wednesday.8 The will of the speaker
in Ash Wednesday is convinced; it has turned to God, but the last blue
rock, the vestiges of sin, prevent the soul from being completely pliable
to grace.

8 Dorothy Sayers, Purgatory (London, 1955), p. 58, has quoted a stanza from
Burns' "Advice to a Young Friend" which is relevant to this point.
"I waive the quantum of the sin,
The hazard of concealing;
But och! it hardens a' within,
And petrifies the feeliig !"

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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Part V then is linked with Part IV by intimation

the Blood of Christ is satisfaction for sin complet
tion, so prominent in Part V, parallels Dante's stub
trate the wall of fire which must be hazarded before the soul can reach
the Earthly Paradise. This wall has recently been described by Bernard
Stambler as "more than a means of purgation, goal, and check com-
bined: it is also the realm of fire through which one passes to reach the
supermundane universe; it is a foretaste, almost a sample, of the power
of God's carifas."9 The wall of fire then has become in the modern poem
God's love illustrated in the Passion. Through this and this alone can
one be baptized and thus spit out the withered apple seed, becoming
again one of the people of God.
Part VI is an epilogue to the spiritual odyssey which has been made
through Parts II to V. A new plateau is reached. Even though there is
a superficial resemblance to the prelude, indicated by the reiteration of
the refusal to turn, the difference is pointed up by the contrast between
the crass sureness of "Because" and the humble diffidence of "Al-
though." The soul has acquired a new insight; it knows the immense
attraction of "the empty forms between the ivory gates" and realizes
that not by depending upon self but only through spiritual assistance
will this state of siege be broken and liberty of spirit attained.
When Dante reaches the Earthly Paradise, before he is allowed to
cross the river Lethe, Beatrice accosts him after he has viewed the
Pageant of the Sacrament and reproaches him for his unfaithfulness. He
confesses his guilt:
...Le presenti cose
col falso lor piacer volser miei passi,
tosto che '1 vostro viso si nascose.
(XXXI, 35-36)

She conmmends him for his confession, allows him to be bathed in Lethe,
and leads him to the Gryphon, "ch'e sola una persona in due nature"
(XXXI, 81).
Both of these Sacramlents, Penance and the Holy Eucharist, our
surest spiritual aids, are signified in the last section of Eliot's poem. The
cryptic formula of confession, "B'less me father," enclosed in paren-
theses, is a suggestion of Penance.
The "Suffer me not to be separated," a supplication for union with
God taken from the prayer said just before the Communion of the Mass,
is the symbol of the second. The happy employment of this line is a
curiosa felicitas indeed. Not only does it foreshadow the Holy Eucharist
' Dante's Other [W'orld (New York, 1957), p. 229.

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 THE PURGATORLO IN A MODERN MODE

about to be received, but the word "separated" enfo

ogy of Purgatory-where the greatest pain is precis
God and where the only act the soul can perform fo
God in prayer.
Part by part, then, I think it is possible to observ
follow the underlying spiritual structure of Dan
tica. To concede that he has merely imitated "an
-even "the most ordered presentation of emotio
achievement. What he has set down is first of all a title which is an in-
timate part of the poem, suggesting, as it does, the Lenten penitential
references. There is a relation of part to part which achieves a structure
that is analogous to the Pzrgatorio. In its composition, symbols (both
traditional and private), tense sequence, and voice structure unite to
dramatize modern man's excessive hesitation in renouncing the attrac-
tions of the world in order to trust in the possibility of the spiritual
world. What is evident is that in paralleling the Purgatorio Eliot has
arrived at a finished work of art which points to and exemplifies in a
modern form the Christian scheme of sorrow for sin and the amendment
necessary for renewing innocence of heart.

Mount Saint Agnes College

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