Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” — Redeeming the Time
Part 4 of a 6-part series.
One could say section IV sees Eliot “in the middle way.” We have allusions to the major early works:
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
One paragraph later, he offers an Italian fragment, “Sovegna vos,” which can be translated as “be mindful.” While it’s a relevant concept here, one drawn from a longer verse in Canto XXVI of Dante’s Purgatorio — more on that below — it’s followed in Dante by the line “Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina,” which Eliot first used in the final stanza of The Waste Land.
Meanwhile, we have further foreshadowing of the Four Quartets. “Redeem the time” — so long as we recall that “a people without history is not redeemed from time.” This refrain, though, is also Biblical, recalling Ephesians 5, which presents a litany of sins Christians are to avoid, and continues:
Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
Contemporary translations present 5:16 with a more modern spin — “Making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” — but one must admit it’s a translation that speaks more immediately to the true deleteriousness of sloth. Dante certainly recognizes its ills in Purgatorio, but it’s the purging of another sin that captured Eliot’s imagination.
“Sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor,” says Dante through the figure of Arnaut Daniel, one whose particular foibles are classified as lust. “Be mindful in due time of my sorrow,” a message for those walking “in ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour.” This passage, incidentally, nearly served as the epigraph for “Prufrock,” tightening more the link between this section’s brooding over misspent time and the first era of Eliot’s work.
Of course, he ultimately chose to utilize an Inferno passage for that piece. But what is Purgatorio’s particular significance to this poem — and part? Certainly, it’s the logical next step after section III’s climb out of the symbolic inferno. Moreover, Purgatorio is in a sense the culmination of Lent: Dante and Virgil arrive in that middle place on Easter Sunday.
Purgatorio, like section IV, is also shot through with strong Marian imagery. Depictions of her life present an example to penitents in each terrace; here she functions similarly as a symbol — “blue of Mary’s colour.” Unicorns, too — like those jeweled ones who “draw by the gilded hearse” — suggest a medieval association with Mary.
And in both works, there is a sense of looming dawn. Eliot draws the section to a close with a fragment from a prayer also recited by Dante’s penitents, the Salve Regina:
Turn then, most gracious advocate,
Thine eyes of mercy toward us;
And after this our exile,
Show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving,
O sweet Virgin Mary.
This is not merely the final prayer of the rosary, but also a prayer specifically associated with Compline — evening (though, in this usage, outside of the Lenten season). Canto XXVI, the focus of Eliot’s Purgatorio references, presents the final stop before Dante encounters Earthly Paradise. Both men are readying themselves for, in a sense, a new year’s walk.
