It may seem cliché to refer to T.S. Eliot’s great poem “Ash Wednesday” as we approach Ash Wednesday. But for at least two reasons, writing about Eliot’s epic poem at this time of the liturgical year is worth the risk. First, other than by reference to the title, it is not at all clear that the poem is about Ash Wednesday. So even understanding it as a poem corresponding to this important day in the liturgical calendar takes some work. Second, the depth of the meaning of “Ash Wednesday” defies exhaustive treatment; there are always new gems to find in it and new things to say about them. It’s never a bad time to talk about this great poem. Ash Wednesday is the perfect time, no matter how often.
For purposes of this brief treatment, I highlight two key themes. The first is Eliot’s decisive rejection of the myth of moral and ontological self-sufficiency. The second, related to the first, is the adventure of the ascent of faith in faithless times. Both these themes, of course, are as resonant in 2025 as they were in 1930 when the poem was first published, about two years after Eliot’s conversion to Anglicanism (he identified as an ‘anglo-catholic’).
Surrender, not despair
The narrator of the poem (you can hear Eliot himself read it aloud here) begins and ends with what appear to be expressions of hopelessness verging on despair. The opening lines say, “Because I do not hope to turn again / Because I do not hope / Because I do not hope to turn.” This is echoed in the first lines of stanza six, but with slight variation: “Although I do not hope to turn again / Although I do not hope / Although I do not hope to turn.” In both cases, it might appear the narrator has given up hope in something or someone — that hope is vain, pointless and disappointing. But things are not always as they appear.
The point of these stanzas is that the narrator is no longer “turning” this way and that for exhaustive answers to the mysteries of life. This is not to say that he has attained anything remotely like complete knowledge or control. On the contrary, the ensuing verses of both stanzas expressly claim not to know things, not to see things, not to claim access to perfect knowledge or wisdom. He is no longer “Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope,” as the first stanza continues. That is to say, the narrator is no longer making any assertion of being the source of knowing.
But this is not despair. Rather, it is surrender, which is something very different indeed.
This surrender of the myth self-sufficiency should be read in contrast with the third chapter of Genesis. There, the man and woman engaged in the false and pernicious “hope” of turning away from the God who created them and toward themselves. To eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil was not simply to disobey a single command. It was the assertion that they are the source of moral knowing itself. The man and woman eschewed the contingency of their creatureliness with the limitations that attend it. Rather than stop turning — giving up hope of being autonomous selves — they turned toward themselves as the source of moral knowing. Their hope was in their assertion of self-sufficiency. This is not true hope, of course, but rather its counterfeit.
Eliot’s narrator in “Ash Wednesday” expressly rejects any such pretense as asserted by our primordial parents. “Because I know I shall not know / The one veritable transitory power,” he explains. “Because I know that time is always time / And place is always place.” Rather than despair at the constraint of time and place, the narrator rejoices in his surrender to its truth. “I rejoice that things are as they are … ” In other words, the poem begins specifically by decrying the myth of human self-sufficiency and embracing the docility of knowing that we are the creature, not the creator.
The fullness of truth
Having surrendered his assertion of self-sufficiency, the narrator then turns to God as the source of salvation and the guide through the spiritual desert of modernity. “Because these wings are no longer wings to fly,” he prays, “Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still.” Thus, the narrator begins his journey from an admission of insufficiency toward complete surrender to God. In other words, he begins a Lenten journey. “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death / Pray for us now and at the hour of our death,” ends the first numbered section of the poem.
Of course, this is not the place for a thorough analysis of the entirety of “Ash Wednesday.” But in the ensuing stanzas the narrator becomes a pilgrim on his ascent toward the rest of the beatific vision. The poem is closely analogous in this sense to Dante’s “Purgatory,” the catalog of Dante’s own surrender of pride and self-sufficiency, and ascent toward the perfect vision of Beatrice.
As he closes “Ash Wednesday,” Eliot invokes a different woman, unnamed but almost certainly the Blessed Virgin. To Mary, the narrator-pilgrim pleads: “Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood / … Teach us to sit still / … Our peace is in His will.” And as Dante closed his “Divine Comedy” with an encomium to the beauty that moves the sun and other stars, so does Eliot appeal to the lady who ushers him to salvation. “Sister, mother / And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea / Suffer me not to be separated.” Then, turning his gaze from the woman to the God who made them both, Eliot concludes, “And let my cry come unto Thee.”
On Ash Wednesday, we are told, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But these are not words of despair. Rather, they are words of surrender. And having surrendered, we begin our ascent toward the fullness of truth. We begin our cry to the God who saves us.
