Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Funnily enough, I read Ash-Wednesday for the first time yesterday. Wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did, but the Christianity theme didn't bother me at all. I loved the stuttering repetition (nicely representing his struggling with faith) and all the intricate rhyming. What do you reckon the three leopards that feast on his flesh are supposed to symbolise?
 

woops

is not like other people
2 days ago I've bought that book From Ritual to Romance that's mentioned in the Waste notes, if I read anything interesting in there I'll report
 

jenks

thread death
Funnily enough, I read Ash-Wednesday for the first time yesterday. Wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did, but the Christianity theme didn't bother me at all. I loved the stuttering repetition (nicely representing his struggling with faith) and all the intricate rhyming. What do you reckon the three leopards that feast on his flesh are supposed to symbolise?
I had a student write about it for coursework recently so I have done a bit of work on it myself - this blog post discusses the leopards: https://thechildanimalpoetandsaint.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/three-white-leopards/
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Cheers.

Made me think it might be worth getting hold of a copy of 4 Quartets, I've only got that little Faber selected pocket book and thought that would be all the Eliot I'd really need.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
To me Ash Wednesday feels like a 'tuning up' for Four Quartets.

It occurred to me after reading it that one of the things that must appeal to Eliot about Dante is that Dante (who so obviously influences the leopards, the winding stair passage, etc.) made the world 'make sense' in a symbolic system.

Which, given Eliot's hysterical reaction to the "pile of broken images" and futility he saw as modern, post-Christian life, must have seemed extraordinarily appealing.

Something similar was going on with Joyce's use of Homer, I suppose. Both an ironic frame through which to castigate the chaos of modernity and a tool with which to explain and redeem it. ("Stetson! You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!" – everything modern is Fallen and everything modern is Ancient.)
 

forclosure

Well-known member
To me Ash Wednesday feels like a 'tuning up' for Four Quartets.

It occurred to me after reading it that one of the things that must appeal to Eliot about Dante is that Dante (who so obviously influences the leopards, the winding stair passage, etc.) made the world 'make sense' in a symbolic system.

Which, given Eliot's hysterical reaction to the "pile of broken images" and futility he saw as modern, post-Christian life, must have seemed extraordinarily appealing.

Something similar was going on with Joyce's use of Homer, I suppose. Both an ironic frame through which to castigate the chaos of modernity and a tool with which to explain and redeem it. ("Stetson! You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!" – everything modern is Fallen and everything modern is Ancient.)
it might also be worth it if you read Coriolanus which was his favourite of all of Shakespeare's plays

when you read it it's like "yeah of course it was"
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I've seen Coriolanus performed (and watched the film with Ralph Fiennes in full frothy form) but never read it.

Nobility vs. the horrible masses, that kind of thing? Yeats was very much on this tip himself.

This was one of Eliot's favourite pieces of music (I love it too, about as Sturm n Drangy as you can get)

 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
To me Ash Wednesday feels like a 'tuning up' for Four Quartets.

It occurred to me after reading it that one of the things that must appeal to Eliot about Dante is that Dante (who so obviously influences the leopards, the winding stair passage, etc.) made the world 'make sense' in a symbolic system.
Ah so the leopards might come from Dante then? I haven't read Dante, but it's on the increasingly long list of things I want to read this year. That blog post suggests the Bible and/eastern philosophy as possible sources.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Ah so the leopards might come from Dante then? I haven't read Dante, but it's on the increasingly long list of things I want to read this year. That blog post suggests the Bible and/eastern philosophy as possible sources.
Not entirely sure about that but there's the famous leopard at the start of Inferno which prevents – along with a lion and wolf – prevents him ascending the hill to purgatory/paradise, forcing him to take the gate into hell. (Dante being in the 'dark wood' of doubt that Eliot inhabits at the start of Ash Wednesday.)

A popular interpretation of the 3 beasts Dante encounters from Google: "the leopard represents lust, the lion pride, and the wolf represents avarice."
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
 

jenks

thread death
Watched it and really thought it did a good job. Lyndal Gordon particularly engaging. Obviously a 90 minute film will never do the poem justice but I guess for many it gave a way in
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Did you watch Ralph Fiennes doing four quartets? I was interested to see how they staged it but I turned it off quite quickly because Fiennes was (excusably, I suppose, he's on stage) very much dramatising lines. Now maybe that's what he should have been doing and I've read the poem in an inappropriate inner montone before? But I sometimes think actors overemphasise "emotion" at the expense of rhythm.
 

jenks

thread death
Did you watch Ralph Fiennes doing four quartets? I was interested to see how they staged it but I turned it off quite quickly because Fiennes was (excusably, I suppose, he's on stage) very much dramatising lines. Now maybe that's what he should have been doing and I've read the poem in an inappropriate inner montone before? But I sometimes think actors overemphasise "emotion" at the expense of rhythm.
I’ve got an audio version of Four Quartets read by Ted Hughes which I think works really well, he’s got that bardic thing going on
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Watched it and really thought it did a good job. Lyndal Gordon particularly engaging. Obviously a 90 minute film will never do the poem justice but I guess for many it gave a way in
This was quite an eye-opening documentary (him taking so many things from his direct experience, the extent to which it's a poem about his disastrous marriage, that rosetti painting, etc.) – makes sense of a lot of stuff that hasn't made sense to me before about it

Albeit it was a little reductive, looking at things through an almost entirely autobiographical lens.
 
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