Poetry: “Ash Wednesday, Part V” by T. S. Eliot

Today is Ash Wednesday.  Over the years on Ash Wednesday I have highlight a particular part of T. S. Eliot’s poem, “Ash Wednesday.”  So far I have highlighted the first four of the six parts of the poem.  Let me link you to the posts on the first four parts:

Part 1 (Posted on February 22, 2023) here.  

Part II (Posted on February 13, 2013) here.  

Part III (Posted on February 18, 2015) here  and again (Posted February 14, 2024) here.  

Part IV (Posted on March 5, 2025) here.

 

If Part I can be summarized as an acknowledgement of personal sin and the turn for repentance, Part II as the suffering of penance and the request of prayer from a lady of silence, Part III as a passing through of Purgatory, and Part IV as the transcendence of sin, we come to Part V. 

 

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent

If the unheard, unspoken

Word is unspoken, unheard;

Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,

The Word without a word, the Word within

The world and for the world;

And the light shone in darkness and

Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled

About the centre of the silent Word.

 

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

 

Where shall the word be found, where will the word

Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

Not on the sea or on the islands, not

On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,

For those who walk in darkness

Both in the day time and in the night time

The right time and the right place are not here

No place of grace for those who avoid the face

No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

 

Will the veiled sister pray for

Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,

Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between

Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait

In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray

For children at the gate

Who will not go away and cannot pray:

Pray for those who chose and oppose

 

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

 

Will the veiled sister between the slender

Yew trees pray for those who offend her

And are terrified and cannot surrender

And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks

In the last desert before the last blue rocks

The desert in the garden the garden in the desert

Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

 

There are four stanzas with a refrain.  The refrain comes between stanzas one and two, between three and four, and clipped at the end as a coda.  Why isn’t there a refrain between stanzas two and three?  I don’t know. Perhaps just to make Part V asymmetric. 

How does one read the refrain, “O my people, what have I done unto thee?”  One might read it with a sense of remorse with a tone of guilt.  However, the refrain is an actual quote from the Book of the Prophet Micah 6:3.  Here is the quote in context:

 

Hear what the Lord says:

Arise, plead your case before the mountains,

    and let the hills hear your voice.

2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord,

    and you enduring foundations of the earth;

for the Lord has a controversy with his people,

    and he will contend with Israel.

 

3 “O my people, what have I done to you?

    In what have I wearied you? Answer me!

4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,

    and redeemed you from the house of bondage;

and I sent before you Moses,

    Aaron, and Miriam.

5 O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised,

    and what Balaam the son of Be′or answered him,

and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,

    that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.” (Mic 6:1-5)

As you can see, the verse that Eliot uses as a refrain is spoken by God in Micah with a tone of anger and indignation, as if God is saying, “what have I done to deserve this?”  Let’s check Eliot’s tone reading the poem.  Part V starts at 8:05 and ends at 10:12.

 

It sounds like indignation to me.  Eliot is channeling God’s indignant voice at least for the refrain.  But is he then channeling God’s voice throughout the poem?  Is that God speaking in indignation in all of Part V?  It is interesting that Part V is the only section of the entire poem that does not appear to be in first person.  It is possible that Part V is the voice of God entering the poem.

It is interesting that stanzas one is framed in the conditional case: “If the lost world is lost,” Stanzas two, three, and four are framed in the interrogative case: “Where shall the word be found,” “Will the veiled sister pray,” and again “Will the veiled sister…pray.”  Framing in a conditional and interrogative cases creates an imagery less specific, more amorphous, and less incorporeal.  That might also suggest a more spiritual or God voice.

The first stanza, except for the images of light and darkness, is built around abstractions.  “Word” and “word,” “spoken,” “unspoken,” “still,” “unstill,” lost, and “spent.”  Of all the nouns to identify Christ, Eliot chooses the most abstract here, “the Word .”  Significantly, the “Word is unheard.”  I suspect this is the voice of God condemning a sinful people. 

The second stanza asks ““Where shall the word be found”?  Not here, and Eliot provides a sequence of very specific nouns of the earth.  The earth is too noisy.  “There is not enough silence.”  It is too busy for holiness and repentance.

The third and fourth stanzas, the voice of—and I think it is God—asks the “veiled sister” to pray for those who cannot.  He asks her to pray for “those who walk in darkness.”  The veiled sister comes up several times in the overarching poem, and in Part VI we see the veiled sister is the “holy mother.”  Humanity is identified as having spit “from the mouth the withered apple-seed,” the image of man tainted with original sin.

The first two stanzas signal the need for Christ (the Word) for acceptance  and redemption in this “noisy” world.  Stanzas three and four asks whether the Blessed Virgin (the veiled sister) will pray as intercessor for our redemption.  The answer theologically of course is yes, she will intercede for us; the real question for me is whether we will accept the grace that comes from her intercession. 

In Part V of “Ash Wednesday,” then, we see God in judgement of man, but offering the possibility through the intercession of the Blessed Mother the means of redemption.

Next year we will read and analyze the final section.  Have a holy Ash Wednesday and blessed season of Lent.

 

Sunday Meditation: But I Say To You

The Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time in Year A, Jesus continues the Sermon on the Mount.  Today is a very long passage, but I will break it down to understand why it’s one complete teaching.  On the surface it appears to be a random set of sayings, but it holds together quite well.  Let’s decompose it.

It breaks down into two sections which I’ll call A and B.  A will have three sub elements and B will have four.  Here is the structure of the passage.

 

A.    The Law

1.     Fulfillment (v. 17-18)

2.     Not Relaxing (v. 19)

3.     Exceeding Righteousness (v. 20)

 

B.    You Have Heard It Said…But I Say To You

1.     Anger (v. 21-26)

2.     Adultery (v. 27-30)

3.     Divorce (v. 31-32)

4.     Swearing Oaths (v. 33-37)

In part A, Jesus is teaching us that in Him “the law” comes to fulfillment, not by relaxing the law, but by exceeding “righteousness.”  In Part B, He gives us four examples in the parallel structure of the law (“You have heard it said”) and its fulfillment (“but I say to you).  The four examples are interesting.  Those are not, I think, the ethical requirements that would come to mind to a first century Jew.

 

 

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

 

Jesus said to his disciples:

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,

not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter

will pass from the law,

until all things have taken place.

Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so

will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments

will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses

that of the scribes and Pharisees,

you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

 

"You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,

You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.

But I say to you,

whoever is angry with his brother

will be liable to judgment;

and whoever says to his brother, 'Raqa,'

will be answerable to the Sanhedrin;

and whoever says, 'You fool,'

will be liable to fiery Gehenna.

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,

and there recall that your brother

has anything against you,

leave your gift there at the altar,

go first and be reconciled with your brother,

and then come and offer your gift.

Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.

Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,

and the judge will hand you over to the guard,

and you will be thrown into prison.

Amen, I say to you,

you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.

 

"You have heard that it was said,

You shall not commit adultery.

But I say to you,

everyone who looks at a woman with lust

has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

If your right eye causes you to sin,

tear it out and throw it away.

It is better for you to lose one of your members

than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna.

And if your right hand causes you to sin,

cut it off and throw it away.

It is better for you to lose one of your members

than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.

 

"It was also said,

Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.

But I say to you,

whoever divorces his wife -  unless the marriage is unlawful -

causes her to commit adultery,

and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

 

"Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors,

Do not take a false oath,

but make good to the Lord all that you vow.

But I say to you, do not swear at all;

not by heaven, for it is God's throne;

nor by the earth, for it is his footstool;

nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.

Do not swear by your head,

for you cannot make a single hair white or black.

Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No.'

Anything more is from the evil one."

~Mt: 5:17-37

 

Dr. Brant Pitre, who we haven’t had in a while, offers an explanation of fulfillment and the exceeding of righteousness.

 

 

Dr. Pitre:

“What Jesus is revealing here … are aspects of the Old Testament that are not perfect.  In other words, they're not what God ultimately wants for his people… Jesus wants to perfect that law of righteousness and bring the disciples up to the top of the mountain where he's going to give them the new law of the gospel that's not going break the old law but it's going to transform.  It's going to transfigure. It's going to transcend it and bring them up to the the Kingdom of Heaven.  That's what he means when he says that their righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees.”

 

For the pastoral homily, I liked Fr. Joseph Mary of the Capuchin Franciscans.

 

 

Fr. Joseph:

“Sometimes when I'm traveling across the country in my car, I have to go through very small towns. And it's not unusual for me to find myself sitting at a stoplight on some country road at midnight without another car in sight for miles. The law says I should wait for the light to turn green before going. I never do that. I run the red light every time.”

 

What?  Is he serious? He runs the red light every time?  LOL, no way.  I hope that was just to just to bring out the theme of the homily.

What justifies us?  “For Christians, it's not the works of the law that justify, but works of faith, namely, to believe in Jesus Christ and to accept the gift of redemption.”

 

 

 

Sunday Meditation: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.  I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

 

 

I love this song, “Prayer for Guidance” by John Michael Talbot.

 

 

Most High and glorious God

Bring light to the darkness of my heart

Give me right faith, certain hope

And perfect charity

 

Lord, give me insight and wisdom

So I might always discern

Your holy and true will

Short Story Analysis: “The Night Before Christmas” by Nicolai Gogol, Post 1

This is the first of three posts on the short story “The Night Before Christmas” by Nicolai Gogol.  While this seems to be listed as a short story, the length and multiple plot lines would suggest to me to be a novella.

 

Concerning the translation, I am using The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, which includes this story and is translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.  By chance I happened to own this book.  You don’t need the book.  You can find this story in a number of places online such as Gutenberg.  Here is an online version with annotations which might be helpful.  https://litarchive.online/the-night-before-christmas#google_vignette  I think all the online versions use the Constance Garnett translation. Garnett translated all the major 19^th century Russian literature in the first half of the 20^th century.  Her translations I suspect are outside the copy write laws.  Pevear and Volokhonsky are contemporary translators, and seem to be on a mission to translate all the Russian writers anew.  They have won awards, so I do trust them.  But Constance Garnett has a great reputation as a Russian translator as well.  As I’ve compared, I don’t think there is that much of a difference. 

There is one noticeable difference.  The names are spelled differently.  I think Garnett altered the spelling for a more phonetic appeal to English speaking readers.  I don’t think it matters.  If I am going to quote for this discussion I will probably pull from the online source so I can copy and paste.  One other translation thing to be aware, some places online translate the title as “Christmas Eve” rather than “The Night Before Christmas.”  I don’t think that matters.

Let me provide some preliminaries to aid the reader.  This is a 19^th century story and a story from a Russian author.  Both of these details can provide some difficulties.  A 19^th century story provides more exposition and/or overture than a contemporary story.  A 20^th century short story writer will tend to start the story in medias res, or “in the middle of things.”  He will tend not to start with exposition and context, but will somehow get it in once the story is started.  You have to give a 19^th century story a little more time to develop. 

A 19^th century story will tend to be more verbose, detailed, or exhaustive than a 20^th century story.  Contemporary stories use elements of poetry and distill their stories with symbols, allusions, loaded imagery, and other literary devices.  It comes down to realism versus emotional engagement.  The more abundant details of a 19^th century story, the more realistic it feels.  The more symbolism of a 20^th century story though with less details, the greater the emotional connection. 

Finally the Russianness of this story does give the non-Russian reader some difficulties.  Russians do (or maybe they only once did and no longer) have a particular way of passing names down.  This could be a difficulty in some long Russian novels, but I don’t think it’s an issue in this story.  There are some cultural distinctions that you will have to do a search on.  In this story you will come across the caroling (koliadovat) the townspeople do on Christmas Eve.  It’s not just simple caroling as we do here but where the carolers are given treats for their effort.  It seems like it combines elements of our Halloween into caroling.  Another is some traditional Christmas Eve dish, kutya, which appears to be a required dish.  There are also different types of Cossacks mentioned, and they are each associated with a specific region.  Other than geography, I don’t know their relationship.  There are historical persons who are real people fictionalized.  Three that I remember are Queen Catherine the Great, Prince Potemkin, and Denis Fonvizin.  Just do a search and they come up pretty easily. 

Finally Nicolai Gogol is a Ukrainian, not a Russian, and so there are distinctions I seem to feel but not converse in the subject enough to understand.  As we have learned these four years of the Ukraine-Russian War, they are not exactly the same culture.  There are some language distinctions and I would bet rsburg.  There may be significance in this, but it’s outside my ken.  Given the evolving n4186many cultural as well.  We know this story occurs in Ukraine, but there is a trip over to St. Petersburg of Ukraine’s borders with Russia, that may also have some significance that alludes me.  Catherine the Great was a Russian queen, but I have no idea what her relationship with Ukraine was at this time in history.  The story is set in a town called Dikanka, but nearby there is a town called Sorochintsy where some sort of assessor or bureaucrat resides.  I found both towns are small when I looked them up but I have no context for a relationship between them.  But even though I had to struggle to understand some of this, I don’t think it causes the non-Russian reader to get the wonder and delight of this story.

As to Gogol’s place in Russian literature, he is one of the greats that stand with go along with Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostevsky, Turgenev, and Chekhov.  Pushkin was Gogol’s predecessor and a friend, and ten years older than Gogol.  Gogol was a good ten to twenty years younger than the other contemporaneous Russian greats except for Chekhov who was born some eight years after Gogol had died.  Gogol’s writing career was over twenty-two years (1830-1852) and included short stories, one novel, drama, and essays.  He is known as a great developer of the form of the short story, which perhaps he is best known for, but his one novel, Dead Souls, is also highly respected and acclaimed.  Gogol split his career writing in early life in Ukraine and then moving to St. Petersburg.

###

This story, “The Night Before Christmas” or sometimes translated as “Christmas Eve,”  is such a superb story.  Frankly I think this is elite level of story writing.  The 19^th century Russians are just so good.  I jotted down some notes and I hope it will help readers that might get lost.  First a list of characters.  This is probably not comprehensive but I think it includes all the major characters.  I am using the spelling in my Pevear/Volokhonky translation.  It may be different in your translation.

My early comments here are first impressions.  By the third post I will have arrived at a more complete understanding of the story.  So take my early comments with a grain of salt.  I don’t think there is anything erroneous in them but they do speak from a lack of complete understanding.  It took several reads

List of Characters

The Witch, Solokha, Vakula’s mother

The Devil

Cossack Choub

The Deacon, Osip Nikiforovich

The Headman (Sexton)

Cossack Sverbyguz

Father Kondrat

Choub’s daughter, Oksana

Vakula, the blacksmith

Panas, Choub’s chum

Tymish Korostyavy

Paunchy Patsiuk, the Zaporozhet, wizard

Shapuvalenko, the weaver

Panas’s wife

The Weaver’s Wife

The Deacon’s Wife
Pereperchikha (Pereperchenko’s wife)

The Zaporozhtsy Cossacks

Prince Potemkin, Grigory Alexandrovich

Empress Catherine the Great

Most short stories have only one plot line.  This one has at least four plot lines that I could count.  The plot lines weave in and out of each other.  It may be helpful to list them, so you can understand what is going on and how they are interconnected. 

Plot Lines

Vakula wins Oksana’s hand in marriage.  (Main plot)

Devil stealing the moon and causing chaos

Choab’s Christmas Eve celebration and adventures

Solokha’s dalliances.

I’m trying to arrive at a main theme.  Perhaps it could be: love wins despite the devil’s confusion?  But it’s more complicated than that.  Why is everyone except maybe Vakula the blacksmith so sinful?  Whatever the central theme might be there are some recurring motifs that I noticed.  Here’s my list.

Motifs:

Pranks

Chaos/confusion

Not being able to see correctly

Things and people hidden

Infidelity/Promiscuity

Merry making/Laughter

Sin

Use of the “unclean powers”

Sophistication vs. simplicity

 

This story is very complex.  I haven’t figured it all out yet, and I am so enchanted with it I am going to read it for a third time.  I will soon post on some truly remarkable scenes.

###

Frances’s Comment:

Last year a friend recommended a Russian novel to me, The Master and Margarita. It is a highly creative, imaginative — at times even wild — story told in three parts. The heroine, Margarita, is a beautiful young woman who rides in the air through Moscow — on a broom. At first I thought of the Wizard of Oz, but when I looked it up, I learned that the image of a female character riding a broom is a common trope in Russian literature. Of course, I recognized it again in this story.

My Reply to Frances:

Thanks for that Frances. This story is highly dependent on its Russian/Ukrainian folklore. Unfortunately we can’t totally comprehend the nuances.

###

Kerstin’s Summary of the Early Section:

THE DAY OF CHRISTMAS EVE ENDED, AND the night began, cold and clear. The stars and the crescent moon shone brightly upon the Christian world, helping all the good folks welcome the birth of our Savior. The cold grew sharper, yet the night was so quiet that one could hear the snow squeak under a traveler’s boots from half a mile away. Caroling hadn’t yet begun; village youths weren’t yet crowded outside the windows waiting for treats; the moon alone peeked through, as though inviting the girls to finish up their toilette and run out onto the clean, sparkling snow.

 

So begins our adventure into goings-on of the little village Dikanka on the night before the Savior is born.

 

Out of the chimney comes a witch flying on her broom.

Sorochinsky, the property assessor, usually does not miss anything going on in the village, but this time he is far away.

 

The witch flies about on her broom and collects stars into her sleeve.

 

The exceedingly ugly devil appears on the scene and after a couple of tries stuffs the moon into his pocket. Now all of Dikanka is cast in full darkness. His purpose is revenge on the blacksmith Vakula, who is also a talented artist.

 

The pinnacle of his art was agreed to be a large panel inside the church porch which depicted St. Peter expelling the devil from hell on the day of the Last Judgment. Faced with imminent death, the terrified devil darts here and there, while the forgiven sinners bash him with whips and sticks. The devil tried everything to stop Vakula from finishing the hateful portrait, shoving his hand, blowing soot on the panel—but despite his heartiest efforts the painting was completed and nailed to the church wall, and since then the devil swore to take revenge on its creator. For only one more night could he roam freely and look for a way to pay Vakula back—hence the moon theft.

 

As an added bonus, the darkness would also prevent Cossack Chub, and other prominent citizens from attending the deacon’s holiday dinner.

The devil having set in motion this mischief starts flirting with the witch.

 

Chub and Panas, Oksana’s godfather (kum) step onto the porch of Chub’s cottage and realize it is pitch black. Chub curses the devil. He doesn’t want to miss the deacon’s dinner he is already wistfully anticipating of a bottle of spiced vodka.

 

Meanwhile, Chub’s daughter Oksana is standing in front of a mirror completely engrossed in her own reflection. Vakula enters the cottage unbeknownst to her and is equally taken by her. He wants to marry her, but she only toys with him, and he knows it.

 

So what is the devil up to? It is very cold flying through the air, so the witch descends back down and into her chimney. The devil follows her, but before he enters the chimney he creates a blizzard so Chub and kum get disoriented and turn back home in the hopes of catching Vakula and Oksana alone.

 

Who is the witch? Her name is Solokha and Valuka’s mother. As it turns out, she provides extra-marital entertainment for many of the village’s esteemed male citizens. Her favorite is the well-to-do widower Chub whom she aspires to claim for herself and his riches. The only wrinkle in the scheme is her son Vakula and his infatuation with Oksana, so she resorts to all sorts of witchery to foil them.