Limited edition signed by Eliot
ELIOT, T.S. Ash-Wednesday. London: The Curwen Press. 1930.
8vo. Original blue cloth with gilt title and gilt lettering on spine, top edge gilt, else untrimmed, housed in original brown paper-covered slipcase; pp. 28; cloth a touch faded, a few tiny spots of discolouration, slipcase slightly rubbed to extremities and beginning to split along the spine; light offsetting to endpapers, otherwise a very good, clean copy.
First edition, number 584 of 600 copies, signed by the poet.
Often referred to as his, “Conversion Poem”, Ash-Wednesday is a long poem written during Eliot’s conversion to Anglicanism. Marking the Christian fast day that signifies the beginning of Lent, a day of penitence to acknowledge one's sins, the poem revolves around a narrator's hope for salvation in a blasphemous world.
Throughout its six parts, the speaker evolves through a series of illuminating and distressing metaphorical transformations, some of which find powerful inspiration from Dante and from texts of liturgy though the poem maintains throughout much of a contrasting, secular undertone. The first section claims the title of an appropriate love poem by Dante's closest friend and mentor Guido Cavalcanti: “Because I do not hope to turn again”.
Gallup A15a.
#2120217