T S Eliot’s Seminal Concepts and “Ash Wednesday”

The poem presents the journey of the poet’s soul from a hopeless andmeaningless world to the all embracing divine world. Eliot maypresent his thoughts and facts in fragments but his target remains to bethe total or the absolute. Eliot may present his thoughts and facts infragments but his target remains to be the total or the absolute.Absolute is something, which when felt or perceived by individuals,becomes same for all; hence it becomes an impersonal observation forall. one can say that at places the personal element can also be tracedout but the dominant feature is indeed impersonal. The poet byemploying various pertinent literary tools succeeds to achieve thedesired characteristic of impersonal presentation in ‘Ash Wednesday’.For any idea or feeling that Eliot wants to be conveyed strongly to thereaders, he does not put only his own thoughts before the readers buthe takes help of the earlier works to substantiate his views. Eliot haslinked his ideas both with literary and religious traditions alongside.We find concrete allusions, in Eliot’s poems from Dante’s DivineComedy and many other literary and religious works. This paperdiscusses the poets skilful use of various devices to build up theimpression of impersonality and tradition in the poem.