April: Cruel or Holy?

12 hours ago5 min read

I have always loved T.S. Eliot; Geoffrey Chaucer, not so much.

They saw the month of April in two very different ways.
One was an April Fool; the other knew and loved "Jhesus, God and Man."
Each was on a Pilgrimage.

Today's article will encouage you on yours!

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April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot in the Wasteland, 1922

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

............Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, --Geoffry Chaucer in Canterbury Tales,

Before we look more closely at the quotes of these two English literary giants, let us look at the month's history.

April got its name from the Romans, coming from the Latin verb aperire, "to open," an allusion to the season when trees and flowers begin to "open." This is close to my third-grade line, "April showers bring May flowers."

The Romans celebrated the beginning of the spring-to-summer rebirth of the earth in honor of Venus, whose feast, her Veneralia, was held on the first day of the month from 232 BC. It celebrated the purity of women and the establishment of family life as the foundation for our life cycle.

It was the cycle Chaucer (?-1400) referred to in Canterbury Tales, and it bespeaks the same reverence for and appreciation of the spring as the rebirth of nature as we see it in nature. Both Eliot* (1889-1965) and Chaucer refer to the same cycle, but from Christian and non-Christian points of view.

An asterisk*after a name means that person is in SPIRITUAL LIVES.

Christians were to continue the Roman idea of seeing April as holy. Bede*(673-735) thinks Easter comes from the Anglo-Saxon name for the month, ēastre. Of course, Easter Sunday falls in April most of the time, along with Palm Sunday and Good Friday.

Anglicans celebrate St George's day (the dragon-slaying patron saint of England), the twenty-third of the month, and St Mark's Eve on the twenty-fourth. (This tradition holds that the ghosts of those who are doomed to die within the year will be seen to pass into the church, on that day.)

Chaucer’s characters were on a pilgrimage, a month-long journey to the tomb of Thomas à Becket (119–1170), an archbishop of Canterbury martyred and canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. He was popular because people believed there was divine healing power at his shrine:

And specially, from every shires ende

Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

This was a pilgrimage of hope, a Christianization of nature's cycle of rebirth after winter into the life-giving season of spring. The Romantic poets saw this, too, and celebrated what they saw in nature as the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

T.S. Eliot* saw the cycle but missed the Savior!

April is cruel because it starts the cycle over again — the cycle of hurt, failure, and sadness. Although it is the start of spring and new beginnings, these new beginnings are meaningless. They always lead back to the same patterns, and it would be better if it ended altogether. ---Sami Grace Donnelly, 2023

The poet continues:

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

Eliot’s knowledge, education, and poetic skill led him only to the Wasteland, and he became its spokesman. At the end of the poems all he brings to it is gibberish, and unholy speaking in tongues:

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow

Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih - lines 426-433

Eliot backed off from the poem later, seeing it just “as a personal grouse against life,” but it was hailed by others as the voice of a disillusioned generation.

But even here Jesus was calling him to Himself. He began reading Thomas Aquinas* (1225-1274) and Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626). Then in 1926, to the surprise of his brother and sister-in-law who were with him on a visit to Rome, Eliot suddenly fell on his knees before Michelangelo’s Pietà.

But that gesture of abasement and worship was increasingly what Eliot wanted to do, and he did it the following year when he was baptized. This was followed some months later by his first confession. Eliot wrote to a friend who had helped him on his way to baptism that he had an extraordinary sense of surrender and gain as if he had crossed a very wide, deep river, never to return.

So, 440 years later, T.S. Eliot joined Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrimage. April now looked like love!

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

By the purification of the motive

In the ground of our beseeching.

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.-- Little Gidding, 1942

Eliot’s conversion shocked the cultural world as it became well-known. He changed how we looked at poetry in the 20th century, making us recognize the value and enduring importance of metaphysical poets, especially John Donne* (1572-1631) and George Herbert. (1593-1633).

He helped me stand up for Jesus, too, his testimony gave me an example to share with my fellow English majors and other poetry lovers. I remember taking the day off from Rutgers when he died in 1965. I missed him and thank him for helping me understand and embrace the Anglican way to Jesus. I look forward to meeting him face to face when Jesus brings us home to him.

NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF JESUS

O pilgrim bound for the heav'nly land,