32 PARTISAN REVIEW
be taken, illuminations, bounty! There speaks a Wisdom, here
sounds that august voice which, when it sounds, knows itself
to
be
not more the voice of a person than that of the waters and the
woods.
In
her commentary, Sewell says:
At first sight it seems almost an irrelevance; but when one looks
into it, it is clearly the only answer Valery could give-though not
perhaps the only one that could be given. Words are the mind's one
defence against possession by thought or dreams; even Jacob kept
trying
to
find out the name of the angel he wrestled with. Words
made into poetry, the prophetic ornamented discourse, carefully
chained lest too much freedom should let in the powers of dark–
ness-these will effect such resolution as can be achieved between
the logical and the irrational functions of the mind....But apart
from this, see how curiously this verse runs: there is the word, sanc–
tified, a god in the flesh, the true light and glory, coming into the
world-it is impossible
to
set it down like that and not be instantly
reminded of the opening of St. John's Gospel. ...This time it is "Au
commencement etait Ie verbe," in the beginning was the word, and
it is Valery quoting it and saying "But the word is nothing else than
one of the most precise names for that which I have called mind"
(esprit).
Mind and word are almost synonymous in a great many
uses.
Words and mind, synonymous: it is a bias congenial not only
to
Valery
but
to
Eliot. I think Eliot allowed words a slight degree of priority and
therefore of privilege before assenting
to
a relation amounting on the
happiest occasions
to
identity. Lost in the flesh, he is content
to
be taken
in the chains of language; or if not content-since he often complains
that the words are not right or not sufficient-he can't think of any
other chains in which to be held. His poems let the ordinary world in
only because, language being discursive, it can't be kept out. Leavis's
phrasing-"establishing apart from the world a special order of experi–
ence, dedicated
to
spiritual exercises"-applies
to
nearly all of Eliot's
poems, not only
to
"Ash-Wednesday." This prejudice of Eliot's sensibil–
ity did not satisfy the Poundian Davie: he wanted
to
think of the self in
anyone as a distinct configuration of energies, not entirely verbal; then
of language as an instrument, a means, and in that respect as a gift of
God; and likewise of the world, external, palpable, sounding and shin–
ll1g.
