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The ''Nunc dimittis'' is the traditional "Gospel Canticle" of Night Prayer that is often called the ''Song of Simeon'' or ''Canticle of Simeon''. In the [[Roman Catholic]] tradition, it was used during the Office for [[Compline]], the last of the [[Canonical hours]], in the [[Liturgy of the Hours]]. The Anglican tradition combined liturgy of the Catholic offices of [[Vespers]] (especially with the ''[[Magnificat]]'' canticle) and Compline (with the ''Nunc dimittis'') into [[Evening Prayer (Anglican)|Evening Prayer]] when compiling the ''[[Book of Common Prayer]]'' during the [[English Reformation]].
The ''Nunc dimittis'' is the traditional "Gospel Canticle" of Night Prayer that is often called the ''Song of Simeon'' or ''Canticle of Simeon''. In the [[Roman Catholic]] tradition, it was used during the Office for [[Compline]], the last of the [[Canonical hours]], in the [[Liturgy of the Hours]]. The Anglican tradition combined liturgy of the Catholic offices of [[Vespers]] (especially with the ''[[Magnificat]]'' canticle) and Compline (with the ''Nunc dimittis'') into [[Evening Prayer (Anglican)|Evening Prayer]] when compiling the ''[[Book of Common Prayer]]'' during the [[English Reformation]].


In 1886, Eliot's grandfather, [[William Greenleaf Eliot]], an American educator and [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]] minister, wrote a poem titled "Nunc dimittis." Written a few months before his death, the elder Eliot's poem used the same gospel text and the poet asks, in his decline, "When may I humbly claim that kind award, / And cares and labors cease?"<ref>Eliot, William Greenleaf. "Nunc dimittis" (1886), lines 4–5.</ref><ref>Eliot, Charlotte Chauncy Stearns. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=SJAAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false William Greenleaf Eliot: Minister, Educator, Philanthropist]''. (Boston/New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1904), 351.</ref><ref>Southam, B.C. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=8sTPaa1edVgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false A Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot]''. Sixth edition. (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), 240–241.</ref> "A Song for Simeon" is seen by some scholars as a tacit tribute by Eliot to his grandfather, "for the last years of a grandfather whose faith his grandson has at last taken up for himself."<ref name="Griffith-JonesChurchTimes">Griffith-Jones, Robin (Rev'd). [http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2007/2-february/faith/looking-forward-to-a-distant-faith "Looking forward to a distant faith: A Song for Simeon looks to a world its speaker can never inhabit, says Robin Griffith-Jones"] in ''Church Times'' (31 January 2007). Retrieved 25 October 2013.</ref>
In 1886, Eliot's grandfather, [[William Greenleaf Eliot]], an American educator and [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]] minister, wrote a poem titled "Nunc dimittis." Written a few months before his death, the elder Eliot's poem used the same gospel text and the poet asks, in his decline, "When may I humbly claim that kind award, / And cares and labors cease?"<ref>Eliot, William Greenleaf. "Nunc dimittis" (1886), lines 4–5.</ref><ref>Eliot, Charlotte Chauncy Stearns. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=SJAAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false William Greenleaf Eliot: Minister, Educator, Philanthropist]''. (Boston/New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1904), 351.</ref><ref>Southam, B.C. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=8sTPaa1edVgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false A Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot]''. Sixth edition. (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), 240–241.</ref> "A Song for Simeon" is seen by some scholars as a tacit tribute by Eliot to his grandfather, "for the last years of a grandfather whose faith his grandson has at last taken up for himself."<ref name="Griffith-JonesChurchTimes">Griffith-Jones, Robin (Rev'd). [http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2007/2-february/faith/looking-forward-to-a-distant-faith "Looking forward to a distant faith: A Song for Simeon looks to a world its speaker can never inhabit, says Robin Griffith-Jones"] in ''Church Times'' (31 January 2007). Retrieved 25 October 2013.</ref><ref>Cf. Oser, Lee. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=e9NAMdI3rQkC&printsec=frontcover&vq=nunc#v=onepage&q=nunc&f=false T.S. Eliot and American Poetry]''. (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 94–97.</ref>


===Conversion===
===Conversion===

Revision as of 15:23, 25 October 2013

A Song for Simeon
by T.S. Eliot
The cover of the poem's first publishing, Faber & Gwyer's 1928 pamphlet
Written1928 (1928)
First published inAriel poems
IllustratorEdward McKnight Kauffer
PublisherFaber and Gwyer, 1928
Publication date1928 (1928)
Lines37

"A Song for Simeon" is a 37-line poem written in 1928 by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). It is one of five poems that Eliot contributed for a series of 38 pamphlets by several authors collectively titled Ariel poems and released by British publishing house Faber and Gwyer (later, Faber and Faber). Published in September 1928, "A Song for Simeon" was the sixteenth in the series and was accompanied by illustrations drawn by American-born avant garde artist Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954).[1] The poems, including "A Song for Simeon", were later published in both editions of Eliot's collected poems in 1936 and 1963.[2]

In the previous year, Eliot had converted to Anglo-Catholicism and his poetry, starting with the Ariel Poems (1927–1931) and Ash Wednesday (1930), took on a decidedly religious character.[3] In the poem, Eliot retells the story of Simeon from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, an old, just and devout Jew who encounters Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus entering the Temple of Jerusalem. Promised by the Holy Ghost that he would not die until he had seen the Saviour, Simeon sees in the infant Jesus the Messiah promised by the Lord, asks God to permit him to "depart in peace." (Luke 2:25–35 (KJV)).

The poem's narrative mimics the Nunc dimittis, a liturgical prayer for Compline derived from the Gospel passage. Eliot introduces literary allusions to Virgil, Dante Alighieri, St. John of the Cross.

Writing and publication

T. S. Eliot in 1934

In 1925, Eliot became a poetry editor at the London publishing firm of Faber & Gwyer, Ltd.,[4]: pp.50–51  after a career in banking, and subsequent to the success of his earlier poems, including "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), "Gerontion" (1920) and "The Waste Land" (1922).

In these years, Eliot gravitated toward embracing a Christian faith and in particular toward the Church of England which led to his baptism on 29 June 1927 at Finstock Church, in the Cotswold, and his confirmation the following day in the private chapel of The Right Reverend Thomas Banks Strong, Bishop of Oxford.[4]: pp.18  Eliot converted in private, but subsequently declared in his 1927 preface to a collection of essays titled For Lancelot Andrewes that he considered himself "a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion."[5][6] When his conversion became known, it was "an understandable choice to those around him" given his intellectual convictions, and that "he could not have done anything less than seek what he regarded as the most ancient, most sacramental, and highest expresession of the Christian faith that forms the indisputable basis for the culture and civilization of modern Europe."[4]: pp.18  Eliot's conversion, and his adherence to Anglo-Catholicism, would inform and influence his later poetry.

In 1927, Eliot was asked by his employer, Geoffrey Faber, one of the partners in Faber & Gwyer, to write one poem each year for a series of illustrated pamphlets with holiday themes to be sent to the firms clients and business acquaintances as Christmas greetings.[4]: pp.19, 50, 376  This series, called the "Ariel Series", would release 38 pamphlets from a selection of English writers and poets from 1927 through 1931. The first poem that Eliot wrote, "The Journey of the Magi", was released as the eighth in the series in August 1927.[7] For the second, "A Song for Simeon", Eliot turned to an event at the end of Nativity narrative in the Gospel of Luke. Faber released this pamphlet, the sixteenth in the series on 24 September 1928.[8] Eliot would follow with three more poems, "Animula" in October 1929, "Marina" in September 1930, and "Triumphal March" in October 1931. All five poems were accompanied by illustrations by American avant garde artist, E. McKnight Kauffer.

Faber & Gwyer, Ltd., printed the "A Song for Simeon" in a Duodecimo (12mo) pamphlet "in blue paper wraps with title in black ink" The poem was printed on two pages, accompanied by Kauffer's colour image, and included one page of advertisements.

In 1936, Faber & Faber, the successor firm to Faber & Gwyer, collected "A Song for Simeon" and the four other poems under the heading "Ariel Poems" for an edition of Eliot's collected poems.[2] When Faber released the entire series in the 1950s, Eliot included a sixth poem, "The cultivation of Christmas Trees",[4]: p.19  which was added to Faber's 1963 edition of his collected poems.[2] Both editions of collected poems were published in the United States by Harcourt, Brace & Company.[2]

Interpretation and analysis

Сретение Господне ("The Meeting of the Lord"), a depiction of Simeon recognizing Jesus at the Temple, from a fifteenth-century Novgorodskye School Russian icon

Gospel narrative and the Nunc dimittis

Most scholars and critics addressing the issues of the poem focus on the Gospel narrative for a source of interpretation as Eliot's poem quotes several lines verbatim from the passage in Luke, from the Nunc dimittis, and is "characterized by deliberately Biblical language interwoven with actual phrases from the Gospels."[9]: p.147 [10]

The subject of Eliot's poem is drawn from the Gospel narrative in Luke 2:25–35, and the early Christian canticle Nunc dimittis derived from it. In Luke's account, Simeon, an aged and devout Jew, stands in the Temple of Jerusalem at the time Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus to be presented in the temple forty days after his birth in accordance with Jewish law and custom. Luke states that Simeon is "waiting for the consolation of Israel" after being promised that "he should not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ." (Luke 2:25–26). Simeon, upon seeing the child, takes him into his arms and prays, prophesizing the redemption of the world by Jesus and of suffering to come.(Luke 2:28–35) This prayer would become known later as the Nunc Dimittis from its Latin incipit.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace : according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen : thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared : before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles : and to be the glory of thy people Israel. (Luke:2:29–32)

The Nunc dimittis is the traditional "Gospel Canticle" of Night Prayer that is often called the Song of Simeon or Canticle of Simeon. In the Roman Catholic tradition, it was used during the Office for Compline, the last of the Canonical hours, in the Liturgy of the Hours. The Anglican tradition combined liturgy of the Catholic offices of Vespers (especially with the Magnificat canticle) and Compline (with the Nunc dimittis) into Evening Prayer when compiling the Book of Common Prayer during the English Reformation.

In 1886, Eliot's grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, an American educator and Unitarian minister, wrote a poem titled "Nunc dimittis." Written a few months before his death, the elder Eliot's poem used the same gospel text and the poet asks, in his decline, "When may I humbly claim that kind award, / And cares and labors cease?"[11][12][13] "A Song for Simeon" is seen by some scholars as a tacit tribute by Eliot to his grandfather, "for the last years of a grandfather whose faith his grandson has at last taken up for himself."[14][15]

Conversion

"A Song for Simeon" is not one of Eliot's significant poems and is thus overshadowed by his comparatively more well-known works of the period, including "The Hollow Men" (1925), "The Journey of the Magi" (1927), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and the later, more substantial Four Quartets (1943) However, in these poems, Eliot continues the progression of his themes of alienation in a changing world, and fuses with this the tenets of his newfound faith.[16] Literary scholar Martin Scofield states that the imagery of the poem, of the symbol of a feather and its setting amid Roman hyacinths and the winter sun conveys "a sense of wonder and fragile new life."[9]: p.147 . The Reverend Robin Griffith-Jones, an Anglican cleric, compares Eliot's image of the feather to statement by Hildegard of Bingen comparing herself "to 'a feather which lacks all weight and strength and flies through the wind'; so she was borne up by God. But Eliot’s speaker, still waiting for the wind to blow, imagines only the death wind that will bear him away."[14] According to Joseph Maddrey, "A Song for Simeon" shares themes with his more famous conversion poem “Ash Wednesday”, the first parts of which Eliot was writing when "A Song for Simeon" was written and published. Eliot uses the biblical story of Simeon to illustrate the "contrast between appearance and reality and humbly begs God to teach him the stillness that unifies the two."[16]

Eliot's Ariel poems and Ash Wednesday all explore this new experience of conversion, and toward the progress of the soul.[17]: p.163  Scofield writes that Eliot's depiction of Simeon presents "a figure to whom revelation has been granted but to whom it has come too late for this life."[9]: p.147  But as he awaits and asks for his death Simeon's understanding, he sees the consequences of the turning of faith to this new child and his mission. Simeon wants nothing of this "time of sorrow", adding that the fate of persecution for the consequences of faith is not for him.[17]: pp.166–167 

According to thy word.
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.[18]

According to Eliot biographer Lyndall Gordon, "Ash Wednesday" and the Ariel poems, "Eliot wonders if he does not belong to those who espouse Christianity officially without being properly committed, whose ostentatious piety is 'tainted with a self-conceit.'"[19]: p.225  The poem is inherently tied to Eliot's religious conversion experience, and connected to Eliot's reading of Anglican divine Lancelot Andrewes during this time. Andrewes, in an 1619 Ash Wednesday sermon, emphasized that conversion "must come from both mind and heart, thought and feeling, "the principall and most proper act of a true turning to God.'"[16][20] Andrewes' words are channeled again, when Eliot's Simeon "sees a faith that he cannot inhabit in "the still unspeaking and unspoken Word'."[14] Eliot uses the image of the winding staircase—an image that also appears in "Ash Wednesday" which Gordon states is a direct reference to this sermon, adding that "Eliot’s pentitent ... 'turning on the winding stair', acts out the two mental turns Andrewes prescribed for a conversion: a turn that looks forward to God and a turn that looks backward to one’s sins, sentencing oneself for the past."[19]: p.224 

The image of a winding stair has also been tied to scenes in Dante's journey from Purgatory to Paradise in the Divine Comedy.[21] Further, the image is thought associated with stairs as the path of mystical ascent in the writings of sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and saint John of the Cross.[14][22] Eliot often alludes to this symbol in several of his poems.[9]: pp.209–211 

Eliot's Simeon appears similar to Dante's depiction of Virgil in the Divine Comedy, as "the seer who can see only so far; the precursor who cannot enter the world that he makes possible."[14] Virgil, in the Divine Comedy, leads Dante through Hell (Inferno) and Purgatory (Purgatorio), but cannot guide him into Paradise—as a symbol of non-Christian philosophy and humanities, can help him no further in his approach to God.[23] In Eliot, Simeon will never know the Christian culture he prophesizes, sensing "the birth-pangs of a world that he will never occupy."[14][21]

Anti-Semitism

T.S. Eliot's poems have frequently been criticized for instances of Anti-Semitism—prejudice or discrimination against Jews. Anthony Julius writes that "A Song for Simeon" is “exceptional in a poetry in which elsewhere Jews are dumb. The voice, however is a disciplined one and speaks lines prepared for it...The song is for, not of Simeon. Eliot gives the Jew lines that locate him, and by implication all Jews, wholly within the Christian drama. Incapable of denying its truth, but equally incapable of living that truth."[24]: pp.70-71  He further states that Jews have no role in the Christian future, quoting Eliot's earlier poem, "Gerontion", he states that the Jews "may find a ledge there to squat on".[24]: pp.70-71  Julius compares Simeon to Moses—"fated to see the Promised Land but not to enter it. Witness to its truth, but denied its redemptive power, the Jew stands solemnly, humbly, outside Christianity’s gates."[24]: pp.70-71  Julius accuses Eliot of animating "the topoi of the Jew acknowledging his obsolescence."[24]: pp.30 

See also

References

  1. ^ Eliot, T(homas). S(tearns). "A Song for Simeon" in Ariel 16. (London: Faber and Faber, 1928).
  2. ^ a b c d Eliot, T(homas). S(tearns). Collected Poems: 1909–1935. (London: Faber & Faber; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1936); and Collected Poems: 1909–1962. (London: Faber & Faber; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1963).
  3. ^ Timmerman, John H. T.S. Eliot’s Ariel Poems: The Poetics of Recovery. (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1994), 117-123.
  4. ^ a b c d e Murphy, Russell Elliott. Critical Companion to T. S. Eliot: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. (New York: Facts on File/InfoBase Publishing, 2007).
  5. ^ Eliot, T(homas). S(tearns). Preface to For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order (London: Faber and Faber, 1929). The specific quote is: "The general point of view [of the essays] may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic [sic] in religion."
  6. ^ Staff. Books: Royalist, Classicist, Anglo-Catholic (a review of 1936 Harcourt, Brace edition of Eliot's Collected Poems: 1909–1935) in Time Magazine (25 May 1936). Retrieved 24 October 2013.
  7. ^ Eliot, T(homas). S(tearns). "The Journey of the Magi" (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1927).
  8. ^ Timmerman, John H. T.S. Eliot's Ariel Poems: The Poetics of Recovery. (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1994), 117.
  9. ^ a b c d Scofield, Martin. T. S. Eliot: The Poems. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
  10. ^ Pinion, F. B. A T.S. Eliot Companion. (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 173.
  11. ^ Eliot, William Greenleaf. "Nunc dimittis" (1886), lines 4–5.
  12. ^ Eliot, Charlotte Chauncy Stearns. William Greenleaf Eliot: Minister, Educator, Philanthropist. (Boston/New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1904), 351.
  13. ^ Southam, B.C. A Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot. Sixth edition. (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), 240–241.
  14. ^ a b c d e f Griffith-Jones, Robin (Rev'd). "Looking forward to a distant faith: A Song for Simeon looks to a world its speaker can never inhabit, says Robin Griffith-Jones" in Church Times (31 January 2007). Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  15. ^ Cf. Oser, Lee. T.S. Eliot and American Poetry. (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 94–97.
  16. ^ a b c Maddrey, Joseph. The Making of T.S. Eliot: A Study of the Literary Influences. (Jefferson, North Carolina: MacFarland & Company, 2009), 147–148.
  17. ^ a b Williamson, George. A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot: A Poem-by-poem Analysis (Syracuse University Press, 1998).
  18. ^ Eliot, T(homas). S(tearns). "A Song for Simeon" (1928), lines 25–30.
  19. ^ a b Gordon, Lyndell. T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life (London: Vintage, 1998).
  20. ^ Andrewes, Lancelot. "SERMON IV. Preached before King James, at Whitehall, on Wednesday, the Tenth of February, A.D. MDCXIX." (on Joel ii. 12, 13.). Retrieved 24 October 2013.
  21. ^ a b Cavallaro, Daniela. "A Song for Virgil: Dantean References in Eliot's 'A Song for Simeon'", Journal of Modern Literature 24(2) (Winter 2000/2001), 349-352.
  22. ^ Unger, Leonard. T.S. Eliot: Moments and Patterns (University of Minnesota Press, 1966), 167.
  23. ^ Kirkpatrick, Robin. Purgatorio (New York: Penguin, 2007), notes on Canto XXX and XXXI.
  24. ^ a b c d Julius, Anthony. T.S. Eliot: Anti-semitism and Literary Form. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
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