Journey Of The Magi
T.S. Eliot’s
This Christmas poem is about the Epiphany and was created the very year of Eliot’s conversion to Christianity (Fleisner, 66). Therefore the theme of religion is an important one if we are to analyse the poem correctly. In the book of Ephesians in the Bible, Paul describes the rebirth of the world upon Christ’s death, emphasising the Ephesians’ new life (2:4-5). This theme of death and rebirth is present in the poem , which, I will argue, is structurally and internally divided into three stages; corresponding to the Sacrament of Penance: contrition (guilt), confession and satisfaction.
To understand this poem, one has to understand the impact that Christ had on the World. At ...
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In the first stanza, this "spiritual sorrow" is apparent by the contrast Eliot uses, of the Magi’s difficult journey. In fact, the central focus of criticism has been on the journey; the "cold coming" (line 1) during "the worst time of the year" (line 2), emphasising the climatic statement of the stanza: "A hard time we had of it" (line 16). The Magus talks of their sorrowful past life of ease, the times they "regretted…the silken girls bringing sherbet" (lines 8-10), and in the same way that they are ‘physically’ moving towards Christ, they feel they are progressing spiritually, putting a personal ban on the sinful lives they have had. This act of contrition seems genuine because they are pressured by the "voices singing in [their] ears, saying/ That this was all folly" (lines 19-20). These are the voices of the camel men, the hostile cities and the unfriendly towns, voices that tempt the wise men to cease their ...
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silver he was paid for betraying Jesus. However, the white horse could subsequently be associated with death, evoking images of the Crucifixion and the great disaster that event was for Jesus’ followers.
The second stage of the Sacrament, the actual confession, takes place in the final stanza when the narrator starts his confession to the addressee, who may well be taken as St. Mathew, (this is the view of a substantial number of scholars) by saying "…set down/This set down/This…" (lines 33-35). In the Oxford Dictionary, confession is described as "the manifestation of one’s sins to an authorised priest for the purpose of obtaining God’s forgiveness." The form that the ...
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"Journey Of The Magi." Essayworld.com. October 11, 2006. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Journey-Of-The-Magi/53763.
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