Eliot's 'Journey of the Magi'

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T.S. Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’

‘Journey of the Magi’ was written by T.S. Eliot during one of the most crucial points of his adult life. It was during this period of his life that Eliot, a staunch atheist in his earlier years, was considering a possible spiritual rebirth as a Christian. It is mainly for this reason that ‘Journey’ is largely devoid of the squalid images of twentieth-century life that most people associate with Eliot’s earlier poetry. The despair and brutal morbidity found in some of his earlier poems such as ‘Preludes’ and ‘The Wasteland’ is noticeably absent in ‘Journey’, which is instead infused with much subtler allusions to the various paradoxes of life, contrasting as he does, hope and despair; faith and disbelief; ease and hardship.

Superficially, ‘Journey of the Magi’ is about exactly that: The journey of one of the three wise men to the cradle of Jesus. It was also a poem that was inspired by a religious sermon, one preached by Lancelot Andrews that told of the struggle the wise men had to face journeying to the side of Christ. However, this is by no means all the poem is about: delve beneath its surface and you will come to understand that ‘Journey’ is very much about Eliot’s own struggle with his religious identity. His metaphorical journey of rebirth is similar to the Magi’s literal one: one that is fraught with hardship, but one that has its own bittersweet rewards.

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The poem begins: ‘A hard time we had of it/ The very worst of the year/ For a journey and such a long journey/The ways deep and the weather sharp/The very dead of winter.” The opening lines lay down quite plainly that as important as the journey to Christ’s cradle was, the anticipation of reaching their destination in no way dulled their perception of its hardships. It was as much about journeying away from what Eliot and the Magi both knew as it was about them journeying towards something they wanted to embrace. There is no attempt to romanticise the ...

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