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The journey of the wise men

The Christmas theme is the subject of TS Eliot’s poem The Journey of the Magi. It begins with one of the three Magi telling us the story long after the event has occurred; the Magi that symbolize the three wise men from the east who come to Bethlehem to witness the birth of Christ, also the birth of a new religion: Christianity. The speaker recounts the weariness that overtook them during their journey through the arduous terrain, desolate and gloomy and bitingly cold, which they had to cross on camelback to reach their place of Nativity, a place where the search for a new faith has ended. . he led them to.

In this quest, after setting out on their journey, the tasks they face go through the cold desert and harsh landscapes, their irritable camels with sore legs becoming almost unmanageable, and in the villages where they have to stop to rest, the huts. owners who charge exorbitant fares so they decide to travel all night in the dark, only occasionally managing to nap – all this and more – make pilgrims wonder if their decision to undertake the journey was wrong, an act of “madness” first? They reflect wistfully on the pleasures of the summer palaces on the slopes of the hills on whose terraces, they rejoiced to be served with a glass of sherbet at the hands of beautiful maidens swathed in silk. But now with no turning back, all they can do is continue.

Nearing the end of their journey, they finally arrive through a valley of wet snow, unlike the harsh sub-freezing ones they had crossed, on the outskirts of a city where Nature’s hostilities seem to be abating; they can smell vegetation, hear the sweet sound of a stream and a water mill that speak to them of human dwellings, just as night gives way to dawn. There pass “the three trees in a low sky”, probably loaded with symbolic clouds of doubt, and the vision of three three trees is a gatekeeper for the crosses of Calvary, those of Christ and those of the two thieves. The old white horse is an evocative image of the victorious Christ riding on a white horse in his second coming, that is, of his redemptive mission of humanity.

Further on they come to a tavern shaded by vine leaves and find three men busy, talking quietly with furtive glances, gambling and drinking obscenely. But all this they cannot understand as a conspiracy that is being hatched, and so they went ahead. These are all allusions to Communion in the tavern sheets, to Christ’s betrayal for thirty pieces of silver, to the offenses Christ faced before the Crucifixion, and to the soldiers playing dice for Christ’s garments in the Crucifixion.

Continuing on their way, the pilgrims at dusk arrive at their Nativity scene, in time to witness the birth of Christ, and also the birth of a new faith. But somehow this arriving at your destination with all the hardships suffered along the journey is not one of jubilation, but only “satisfying”. In the following lines we learn the reason for it: why devoid of exuberance and not satiety as it should have been.

The narrator explains that this recollection is of an event that happened a long time ago, and now, if necessary, he would do it all over again, “but put/This put/This:”, the emphatic tone almost certainly implies his now foreknowledge of the conspiracy, this “murder” of Jesus, he will ‘set up’, i.e. not let it happen, and curiously wonders

“Were we led all the way to

Birth or death?

“I have seen the birth and death” of Christ; this, says the Magician in retrospective terms, and after having witnessed the resurrection of Christ he has managed to believe in the Incarnation, believed impossible in his old faith. They cling to the old faith that is still a part of their lives, and which Christ has come to sweep away, but the shock of the ‘witnessing’ experience has made their usual pleasures derived from observing the old religion, to which even now they would return to memory, like meaningless realms. The narrator feels that his long life has already suffered a preliminary death. Their gods, whom they believed, now appear as strange gods. And he now wishes for another “death” for his final release.

For it is only through the “death” of his old religious faith and its myths that he can be born or converted to the Christian faith, and this is the liberation he now devoutly desires.

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