The story of the Magi, the three wise and rich kings who took a long journey, following the shooting star to greet the newborn infant Jesus is a very important story of the Christian culture. If we think of the Magi, the first things that come to our minds are the birth of Jesus, Christmas, a holy and solemn mood and joy as Jesus has come to our world as the Redeemer.
The Journey of the Magi is one of Eliot's four Ariel Poems, which was published as part of a series of illustrated Christmas greetings pamphlets. This was Eliot's first commissioned poem.
Describing the long and tiring journey of the three kings could emphasize that the whole journey was worth struggling to see and greet the infant Jesus, but it is not what Eliot tries to express.
This narrative and cold tone makes him capable of looking at the Magi objectively and without bias. Nevertheless, even without passionate emotions and despite the varying lenght of lines and the changing rhyme schemes, the rythm and the carefully thought-out poetic figures make the Journey of the Magi a real poem. In my opinion, writing about such a well-known and holy event as the myth of the Magi in a tone like this and expressing deep feelings without exuberant and usual emotions is something outstanding and special. .
The atmosphere of the first paragraph is unbiased as well, we read a cold, objective description. The narrator, one of the Magi presents the details of the journey, in a manner as if he was tired and as if he was repeating the too well known, something that he has explained many times. The first five lines are put in inverted commas. These lines are taken from Lancelot Andrews's Nativity Sermon preached before James I on Christman Day in 1622. Eliot cites these lines in his Lancelot Andrews essay as one of those "flashing lines" which "never desert the memory" . The text given in the poem is not the original one, there are slight changes made by the poet.
After Eliot's death, Valerie dedicated her time to preserving his legacy, by editing and annotating "The Letters of T. S. ... T. S. ... His critical prose set the aesthetic standards for the New Criticism, and his journal Criterion was one of the primary arbiters of taste throughout the 1920's and 1930's. ...
The Journey of the Magi is a poem by T. S. ... Lines 2-4 express the hardships that have been endured through Eliot's life and the Magi's journey. ... Eliot wants his readers to visual image of the immoral men and women by using synesthesia, Eliot produces a vivid understanding of the wise men's journey. Eliot uses figurative language for the readers to experience the spiritual journey of the wise men. ...
T. S. Eliot is, to many, just another name heard, but never truly known about. For a select few, he is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century and "the" modernist poet and critic of all time. T. S. Eliot had a few select influences in his life that helped him and pu...
Stages of Acceptance in T. S. ... The Quartets taken together, then, embody a journey from the ignorance of time to an awakening in eternity. ... The speaker asserts, "[T]o be conscious is not to be in time," for consciousness implies a fixed perspective while time is characterized by relativity (around the fixed point of the present). ... According to Thompson, "[T]he phrase involves a contradiction since a present really present is not temporal. ...
Eliot In T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. ... The Inferno is Dante's journey through the rings of Hell in his search for enlightenment. ... (Eliot 10) "Do I dare/ Disturb the universe? ... (Eliot 131) Eliot makes many references to many great literary and artistic works throughout the poem. ...
Eliot was an extremely educated person in many fields of expertise. ... Eliot explicitly indicates that there is a betrayal of God in "The Waste Land." ... Consequently, this forces the reader to acknowledge his/her inferiority, and it also impels the reader to question whether or not he/she "know[s] only A heap of broken images" (21-22). ... Eliot, being a scholar in countless areas, surely studied Indian philosophy. ... Therefore, it is not the actual religion which Eliot uses that is significant, but it is the message that Eliot hopes to convey with these religious allusions. ...
Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi", the speaker is grumbling about a trip that he once made. ... Eliot's poem the speaker isn't really talking bad about God or a heavenly being, but that of a terrible journey and the confused outcome of it. ... Eliot's poem appeals more to the sounds than that of Cofer's poem though. ... Eliot's purpose is only to tell a story and to foreshadow the future. ... Eliot's poem obviously believes in God and his son. ...
Eliot in "The Love Song of J. ... Moreover, women of the early 1900's were commonly thought of as inadequate and served exclusively to complement the man. ... However, social expectations of incapability and purposelessness of women began to deteriorate during the early 1920's. ... Both the lady and Eliot's Prufrock, are socially conscious characters. ... " (Eliot 1921)....