|
āJourney of the Magiā was published as a pamphlet in August 1927 by Faber & Gwyer, being the first of T. S. Eliotās contributions to a series called āthe Ariel Poems.ā In Critical Companion to T. S. Eliot: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work (Facts on File, 2007), Russell Elliott Murphy, a professor at the University of Arkansas, writes, āFor all of their acquaintance with mystery, its human dimensions, Eliot offers the suggestion that the magi could not possibly have understood the profundities of the unfolding mystery that they were to witness in its initial manifestation. [. . .] The speaker seems to know, or at the very least intuit, that his age and his kind, and all the wisdom of his world, is coming to an end and that [the birth of Christ] is the signal of their death. [. . .] The speaker confesses that his long-ago experience has forever unsettled his life; he is āno longer at ease hereā in his familiar surroundings, but to what purpose he neither puzzles nor supposes. Like Eliotās hollow men, he appears to have seen the light but is unable to either recognize its source or to follow it, so he shall die in the wilderness that, for Eliot, is a world without a coherent belief in a singular creation that serves a singular purpose.ā
|
