The Journey Of The Magi
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
"Journey of the Magi" is a poem by T.S. Eliot, first published in 1927 in a series of pamphlets related to Christmas. The poem was written shortly after Eliot's conversion to the Anglican faith. Accordingly, though the poem is an allegorical dramatic monologue that inhabits the voice of one the magi (the three wise men who visit the infant Jesus), it's also generally considered to be a deeply personal poem. Indeed, the magus in the poem shares Eliot's view that spiritual transformation is not a comfort, but an ongoing process—an arduous journey seemingly without end. The magus's view on the birth of Jesus—and the shift from the old ways to Christianity—is complex and ambivalent.
Summary
"It was freezing. We traveled at the worst time of the year, and it took us ages. The paths were difficult and the weather was horrible—it was a brutal winter." Our camels were in pain, unwilling to go on. They lay down in the snow. Me and the other magi missed the old days—the days of revelry in palaces, when beautiful women would bring us luxuries. The camel drivers were unreliable, full of complaints—some of them ran away, craving alcohol and women. Our fires kept going out and it was hard to find shelter. Wherever we went, the people seemed to dislike us. The villages we visited were filthy and lodging was expensive. It was a difficult journey. We decided to travel throughout the night, sleeping when we could. We heard voices telling us to stop being foolish and turn back.
Then one morning we arrived at a pleasant valley. It was damp but not snowy, and full of plant life. There was a stream and a water mill, and three trees on the horizon. We saw a white horse in a nearby meadow. We pulled up at a tavern with vines above the door. People asked us for money, and everyone there was drunk. No one gave us any useful information, so we continued along our way. That evening, we finally got to Bethlehem. It was, well... acceptable.
This all happened a long time ago, as I recall. If I had to, I would do it again. But write this down: did we undertake the journey for birth or death? We saw the baby Jesus, yes. I thought I knew birth and death, but I was wrong. Jesus's birth did not feel like a positive development, but something full of pain—like it represented our own death. We went back to our kingdoms and felt like we didn't belong there anymore, in the old ways. Our people seemed foreign to us, with their false idols. I would be happy to encounter another death.
Themes
Spiritual Death and Rebirth
“Journey of the Magi” is a deeply allegorical poem about the pain of spiritual rebirth. It’s worth noting, before looking at the poem directly, that it was written after Eliot himself had just experienced a dramatic conversion to the Anglican faith, which informed all of his poetry that came after. Though the poem is directly about one of the magi, the three wise men who went to visit the baby Jesus at the time of his birth, the poem is more generally about the pains of letting go of one way of life—one faith—and acknowledging the birth of another.
There are many variations on the magi story, but the biblical account tells how the magi were dispatched by King Herod to scope out whether what he had heard was true—that a new King of the Jews, Jesus Christ, had been born. The magi are tasked with finding Jesus and confirming his identity. The whole journey depicted in this poem, then, takes place on the border between two different worlds: pre-Christianity and post-Christianity. And as the poem’s speaker recollects the arduous journey to Bethlehem, he explores his own thoughts and feelings regarding the seismic shift in the world that Jesus’s birth represents.
The magi already had a pretty good way of life before they set off. They enjoyed positions of privilege, staying in “summer palaces on the slopes, the terraces, / And the silken girls bringing sherbet.” They lived in kingdoms (possibly as rulers, though the Bible doesn’t actually say this) where they felt at “ease.” The pilgrimage towards Jesus, then, is both a literal move away from their old worlds and a move towards a new spiritual world based on a different faith. Perhaps that’s why this journey is so arduous for the speaker. The practical difficulties faced by the magi throughout speak to the difficulties of spiritual rebirth, whether on an individual or a societal level. That is, the poem suggests that any great change comes with its pitfalls. The pain of the journey—with its long roads, rough sleeping, and unfriendly strangers—works like a kind of purification, stripping the magi of their old identities and preparing them for the new.
Indeed, when the magi do finally track down Jesus, it’s hardly a moment of celebration. The speaker frames it in an off-hand, almost flippant way: “it was (you might say) satisfactory.” He knows he has just met the son of God, and yet there is a distinct atmosphere of deflation and disappointment. Ultimately, this resignation is explained in the final stanza. The speaker asks rhetorically if the magi had been led all that way—and through such hardship—for “birth or death.” He acknowledges that there was a birth (in that they did find the baby Jesus), but “death” is perhaps the more revealing word here. With the birth of Christianity, the speaker senses the death of the old ways. The customs and traditions of his world—like magic, astrology, and paganism—are no longer valid because he has met the true son of God, who now represents the only real religion in the world.
The speaker becomes an imposter in his own world, then, which again suggests the pains of spiritual rebirth—those people that he once considered his peers are now “alien” to him, and his home doesn't feel comfortable anymore. That’s why, then, he seems to long for another death—because he is no longer at “ease” in the world he once knew. Spiritual transformation, then, is presented as a kind of trauma which, in this case, is unavoidable.
동방박사의 여행
"추위가 우리를 덮쳤고,
한 해 중 최악의 바로 그런 때였네
여행을 하기에는, 그런 먼 여행을 하기에는,
길은 깊었고 날씨는 매서웠던
겨울의 바로 한가운데였네."
낙타들은 부르트고, 발이 아프고, 다루기 힘들더니,
녹는 눈 속에 드러누워 버렸네.
우리는 후회할 때도 있었네,
언덕 위 여름 왕궁, 아름다운 테라스와
음료를 나르던 비단옷의 처녀들을 그리워하며.
낙타 짐꾼들은 욕하고, 불평하고,
달아나고, 술과 여자를 요구하였으며,
밤 모닥불은 꺼졌고, 잠잘 곳은 부족한데,
도시는 적대적이고, 마을은 불친절하며,
촌락은 더러우면서 비싼 값을 요구하였네.
참으로 힘든 고생이었네.
종국엔 우리는 밤새워 여행하는 것을
더 선호하였네, 토막잠을 자면서,
우리 귀에 노래하는 목소리를 계속 들으며,
이 모든 것이 어리석은 짓이라고 말하는.
새벽녘에 우리는 날씨가 온화한 계곡으로 내려갔네,
겨울 눈이 보이지 않는, 젖고, 초목 냄새가 나며,
개울이 흐르고 어둠 속에 물레방아가 돌고 있고,
낮은 하늘을 배경으로 세 그루의 나무가 서 있는,
그리고 한 마리 늙은 백마가 초원 위를 달리며 사라졌네.
그 후에 문틀이 포도넝쿨 잎으로 덮인 술집을 보았고,
여섯 명이 열린 문가에서 빈 포도주 부대를 발로 차면서,
은화를 걸고 주사위를 던지고 있었네,
하지만 얻을 만한 소식은 없었고, 우리는 여행을 계속하여
저녁 무렵에 그곳에 때맞춰 도착했네,
그것은 (굳이 말하자면) 만족스러웠네.
이 모든 것이 오래전 일이었네, 내 기억에는,
그리고 난 다시 하려고 할 거야, 하지만
분명히 해 두어야 해, 분명히 해 두어야 해,
우리가 그 먼 길을 간 이유가
'탄생'1 인지 아니면 '죽음'2를 위해서인지?
'탄생'이 있었던 것은 분명하네,
증거가 있고 의심의 여지가 없네. 난 탄생과 죽음을 보았네,
하지만 그 둘은 서로 다르다고 생각했네, 이 '탄생'은
우리에게 매우 쓰라린 고통이었고, '죽음' 처럼 우리의 죽음이었네.
우리는 고향인 이 왕국으로 돌아왔지만,
더 이상 여기는 마음이 편하지 않네, 낡은 율법 속에
낯선 백성들이 그들의 신을 열렬히 숭배하는 이곳은.
난 다시 한번 죽기를 원하네.
T. S. 엘리엇(T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965)은 미국에서 태어나 영국에 귀화한 시인, 수필가, 희곡 작가, 비평가, 편집인이다.
1948년 노벨문학상을 받았다. 20세기 가장 중요한 시인의 하나로 평가되며, 현대 모더니스트 영시의 주도적 시인이다.
이 시는 마태복음 2장 1-12절의 동방박사 이야기에 바탕을 두고 있다.
'동방박사' (Magi)는 예수 탄생을 경배하러 베들레헴을 방문한 '동쪽으로부터의 현인' (wise men from the East)을 말한다.
성경에는 동방박사의 숫자가 명시되어 있지 않다. 다만 황금, 유향, 몰약의 세 가지 선물을 가져왔기 때문에, 세 명으로 추정하였다.
그래서 '세 현인' (Three Wise Men), '세 명의 왕' (Three Kings) 또는 '세 동방박사' (Three Magi)로 불린다.
이 시는 베들레헴을 방문하고 돌아온 동방박사 중의 한 사람의 시각에서 쓰였다.
여행하기에 가장 나쁜 한겨울에 출발, 갖은 고생 후에 베들레헴에 도착하여, 예수의 '탄생'을 보고 고국으로 다시 돌아와 여행 소감을 적고 있다.
예수의 '탄생' 을 목격함으로써, 그전에 알고 있던 세계가 붕괴되는 '죽음'을 경험하며, 다시 돌아온 고국은 이미 자신에게 생소한 나라가 되었음을 느낀다.
진정한 신을 만나고 온 그에게는 고국의 사람들이 낡은 율법 속에 우상을 숭배하는 '낯선 백성' (alien people)이 되었기 때문이다.
이 시는 정신적 새로운 삶의 추구와 그에 따른 고통을 우화적으로 말하고 있다. 1927년 발간된 이 시는 엘리엇 개인의 신앙적 심경과 밀접한 관련이 있다.
1927년에 엘리엇은 영국 성공회를 받아들여, 세례를 받았다. 그의 인생의 중요한 결정이었으며, 이후의 시에 기독교적 주제가 많이 반영되는 계기가 되었다. 이 시도 그중의 하나이다.
시는 '극적 독백' (dramatic monologue) 형식으로 쓰였다.