Now, as The Epiphany approaches, or do we approach it, I am struck with the
vivid and evocative imagery of two 20th century poems. I notice especially
very different mood of the endings.

The first is Yeats', The Magi:

"Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor."

And the next is Eliot's 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, sore-footed, 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 arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may 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."


These poetic imaginings are so different from each other. Yeats' Magi are
archetypal and mythic and very much elite figures, "the pale unsatisfied
ones" still searching for the meaning of, "the uncontrollable mystery on
the bestial floor." (This foreshadows his "Second coming.") His magi seem
acutely aware that something mysterious and uncontrolled and new has taken
place. Yet they keep returning at least in thought and imagination to try
and comprehend what may indeed be incomprehensible. And yet, Yeats was not
a rationalist setting out to demystify the mystery. I am finally left with
the sense of the strangeness that haunts these figures who themselves are
mysterious and powerful figures, encountering another, perhaps newer,
perhaps alien, mysterious figure. And how is it that they remain, "by
Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied", and so have to return to the mystery of
the birth? Surely that mystery, like Calvary, recurs again and again in
many hearts and souls. And maybe its that simple.

And Eliot's Magi. More like ordinary people, complaining of the rigors of
the pilgrimage, and yet pushing on to the goal, the preliminary goal of the
"temperate valley", full of symbols, but yielding no information. And still
pushing onward, and arriving "at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory."

But then there are those final lines, the end of their ascendancy:

this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

And yet one writes: "I would do it again but....."

This was or is a birth not quite like any other, and calls the contemporary
situation into question. It bids us recognize that each birth brings
someone, not something, entirely new into the world. This condition of
natality goes before our condition of mortality. And yet we keep returning
to this birth either in spite of or maybe because of its turbulent promise.
Eliot's Magi can foresee the coming turbulence and dread it; Yeats' magi
hope to find the mystery underlying the turbulence. Does Yeats have in mind
that hope was the last of the evils to escape Pandora's box?

Arendt's comments about the connection between birth and action are, I
think, to the point here.

"...the new beginning inherent in birth can
make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses
the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting." (p.9)

"Šthe new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. (p.178)

from "The Human Condition", Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958.


Warren Wilson
wwilson@halcyon.com
Bainbridge Island, Washington

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O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.

WBYeats

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--John Freeman Lohr, Presby. Ch. @ Franklin Lakes, NJ