Eliot's Death of an Old World

In this video, I talk about T.S. Eliot’s 1927 poem, “The Journey of the Magi.” Dashed off in just forty-five minutes, Eliot’s poem looks at the Christmas miracle from the perspective of the Magi, now grown old and full of years. In the midst of the Christmas season, we can forget that the Birth was not just the beginning of a new world, but the ending of the old. What must it be like, Eliot asks, to live in the knowledge you are between two worlds, having outlived the old, and unprepared for the new?

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