culture. remembering Salvador Espriu
The Magi, Yeats’ “unsatisfied ones” 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 depths 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.
William Butler Yeats
Miquel Àngel Llauger As we all know, the Gospel according to St Matthew speaks of the “Magi who came from the Orient” in search of a child who has just been born. That is the version in the Montserrat Bible. The Catalan Interconfessional Bible refers to “wise men”. Both are possible translations of mágoi, a Greek term of Persian origin referring to members of a priestly caste who were the heirs to the ancient wisdom of the Babylonian astronomers. These magi, or wise men, only becamse kings in later tradition and were in one way or another given even later a number, names, provenance and characterisation. Universal poetry and indeed, universal versions, have been seduced by this event which Orthodoxy
views as representing the discovery of truth by peoples of pagan tradition. It is, together with the above narrative, the great Christmas story. And it therefore seems to demand of poets the tonality of a pious storlyline, of children’s stories and decorative colourful description. This was the perspective of W. Goethe (in a poem translated by Marià Manent almost century ago) among many others such as the American, H. W. Longfellow, the Catalan, Jacint Verdaguer, and Rubén Darío. A number of great poets have, though, been able to see that the story of the wise men from the East is about more complex spiritual trajectories, of a more uncertain outcome, so to speak. One must inevitably