A Song for Simeon
T.S. Eliot’s A Song for Simeon is a poem written in 1928. It is one of five poems that Eliot contributed to the Ariel poems series of 38 pamphlets. The poem is seen by many critics and scholars as a discussion of the conversion experience. Critics have debated whether Eliot’s depiction of Simean is a negative portrayal of a Jewish figure and evidence of anti-Semitism on Eliot’s part.
About A Song for Simeon in brief
T.S. Eliot’s A Song for Simeon is a poem written in 1928. It is one of five poems that Eliot contributed to the Ariel poems series of 38 pamphlets. In 1927, Eliot converted to Anglo-Catholicism and his poetry took on a decidedly religious character. The poem is seen by many critics and scholars as a discussion of the conversion experience. Critics have debated whether Eliot’s depiction of Simean is a negative portrayal of a Jewish figure and evidence of anti-Semitism on Eliot’s part. Eliot was baptised into the Anglican faith on 29 June 1927 at Finstock, in Oxfordshire, and was confirmed the following day in the private chapel of Thomas Banks Strong, Bishop of Oxford. Eliot converted in private, but subsequently declared in his 1927 preface to a collection of essays titled For Lancelot Andrewes that he considered himself a classicist in literature, a royalist in politics, and an Anglo- Catholic in religion. His conversion informed and influenced his later poetry. Critical reviews of Eliot’s poems shifted as well, with some critics asserting that Eliot’s work suffered with the addition of Christian themes. One critic, Morton Zabel said that this “deprived his art of its once incomparable distinction in style and tone”. Other critics thought Eliot’s exploration ofChristian themes was a positive development in his poetry, including Gordon Symes, who recognised it as an evaluation of old age, an elucidation of its special grace and an appreciation of itsSpecial function in the progress of the soul”.
The poem’s narrative echoes the text of the Nunc dimittis, a liturgical prayer for Compline from the Gospel passage. Eliot introduces literary allusions to earlier writers Lancelot. Andrewes, Dante Alighieri and St. John of the Cross. Eliot turned to an event at the end of the Gospel of Luke for the second poem, the poem, ‘The Journey of the Magi’, to tell the story of the birth of Jesus. The poems were later published in both the 1936 and 1963 editions of Eliot’s collected poems. They were published by Faber and Gwyer, Ltd. and included an illustration by avant garde artist Edward McKnight Kauffer. The series, called the “Ariel Series”, consisted of 38 poems published between 1927 and 1931 featuring poems and brief prose from a selection of English writers and poets. For the first poem in the series, Eliot wrote, ‘A Song of Nativity,’ which was printed as the eighth in the Ariel series in August 1927. The printing of the sixteenth in theseries was completed on September 24, 1928. The five poems, including “A Song for Simeon”, were followed with three more poems: ‘Animula’ in October 1929, ‘Marina’ in September 1930, and ‘Triumphal March’ in October 1931. Four of the five poems were printed with illustrations by American-born avant-garde artist Eimim Kauffer, including ‘The Song of the Nativity’.
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