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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012
One ought, indeed, to study the development of the art of love from the Provençal poets onwards… But such study is vain unless we have first made the conscious attempt, as difficult and hard as rebirth, to pass through the looking-glass into a world which is just as reasonable as our own… When we repeat Tutti li miei penser parlan d'Amore we must stop to think what amore means…
In Eliot's mind the Christmas tree becomes one with Christ's cross. His Thomas Becket preaches to this effect in the Christmas sermon which is the preface to his martyrdom in Murder in the Cathedral:
It was in this same night that has just passed, that a multitude of the heavenly host appeared before the shepherds at Bethlehem, saying ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will’; at this same time of all the year that we celebrate at once the Birth of Our Lord and His Passion and Death upon the Cross.
That sermon is very helpful for an understanding of Eliot's view of the Incarnation, which became the governing idea of all his poetry after 1925. Thomas strives to make one event of the birth and death of Christ; to identify Christmas Day and Good Friday; and to associate the good tidings of great joy with the deaths of Christian martyrs.
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