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ABSTRACT
W. B. YEATS: VISION AND EXPERIENCE
By

Okifumi Komesu

This study concerns itself with the question of whether W. B. Yeats
was a visionary poet or not in the light of his Oriental interest. The
question is not new; indeed, it is central to the discussion of Yeats's
thought and art. Opinions, however, are divided on the problem. One
line of criticism explains away the poet as a non-visionary poet. An-
other line of criticism holds that the poet did attain the vision of
‘Vnity of Being.” Still another views the poet as a visionary failure.

The writer is sympathetic with the third of the critical views
cited above. It is the writer's belief that Yeats should not be looked
upon either as a non-visionary or as a perfect visionary. His mode of
thinking was characterized by a double perspective. Neither the vision-

ary perspective nor the non-visionary perspective should be denied in

 

the study of Yeats.

Yeats's thought was characterized by a polarity of perspectives;
the monistic-experiential and the dualistic-cognitive. The monistic-
experiential perSpective motivated Yeats to adopt the life of a saint
whereby he tried to attain a unified vision of eternal truth; while
the dualistic-cognitive perspective envisaged as an ideal type of
existence the life of an artist, in which the poet tried to live at-
firmatively in the rugged world of time, "the foul rag-and-bone
Shop of the heart." These antithetical perspectives did not deny
each other in Yeats's mind; rather, they complemented each other,

'Wying each other's life, living each other's death,” to use the

 

 

_

 

 

Okifumi Kemesu

Heraclitian phrase Yeats loved so much. The one perspective implied
and necessitated the other. Climbing the ladder to Heaven meant for
Yeats to start climbing at the bottom rung of the ladder planted on
earth.

Of the two poles the pole of unity was ideal for Yeats. However,
he was skeptical about the possibility of ever attaining a unified
vision. Thus, the idea of failure haunted him till death. In fact,
the realization of failure seems to be his personal myth that underlay

his thought. In this respect, Yeats's meeting with the East is signifi-

cant, for Eastern thought is characterized by the monistic—experiential

perspective and emphasizes the importance of the experience of Spiritual
freedom.

This study attempts to delineate the patterns of failure in Yeats's
understanding and adaptation to his purposes of Eastern thought and art,
namely, the Hindu philosophy and the Japanese Noh drama. It argues
against the extravagant claim on Yeats's debt to the East. Further,
it looks for discrepancies that exist between Yeats's thought and
aesthetic and Eastern thought and the Noh. It concludes that the
double perspective of monistic-experiential and the dualistic—cognitive
is basic in Yeats's interest in the East.

This study does not concern itself with source—hunting. The writer
realizes, of course, that any comprehensive study of Yeats's thought
and art cannot be done without utilizing ample source material. 0n the
other hand, he strongly doubts the feasibility of the method used by
some critics who try to align Yeats’s thought and art to a particular
doctrine or system from which Yeats gained extensive information.

One must be extremely careful in using source material when one studies

 

 

 

Okifumi Komesu

such an artist as Yeats, who was widely read in the literatures of both
the west and the East, and who comprehended much but who misapprehended
also. Most of Yeats's sources have been studied, but some critics make
too extravagant a claim on Yeats's debt to his sources. Some sources
Yeats misapprehended and some he only partially adapted to his works.
It is time, the writer believes, that one should examine how much Yeats
is really indebted to his sources. This study constitutes an attempt

at such an examination.

 

W. B. YEATS: VISION AND EXPERIENCE

By

Okifumi Komesu

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1968

 

 

 

$57597

Cliopyright by
OKIFUMI KOMESU

I968

 

 

 

 

PREFACE

This study represents the conclusion of my academic training in
the United States which lasted for a period of eight years. Being an
Asian, I have found the training valuable not only in the purely pro—
fessional sense but also in the broad sense of cultural and personal
philosophy: my experience with American culture and the literature of
the English-speaking world helped me to shape a new life and world view.

The choice of the topic for the thesis was almost inevitable, for
I have felt that my cultural background and my experience in the United
States can be most profitably utilized for the study of the East—West
relationship. Moreover, my own experience is itself a living example
of East-West relationship. In a sense, this study is a dialogue be—
tween Yeats, the apprentice to Eastern arts, and myself, an apprentice
to Western trade.

My thanks are due to the United States Civil Administration of the

Ryukyus for a scholarship which enabled me to complete my undergraduate

 

program, and to the Department of English, Michigan State University,
for a graduate assistantship. I am especially grateful to Professors
C. David Mead and Robert J. Geist, without whose consideration and
personal interest in my work I would not have been able to come this
far. My thanks are also due to Professor Sam S. Baskett, who was a
member of my guidance committee and who is one of the most inspiring
teachers I have had, and to Professor Hazard Adams, who first intro-
duced me to the works of w. B. Yeats and who was the original chairman
of my guidance committee. Last but not least, I am grateful to my wife,
whose enduring and loving heart has always been a stay and comfort to

me through the difficult years of my graduate study in a foreign land.

ii

 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

PREACE . I I I I O 0 O O U . O O O O I I O I U C D 0 O O I I D O i 1

CHAPTER

I o INTRODUCT 1 0N . o o o o o o o a c o o o 0 a o o o O o o o 1

II. THE SAINT OR THE ARTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . .

III C BRAmA-N AND DAIMON O O O O I C U C V O O . O O C O I O O 51

IV. THE FLOWER OR THE GYRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

v. THEFLOWERTHATNEVERBLOOMED

VI 0 CONCLUSION o o o u o o o o o O O I o I I I o o o

BIBLIOGRAPHY......ooooeoooouoooeoo

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The idea that w. B. Yeats failed as a visionary poet was put for-

 

ward by C. M. Bowra as early as 1943. Bowra, who saw Yeats's develop—
ment as a struggle between "Soul" and "Self" or the mystical Yeats and
the life-affirming Yeats, concluded that the "Self" was the final vic-
tor.l Yeats as a visionary poet is a much discussed topic, and there
have been disagreements as to whether he was a success or a failure.
Hazard Adams essentially agrees with Bowra but goes beyond him by say-
ing that Yeats's poems "are truly great poems for the reason that they
dramatize their own failure as truly visionary documents."2 F. A. C.
Wilson attempts to prove in his two books that Yeats can and must be

placed in the "Heterodox.tradition in mysticism."3 A third position

 

is taken by Alex Zwerdling, who sees Yeats as a sort of tragic compro-
mise, a mystic who "did not leave man's world behind."4

Bowra's formula is convenient for explaining the genesis of the
"old man's eagle mind" of the later period of Yeats, but it is inade—
quate to explain the antinomical concept of subjectivity and objectivity

in the thought and cosmology of Yeats, for, though Bowra's "Soul“ may mean

 

l. C. M. Bowra, The Heritage 2: S bolism, London: Macmillan, 1962,

p. 214.

 

N

 

. Hazard Adams, Blake and Yeats: The Contrary Vision, Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1955, p. 272.

 

0)
e

F. A. C. Wilson, y. E. Yeats and Tradition, London: Victor Gollancz,
1961, p. 16.

4. Alex Zwerdling, Yeats and 3&2 Heroic Ideal, New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 1965, p. 171.

 

 

 

2
Yeats's "subjective tincture," the "Self" can hardly be called
“objective" in the Yeatsian sense. Bowra's insight, however, antici—
pated two critical views of Yeats now in vogue. One is to explain
away Yeats as a non-visionary poet and concentrate on the poet as a
literary artist. The other View makes much of the antinomical tension
and finds Yeats's creative energy in the perennial struggle between the
soul and the self.

The critics with the former view are mainly interested in the
symbology of Yeats rather than in his thought. At the hands of these
critics Yeats's prose writings become a mere set of metaphors and
symbols for his poetry, a grammar of romantic symbolism. Helen H.
Vendler, for instance, who seeks in A Vision “a systematic background
against which Yeats's poetry and plays must be read to acquire their
proper resonance,"5 finally reduces the book to "a series of metaphor—
ical statements about poetry."6 Northrop Frye, in his essay on Yeats,
does essentially the same thing. He says in the essay:

1 have laid such stress on the Vision because it does give
an account, for better or worse, of the symbolic structure which
underlies Yeats's poetry from at least 1917 onward. Q..It presents
a physical or phenomenal world apprehended by the consciousness
and a hyperphysical world apprehended by the sub-conscious, and
in so doing it preserves the original romantic cult of nature
which led to identifying Spiritual and hyperphysical reality.

It does not get, except in theory, to any order above that of

nature or to any mode of consciousness in which the gap between
subject and object is bridged.

5. Helen Hennessy Vendler, Yeats' 3 Vision and the Later Pla s, Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1963, p. 5.

6. Ibid., p. 30.

 

7. Northrop Frye, l'ables of Identit , studies in Poetic Mythology,

New Yerk: Harcourt, Brace 8 World, 1963, p. 231.

 

 

Two things become clear: in Frye's view, A Vision is a grammar book

 

of romantic symbolism in which one is to find the secret of structure
of the later poetry of Yeats. And, A Vision is not to be taken as a
visionary document. The second point is important, because it denies
Yeats a visionary experience. Elsewhere Frye reinforces the point by
comparing Yeats's system with Blake’s. Yeats's is essentially a vision
of the cyclical world with "the upper limit sealed off“; that is,
Yeats lacks the vortex of vision whereby one is to escape from Beulah
into eternity. This second point is also important because only after
this point is established is it possible to treat A Vision and other
writings of Yeats as a body of grammatical rules of poetry, "a means
of expression and not a body of doctrine, not something to look at but
something to look and speak through, a dramatic mask."8 Vendler arrives
at her critical position through a similar process. She denies a mysti-
cal orientation in A Vision and believes that "A Vision is something
not supernatural in its concerns, but natural....“9
Critics at the other pole are those who make much of the tension
that exists between Yeats's self and antiself. They concern themselves
with Yeats's progress from antinomy to the Unity of Being. Two differ-
ent views of Yeats result from this critical attitude. One is to
regard Yeats as a successful artist capitalizing on his failure as a
visionary. The failure of vision caused by too powerful a pull of

the antinomical world of nature is the source of Yeats's creative

 

 

8. Ibid., p. 236.

9! Vendler, 22¢ Cit., p0 3.

 

energy. This is Adams's position. The critics with the other view
see Yeats more as a dramatist than a visionary. Leonard E. Nathan be-
lieves that Yeats's antinomical concept is represented in his dranm

as a "war of orders," the natural order of dualism and the super—
natural order of Unity of Being. The hero, who is of the natural
order, "must strive against the world with his excessively passionate
longing for perfection, for Unity of Being, and is necessarily defeated
by his own and the world's limits. The very character of the world,

of which he is a part, its perpetual divisiveness, makes Unity of Being
impossible...."lo Out of this failure emerges a tragic stature and a
tragic vision of the hero.

The critics cited above, regardless of their different views and
approaches, fall into a group on one point: they consider Yeats either
a non—visionary or a visionary failure. Against these critics there
are some, including Wilson and Zwerdling, who hold that Yeats did

attain the vision of Unity of Being. Though he recognizes an antinomi-

 

cal conflict between visionary susceptibility and compensatory earthi-
ness that exists in Yeats, Wilson believes that it is "useful to con-
centrate in the first place on his visionary sensibility," and that
"his vision...has too often been denied him in the past."11 é Vision,
too, is "the product of acquired learning and of the visionary
faculty...."12 And thus he concludes that

10. Leonard E. Nathan, The Tragic Drama 2: William Butler Ye ts, Figures
22 a Dance, New York: Columbia University Press, 1965, p. 163.

 

11. Wilson, y. B. Yeats and Tradition, p. 18.

 

12. Ibid., p. 19.

 

years of love for the man and his work have left me in the position
of believing that what Yeats meant by visionary experience, the
greatest sustaining influence on his life and art, was not substan-
tially other than the state described by more orthodox mystics.l3
Having placed Yeats in what he calls the "heterodox tradition of
mysticism," Wilson proceeds to track down the sources of Yeats's symbols,
showing how the traditional symbols are used in the plays and some of the
lyrics of Yeats. Zwerdling reaches a different conclusion from Wilson's.
In his recent book, in which he discusses different types of Yeats's
heroic image, Zwerdling includes a visionary as a heroic type. He argues
against Bowra and others, who believe that the earthly triumphs over the
spiritual in the later days of Yeats, and insists that for Yeats a union
with God never meant the casting away of earthly desires. A vision of
reality for Yeats was always nurtured by his keen feeling for natural
things, as, according to Zwerdling, in the Byzantium poems. Thus, "the
Yeatsian visionary does not leave the actual world behind in the moment
of vision. He sees hggh the tree and its form, 2233 the dancer and the
dance, bggh the scarecrow and the child, in one instant of time."14
Essentially the same attitude is maintained by Whitaker, who applies
the dichotomy of the visionary and the earthly perspectives to Yeats's
concept of history. Like Zwerdling he sees no fundamental conflict

between the two perspectives, which he calls "a God's-eye view of the

panorama of history"15 and "existential immersion in history." 6 "In

 

13. Ibid., p. 20.
14. Zwerdling, 22. 212., p. 169.

15. Thomas Whitaker, Swan and Shadow, Yeats' 5 Dialogue with Histor,
Chapel Hill. University of North Carolina Press, 1964, p. 8,

 

16. Ibid., p. 9.

 

 

portions of A Vision," Whitaker believes, "Yeats stands above time, and
history is projected beneath him as an almost completely external
object.... Elsewhere he explores his concrete relation to Sligo, to his
ancestors, and to the immediate history of Ireland-—seeing himself as
an actor in a drama that combines present and past in a living whole."17
These two perspectives, qualifying each other at every point of Yeats's
thought, gradually fuse themselves into a single dramatic vision.
Whitaker traces the development of each perspective and shows how the
group of symbols belonging to each perspective becomes a part of a
poetic whole.

I have noted the variety of Yeats‘s critics, with their different
approaches and interests leading to different conclusions, in order
to show how important the problem of Yeats as a visionary poet is in
the criticism of Yeats and how diverse conclusions have been reached
by these critics. I have not, of course, exhausted the list of critics
who deal with the problem in one way or another. My chief concern here
is not to make a survey of the Yeatsian scholarship dealing with the
question, but to bring to the fore the problem of visionary experience-—
the problem which cannot escape the attention of Yeatsian critics of
whatever view. These critics, however, do not do justice to Yeats, for
they ignore, in one way or another, some vital aspects of Yeats that
are fundamental to his mode of thinking. Those who consider the poet
a non-visionary display considerable uneasiness by taking a rather
uncomfortable step before they reach their conclusion, that is, declar-

ing 5 Vision and other visionary documents of Yeats as insincere. 0n the

 

17. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

7
other hand, those who accept the poet wholeheartedly as a visionary
success seem to run the risk of glossing over delicate expressions of
"bitter" and intricate patterns of failure pervading his prose and
verse. Above all, they ignore the dramatic confession that Yeats him—
self made in 1937 at the end of g Vision. It is my belief that Yeats
should not be looked upon either as a non-visionary or as a perfect
visionary. His mode of thinking was characterized by a double per-
spective, which is aptly revealed in his introduction to a Vision
(1937). Concerning the question whether or not he believes in what he
says in the book, he writes:
To such a question I can but answer that if sometimes, overwhelmed
by miracle as all men must be when in the midst of it, I have
taken such periods literally, my reason soon recovered; and now
that the system stands out clearly in my imagination I regard
them as stylistic arrangements of experience comparable to the
cubes in the drawing of wyndham Lewis and to the ovoids in the
sculpture of Brancusi. They have helped me to hold in a single
thought reality and justice.18

Neither the visionary perspective nor the non-visionary perspective

should be denied in the study of Yeats.
II

Yeats was a candid dualist, but he was a dualist of a very sophist-
icated type. He was a dualist in the sense that he believed in antinomy
as the basic principle of reality; he was a dualist in setting up two
worlds—-the world of names and forms and the world of unity; he was
a dualist in trying to be both a saint and an artist; but above all,

he was a dualist in the very sense that he adopted a dualistic mode of

 

18. 5 Vision, p. 25.

 

 

 

 

8
thinking while keeping monistic aspirations. Yeats's failure stemmed
from such a double perspective.

Yeats's dualism perplexed generations of Yeatsian critics. As I
have outlined above, some saw a war between the two perspectives, some
saw a complementary relationship between the two, some saw a final
resolution of them, and others looked upon them as an aesthetic device.
Non, except perhaps Adams, saw the dualism as a process-—a process in
the Yeatsian multifarious senses, philosophical, spiritual, cultural,
as well as aesthetic. At one end of the process is the status quo and
at the other end is the world of the ideal; stated in other terms, the
self and the antiself, the conflict and the unity, the Anima Hominis
and the Anima hundi, the "Hodos Chameliontos" and the "Thirteenth Sphere,"
and so on. The two poles are not completely severed; rather,they exist
in one continuum. They are not in eternal conflict like the war between
Heaven and Hell, in which one or the other must triumph, but in a sort
of reconciliatory war, not killing each other, but "dying each other's
life, living each other's death."19 The one world inmlied and necessi-
tated the other. Finding the antiself meant for one to start from the
self. Climbing the ladder to Heaven meant for one to start climbing
at the bottom rung of the ladder planted on earth. Yeats spent the
better part of his life constructing and climbing that ladder. When,
in his later years, he found that ladder gonegohe found himself at

the spot where the ladder started.

 

19. Ibid., p. 68.

Poems, pp.

 

20. See "The Circus Animals' Desertion" in the EflllSSEEQ
335-336.

 

 

 

flvw i;-'
9

0f the two poles the pole of unity was ideal for Yeats. To attain
a unity at all levels of life—~8piritual, aesthetic, cultural, philo—
sophical, etc—-was Yeats's lifelong aim. His study of Irish mythology,
his interest in western and Eastern occultiSm, his fascination with
the Japanese Noh drama, his absorption of various philosophical systems
all come to one point, that is, his aim of achieving a unity out of
multiplicity, a resolution of all conflict. At the spiritual level he
endeavored to attain a Unity of Being, a turning of consciousness into
pure knowledge; at the aesthetic level, he tried to achieve a Unity of
Image, an.image whereby reality is evoked; and at the cultural level, g
be tried to achieve a Unity of Culture, a Byzantium where all things L
have oneness as if they were conceived by a single mind.

Yeats's effort to achieve his lifelong aim culminated in the

writing of g Vision (1925) and ended in frustration upon redonsidering

 

his achievement in that book, and his confession of failure is pre-
sented to us in the form of an epilogue in the revised edition (1937)
of the book. Yeats felt, however, similar frustrations earlier in

his life. In "Rosa Alchemica" he writes:

I had dissolved indeed the mortal world and lived amid immortal
eSSences, but had obtained no miraculous ecstasy. As I thought

of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into

the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those
little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of
inumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning

lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the
darkness into God; and at their perfect labour nw'mortality grew
heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letteis in
our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spirituad 21
beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted With so many reams.

 

 

21. Mythologies,‘ New York: Macmillan, 1959, p. 270.

 

 

10

Much later, in his introduction to Shri Purohit's fin Indian Monk (1932),
Yeats confesses that the book has given him in a complete form what he
sought after in his study of the Irish folk tales, occultism, and

Christian and Pagan visionary writings:

The book lies before me complete; it seems to me something I have
waited for since I was seventeen years old. About that age, bored
by an Irish irotestant point of view that suggested by its blank
abstraction chloride of lime, I began to question the country-
people about apparitions. Some dozen years later Lady Gregory
collected with my help the stories in her Visions and Beliefs.
Again and again, she and I felt that we had got down, as it were,
into some fibrous darkness, into some matrix out of which every—
thing has come,...but there was always something lacking.... When
Shri Purohit Swami described his journey up those seven thousand
steps at Mount Ginar, that creaking bed, that sound of pattens,

in the little old half-forgotten temples, and fitted everything
into an ancient discipline, g philosophy that satisfied the intel-
lect, I found all I wanted.2

The book is Shri Purohit's autobiography, which describes the author's
spiritual experience. The Swami's sort of experience indeed never came
to Yeats. He knew all about it, but he never attained it. That is why
he advised Shri Purohit to write about it.
Presently I said: "The ideas of India have been expounded again
and again, nor do we lack ideas of our own; discuSSlon has been
exhausted, but we lack experience. write what you have Just told

us; keep out all philosophy, unless it interprets something seen
or done."

 

What Yeats lacked, then, was experience. Yeats had earlier commented
that the saint had a direct passage to the antiself while the artist
and the hero did not:

22- §§§§x§ and Introductions, New York: Macmillan, 1961, p. 429.

23. Ibid., p. 428.

 

 

 

11

The poet finds and makes his mask in disappointment, the hero in
defeat. ... The saint alone is not deceived, neither thrusting

with his shoulder nor holding out unsatisfied hands. He could
climb without wandering to the antithetical self of the world,

the Indian narrowing his thought in meditation or driving it away
in contemplation, the Christian copying Christ, the antithetical
self of the classic world. For a hero loves the world till it
breaks him, and the poet till it has broken faith; but while the
world was yet debonair, the saint has turned away, and because he
renounced experience itself, he will wear his mask as he finds it.24

Being an artist, Yeats could not forsake the world as the saint could
and, therefore, could not attain his antiself.

To return to the idea of dualism as a process, there are enough
references in Yeats‘s writings to make it clear that he failed in his
progress from the pole of the self to that of the antiself. In fact,
the realization of failure seems to be his personal myth that underlies
all his thought and activities as an artist and thinker. It is not sur-
prising that he should have such a myth for himself, for he believed
that every man had his own myth. Commenting on Shakespeare he wrote in
his essay, "Stratford-on-Avon":

I have often had the fancy that there is some one myth for every

man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he

did and thought. ShakeSpeare‘s myth, it may be, describes a wise

man who was blind from very wisdom, and an empty man who thrust

him from his place, and saw all that could be seen from very empti-
ness. It is in the story of Hamlet, who saw too great issues
everywhere to play the trivial game of life, and of Fortinbras,

who came from fighting battles about 'a little patch of ground' ;

so poor that one of his captains would not give 'six ducats' to

'farm it,’ and who was yet acclaimed by Hamlet and by all as the
only befitting King.25

Yeats's own was a myth of failure. Having placed himself between the

 

24. Mighologies, p. 337.
25. 5 Vision (1937), p. 214.

 

 

 

Ffi————vi

12

two world-views, the dualistic—cognitive and the monistic-experiential,
Yeats chose to ascend to the world of experience but sank with his own
weight to be absorbed into the dualistic world of knowledge.

Perhaps it is necessary to define more clearly the terms which
are being used to explain Yeats‘s dualism. Yeats has various terms of
his own, but they are so many that using them all would hinder lucid
discussion. The term "dualistic-cognitive" is used to mean the world
of consciousness (which Yeats equates with conflictzs) and of many
("Hodos Chameliontos” is Yeats's term). This term has both metaphysical
and epistemological implications. In the dualistic—cognitive perspec-
tive Yeats sees duality in reality: the self and the antiself, conflict
and unity, Image and Mask, Anima Hominis and Anima Mundi, and so on.
This perspective envisages the world of cognition where there are the
seer and the seen, the knower and the known. In this view, logic and

image are possible. In the philosophical sense, this is the perspective

 

in which intellect and reason have full play. In the aesthetic sense,
this is the perspective which makes symbolism not only possible but
useful, for symbols, taken from the world of senses, are necessary to
evoke the ideas from the Anima Mundi.

Opposed to the dualistic-cognitive world-view is the monistic-
experiential world—view. The term is used to mean metaphysically that
which is represented by such ideas as "unity" (which is a Yeatsian

" etc. In the monistic—

term), "Brahmanic experience," "oneness,
experiential perspective Yeats tries to resolve all conflict, aspires
to attain sainthood in which the dancer and the dance are seen as one

26. See g Vision (1937), p. 214.

 

13

and the tree is seen in its totality, and renounces the "sensual music"
of the world of nature. This perspective envisages the world of experi-
ence where there is no distinction between the seer and the seen, the
knower and the known. In this view logic has done its work27and image
is fused into reality (the self has found its mask). This perspective,
in short, envisages what Yeats calls in g Vision the Thirteenth S here,
a liberation of the spirit.

Such, then, is Yeats's dualism. Much of his writing is sustained
by this dualism. In some of his works the dualistic-cognitive perspec-
tive plays the major role, while in others the monistic-experiential
perspective comes to the fore. The process from one perspective to the
other is the subject of many poems, such as "Sailing to Byzantium“ and
"Byzantium." The theme of failure in the process is also taken up in

many poems and essays. In Yeatsian terms, the poles of dualism have a

gyric relatioship to each other. When the one pole waxes the other

 

wanes and when the one wanes the other waxes. Yeats never seems to be
able to get out of the gyric movement. Indeed, Yeats's incorrigible
dualisn1is.shown in his belief that the dualistic—cognitive perspective
is necessary in order to attain the monistic-experiential, that unity
arises out of conflict.

In the following chapters I shall try to see the patterns of
failure in Yeats in the light of his Oriental interest. His meeting

with the East was almost inevitable, since the East provided for him

 

27. Yeats believed that logic was a necessary preliminary to inspiration,
but no more. (See the letter to w. T. Horton, dated May 5, 1896, in
Ihg Letters gf E} Q. Yeats, Allan Wade, ed., New York: Macmillan,

1955, p. 262.) The subject will be discussed more fully in Chapter Two,

 

l4

rich sources of information and living models to follow in the philo—
sophy and art in which the monistic-experiential perspective is predomi-
nant. As he "found all [he] wanted" in Shri Purohit's account of his
experience, so he found his ideal form of drama in the Japanese Noh.
However, as the monistic-experiential world was finally denied to Yeats,
so the East remained out of his reach. As early as 1909 Yeats realized
how difficult it was for a Westerner to absorb the Eastern way.
By implication the philosophy of Irish faery lore declares that
all power is from the body, all intelligence from the spirit.
Western civilization, religion and magic insist on power and
therefore on body, and hence these three doctrines—-efficient
rule--the Incarnation—~thaumaturgy. Eastern thoughts answer to
these with indifference to rule, scorn of the flesh, contempla—
tion of the formless. Western minds who follow the Eastern way
become weak and vapourg, because unfit for the work forced upon
them by western life.2
Likewise, Yeats the Western mind could not quite follow the Eastern
way, for the burden placed on him by the Western dualistic-cognitive
perspective was too heavy.
This study does not concern itself with source—hunting. Rather
it attempts to delineate the patterns of failure in Yeats's understand-
ing and adaptation to his purposes of Eastern thought and art, namely,
the Hindu philosophy and the Japanese Noh drama. In Chapter Two I shall
discuss the theme of failure in Yeats's works in general terms. The
Subject is pursued without recourse to outside sources. In Chapter
Three Yeats's idea of freedom in the light of his understanding of

Hindu thought will be discussed. Chapter Four will concentrate on

Yeats's interest in the Japanese Noh drama. There I shall try to

 

 

28. Autobiographies, London: Macmillan, 1961, pp. 481f.

 

 

 

 

15

make clear on the theoretic basis what Yeats found and missed in that
highly sophisticated dramatic form of medieval Japan. Chapter Five
will be focussed on the structural and thematic analysis of Yeats's
"Noh" plays in the light of his understanding of the Noh theory. And
finally, Chapter Six will draw some conclusions on Yeats's thought.

My methodology inclines to the formalistic side at times and to '
the comparative side at other times. My choice is due partly to the
circumstances and partly to my conviction. Having to do most of my
research on the remote island of Okinawa in the Western Pacific, where
resources are severely limited, I have found it practically impossible
to do any type of research that required a mine of source material.

Any comprehensive study of Yeats's thought and art can be done only by
one to whom ample western material is available, for, after all, Yeats
was a Western poet and must be treated as such. 0n the other hand,

I strongly doubt the feasibility of the method used by some critics
who try to align Yeats's thought and art to a particular doctrine or
system from which Yeats gained some information, or a number of such
doctrines. I believe that one must be extremely careful in using
source material when one studies such an artist as Yeats, who was
widely read in the literatures of both the West and the East, and who
comprehended much but misapprehended also. host of Yeats's sources
have been studied, but some critics, notably Wilson, make too extrava—
gant a claim on Yeats's debt to his sources. Some sources Yeats mis—
apprehended and some he only partially adapted to his works. It is
time, I believe, that one should examine how much he is really indebted
to his sources. My study will, I hope, constitute an attempt at such

an examination.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

The Saint or the Artist

In a short essay in the Discoveries (1906) Yeats distinguishes
the saint from the artist in an analogy of a wheel as follows:

If it be true that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere,

the saint goes to the centre, the piet and artist to the ring

where everything comes round again.
The saint is interested in what is fixed and eternal while the artist
seeks what is perpetually recurring in the world of time and the seams.

Yeats envisaged the life of the saint and that of the artist as
antithetical to each other. Yet he endeavored throughout his life to
live both as an artist and a saint. The two types of life were con-
ceived in Yeats's mind with the two perspectives that he adopted for
himself: the monistic-experiential and the dualistic—cognitive. The
monistic-experiential perspective envisaged the life of the saint as
an ideal type of life, while the dualistic-cognitive perspective found
its ideal in the life of the artist.

Yeats the saint endeavored to fathom the secret of the universe
and transcend the dualistic restrictions of the phenomenal world; and
Yeats the artist tried to live affirmatively in the rugged world of
time and the senses and concentrated on creative activity. It was

mainly as the artist, however, that Yeats found his genius more fitting

 

 

1. Essays and Introductions, p. 287.

16

 

 

17
and productive. Although he aspired till death to achieve his saintly
objective, his dualistic—cognitive perspective constantly checked his
aspirations.

Whichever type of life he pursued, Yeats constantly carried within
himself a polarity of perspectives. In the pursuit of the saintly life
he could not abandon the dualistic-cognitive perspective; and in the
pursuit of the creative life he could not dispense with the monistic-
experiential perspective.

The double perspective is clearly shown in g Xigigg, in which he
exhausts his imaginative power in mapping out the realm of reality in
geometric abstraction while attempting through the very effort to gain
the perfect knowledge of reality, a final delivery from the cycle of
birth and death. A jggigg, in this sense, is a record of an attempt
and a failure of Yeats the saint. The section called "THE END OF THE
CYCLE," included in the 1937 edition of the book, is a very important
part of the work that requires a careful and minute study. Yeats ends
the section with a question, which leaves the whole issue in typically
Yeatsian ambiguity:

Shall we follow the image of Heracles that walks through the dark-

ness bow in hand, or mount to that other Heracles, man, not flmage,

he that has for his bride Hebe, "The daughter of Zeus, the mighty,
and Hera, shod with gold"?2
The choice would have been a difficult one, had Yeats had it. But we
know, upon reading the book, that he had to follow Heracles the mortal
man. As his works show, Yeats adhered to the heroic discipline in his

creative activity rather than pursuing saintly visions.

—__.

2. A Vision (1937), p. 302.

 

18

The double perspective is also evident in his creative activity.
Although he dealt as an artist with symbols and "those recurring images"
and believed in tragic conflict, Yeats had a firm conviction in ecstasy
as the ulthnate aim of art. The artist, Yeats believed, is confined by
nature to the things of the earth and is permitted to work from "desire
to weariness and from weariness to desire," creating his works out of
those images that recur in the world of time or of Conflicting elements
that symbolize the world of antinomy. The artist should, nevertheless,
work toward some sort of vision or a reverie in which individuals are
drowned in the Great One, Anima Mundi, a vast reservoir of tribal memory.
Symbols and hmages are the triggers whereby the great memory is evoked.
The artist must painfully work his way out of conflict toward a vision
of reality. For such tragic writers as Dante and Villon, Yeats believed,
a vision of reality was possible.

Yeats, however, expresses a profound pessimism over the adequacy
of his approach to reality. Later in his life he casts doubt as to the
possibility of ever evoking reality through images and symbols. If
these are not the same as reality itself, then they are caught in the
world of time and are therefore mutable; they are withering images that
have no eternal value. What is more, the so-called recurring images
may not recur at all, “for no reCurring spring ever brings again yes-
terday's clock."3 If, then, the so—called recurring images may not
recur at all, the artist's work comes to naught: not only will he not
attain a vision of reality, but he is laboring with things that are

subject to sure death. This is a horrible realization for one whose

 

3. Essays and Introductions, p. 288.

 

19
lifelong aim has been to attain a final liberation from the mundane and
the temporal.

The saint and the artist thus represent in Yeats his double per—
spective of the monistic-experiential and the dualistic-cognitive.
Taken separately, however, each carries a polarity of perspectives.

The saint carries within himself the dualistic—cognitive pole, while

the artist carries the monistic—experiential pole. Whether as the saint
or as the artist, Yeats labored in the direction toward which his monis-
tic—experiential perspective pointed, but his attanpt ended in a failure
because of the reverse pull of the dualistic-cognitive perspective.
Yeats's attempt to be a saint failed because he only tried to map out
reality in cognitive terms, in geometric abstraction. So, he followed
the way of art. Again in art, he tried to gain an ecstatic vision, but
he never abandoned his dualistic—cognitive perspective, affirming the

antinomical aspect of creative process as exemplified in Dante.
II

The failure of experience was quite real to Yeats. It was neither
a metaphor nor a dramatic device for his poetry. Otherwise he would not
have made a confession of failure so frequently throughout his life. It
is difficult to doubt the poet‘s sincerity in making such an admission
so persistently.

The oft—quoted confession of failure that Yeats makes at the end
of A Vision (1937) is perhaps the most dramatic of all these acknowl-
edgments. Here we might quote it in full in order to examine it in

detail:

 

20

THE END OF THE CYCLE

I

Day after day I have sat in my chair turning a symbol over in my
mind, exploring all its details, defining and again defining its
elements, testing my convictions and those of others by its unity,
attempting to substitute particulars for an abstraction like that
of algebra. I have felt the conviction of a lifetime melt though
at an age when the mind should be rigid, and others take their
place, and these in turn give way to others. How far can I accept
socialistic or communistic prophesies? I rananber the decadence
Balzac foretold to the Duchess de Castries. I remember debates in
the little coach-house at Hammersmith or at Morris' super-table
afterwards. I remember the Apocalyptic dreams of the Japanese
Saint and labour leader Kagawa, whose books were lent me by a
Galway clergyman. I remember a Communist described by Captain
White in his memoirs ploughing on the Cotswold Hills, nothing on
his great hairy body but sandals and a pair of drawers, nothing
in his head but Hegel‘s logic. Then I draw myself up into the
symbol and it seems as if I should know all if I could but banish
memories and find everything in the symbol.

II

But nothing comes-~though this moment was to reward me for all
my toil. Perhaps I am too old. Surely something would come when
I meditated under the direction of the Cabalists. What discords
will drive Europe to that artificial unity-—only dry or drying
sticks can be tied into a bundle--which is the decadence of every
civilization? How work out upon the phases the gradual coming and
increase of the counter movement, the antithetical multiform influx:

Should Jupiter and Saturn meet,
0 what a crop of mummy wheat!

Then I understand. I have already said all that can be said. The
particulars are the work of the thirteenth sphere or cycle which
is in every man and called by every man his freedom. Doubtless,
for it can do all things and knows all things, it knows what it
will do with its own freedom but it has kept the secret.

III

Shall we follow the image of Heracles that walks through the
darkness bow in hand, or mount to that other Heracles, man, not
image, he that has for his bride Hebe, "The daughter of Zeus, the
mighty, and Hera, shod with gold"?4

 

 

4. A Vision (1937), pp. 301—302.

 

sii,, ________________miiiitinlfs:jiiiiiifir

21

What does all this mean? In Section I Yeats summarily describes
the process whereby the revised edition of A_!i§igg came into existence.
He sat day after day in his chair playing with his symbol of reality in
his mind. Not being confident as to the validity of his symbol, he com—
pared his ideas with those of his predecessors, such as Plato, Plotinus,
Empedocles, Hegel, and the Eastern sages, trying to see if his symbol
unites all. The list of authorities includes practically all known
thinkers of the East and the West who dealt with metaphysics and prophecy
Section 11 makes the dramatic confession of failure that his labor as
described in Section I was rewarded with no vision of reality. Although
his conviction about the ultimate reality ranains firm , he is barred
from the secret of that reality. Section III puts forward in the poet's
typically cryptic manner his ambivalent attitude toward the mortal world
and the immortal.

What we are given to know in "THE END OF THE CYCLE" is that the

 

whole purpose of writing A Eisigg was to gain a perfect knowledge of
reality. The laborious process of defining and re—defining his terms
was in the long run to lead him to a vision, the very title of the book.
Yeats deliberately chose a mathematical approach in defining his symbol:
a knowledge of reality was to be abstracted from the particulars of phe—
nomena as a mathematical formula is abstracted from particular numbers.
In working with mathematical figures, however, Yeats never lost sight
of his ultimate objective, that is, to draw himself "up into the symbol"
and "find everything in the symbol," forgetting everything that went
into the making of that symbol. It is easy enough to see his basic
antinomical principle operating in his thinking here. The attainment

of knowledge is a spiritual progress from the vision of particulars to

 

22
that of reality:

My instructors identify consciousness with conflict, not with know-

ledge, substitute for subject and object and their attendant logic

a struggle towards harmony, towards Unity of Being. Logical and

emotional Conflict alike lead towards a reality which is concrete,

sensuous, bodily.
Here we see a complementary relationship between the monistic-exgnfientmd
perspective and the dualistic-cognitive. Consciousness is identical with
conflict; and unity is reached through that conflict. The practical way
to attain a knowledge of reality is by way of a symbol, a single image
distilled from a multiplicity of images.

That unified symbolism whereby a knowledge of reality is attained
is called by Yeats the "Unity of Image." It is one of the three kinds
of unity with which Yeats was obsessed throughout his life as the ulti—
mate goal of man: the Unity of Being, the Unity of Culture, and the
Unity of Image. Briefly explained, the Unity of Being is a personal
goal where an individual achieves a momentary Contact with the eternal;
the Unity of Culture is the goal of every society in which "religious,
aesthetic and practical life were one"6 and where "building, picture,
pattern, metal work of rail and lamp, seem but a single image"7; the
Unity of Image is the goal in national literature which serves as "an
originating symbol"8 whereby the Unity of Culture is evoked. These

three kinds of unity are closely related to one another and are indeed

 

5. Ibid., p. 214.
6. Ibid" p. 279.
70 Ibido, p. 2800

8. Autobiographies, p. 263.

 

 

23

one and the same thing in the realm of eternity, because the ultimate
reality is "neither one nor many" but "phaseless."9 In human experi-
ence and in Yeats‘s own experience the unity falls into three cate-
gories, that is, personality, history, and art. A unity is achieved
in both personality and history through art, a single image. Attain-
ability of unity depends, therefore, upon whether the image is the
right one or not; hence Yeats's obsession with symbolism:

Can there be anything so important as to cry out that what we call

romance, poetry, intellectual beauty, is the only signal that the

supreme Enchanter, or some one in His councils, is speaking of
what has been, and shall be again, in the consummation of time.10

And

Nations, races, and individual men are unified by an image, or
bundle of related images, symbolical or evocative of the state
of mind which is, of all states of mind not impossible, the most
difficult to that man, race, or nation....

Thus the image is the unifying force of minds and "the drowner of dykes"
that separate individuals.

At the base of Yeats's theory of symbolism there is the concept of
"Anima Mundi." It would be simply redundant to quote here from Yeats's
essay "Magic" the well-known passage that defines his concept of Anima
Mundi. Suffice it to say that our indiVidual memories are part of that
great memory of nature. Probably the most important premise in connec-
tion with the theme of failure is that there is a mystical basis to the

idea of the great memory. Through his own study of the country vision—

aries of Ireland and his association with the Theosophists and the

 

 

10. Essays and Introductions, p. 52.

 

ll. Autobiographies, p. 194.

 

 

 

 

24
Cabalists, Yeats arrived at a firm conviction that the great memory can
be evoked by symbols. In the essay on Shelley's poetry, which antedates
the first version of A Vision by a quarter of a century, Yeats suggests
a mystical basis for the evocation of the great memory:
Any one who has any experience of any mystical state of the soul
knows how there float up in the mind profound symbols, whose .
meaning, if indeed they do not delude one into the dream that
they are meaningless, one does not perhaps understand for years.
Nor I think has any one, who has known that experience with any
constancy, failed to find some day, in some old book or on some
old monument, strange or intricate image that had floated up be—
fore him, and to grow perhaps dizzy with the sudden conviction
that our little memories are but a part of some great Memory that .
renews the world and men's thoughts age after age, and that our .
thoughts are not, as we suppose, the deep but a little foam upon L
the deep.12
So a knowledge of the great memory is a mystical experience; but it would
be a mistake to think that Yeats is speaking here of his own attainment
of experience. For as late as 1922 Yeats confesses that he has not at-
tained the experience. The truth he sought, Yeats says, would come to -
him "like the subject of a poem, from some moment of passionate experi—
ence," but "that passionate experience could never come--of that I was
certain--until I had found the right image or right images."13 It is
clear, then, that the knowledge of reality is mystical in nature and
that it is brought forth only by a right image or images.
That image he thought he found in the gyre. "But nothing 00m95:"
Yeats says at the beginning of Section II of "THE END OF THE CYCLE,"

"though this moment was to reward me for all my toil."l4 Perhaps he is

x

 

12. Essays 33d Introductions, p. 79.

13. Autobiographies, p. 269.

14. A Vision (1937), p. 301.

 

 

25

too old, he muses, for something would come when he meditated under the
direction of the Cabalists. What are the causes of the failure? One is
already suggested at the end of Section I: "Then I draw myself up into
the symbol and it seems as if I should know all if I could banish such
memories and find everything in the symbol." He could not banish "such
memories" of other prophecies. Yeats had warned himself against the
danger at the time of writing Th2 Trembling 2f Ehg Egg; (1922)-—to fall
victim to the "multiplicity of interest and opinion," which stimulated

him to conceive a Unity of Culture in the first place.

I asked no help of books, for I believed that the truth I sought
would come to me like the subject of a poem, from some moment of
passionate experience, and that if I filled my exposition with
other men's thought, other men's investigation I would sink into
all that multiplicity of interest and opinion.1

Much earlier than this Yeats had said in the essay, "Symbol of Poetry,"
that
One is furthest from symbols when one is busy doing this or that,
but the soul moves among symbols and unfolds in symbols when trance,

or madness, or deep meditation has withdrawn it from every impulse
but its own.

So, truth is not to be attained unless the mind is rid of conflict or
multiplicity and brought to a razor—sharp intensity in its meditation.
here the monistic-experiential perspective dominates Yeats's thinking.
Multiplicity and conflict, however, are not to be discarded as
completely worthless. Rather, they have an important place in Yeats's
thought. Yeats believed that the Unity of Being came through conflict.

15. Autobiographies, p. 269.
16. Essays and Introductions, p. 162.

 

 

26
In "Hodes Chameliontos," Book III of Ihg Trembling of the 233$, he ex-
plains how a "multiplicity of interest and opinion drove him to conceive
a Unity of Culture defined and evoked by Unity of Image,"17 and finds
a similarly paradoxical process in the progress of such artists as Dante
and Villon. A revelation of truth, Yeats believes, comes from the Anima
Mundi, or "that age—long memoried self."18 By genius is meant a link
that connects the individual mind with the Aninm,Mundi for brieflnmments.
In Yeats's own words: "Genius is a crisis that joins that buried self
for certain moments to our trivial daily mind."19
A man of genius, then, achieves a momentary union of his mundane
self with the eternal self. That union, however, is achieved through
conflict. The path to eternity is never plain. A man treading that
path is confronted with "the greatest obstacle he may confront without
despair."20 In other words, man works his way out of conflict to unity
and that conflict serves as fuel for his upward movement. The paradox
is universal in the spiritual progress of men. In 1927 Yeats wrote to
Mrs. Shakespear and Compared the paradox in him and that in Dante:
Certainly we suck always at the eternal dugs. How well too it puts
my own mood between spiritual excitement, and the sexual torture
and the knowledge that they are somehow inseparable! It is the
eyes of the Earthly Beatrice--she has not yet put on her divinity;-
that makes Dante risk the fire 'like a child that is offered an

apple.‘ Immediately after comes the Earthly Paradise and the
Heavenly Beatrice.2

 

 

l7. Autobiographies, p. 269.
18. Ibid;, p. 272.

19. Ibig.

20. Ibid.

21. Allan Wade, ed., Zhg Letters gfi_@§ p. Yeats (New York: Macmillan,
1955), p. 731.

 

 

 

 

27

The eternal is thus found via the earthly. Again in "Hodos Chamefiontos"
Yeats writes that the personifying spirits of Anima Mundi "contrived
Dante's banishment, and snatched away his Beatrice, and thrust Villon
into the arms of harlots...that Dante and Villon might through passion
become Conjoint to their buried selves, turn all to Mask and Image, and
so be phantoms in their own eyes.”22 There is tragic beauty and gran- -;.
deur in such masters, whom we see in awe as men re-born greater in

stature:

We gaze at such men in awe, because we gaze not at a work of art,
but at the re-creation of the man through that art, the birth of
a new species of man, and it may even seem that the hairs of our
heads stand up, because that birth, that re-creation is from terror.23

There was a war going on in Dante's mind, Yeats believes; and out of that
war with himself Dante created poetry. And like Dante, who had to strug-
gle with his anger at the world and with his lust for Beatrice, Yeats
turned his own conflict into creative energy. "We make out of the
quarrel with others, rhetoric," Yeats writes in Egg Amiga Silentia Egggg
(1917), "but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.“24 And this poetry,
which Yeats calls tragic poetry, represents a creative endeavor in which
the artist can come closest to the saint's vision, as we shall see later.
Another cause of failure lies in the choice of the spiritual objec-

tive itself-~the whole idea of unity. After the confession of failure

in Section 11 comes a resignation-—a resignation to the cyclical move-

ment of nature based on the understanding that a vision of unity, after

all, does not mean an attainment of perfect knowledge, a liberation of

 

22. Autobiographies, pp. 272-3.
23. Ibid., p. 273.

24. W. B. Yeats, Mythologies, p. 331.

 

 

28

the mortal self. A unity which Europe tries to achieve out of whatever
discords there are, after all, is an artificial unity, which Yeats calls
“the decadence of every civilization."25 He believes that a civilization,
like a person, goes through a cyclical movement of twelve cycles. As a
person is controlled by an invisible Daimon in the Thirteenth S here, so
a civilization is controlled by a Supreme Enchanter. "All civilization
is held together," Yeats says in a diary in 1909, "by the suggestions of
an invisible hypnotist—~by artificially created illusions.“26 Viewed
from the mortal standpoint, a civilization means "a struggle to keep sen;
control."27 It represents an almost superhuman effort to maintain axnfity
and coherence, but the effort is lost in the end and a unity is lost, the
whole civilization whirling round in the "widening gyre" of "The Second
Coming." Yeats compares a civilization with a tragic hero: "It is like
some great tragic person, some Niobe who must display an almost super—
human will or the cry will not touch our sympathy."28 The struggle,
however, comes ultimately to naught, for all civilization is subjected to
a gigantic cyclical movement of nature. A time comes to any civilization
when the center can no longer hold and "here anarchy is loosed upon the
world." Any attempt to keep self—control, therefore, must be frustrated
in the end. A civilization must yield itself to fate as a tragic hero
must. Yeats had earlier cast doubt over the hope of Europe's ever attahb-

ing a Unity of Culture. In "The Tragic Generation" hevmote pesshmhmicafly:

 

25

9.11.3222 (1937), p. 302.

26. Autobiographies, p. 482.
27. A Vision (1937), p. 268.

 

28. Ibid.

29
I can but remember pipe music to-night, though I can half~
hear beyond it in the memory a weightier music, but this much at
any rate is certain——the dream of my early manhood, that a modern
nation can return to Unity of Culture, is false; though it may'be
we can achieve it for some small circle of men and women, and
there leave it till the moon bring round its century.29
Thus a civilization is under the control of a supernatural force; any
attanpt to free itself from that force is hopeless, "a struggle of the
fly in the marmalade"—-unless there is a revelation.
Now it is true that Yeats expected some sort of revelation when a
civilization completes a cycle, and it seems that he likewise expected
a revelation upon completion of A Vision, which ended in disappointment.

In Book V of A Vision, "Dove or Swan," Yeats comments on the end of a
cycle of a civilization thus:
The loss of control over thought comes towards the end; first a

sinking in upon the moral being, then the last surrender, the
irrational cry, revelation-the scream of Juno's peacock.

This is the same revelation that he expects in "The Second Coming":

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

And it is essentially the same revelation that is envisaged at the level
of art in "My Table":

Our learned men have urged

That when and where 'twas forged

A marvelous accomplishment,

In painting or in poetry, went

From father unto son

And through the centuries ran

29. Autobioggaphies, p. 295.
30. A Vision (1937), p. 268.

 

 

 

 

 

30

And seemed unchanging like the sword.
Soul's beauty being most adored,

Men and their business took

The soul's unchanging look;

For the most rich inheritor,

Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door
That loved inferior art, ‘
Had such an aching heart \
That he, although a country's talk

For silken clothes and stately walk, '7
Had waking wits; it seemed ..‘
Juno's peacock screamed.

 

The screaming of Juno's peacock never occurred, however, at the end
of the cycle of A Vigigg. Yeats wonders how it is possible to bring
about a unity in Europe. Then he understands—-that he has said what can
be said in words. Therest is up to the thirteenth §phg£_. The descrip-
tive part of the job is done; what remains is experience itself, a vision
of reality, a liberation. That liberation failed to come: the thirteenth
§phg£g "has kept the secret."31 "Shall we follow," Yeats asks, "the
image of Heracles that walks through the darkness bow in hand"?--a,Hera-
cles the mortal hero who was rejected by Hera, or Juno, the owner of an
peacock. 0r shall we, Yeats offers as an alternative, "mount to that
other Heracles, man, not image"32 who was accepted by Hera as a god and
was given Hebe, Hera's daughter by Zeus, for his bride? The choice is
between the life of an artist and that of a saint. The choice, again,
is between earthly bondage and freedom.33 From the philosophical stand-
point, the choice is between the monistic-experiential perspective and
the dualistic-cognitive. Yeats ends his proposition with a question,
giving no definite answer. Actually, however, Yeats chose the former;

31. Ibid., p. 302.
32. Ibid.

33. Elsewhere in A Vision Yeats equates Heracles after death with "
.. _ th
free spirit, a Happy god among the gods." Q5 Vision, p. 226.) e

 

 

or rather,

knwledge <

Althot
artist than
aspirations
In Yeats tb
saint. Yea
artistic or
cestasy. 1
artist is g
saint.

The vo
"In very
"and depl‘iv
minded reli‘
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ages, and a
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1W“ lit:
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‘___r» ,

31
or rather, he had no choice. Barred from an attainment of a perfect

knowledge of reality, Yeats had to walk the way of the artist.

III

Although Yeats found his genius more suitable to the career of an
artist than that of a saint, he could not completely abandon his saintly ‘
aspirations. As a result, we find a curious type of an artist in Yeats. 'I
In Yeats the artist there exists the mask of another Yeats--Yeats the
saint. Yeats the artist, who is engaged in the Apollonic pursuit of
artistic creation, is constantly haunted by the Dionysian desire for i
ecstasy. In other words, the dualistic-cognitive perspective of the h
artist is qualified by the monistic-experiential perspective of the : 3
saint.

The world of poetry, indeed, is elevated to the sphere of religion.
"I am very religious," Yeats says in Book I of The Trembling 2f the 222;,
"and deprived by Huxley and Tyndall, whom I detested, of the simple-
minded religion of my childhood, I had a new religion, almost an infal-
lible Church of poetic tradition, of a fardel of stories, and of person-
ages, and emotions.... I wished for a world where I could discover this
tradition perpetually, and not in pictures and in poems only, but in tiles
round the chimney piece and in the hangings that kept out the draught."34
This religion of poetry "would find its manners of devotion in all imag-
inative literature, and set before Irishmen for special manual an Irish

literature which, though made by many minds, would seem the work of a

Single mind...."35 The world that Yeats envisages, then, is a kind of

34. Autobio ra hies, pp. 115-6.

35' Ibid., p. 2540

 

religio-ae:
unified am
colours, a:
torn, and 1
tions and 3
a crowd of
'the poet :
ality whici
certainly <
and Boehme,
Hover:
felt frustr
0bJective.
I sugg
”111w thr
Yeats's mm
on: of heav
"1d ullderst:

1m”: the

 

32

religio—aesthetic world, a Byzantium, where men seek a unityh-a world

unified and made coherent by a single myth. There "all sounds, all

colours, all forms...become, as it were, one sound, one colour, one
form, and evoke an emotion that is made out of their distinct evoca-
tions and yet one emotion."36 There a nation is "distinguished from

a crowd of chance comers, bound together"37 by a Unity of Image. There
"the poet seeks truth, not abstract truth, but a kind of vision of re—
ality which satisfies the whole being."38 The gates of this world would
certainly open for him, Yeats thought, as they did for Blake, Swedenborg,
and Boehme, the chief mystical authorities he recognized in 1915.39

However, as he had felt frustrated in his saintly pursuit, so he
felt frustrated in his artistic endeavor as long as he kept the saintly
objective.

I suggested in the previous sections that Yeats tried to approach
reality through two channels: logic and image. The former involves
Yeats's own intellection on reality, a logical, or mathematical, mapping
out of heaven;“0 at the same time, it involves a meticulous examination
and understanding of wisdom presented by generations of thinkers. The

latter, the way of image, is a direct passage to the world of eternity.

 

36. Essays 229 Introductions, pp. 156-7.

37. Autobiographies, p. 263.
38. Letters, p. 588.

39. In his letter to Ernest Boyd, Yeats said: Whrchief mystical authori—
ties have been Boehme, Blake and Swedenborg." (Letters, p. 592.

40. Yeats thought an intellect of Spinoza's type to be an important ele-
ment of mysticism. In a letter he wrote to his father in June 1918
he said: "Why do you call Bunyan a mystic? It is not possible to make
a definition of mysticism to include him. The great mystics of that
epoch are Spinoza and Pascal. Nearly all our popular mysticism
derives indirectly from the first or from a movement he was first to

explain." (Letters, p. 650.)

 

 

 

 

In either
process an
consciousn
not realit
01‘ th
forever. ‘
logic only
intellecti
to him as
Yeats writ
l hol<
its u:
from 1
5° intelle¢
that Symbol
Perfect kn:
tequired H
Finding Sta
lenerations

it syn“5011':

33

In either case, however, there is no escaping dualism. logic means a

process and, therefore, implies conflict, which Yeats identifies with

consciousness. Image, on the other hand, is only a symbol of reality,

not reality itself.
of the two gates to reality Yeats concluded logic to be closed

forever. That is what he says in Section I of "THE END OF THE CYCLE."

Logic only helped him find the image, not reality. The inadequacy of
intellection as a means to attain the knowledge of reality was clear

to him as early as 1896. In a letter to W. T. Horton, dated May 5, 1896,

Yeats writes:

I hold as Blake would have held also, that the intellect must do
its utmost 'before inspiration is possible.‘ It chums the rubbish
from the mouth of the sybil's cave but it is not the sybil.

So intellection is preliminary to inspiration, but no more. The image

 

that symbolizes a laborious intellectual attempt at the attainment of

perfect knowledge is found in Thoor Ballylee, the tower which Yeats

acquired in 1917 and moved into two years later. The tower, with a

winding stair and a ruined top, symbolizes for Yeats human endeavor by
generations of great minds toward perfect wisdom. At the personal level
it symbolizes Yeats's own endeavor and his life itself.

In his note t0.2§2 Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Yeats

exPlains the symbolism of the tower as follows:
In this book and elsewhere, I have used towers, and one tower in
particular, as symbols and have compared their winding stairs to

the philosophical gyres, but it is hardly necessary to interpret
what comes from the main track of thought and expression. Shelley

41. Letters, p. 262.

 

The map,
Amust thy
‘0 Yeats i1
the rich e
accept his
of 1“, (n
dress) and
c”11°31 m
the Self t<
crime of de
the World ‘
M fro:

\
42' % col

\

p. 456

 

34

uses towers constantly as symbols, and there are gyres in Sweden-
borg, and in Thomas Aquinas and certain classical authors. Part
of the symbolism of Blood and the Moon was suggested by the fact
that Thoor Ballylee has a waste room at the top and that butter-
flies come in through the loopholes and die against the window-

panes.

 

In "A Dialogue of Self and Soul" Yeats makes the tower "Emblematical
of the night," a mystical cammufibn with eternity. fly Soul urges fly

Self to quit wandering on earth and concentrate on a spiritual ascent:

 

g1 Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?

The winding stair of Yeats's tower is a symbol of spiritual ascent.

 

Against this symbol, fly gel: poses a Japanese sword, which was given
to Yeats in 1920 by Junzo Sato, a Japanese. The sword together with
the rich embroidery on the hilt symbolizes Self's determination to

accept his lot on earth. The Soul argues that the sword is an emblem
of love (represented by some colorful embroidery torn from a courtlady's

dress) and war (represented by the blade), which in turn implies a
cyclical movement of birth(love) and death(war). The Soul then urges

the Self to "Think of ancestral night that can,/...Deliver from the

crhne of death and birth." But the Soul, when he comes to describe
the world where "intellect no longer knows/ Is from the Ought, or

Knower from the Known," he discovers that his "tongue's a stone." The

 

42.1225 Collected Poems g: E. g. Yeats (New York: Macmillan, 1959),
p. 456.

 

Soul sudd!
speaks on
eulogy of
partly be
but large]
patience.
of concord
ts Engelbe
the very ;
a dialogue
Yeats's m‘
l‘ellresente
diminished
came to th
thought is
never reac
min/ And
blind m.
The "I? e
tum 0f mi

In "E
is Used as
\
43. Edy” d

gag

H

.‘QI
here,
“18 wh
the Qt]
'Dl’ing

 

35

Soul suddenly falls into silence and abandons the argument. The Self
speaks on and the second section of the poem consists, in effect, of a
eulogy of his own philosophy of life. The Soul abandons the argument
partly because the sort of experience he is hinting at is incommunicable,
but largely because Yeats the poet has almost nothing to say on that ex-
perience. The gyre of discord now dominates Yeats‘s mind and the gyre
of concord recedes into the background. It would be a mistake to argue,
as Engelberg does, that the Soul l2§£§ the argument because "she offers
the very permanence Self cannot accept."43 After all, the poem is about
a dialogue, not an argument, taking place between two tendencies in
Yeats's mind. For a moment two tendencies were kept in balance, but one
represented by the Soul, or the gyre of concord in the terms of é.EE§£Ef4
diminished as the other, the gyre of discord represented by the Self,
came to the foreground. The world of eternity, the "quarter where all
thought is done," which the Soul desires is the world Yeats's self could
never reach; the Self, therefore, resolves to be "content to live it all
again/ And yet again, if it be life to pitch/ Into the frog spawn of a
blind man's bitch." The Self is the predominant gyre in Yeats's mind.
The very eloquence and strongly affirmative tone of the Self shows Yeats's

turn of mind-at least at the time of writing the poem.

In "Ego Dominus Thus" and "The Phases of the Moon" the tower image

is used as a symbol of intellectual toil. The inhabitant of the tower

 

43. Edward Engelberg, The Vast Desi n, Patterns in N". B. Yeats' s Aes-
thetic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), p. 177.

 

44. Yeats has the following to say in the 1937 edition of A Vision(p. 68):
"...I see that gyre of 'Concord' diminishes as that of 'Discord'
increases, and can imagine after that the gyre of 'Concord' increas-
ing while that of 'Discord' diminishes, and so on, one gyre within
the other always. Here the thought of Heraclitus dominates all.
‘Dying each other's life, living each other's death.'"

in 'Ego Du
cause he s
mysterious
The antise
afraid the
any to bl
of the Hoe
Becau
From
Sat 1
The l
in in
but his tc
In both pe
does not 5
In "i
made of ti
I de<
This
The (

Thus Yeat;
°f great 1
of the m
Strength 1

\

45, "The 1
"Em;

36

in "Ego Dominus Tuus" (presumably Yeats himself) leaves the tower be-
cause he seeks "an image, not a book." By that image he calls "to the
mysterious one," his antiself who will "disclose/ All that I seek."
The antiself will whisper a secret knowledge45 "as though/ He were
afraid the birds," the symbol of momentary vision, "Would carry it
away to blasphemous men." The inhabitant of the tower in "The Phases
of the Moon" has chosen to live in the tower

Because, it may be, of the candle-light

From the far tower where Milton's Platonist

Sat late, or Shelley's visionary prince:

The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved,

An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil;
but his toil, Aherne and Robertes know, does not bring him what he seeks.
In both poems the tower, which is used as a symbol of intellectual toil,
does not satisfy its inhabitant.

In "Blood and the Moon" a more thorough and sophisticated use is
made of the tower as a symbol.

I declare this tower is my emblem; I declare

This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my

ancestral stair;
The Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled

there.
Thus Yeats would use the tower in the poemp-as an emblem of procession
of great minds of the past, "A bloody, arrogant power" that "Rose out
of the race/ Uttering, mastering" that race. It is an emblem of "The

strength that gives our blood and state magnanimity of its own desire,"

 

 

45. "The knowledge of reality," wrote Yeats in 1909, "is always in some
measure a secret knowledge. It is a kind of death." (Yeats,
"Estrangement," Autobio ra hies, p. 482.)

 

of the m
Unity of (
universe.
gestion 01
philosophi
lectual fj
dusty, g1:
skies,/ T<
modern m1
Becomes 1
Minds who
smething
"blood-5&1
living”.

his Smbol
sion of g:
of the pa:
8mm of
b1°°d Whh
f" the 1:
"meme“
in“ life
tower in i
and Bllrke
of the de;

\

46. This j
Elbod'

37
of the great intellectual leaders who endeavored to give the nation a
Unity of Culture and who endeavored to give a rational order to the
universe. On that "ancestral stair'1 there is "odour of blood," a sug-
gestion of temporality.46 This winding stair, which is compared to a
philosophical gyre, or "Everything that is not God consumed with intel-
lectual fire," leads to the ruined top of the tower, where "Upon the
dusty, glittering windows cling,/ And seem to cling upon the moonlit
skies,/ Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies." "Is every
modern nation like the tower," Yeats muses, "Half dead at the top?"
He comes to this awareness, however, that the wisdom that the great
minds who climbed the stair sought "is the property of the dead,/ A
something incompatible with life" and that the power suggested by the
"blood-saturated ground" is, like any earthly thing, "A property of the
living." It must be noted how tactfully Yeats reverses the meaning of
his symbols here. In stanza II Yeats has the stair stand for a proces-
sion of great minds of the past. In this sense the stair is an emblem
of the past glory. But then the great minds represent the shaping
spirit of the entire Irish race and culture, a vitality. In stanza III
blood which smelt on the stair and which saturates the ground stands
for the long political struggle that Ireland had to go through, a vainly
expended human endeavor. In the final stanza the stair is brought back
into life again, for the power belongs to the living. Thus we see the
tower in a double—exposure effect: the stair on which Goldsmith,Berkehgg
and Burke trod leading to the ruined top, an emblem of the sterile wisdom

of the dead, and the stair which the moderns, including Yeats himself,

 

 

46. This is precisely the meaning in which "blood" is used in "Oil and
Blood."

 

 

clilb spir
nation. 0
ancient pn

'Bloc
and power
we: upon
toil 11pr
end; the i
The poem,
when be cc
or explore
to make hj
notes that
desire of
able to r.

The 1
Search fox
out of vhj
of Yeats';
I'°3°].utiox
in 1923 t1

May 1

Beeon

May 1
Her c'

\

47. p. R.
(Nev)

 

38
climb spiraling the tower half dead at the top, an emblem of a modern
nation. Over the tower hangs the transcendent moon shining with its
ancient purity, and "no stain/ Can come upon the visage of the moon."
"Blood and the Moon," then, contrasts the temporal world of struggle
and power with the world of eternity. Man toils with his intellect and

power upon the stair, which suggests the gyre image of A Vision, but his

 

toil uplifts hhn only the height of the tower where it comes to the dead
end; the best he can do is to "clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon."
The poem, furthermore, is a poetic statement of what Yeats must have felt
when he completed the second version of A Xigigg: he climbed the stair-—
or explored the gyre--but his toil was rewarded with the dead top, only
to make him realize that the moon shone far above his head. T. R. Henn
notes that Yeats correlated his endeavor in writing A Xigign to his
desire of restoring the room at the top of the tower.47 As he was never
able to restore the room in life,48 he never attained his aim in AM

The tower, then, symbolizes for Yeats a frustrated effort in the
search for reality; it is, nevertheless, also a symbol of life on earth
out of which the stuff of art is derived. It is, furthermore, symbolical
of Yeats's later affirmation of the cyclical movement of life and his
resolution to be true to it. This is what he had in mind when he wrote
in 1923 these lines in "Meditation in Time of Civil War":

May this laborious stair and this stark tower

Become a roofless ruin that the owl

May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky.

47. T. R. Benn, The Lonely Tower, Studies in the Poetry of w. B. Yeats
(New York: PEllegrini and Cudahy, 19527: $7.13. __ - -

48. Joseph Hone, E, B. Yeats, 1865-1939 (London: Macmillan, 1962), p.319.

 

 

The P
Has I
And I
Seein
For a
And d
And k
These
However de
tiles and
out of vhi
If Ye
Perfect kn
iPProach,
Hunt 3, di
Emory. I‘
by his sym'
lies heme
reality‘w
“Willis" 1]
"happy art,‘
that 110110‘
Set its ma]
luxury” "1
Spiritual (
in; Dante p

49. gm

 

39

The Primum Mobile that fashioned us

Has made the very owls in circles move;

And I, that count myself most prosperous,

Seeing that love and friendship are enough,

For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house

And decked and altered it for a girl's love,

And know whatever flourish and decline

These stones remain their monument and mine.

However desolate it may be, Yeats thought, the tower will endure the
times and remain forever a symbol of his life and of the gyre of life
out of which man never seems to be able to escape.

If Yeats was aware of the inadequacy of intellect as a path to
perfect knowledge, he also felt frequently frustrated in his second
approach, symbolism. It was previously noted that for Yeats symbolism
meant a direct passage to the world of eternity, for it evoked the great
memory. It was also noted, however, that Yeats was finally frustrated
by his symbol in A Vision. Yeats is constantly aware of the gulf that
lies between reality and symbol. The symbol is nothing unless it evokes
realitynunless, in effect, it becomes one with reality. In "Anima
Hominis" in E Amica Silentia Lunae, Yeats distinguishes what he calls
"happy art" from tragic art. "All happy art," he says, "seems to me
that hollow image (of fulfilled desire, a phrase by Simeon Solomon], but
when its lineaments express also the poverty or the exasperation that
set its maker to the work, we call it tragic art."49 The difference is
aptly exemplified in Keats and Dante. Keats's art is only a "dream of
luxury," which he never attained, but Dante's art is made out of his
Spiritual conflict and is his spiritual progress itself: "...while read-

ing Dante we never long escape the conflict, partly because the verses

are at moments a mirror of his history, and yet more because that history

49. Mythologies, p. 329.

 

is so cle;
In "1
hie: 32

for Dante

Beim
Deri‘
to cl
He f<
The x

Dante fom

His a
I se1
With
For <
His :
Andn
Shut
The c
Luxm

The porth
"HOdos Ch;
deals witk

that essay

 

 

 

 

40
is so clear and simple that it has the quality of art."50
In "Ego Dominus Tuus," which Yeats uses as the title poem in 225

Amica Silentia Lunae (1917), Ille, presumably Yeats himself, argues

 

for Dante that

Being mocked by Guido fbr his lecherous life,
Derided and deriding, driven out

tocflimb that stair and eat that bitter bread,
He found the unpersuadable justice, he found
The most exalted lady loved by a man.

Dante found what he wanted; but what about Keats? Ille's answer is:

His art is happy, but who knows his mind?

I see a schoolboy when I think of him,

With face and nose pressed to sweet-shop window,
For certainly he sank into his grave

His senses and his heart unsatisfied,

And made-—being poor, ailing and ignorant,

Shut out from all the luxury of the world,

The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper--
Luxuriant song.

 

The portion of "Ego Dominus Tuus" on Keats is reproduced at the end of
"Hodos Chameliontos" in Eh: Trembling 2; tbs Veil (1922) in which he
deals with the idea of unity arising from conflict. Toward the end of

that essay Yeats again compares Keats with Dante and Villon:

In great lesser writers like Lander and like Keats we are shown
that Image and that Mask as something set apart; Andromeda and
her Perseus-~though not the sea-dragon-but in a few in whom we
recognize supreme masters of tragedy, the whole contest is brought
into the circle of their beauty. Such masters-—Villon and Dante,
let us say-would not, when they speak through their art, change
their luck; yet they are mirrored in all the suffering of desire.
The two halves of their nature are so completely joined that they
seem to labour for their objects, and yet to desire whatever hap-
pens, being at the same instant predestinated and free, creation's
very self. 1

50. Ibid.

51. Autobioggaphies, p. 273.

 

 

It takes a
and reali1
in effect1
possible.
least, Yea
instructol
of abstrac
lead him 1
My is
"The
birds
thong
That he di
l'epeatedly
There
exDresses ]
1Wise and 1
0f their 1,
of "ChOiCe
tion that 5
of °°nflict
ing aDple b
f0“1 world

has net dis

 

 

 

41
It takes a great artist to fuse the Image and the Mask, to unite poetry
and reality, to link creative effort to knowledge, to turn consciousnms,
in effect, into pure experience. In lesser artists such fusion is imr
possible. Yeats must have felt in his own art a similar inadequacy. At
least, Yeats is always uncertain about the adequacy of his symbols. The
instructors that gave him the systems for A Eisigg gave them in the form
of abstract symbols, which were meant to enkindle his imagination and
lead him to "a reality which is concrete, sensuous, bodily":
My imagination was for a tflme haunted by figures that, muttering
"The great systems," held out to me the sun—dried skeletons of
birds, and it seemed to me that this image was meant to turn my
thoughts to the living bird.
That he did not catch that living bird, Yeats testifies, as it has been

repeatedly noted, at the end of g Vision (1937).

 

There are a number of poems in which the poet or the protagonist
expresses his disappointment or impatience over the cleavage between the
image and reality. In "Solomon and the Witch" Solomon ascribes a.fifilure
of their love to the inadequacy of an hmage to bring about a resolution
of "Choice and Chance." Solomon first explains that the strange sensa-
tion that Sheba felt in their sexual union may mean a true resolution
of conflict, an announcement by a cockerel, which "Crew from a blossom—
ing apple bough," that "All that the brigand apple brought/ And this
foul world were dead at last." When Sheba points out that the fouluworld

has not disappeared, however, Solomon replies:

If that be so,
Your cockerel found us in the wrong
Although he thought it worth a crow.
Maybe an image is too strong
0r may be not strong enough.

52. A Vision (1937), p. 214.

 

 

In a sini
hero and '
and the t1
rated bee:
girl's be:
amm tha1
fool, who

when one 1‘

When
And I
Coagu
Trans
I thi
A fai
"Anon
reality.
and theref‘
they are S .
Stand for.
With time h
on: °f time
““1011 of

8““ 0f ti

the hinge“
chum“ st

 

7—i——

42
In a similar context, in "The Hero, the Girl, and the Fool," both the
hero and the girl loathe imperfection of their love because the image
and the true self are confused as the object of love. They are frust—
rated because they feel cheated out of their love: the hero loves the
girl's beauty, not her; the girl loves the hero's heroism, not him; and

a nun that the girl wishes to become is revered for her holiness. The

 

fool, who is by the roadside, comments that a true love is found only

when one is completely out of the human context:

When all workers that have
From cradle run to grave
From grave to cradle run instead;
When thoughts that a fool
Has wound upon a spool
Are but loose thread, are but loose thread:

When cradle and spool are past
And I mere shade at last
Coagulate of stuff

Transparent like the wind,

I think that I may find

A faithful love, a faithful love.

 

"Among School Children" is, in one sense, also a study of image and
reality. The images, which are taken from the world of Anima.Hominis
and therefore subject to passage of time, break Yeats's heart, because
they are separated, due to time‘s destructive power, from what they
stand for. A sense of change is persistent in the poen. Images wither
with time while the "Presences," which are "self-born" and are therefore
out of time, mock "man's enterprise." The poem begins with a casual
mention of the setting in which Yeats is inspecting a school, but a
sense of time is immediately emphasized by a sharp contrast between

the innocent children and "A sixty—year-old Smiling public man.“ The

children stir Yeats's memory of his youthful love. The "Ledaean body"

 

 

 

Yeats drea
The Ledaea
the one sh
The proces
of Plato's
children's
Her p
Did C
Hello
And t
If hi
scarecrow
Pictures h
the lines
“D the iro
seeks in h
1926, feat
Don is a
tWeen image
What ;

Honey
And u

 

rIIIIIIIII__________________________________—_____—______________________—__________‘

43
Yeats dreams of may or may not be Maud Gonne; it is beside the point.53
The Ledaean body with whom Yeats was united "Into the yolk and white of
the one shell" suggests Helen, a symbol of eternal beauty and destruction.
The process of the lovers' uniting into an egg, of course, is a reversal
of Plato's parable of the egg in the Symposium. The bright color of the
children's faces, however, is driven away by her present image:

Her present image floats into the mind-—

Did Quattrocento finger fashion it

Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind

And took a mess of shadows for its meat?

If his love is now a withered image, Yeats, too, is now an old
scarecrow who is avowedly not "of Ledaean kind." In self-mockery Yeats
pictures himself as an image of what stimulates a mother's dreams. In
the lines that echo the second song of "At the Hawk's Well," Yeats points
up the irony which old age presents to the ideal image that a mother
seeks in her son. In his letter to Olivia Shakespear, dated September-24,
1926, Yeats says that the poem is his "last curse upon old age.”54 The
poem is a sorrowful comment on the widening gulf that time creates bee
tween image and reality.

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap

Honey of generation had betrayed,

And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape

As recollection or the drug decide,

Would think her son, did she but see that shape

With sixty or more winters on its head,

A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

 

53. The Ledaean body is generally taken for Maud Gonne. Although the
context does not require such an association, it can hardly be
otherwise, since Maud Gonne is frequently associated.with Helen
of Troy in other poems. For a contrary view, see Cleanth Brooks,
Egg Well'wrogght Urn, p. 183.

54

0

Letters p. 719.

“,

 

 

 

An old In
nithere
in "At th
eternal y.
in his pro
What
Wouln
A W
Doubl
Eros:
Woul<
Here
And 1
In ck
that the p
by the tin
Aristotle,
are also 3
Yeats does
Stanza, bu
"'10 tried I
but “is to}
he colud 0]
Stalin
311d SUdden}
the "Press:
Whit a Se

\

55. Yeats,
p. 137

 

44

An old man is, thus, a symbol of disillusionment of motherly affection,
a withered image of reality. He breaks a mother's heart. The old man
in "At the Hawk's Well," who is forever severed frun the fountain of
eternal youth, would also break his mother's heart if she would see him
in his present condition:

What were his life soon done!

Would he lose by that or win?

A mother that saw her son

Doubled over a speckled shin,

Cross-grained with ninety years,

Would cry, 'How little worth

Were all my hopes and fears

And the hard pain of his birth! '55

In the letter to Olivia Shakespear already referred to, Yeats says
that the poem "means that even the greatest men are owls, scarecrows,
by the time their fame has come." Thus, the great minds such as Plato,

Aristotle, and Pythagoras, who try to find order in the flux of reality,

are also subject to time, "Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird."

 

Yeats does not include himself in the list of the great minds in this
stanza, but the reader cannot but sense the irony of the poet himself
who tried all his life to gain the secret from the depth of eternity
but was constantly and finally thrown back on the strand of time, where
he could only curse old age.

Stanza VII discusses Yeats's last category of images in the poan
and suddenly erupts into a series of emotional utterances directed to
the "Presences." The stanza runs into the next and final stanza in
thought and syntax. To separate the stanzas, it seems to me, is to
cannit a serious critical error. It seems to misinterpret what Yeats

55. Yeats, Th3 Collected Plays 9: W. p. Yeats (New York: Macmillan, 1961),
p. 137.

main;

3 here.

Labm
The 1
Nor 1
Nor 1
0 Ch.
Are 1
0 ho
How <
The first
deal with
dbrine in
Vorship i,
”We,"
that "the;
that "brea
s“palatal!
ends with
the thOugh
following

W“ What

 

45
is trying to say, or rather to ruin the emotional effect Yeats aims at

here.

VII

Both nuns and mothers worship images,

But those the candles light are not as those

That animate a mother's reveries,

But keep a marble or a bronze repose.

And yet they too break hearts-—0 Presences

The passion, piety or affection knows,

And that all heaverly glory symbolise-—

0 self—born mockers of man's enterprise;

VIII

Labour is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,

Nor beauty born out of its own despair,

Nor blear~eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

0 Chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

0 body swayed to music, 0 brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?
The first four lines of stanza VII, and the fifth except "0 Presences,"
deal with the last category of images Yeats presents in the poem. The
divine images that nuns worship are different from those that mothers
worship in that they do not grow old: they "keep a marble or a bronze
repose.“ And yet they are similar to those that mothers worship in
that "they too break hearts." Here ends Yeats's enumeration of images
that "break hearts." Then comes an eruption of emotional utterances,
"0 Presences," etc. The remainder of stanza VII is an apostrophe to
supernatural beings, Daimons of the thirteenth sphere. The stanza
ends with a semiColon, which means that the syntactic structure and
the thought content of stanza VII continue uninterruptedly to the

following and final stanza. If we separate the stanzas, then we must

take what the final stanza says as Yeats's "final justification of

 

 

life“ tha
or as 'a j
Soul (whit
is the in
uh the b
Daimons,
it repres
Stan
his conte
self over
reaching 1
in the mi,

no longer
And 1

It is a I);
sense. y.
Superhumm
th‘mgh mm
Bylantiun‘

\
55. Min ‘
York:
‘0 SH
57. 13W“J
the DI
term”,
form
VIII j

53. ,p
5m

 

46

life" that "the poem constructs from the destructive ravage of time,"56
or as "a proclamation that the body must not be bruised to pleasure the
Soul (which is for Yeats that which seeks abstraction), and what matters
is the instinctive joy of life symbolized by the chestnut tree in blossun
and the body swayed to music."57 The stanza is addressed rather to the
Daimons, "self-born mockers of man's enterprise," than to the reader;

it represents, rather, Yeats's prayer that the image and reality be fused.

Stanza VIII, then, is not a vision of reality that he gained out of

his contemplation of conflict, nor is it a statement of triumph of his
It is rather an expression of his frustration in

self over the soul.

reaching his spiritual goal. That is why the apostrophe to the "Presences"

in the middle of stanza VII is so abrupt: Yeats's sustained emotion can

no longer be checked.

 

And yet they too break hearts—-0 Presences

It is a Dantesque search for unity. It is a tragic cry in the Yeatsian

sense. Yeats is crying like the tragic person he writes about in g
Vision, "some great tragic person, some Niobe who must display an almost
superhuman will or the cry will not touch our sympathy."58 A similar cry,
though much less tragic, is uttered by the old man of "Sailing to

Byzantium."

 

56. John Unterecker, §_Reader's Guide to William Butler Yeats (New
York: The Noonday Press, 1961), p. 192. It is difficult for me
to see how the poem constructs such a justification.

57. Bowra, o . cit., p. 212. Professor Bowra's conclusion comes frun
the premise that in Yeats the struggle between Soul and Self was
terminated in the triumph of the latter. Professor Bowra seems to

forget that Yeats always associated Self with conflict. Stanza
' VIII is about a resolution of conflict.

58. g Vision (1937), p. 268.

 

 

'Sai
The aging
A tattere
world of
because t
fore “sai
the city

the destr

Into

“Once out

able thin

on

It is Sig
he is 1101
the ham]
"sing/ h
the may
in the m
and are ‘
therefore

the city
will: u t.

 

47

"Sailing to Byzantium" is another "curse" of Yeats's on old age.
The aging protagonist, who looks upon himself to be "a paltry thing,/
A tattered coat upon a stick" (another scarecrow image), leaves the
world of time, where "Those dying generations" are "at their song,"
because the Soul does not sing for "its mortal dress," He has there—
fore "sailed the seas and come/ To the holy city of Byzantium." In
the city of Byzantium images have eternal life, not being subject to
the destructive power of time. He prays to the sages of the city:

gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.
"Once out of nature" he will take his image not from natural, perish-
able things, but from some work of art that transcends time.

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily fonn from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

0f hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

0r set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

 

It is significant that the old man is not aspiring to be pure soul;
he is not by any means choosing the soul against the Self. Even in
the nauiral world of time he has the soul; but that soul does not
"Sing/ For every tatter in its mortal dress," that is, the soul and
the image are not united. What the old man loathes is the fact that
in the natural world "Monuments of unageing intellect" are neglected
and art studies only the "Monuments of its own magnificence." He
therefore came to the holy city of Byzantium and asks the sages of

the city, who stand "in God's holy fire/ As in the gold mosaic of a

wall," to gather him "Into the artifice of eternity." What the old

 

 

nn seek:

In I
is again
an image
more inag
School Ch
'May umn'
across tb
calls "de
"Sailing
fire, per
next imag
bird, vhi
is now am
Unterecke

Moore's e

meaning 0

 

48
man seeks, then, is an eternal image, not the soul.
In "Byzantium," a sister piece to "Sailing to Byzantium," Yeats
is again chiefly concerned with image. What floats before the poet is
an image which has nothing that man is; it is "Shade more than man,
more image than a shade." This image, unlike the scarecrow of "Among
School Children" or "Sailing to Byzantium," is a walking mummy that
"May unwind the winding path" and summon the spirits that have come
across the seas to the holy city of Byzantium. This image, which Yeats
calls "deathrin-life and life-in—death," is equivalent to the sages of
"Sailing to Byzantium" whom the old man asks to "Come from the holy
fire, perne in a gyre/ And be the singing-masters of my soul." The
next image that floats in Yeats's mind is an eternal image of a golden
bird, which previously appeared in "Sailing to Byzantium," and which
is now amplified in meaning in the present poan. As Ursla Bridge, John
Unterecker, and Curtis Bradford have noted, Yeats, stimulated by Sturge
Moore’s criticism, felt that the image needed an explanation. The
meaning of the golden bird is clarified in the present poem.
Miracle bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star—lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
The bird is not merely a work of art, but is a supernatural bird that
mocks mortality.

Against these supernatural images Yeats juxtaposes the images of
the "blood-begotten spirits," which come in flood on the back of dol-

Phins to Byzantium to dance. The flood, "That dolphin—torn, that gong-

 

 

tomentec‘
by the “I!
flutthe
holy city
Both
the same
of Hither
in and mo
tive deal
Wrote to
nature be
In :1
sins. Al
1" "Anima
...w‘

the]
tude

His resell

I thj
Show
30 in
to 01
brute
and a
we a;
huge
the F
at th

\
59c
50. M

m

61. MU

 

 

 

49

tormented sea," is broken by "The golden smithies of the Emperor and
by the “Marbles of the dancing floor" of Byzantium. It must be noted
that the "blood-begotten spirits" sail across the sea and come to the
holy city like the old man in the earlier poem.

Both "Sailing to Byzantium" and "Byzantium," then, have essentialLy

the same theme. They both envisages a sailing«-a sailing from the land
of withering images to the land of eternal image, a sailing originated

in and motivated by Yeats's mistrust of temporal images. "The imagina-
tive deals with spiritual things symbolized by natural things," Yeats

wrote to George Russel about 1900,59 but in the symbols taken from
nature he only half believed.

In natural things Yeats only half believed.
Although he is aware of the limitations of the poet, sing he must.

Yet he continued to

sing.
In "Anima Hominis" he wrote:

...we (the poet) sing amid our uncertainty; and, smitten even in
the presence of the most high beauty by the knowledge of our soli-

tude our rhythm shudders.6

His resolution for creative endeavor is accompanied by this realization:

I think that we who are poets and artists, not being permitted to
shoot beyond the tangible, must go from desire to weariness and

so to desire again, and live but for the moment when vision comes
to our weariness like terrible lightning, in the humility of the
brutes. ...We seek reality with the slow toil of our weakness
and are smitten from the boundless and the unforeseen. Only when
we are saints or sage, and renounce experience itself, can we, in
imagery of the Christian Cabbala, leave the sudden lightning and
the path of the serpent and become the bowman who aims his arrow

at the centre of the sun.6

 

59. Letters, p. 343.

60. Mythologies, p. 331.

61’ Ibid., p. 340.

 

 

The poets and
the gyre and
lakes in "The
the two-fold
back on his c
with images,
Players
And not
The? represen
NW that thes
be content vi
it:
Those ma
Grew in
A mound
01d kett
01d iron
who keep
1 must 1
In the f
He mm Pursu
of Hex-gel” t
“mount ‘30 tha
Hebe n

 

50

 

The poets and the artists, then, are bound by the cyclical movement of

the gyro and cannot seem to get out of it. The confession that Yeats

makes in "The Circus Animals' Desertion" is essentially the same as
In that poem he looks

 

the two-fold realization of "Anima Hominis."

back on his career as an artist and confesses that he was infatuated

with images, not what they stood for.

Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

They represented a ladder from "hodos chameliontos" to "Anima Mundi."

Now that these images are gone he can only enumerate old themes, or

be content with the heart. That is the artist's lot and he must accept

it:

 

Those masterful images because complete

Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?

A mound of refuse orthersweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,

Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,

In the foul rag-and—bone shop of the heart.

He must pursue, to return to the last section of g vision, "the image
of Heracles that walks through the darkness bow in hand," if he cannot

"mount to that other Heracles, man not image, he that has for his bride

Hebeoo on"

 

 

The nail
Hisfl was
of his life-l
With the Easw
“Pk in his I
to Oriental 1
Yeats schola]
szl'ess of 1
to his Cosno]
to his drama

Yeats's
by those cm
the other ha!
t° the East 3
Either critic
encounter “it
\

1' Naresh Guh
diSSertati

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

Brahman and Daimon

 

The main conern of Yeats the saint was the soul and its liberation.

5 Vision was, as I have affinmed in the previous chapter, a culmination
of his life-long effort in search of the soul's freedom. His meeting

with the East was almost inevitable and it doubtless left a significant

Throughout his works Yeats makes frequent reference
! 1

mark in his mind.
As a number of

to Oriental thought, especially Indian and Japanese.
Yeats scholars have noted, the East had a profound influence upon the

progress of the poet. Especially, Indian thought contributed greatly
to his cosmology, as Naresh Guha has pointed out,1 and the Japanese Noh

to his dramatic theory and practice.
Yeats's debt to the East, however, has been considerably exaggerated

by those critics whose active interest is in hunting Yeats's sources. 0n
the other hand, another line of criticism completely denies Yeats's debt
to the East and establishes him as a genuinely Western thinker and poet.

Either criticism distorts, in my opinion, the true meaning of Yeats's

encounter with the East,2 and therefore misses the possibility that a study

 

l. Naresh Guha, E. E. Yeats: an Indian A roach (An unpublished doctoral
dissertation, Northwestern University, 19625.

2. There is a recent tendency among Yeats's critics to lay more emphasis
en the confirmatory rather than the initiatory aspect of Yeats‘s school-
ing in Eastern thought and art. These critics believe that Yeats had
reached his conclusions long before he came to know Eastern thought and

art, in which he only sought an authority for his ideas and beliefs.
I am in sympathy with this view, though I think that the problem is far
more complex than these critics would have us believe.

51

 

of the relat
and art.
Yeats w
way of think
is broadly t
ranks of suc
and Boehme, ‘
spective of
should also
by the Cabal
Profitably s
neously cred
when some
[a resolutio
by the cabal
Can Profit 1”
bl discoveri
turn illumin
It is o
dition of We
i“ a such.
Vb“ he acce;
elm to the
Yeats's

\

3' Mesh Cu}
idea 011 SI
Cabalisth

 

 

52
of the relationship offers in the way of illuminating Yeats's thought
and art.

Yeats was neither an Eastern convert nor a typical Westerner whose
way of thinking was antithetical to the Eastern mode of thinking which
is broadly termed as "mysticism." Yeats should be placed among the
ranks of such Western thinkers aslbthagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Swedenborg,
and Boehme, whose mode of thinking was characterized by the double per-
spective of the monistic-experiential and the dualistic-cognitive. He
should also be placed in the tradition of Western occulatism represented
by the Cabala and the Hermes. Yeats's meeting with the East is most
profitably studied with this context in mind, for we should not erro-
neously credit Indian sources for what Yeats may have learned from Eu—
ropean sources: Yeats's concept of sexual union as a.mystical experience
(a resolution of conflict), for instance, may well have been inspired
by the Cabala as well as by the Tantric system of India.3 Moreover, we
can profit from the study of Yeats's relationship with Eastern thought
by discovering discrepancies that exist between the two, which will in
turn illuminate for us the nature of Yeats's thought and art.

It is outside the scope of this study to consider Yeats in the tra-
dition of Western thought. The purpose of the present study is to see
in a synchronic fashion how the East influenced Yeats. By discovering
what he accepted and rejected or missed in Eastern thought, we may cane

close to the essence of Yeats's thought.

Yeats's meeting with Indian thought dates back to his late teens,

 

3. Naresh Guha, for instance, credits the Tantric sources for Yeats's
idea on sexual union in his later poetry to the exclus1on of the
Cabalistic source. See his doctoral dissertation, pp. 128ff.

 

PW,-

 

 

vhen he stax
his mystic i
of twenty, h
a view to 1):
following ye
visited Dub]
The Brahnin,
philosophy a
haunted him
Indian upon
011 Himself,"
In 1887
associated w
“9 was soon ‘
'35 cOinposed
oriental Sym'
In 1890
in“ Micgreg.
himself to 1:]
Yeats More
to return to
Yeats's
1118aSsocim‘
in; bOOhs of
“d the ”Dam
and Ezra Pour
terest found
Vhich he “rot

 

 

 

53

when he started reading sacred books of India under the influence of
his mystic friends including George Russel (AE). In 1885, at the age
of twenty, he organized with Charlie Johnston the Hermetic Society with
a view to promoting Oriental religions and theosophy generally. In the
following year Yeats met a Bengali Brahmin, Babu Mohini Chatterji, who
visited Dublin at the time when the Theosophical Lodge was being founded.
The Brahmin, who possessed a vast knowledge of Indian as well as Western
philosophy and religion, fascinated Yeats and left in his mind ideas that
haunted him for years. His new ideas found their expression in "The
Indian upon God," "The Indian to his love,“ "The Sad Shepherd," "Kanva
on Himself," and "Anashuya and Vijaya."

In 1887 Yeats joined the Theosophical Society and came to be closely

associated with Madam Blavatsky after reading her Th5 Secret Doctrine.

 

He was soon admitted into the esoteric section of the Society, which
was composed of devout students who gathered to study the tables of
oriental symbolism.

In 1890 Yeats withdrew from the Theosophical Society and passed
into Macgregor Mathers's Order of the Golden Dawn and thence devoted
hhnself to the study of magic and spiritism. By joining the Order,
Yeats severed himself from the Dublin group of visionaries and was never
to return to it or any other organized group of such visionaries.

Yeats's interest in Eastern thought never waned, however. Through
his association with Tagore, Shri Purohit, and Michio Ito, and by read—
ing books of Indian philosophy, such as Th3 Yggg §y§£gm g: Patanjali
and the Upanishads, and the Noh of Japan translated by Ernest Fenollosa

and Ezra Pound, Yeats kept his interest in the East fresh. This ins
terest found its artistic expression in a series of Noh-like dramas

Which he wrote in the several years after he was introduced to the

 

 

genre by his
sion in the
tion with Sh
on Indian bo
Yeats's
aspirations.
vided the no
thought. In
his father,
to mysticism
father's inf
It in
Philoso
been a
convict
the ear
this re
allies
And he soon .
to Mill's, V
approprl
t0 defi}
but fin
thflne. I.
Yeats‘s

111 ~ .
onlstlc‘exp‘

Bhlfitsky hm

 

 

 

54

genre by his secretary, Ezra Pound, in 1913. It also found its expres-
sion in the translation of the ten principal Upanishads in collabora-
tion with Shri Purohit and in a series of introductions to and essays
on Indian books.

Yeats's interest in the East was always stirred by his saintly
aspirations. The monistic-experiential pole of his perspective pro-
vided the motive and energy for taking interest in mysticism and.Eastern
thought. In Reveries over Uhildhood and Youth he places the thought of
his father, a follower of John Stuart Mill, in an antithetical position
to mysticism, and confesses that he could not break away from his
father's influence until he became familiar with mysticism:

It was only when I began to study psychical research and.mystical
philosophy that I broke away from my father's influence. He had
been a follower of John Stuart Mill and so had never shared Rossetti's
conviction that it mattered to nobody whether the sun went round
the earth or the earth round the sun. But through this new research,
this reaction from popular science, I had begun to feel that I had
allies for my secret thought.4

And he soon angered his father by giving a definition of truth contrary
to Mill's, which emphsizes validity of sensations:

I was soon to vex my father by defining truth as 'the dramatically

appropriate utterance of the highest man.‘ And if I had been asked

to define the 'highest man,‘ I would have said perhaps, 'We can

but find him as Homer found Odysseus when he was looking for a

theme.’5

Yeats's approach to Madam Blavatsky was also motivated by the same
monistic-experiential aspirations. Although his meeting with Madam
Blavatsky had been prepared by his youthful enthusiasm over Indian

4. Autobiographics, p. 89.
5. Ibid., p. 90.

 

 

 

philosophy i
was directly
theosophist ‘
O O I 'tis
Dream,
The Dublin T
of the Jew a
Blavatsky ca
had a fin c
the hidden r
the Jew did
Certain
some lo:
concedi:
bound 1;

existed
which t}

Yet Mad
Yeats' s expe‘
his “Sire f1
We had I,
himself from
nesoteric te;

abstraction I

\

he

g:

"I
b
5
O
3‘
O

 

 

 

55

philosophy in general and his interest in theosophy in particular, it
was directly motivated by his desire to find out whether the Russian
theosophist was an Ahasuerus, the Jew in Shelley's Hellas, of when
...!tis said his tribe 6
Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.
The Dublin Theosophists had already affirmed to Yeats the real existence
of the Jew and Yeats "saw nothing against his reality." So, when Madam
Blavatsky came to Dublin, he decided "to look the matter up," for he
had a firm conviction that there were some people who could see into
the hidden reality of things and reveal it to ordinary men as Ahasuenm
the Jew did to Mahmud the Sultan:
Certainly if wisdom existed anywhere in the world it must be in
some lonely mind admitting no duty to us, communing with God only,
conceding nothing from fear or favour. Have not all peoples, while
bound together in a single mind and taste, believed that such men
existed and paid them that honour, or paid it to their mere shadow:
which they have refused to philanthropists and to men of learning?7
Yet Madam Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society did not satisfy
Yeats's expectations wholly, for he was asked to leave the Society when
his desire for immediate experience of vision became stronger than the
circle had permitted. Although Yeats admits that he did not separate
himself from the Society by his own will, his disappointment in the
"esoteric teachings" of Madam Blavatsky is clear. He had been tired of
abstraction and wanted experience itself; that was why he started exp

perimenting in ways contrary to the policies of the Society:

 

6. Hellas, 135-136. Thomas Hutchinson, Eh: Complete Poetical Works of
Shelley, Clarendon Press, 1904, P. 500. '“

7. Autobiographics, p. 173.

 

 

I had 1
by what
perinen
Ironically,
self to in g
knowledge of
Yeats t
artist. If
forget the w
Vague. hhil
ticisn, Yeat
.. .it w
there 0
books a]
He was so afl
nation Might
nth life as
Indian .
but, at the :
it brought al
could he d es:
reality, the]
Yeats's atti1

Wits a nega1

\

3- ma

\‘r I).

9~ Ibid

\‘) D.

10. .
Isa.

56

I had learned from Blake to hate all abstraction, and, irritated

by what were called 'esoteric teaching,‘ I began a series of ex-

periments.8
Ironically, however, this abstraction is in fact what he enthrals him—
self to in A Xisign and is what prevents him from attaining the secret
knowledge of the Thirteenth 9225-

Yeats thought that abstraction held another danger for him as an
artist. If an artist is wholly given to abstraction, he is likely to
forget the world he lives in and his creative work will become weak and
vague. While he was engaged in psychic research and the study of mys-
ticism, Yeats was always aware of the danger, because he thought:

...it was my business in life to be anaartist and a poet, and that

there could be no business comparable to that. I refused to read

books and even to meet people who excited me to generalization....
He was so afraid of abstraction that he "began to pray that [his] imagi—
nation might somehow be rescued from abstraction and become preoccupied
with life as had been the imagination of Chaucer."lo

Indian thought provided for Yeats profound wisdom and inspiration,
but, at the same time, it contained a real danger if it was misused. If
it brought about a true vision of reality as it promised, nothing more
could be desired; however, if it gave no more than formless theory of
reality, then a complete immersion in it would mean ruin for an.artist.
Yeats's attitude toward Indian thought is therefore ambivalent. He

takes a negative attitude toward it when his artist's impulse, or the

 

8‘ Ibid., pa 181.
9. Ibid., p. 188.

10. Ibid.

 

 

 

dualistic-co;
when his sail
strong. In a
when he was 1
Apollonian 1':
of Indian met

I have I
but with the
stantializim
supersensual:
not upwards (
Much later i]
Bose and Dr.
Tagore Wrote
Vigneness of
fill t° Netrg
his mlsic tk
the ”Danishac‘
that I disliy
Has asked if
one Side Meet
the Willow,
sheathing dra
““111“.an

The dual

\

1.1' %,
12

. Joseph H0

 

I 7

57
dualistic—cognitive perspective, is strong, and a positive attitude
when his saint's impulse, or the monistic-experiential perspective, is
strong. In a letter to Florence Farr, written probably in,FEbrmuy'1906
when he was tired of his "vague desires" and was inclined to follow an
Apollonian impulse of art, he wrote negatively of the quiescent nature
of Indian meditations:

I have myself by the by begun eastern meditations—-of your sort,
but with the object of trying to lay hands upon some dynamic and sub-
stantializing force as distinguished from the eastern quiescent and
supersensualizing state of the soul-a movement downwards upon life,
not upwards out of life.

Much later in his life, in a conversation with an Indian, Professor
Bose and Dr. Wilbraham Trench of Trinity College, Yeats complained flat
Tagore wrote "too much about God." He said: "My mind resents the
vagueness of such references. Another sort of mysticism which is harm-
ful to poetry is that of Peter Bell and the primrose." Falling back on
his tragic theory, he then added: "I have fed upon the philosophy of
the Upanishads all my life, but there is an aspect of Tagore's mystkimn
that I dislike. I find absence of tragedy in Indian poetry." When he
was asked if he had any message to India, he said: "Let 100,000 men of
one side meet the other. That is my message to India, insistence upon
the antinomy." He then strode across the room, and taking up and un-
sheathing dramatically Sato's Japanese sword, shouted, "Conflict, more
conflict."12

The dualistic-cognitive perspective did not, however, dominate

11. Letters, p. 469.

~—-—.~_

i2. Joseph Hone, !. E. Yeats, 1865-1939, London: Macmillan, 1962,
pp. 458-9.

 

 

 

Yeats's mim
experience (
Indian monk,
Indian thong
principal U1
published by
write his at
fern, repres
The meeting
Indian thong
They are, n;
“Introductio
Mandudya Upa
(1937) trans
tion" to 51h
Purohit gym

Wen and 1

In an e
f" a While-
briefly men t;
in writing in
it will beCon
reaJ~ity,nl4
\

1
4.%§

 

58
Yeats's mind constantly. There were moments when he aspired for direct
experience of oneness with reality. Especially when in 1931 he met an
Indian monk, Shri Purohit Swami, in London, his old enthusaism for
Indian thought was reawakened. He helped Shri Purohit to translate ten
principal Upanishads and wrote an introduction to them when they were
published by Faber and Faber in 1937. He also advised Shri Purohit to
write his autobiography, which he thought, after reading it in manuscript
form, represented "the reality of which the theosophists have dreamed."13
The meeting with the Indian monk touched off Yeats's meditations about
Indian thought, which resulted in a series of essays and introductions.
They are, "Introduction" to An Indian figgk by Shri Purohit (1932),
"Introduction" to The H211 Mountain by Bhagawan Shri Hamsa (1934), "The
Mandudya Upanishad" (1935), "Preface" to Th2 Egg Principal Upanishads
(1937) translated by Shri Purohit Swami and w. B. Yeats, and "Introduc-
tion" to Aphorisms g; Ygga (1938) translated into English by Shri
Purohit Swami. In this series of essays Yeats definitely links his

system and Indian thought.
II

In an essay entitled "A General Introduction for my Work," written
for a complete edition of his works which was never produced, Yeats

briefly mentions how A Vision came about. He reveals two motivations

 

in writing it. One was a conviction that "in two or three generations
it will become generally known that the mechanical theory has no

reality. "14

 

13. Letter to Olivia Shakespear, postmarked Marchljb 1932. Letters,p.794.

l4. Essays and Introductions, p. 518.

 

 

the other w

natural and

tangible, n

distant vor

subconsciou
I was

my Chr

as I t

proper
Shads

intell

to man

of new
Subc

its ha
What I

“d knowled
flowing, CO
“Wing thi
Christ, fail
bOOk, beCau
”miletely.
book to lap
It has

“Man's 501

(My, he sa‘

 

 

 

59

The other was his belief in the unity of all mythologies knitting the
natural and the supernatural together. This unity was concrete and
tangible, not an abstract theory intellectually formulated nor a
distant world subject to knowledge. Yeats's firm faith in this unity
subconsciously motivated the writing of A Vision:
I was born into this faith, have lived in it, and shall die in it;
my Christ, a legitimate deduction from the Creed of St. Patrick
as I think, is that Unity of Being Dante compared to a perfectly
proportioned human body, Blake's 'Imagination,' what the Upani-
shads have named 'Self': nor is this unity distant and therefore
intellectually understandable, but imminent, differing from man
to man and age to age, taking upon itself pain and ugliness,'eye
of newt, and toe of frog.‘
Subconscious preoccupation with this theme brought me A Vision,
its harsh geometry an incomplete interpretation.l5
What Yeats emphasizes in this passage is immediacy of experience
and knowledge. His Christ was to be "not shut off in dead history, but
flowing, concrete, phenomenal."l6 é Vision was written with a view to
knowing this Christ immediately, concretely, and permanently. But
Christ failed to appear before Yeats, as he confessed at the end of’the
book, because he could not allow himself to be absorbed into the symbol
completely. The Thirteenth Cone remained silent, allowing the whole
book to lapse into geometric abstraction that he wished to avoid so much.
It has been argued that Yeats detested the tendency of abstraction
in the Upanishadsgl7 however, in his consideration of reality'and freedom

of man's soul, Yeats falls into that very Upanishadic abstraction. More-

over, he says very little in.§ Vision about how ultimate freedanis brought

 

 

15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.

17. Cuba, 22. 3135., p. 54.

 

 

 

about it
hiograpl
on the t
system,l
visionm
Brahman
his I‘in:
ity and
structo:

nomenal

Thus, 5
the son'
0f that
zeal. ’.
the 30m
most in.
its deg.

Tht

teenth (

60
about in man's soul. It is only after he has read Shri Purohit's auto-
biography and his master's book that we begin to hear Yeats's comments
on the subject. As Yeats refers to the content of A Xisign as "the
system,"18 or "my public philosophy,"19 the book may, as far as its
visionary aspect is concerned, be regarded as an Upanishad without a

Brahmanic vision. In Section V of A Vision (1937), Yeats admits that

 

his "instructors" revealed to him very little about the ultimate real-
ity and that it cannot be known but only symbolized. What his "in—
structors" communicated to him, therefore, is largely about the phe-
nomenal World rather than the secret of the ultimate reality:
My instructors, keeping as far as possible to the phenomenal world,
have spent little time upon the sphere, which can be symbolised but
cannot be known, though certain chance phrases show that they have
all the necessary symbols.
Thus, é Xigign offers to us very little about the ultimate reality and
the soul's escape into that reality, and is characteristically devoid
of that personal vision which the title of the book envisages as its
goal. The book concentrates, intead, on history and civilization, and
the souls in this world which Yeats views as antinomical. The book is
most incomplete, as Yeats admits, in its consideration of the soul and
its destiny.21
The ultimate reality for Yeats is found in what he calls the "Thir-

teenth Cone." From scattered passages referring to the Thirteenth Cone

 

 

 

18. Letters, P.
19. Ibid., p.

20. A Vision (1937), p. 193.

 

21' Ibid., p. 230

 

 

we can r
and its
together
comolog
The
of a can
the estr
assumes
timate r
and the

Absolute

are

dis
So 1

 

 

 

 

61

we can reconstruct what constitutes Yeats's idea of the ultimate reality
and its significance to the soul's freedom. When the passages are pieced
together into a consistent whole, there emerges the crux of the whole
cosmological concept of Yeats.

The idea of the Thirteenth Cone subsumes the Heraclitian concept
of a continuity of life and the Orphic dualism of the personal God and
the estranged individual souls. However, it most characteristically
assumes the Upanishadic mode of thinking. The Upanishads view the ul-
timate reality, or the Brahman, from two viewpoints: the transcendental
and the relative. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad defines two forms of the
Absolute, or Brahman:

1. There are two fonms of Brahman, the material and the im-

material, the mortal and the immortal, the solid and the fluid, sat
(being) and tya (that), (i.e. sat-tya, true).

2. Everything except air and sky is material, is mortal, is
solid, is definite. The essence of that which is material, which
is mortal, which is solid, which is definite is the sun that shines,
for he is the essence of sat (the definite).

3. But air and sky are immaterial, are immortal, are fluid,
are indefinite. The essence of that which is immaterial, which is
immortal, which is fluid, which is indefinite is the person in the
disk of the sun, for he is the essence of tyad (the indefinite).

So far with regard to the Devas.2

The transcendental Brahman is the Absolute One which pervades the whole

universe and yet transcends it. Let us see how the Upanishads describe

it.
First of all, the Upanishads speak of the transcendental Brahman
as devoid of any qualifying attributes. Since attributes are necessa-

rily of the world of relativity, the Absolute One, which is without a

 

 

22. Brihad k ' "‘ - '
aranya a Upanishad, II, 111, 1 3. Max Muller The Upanishads,
Vol. II, New York: Dover Publications, 1962, p. 10;._—-

 

 

second, art
famous com
is bewilde:
relative 10

Absolute i.

other
other
the 0'
how s]
he ta;
anotht
How s]
be do

Vagasanezi.

hum thou;

than ‘
fore ‘

011 it
The 11]

MW 1

butts
Md p1

 

 

 

 

62

second, are without them. It cannot be known except by negation. In a
famous Conversation between Yagnavalkya and his wife, in which the wife
is bewildered about the meaning of Brahman, the husband explains that

relative knowledge is possible only in the phenomenal world and that the

Absolute is known only negatively:

15. 'For when there is as it were duality, then one sees the
other, one smells the other, one tastes the other, one salutes the
other, one hears the other, one perceives the other, one touches
the other, one knows the other; but when the Self only is all this,
how should he see another, how should he smell another, how should
he taste another, how should he salute another, how should he hear
another, how should he touch another, how should he know another:
How should he know Him by whom he knows all this: That Self is to
be described by No, no!2

Vagasaneyi—Samhita (Isha) Upanishad describes Brahman as swifter than

human thought:
4. That one (the Self), though never stirring, is swifter
than thought. The Devas (senses) never reached it, it walked be-
fore them. Though standing still, it overtakes the others who are

runnin . Matrisvan (the wind, the moving spirit) bestows powers
on it.

The unknowable Brahman is all-pervasive of the universe. Sveuuwatra

Upanishad has the following description:

16. (If he looks) for the Self that pervades everything, as
butter is contained in milk, and the roots whereof are self-knowledge
and penance. That is the Brahman taught by the Upanishad.25

This all-pervasive Brahman is all-inclusive as well:

23. Ibid., p. 185.
24. Vagasaneyi—Samhita Upanishad, 4. Max Muller, Egg Upanishads, Vol.1,
p. 311.

25. Svetasvatara Upanishad, I, 16. Max Muller, Th5 Upanishads, Vol. II,
p. 237.

 

 

 

Brahnan
It inclu
the tran
than Bra

Sin
cause am
not real
reali’cy,
eVer, is
Power, c;
relativi.

meal

thi:
end.

the
the
013111

Lou
' s

\
26.
m

 

63
l. Manifest, near, moving in the cave (of the heart) is the
great Being.

In it everything is centred which ye know as moving,
breathing, and blinking, as being and not-being, as adorable, as
the best, that is beyond understanding of creatures.

2.

That which is brilliant, smaller than small, that on which
the worlds are founded and their inhabitants, that is the indestruct—
ible Brahman, that is the breath, speech, mind; that is the true,
that is the immortal.

9. In the highest golden sheath there is the Brahman without
passions and without parts. That is pure, that is the light of
lights, that is it which they know who know the Self.2

Brahman thus exists within and outside the universe at the same time.

It includes and transcends the phenomenal world as we conceive it.

Fran
the transcendental standpoint, therefore, there is no universe other

than Brahman. Brahman is thus non-dual, absolute existence.

Since Brahman is the One without a second, free from the law of

cause and effect, including and pervading all, the created world does
not really exist. To the illumined, Brahman itself is the ultimate

reality, the world of duality being mere illusion.

That illusion, how—
ever, is created by Brahman itself.

By means of its own inscrutable
power, called maya, the transcendental Brahman appears in the world of

relativity as a knowable entity endowed with attributes:

1. He, the sun, without any colour, who with set purpose by
means of his power (sakti) produces endless colours, in whom all
this comes together in the beginning, and comes asunder in the
enqunay he, the god, endow us with good thoughts.

9. That from which the maker (mayin) sends forth all this--
the sacred verses, the offerings, the sacrifices, the penances,
the past, the future, and all that the Vedas declare—-in that the
other is bound up through that maya.

10. Know then Prakriti (nature) is Maya (art), and the great
Lord the Mayin (maker); the whole world is filled with what are
his members.

 

26. Mundaka Upanishad, II, ii, 1-2, 9. Ibid., pp. 36-7.

 

Tn

be
Things
Absolut

lute On

The ind
mien
us as r
of BPah
Phenm
cream]
\
27. 33
28- The

29, E

 

 

llIII""""""""""""""""""""""'“""""———————--------------------t--"
64

19. No one has grasped him above, or across, or in the middle.
There is no image of him whose name is Great Glory.

20. His form cannot be seen, no one perceives him with the eye.

Those who through heart and mind know him thus abiding in the heart,
become immortal. 7

Things of the phenomenal world are thus conceived to emanate from the

AbSolute One, who is transcendental and cannot be seen. Yet the Abso-

lute One is the home to which everything returns:

7. And, 0 friend, as birds to a tree to

roost, thus all this I
rests in the Highest Atman, -— 28 ‘

8. The earth and its subtile elements, the water and its sub- I
tile elements, the light and its subtile elements, the air and its l
subtile elements, the ether and its subtile elements; the eye and
what can be seen, the ear and what can be heard, the nose and what
can be smelled, the taste and what can be tasted, the skin and what
can be touched, the voice and what can be spoken, the hands and
what can be grasped, the feet and what can be walked, the mind and
what can be perceived, intellect (buddhi) and what can be conceived,
personality and what can be personified, thought and what can be

thought, light and what can be lighted up, the Prana and what is to
be supported by it.

9. For be it is who sees, hears, smells, tastes, perceives, '
conceives, acts, he whose essence is knowledgeé the person, and he
dwells in the highest, indestructible Self,--2

The indestructible, causeless Brahman is, then, the source and the desti-

nation of all forms and names of the phenomenal world. What appears to

us as real is a shadow of reality which is created by the magical power

of Brahman, called maya. Brahman thus creates and does not create the

phenomenal world. It pervades and transcends the created world. By

creating the phenomenal world it does not lose its non-dual nature; it

 

 

 

27. Svetasvatara Upanishad, IV, 1,9,10,19,20. Ibid., pp. 249,251,253,254.
28. The identity of Atman with Brahman will be discussed later.

29. Prasna Upanishad, V, 7, 8, 9. Ibid., pp. 280-81.

 

 

 

always
is rem

Be
us red
with t1

Li
standpc
cendenl
flag.
the his
is a cc
transce
Point,
esis of
each 16
331:3
dental

VOI‘ld c

 

65

always remains one. Thus the seeming dualism of the Vedantic metaphwflc
is resolved into non—dualism as salt and water are fused into salt water.

Before we wander too far into the maze of the Vedantic wisdom, let
us return to Yeats and see how his idea of the ultimate reality compares
with the Vedantic concept.

Like the Upanishads, Yeats also views the ultimate reality from two
standpoints: the transcendental and the relative. Viewed from the trans—
cendental standpoint, the ultimate reality is called the Thirteenth
§phg£g. It is called a Sphere because it is phaseless. Yeats divided
the historical process of the time—world into twelve cycles. Each cycle
is a cone because it consists of antinomies. The Thirteenth §phggg
transcends the twelve historical cycles. Viewed from the relative stand-
point, however, the ultimate reality is a cone and the spiritual antith-

esis of the historical cycles and incarnate daimons. It is reflected in

 

each lesser cycle of the time-world. Thus, Yeats's Thirteenth Cone or
Sphere is both transcendental and relative as Brahman is. Its transcen-
dental nature cannot be perceived or described by a person living in the

world of relativity. It can best be symbolized:

I speak of the Thirteenth Cone as a sphere and yet I might say that
the gyre or cone of the Principles is in reality a sphere, though
to Man, bound to birth and death, it can never seem so, and that
it is the antinomies that force us to find it a cone. Only one
symbol exists, though the reflecting mirrors make many appear and
all different.30

 

The ultimate reality transcends all relativity, all conflict and all
knowledge. It is, in other words, nonedual entity; and this is the

reason why it cannot be known by the creature of the relative world:

 

 

30. A Vision (1937), p. 240.

 

 

The on
therefl
of anti
key idv
to and
sophice
This he
justifj
Vendlez
on two
Yeats z

the "1‘11

 

I h

66

The ultimate reality because neither one nor many, concord nor
discord, is symbolized as a phaseless sphere, but as all things
fall into a series of antinomies in human experience it becomes,
the moment it is thought of, what I shall presently describe as
the thirteenth cone. All things are present as an eternal instant
to our Daimon (or Ghostly Self as it is called, when it inhabits
the sphere), but that instant is of necessity unintelligible to
all bound to the antinomies.

The creature of this time—world can only see things antinomically and
therefore cannot know the ultimate reality which transcends the world
of antinomies. The unintelligibility of the ultimate reality is the
key idea of Yeats and must be clearly understood and remembered in order
to understand his thought. The confession of failure at the end of A

Vigigg is not an artistic gesture nor an abandonment of Vedantic philo-
sophical abstraction; it is a statement of his epistemological belief.
This belief, of course, strengthened his position as an artist, for it

justifies the artist's work that falls in the domain of symbols.

Vendler's equation of the Thirteenth Gone with Phase Fifteen is based

 

on two misunderstandings of Yeats's concept of the ultimate reality.
Yeats never placed, as Vendler believes he did, the Thirteenth Gone in
the mind, nor Phase Fifteen in a form of created art.32

The non-dual ultimate reality is not an abstract idea, but a

dynamic energy which is free from causal and other relationships. Its

relative and causal aspects are only in our human perception:

The Thirteenth Gone is a sphere sufficient to itself; but as seen
by Man it is a cone. It becomes even conscious of itself as so
seen, like some great dancer, the perfect flower of modern culture,
dancing some primitive dance and conscious of his or her own life

and the dance.
31‘ Ibid., P. 193’
32. Vendler, _p. cit., p. 69.
33. A Vision (1937), p. 241

 

 

 

ica

spi

fro

Thi:

Vasi
the
to t

Viou

Vere

67
The ultimate reality as a personal, dynamic entity assumes an antithet-
ical position to the antinomies of the phenomenal world. It is the
spiritual destination of all creatures of the phenomenal world, for
whom entering into the "sphere" means to attain freedom, a deliverance
from the cycle of birth and death:
It is that cycle which may deliver us from the twelve cycles of
time and space. The cone which intersects ours is a cone in so
far as we think of it as the antithesis to our thesis, but if the
time has come for our deliverance it is the phaseless sphere,
sometimes the Thirteenth Sphere, for every lesser cycle contains
within itself a sphere that is, as it were, the reflection or mes-
senger of the final deliverance. Within it live all souls that
have been set free and every Daimon and Ghostly Self; our expand-

ing cone seems to cut through its gyre; spiritual influx is from
its circumference, animate life from its centre.

This brief passage, which touches on the meaning of the ultimate reality
in connection with the soul's freedom, brings in ideas from three dif—

ferent sources that are conspicuous among others in the making of A

 

Xigigg. The idea of nonduality of the ultimate reality comes from
the Vedantic sources, which emphasize the all—inclusive and all-per—
vasive and attributeless (phaseless in Yeats's language) Brahman as
the sole reality. However, this phaseless sphere is the antithesis

to the antinomies of the phenomenal world—-an idea which Yeats ob—
Viously borrowed from Heraclitus, to whom life was a continuous flow

in which death meant only a renewal of life and in which life and death
were in complementary relationship. Yeats borrowed the idea of the
interlocking gyres from Heraclitus. Explaining his fundamental symbol,
Yeats said in A Visign: "Here the thought of Heraclitus dominates all:

'Dying each other's life, living each other's death.m35 Heraclitus

 

 

34. Ibid., p. 210.

35. A Vision, p. 68.

 

 

US!

the
hri
ide
hm
him

sel

The
of t
its

Mag

36, ]

37. l
38. I

I1

 

68

used the expression to explain the relationship of the mortal world
and the immortal: "Immortals become mortals, mortals become immortals;
they live in each other's death and die in each other's life.36 Yeats
brings the phrase back into its original context to explain his own
idea of the ultimate reality and the phenomenal world. Heraclitus,
however, condemned plurality of the ultimate reality. There was for
hnm one continuous Being and therefore one lggg_: "We should let our-
selves be guided by what is common to all. Yet, although the Logos is
common to all, most men live as if each of them had a priVate intelli—
gence of his own."37 Thus, it is not right, according to Heraclitus,
to distinguish modes of life: "It is one and same thing to be living
or dead, awake or sleep, young or old. The former aspect in each case
becomes the latter, and the latter again the former, by sudden unex-

pected reversal."38 According to Yeats, the souls have their antithet-

 

ical daimons in the Thirteenth Cone:

Our action, lived in life, or remembered in death, are the food
and drink of the Spirits of the Thirteenth Cone, that which gives
them separation and solidity.3

The Thirteenth Gone, in other words, has gyric relations with the cones

 

of the Faculties and Principles, the two systems that control the spir-
its in life and between lives. It has a corresponding phase to each
phase of the gyre. When we are in the twelfth month of our expanding

gyre, we are in the first of the Thirteenth Cone, so that the contrary

 

 

36. Fragment 66. Philip Wheelwright, Heraclitus, New York: Atheneum,
1964, p. 68.

37. Fragment 2. Ibid., p. 19.

38. Fragment 113. Ibid., pp. 90-91.
39. A Vision (1937), p. 230.

 

 

 

69
Cone serves us as the other half of the antinomy. Which simply means
that the Thirteenth Cone as a whole is the "spiritual objective" of the
souls in the gyre. Individual: spirits of the Thirteenth Cone have
their control over the souls in the relative world, and the individual
souls of the relative cycles are, upon death, put through six purgatorial
stages before they are reborn or delivered from the cycles of birth and
death; during the round of incarnations the souls in the lesser gyres
are controlled by the whirling of greater gyres:
All the involuntary acts and facts of life are the effect of the
whirring and interlocking of the gyres; but gyres may be inter—
rupted or twisted by greater gyres, divide into two lesser gyres
or multiply into four and so on. The uniformity of nature depends
upon the Constant return of gyres to the same point.
The souls whirl round in the gyres until they are absorbed into the
Thirteenth Cone, when the whirling of gyres comes to an end:
When all sequence comes to an end, and the soul puts on the rhyth-
mic or spiritual body or luminous body and contemplates all the
events of its memory and every possible impulse in an eternal pos—

session of itself in one single moment1 That condition is alone
animate, all the rest is phantasy....

 

This combination of the individuality of souls and the macroqmicrocosmic
periodicity of life is not Heraclitan nor Vedantic in origin. It is
most likely derived from the Orphic doctrine of reincarnation. In the
words of F. M. Cornford:

Orphism is focussed on the individual soul, its heavenly origin

and immutable nature, and its persistence, as an individual,
throughout the round of incarnations. It is 'an exile from God

__

40. Ibid., p. 237.

41. Mythologies, p. 357.

 

 

70

and a wanderer'; and it is reunited with God, and with other souls,

only after its final escape at the end of the Great Year. Hence,

the Orphic is preoccupied with the salvation, by purifying rites,

of his individual soul.42

The idea of the Thirteenth 2233, then, has non-Vedantic substrata
which make Yeats's concept extremely complex and, in a sense, selfhcon—
tradictory, for what are we to make of the Sphere which is "neither one
nor many" and yet inhabited by the "teaching spirits"? What saves Yeats
from a hopeless confusion is the concept of maya that be borrowed from
the Upanishads. As Brahman manifests itself as the Creator and Destroyer
to man through its magic power of illusion, so the Thirteenth 9222 ap—
pears as a cone to man who, forced by the antinomies, cannot find it
otherwise.

Yeats, however, could not accept the concept of maya wholly. He

adapted the concept to his systen only in the epistemological sense.
He totally disregarded its metaphysical implication. By condemning the

phenomenal world as illusory, the Vedantic philosophy denied it reality,

 

which belongs solely to non—dual Brahman. It follows from this that the
soul, in order to attain the ultimate reality, its freedom, must discard
all Vestiges of duality and unite itself with Brahman. As long as it
inhabits the illusory world of duality, it is not free. In order to be
free, the soul must know that the only reality'isTBrahnnn with which it
is united; that knowledge constitutes the experience of freedom. The
Vedantic philosophy is thus monistic-experiential in its perspective.
The experience of freedom is gained, according to the Upanishads,

by a fusion of Brahman and Atman, the Self in the individual soul. The

 

 

42 F M. Cornford, From Religion_ to Philoso h , a Stud by in the 0ri1gins
of Western S eculation, New York: Harper 8 Row, Pu bli sh ers ,1957,
p. 179.

 

 

 

71
individual Self is truly the same as Brahman itself, although it is not

aware of it as long as it is enthralled in the illusory world.

In the
conversation between Svetaketu and his father in Khandogya Upanished,

the father explains to the son the meaning of the Brahman-Atman rela-
tionship:

1. 'As the bees, my son, make honey by collecting the juices
of distant trees, and reduce the juice into one form,
2.

‘And as these juices have no discrimination, so that they
might say, I am the juice of this tree or that, in the same manner,

my son, all these creatures, when they have become merged in the
True (either in deep sleep or in death), know not that they are
merged in the True.

3. 'Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion, or a
wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, or a gnat, or a mosquito,
that they become again and again.

4'

‘Now that which is that subtile essence, in it all that
exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou,
0 Svetaketu, are it.‘

The famous phrase, "Tat tvam asi" (Thou art it) defines the individual
Self as one and the same as Brahman. The concept of the oneness of
Brahman and Atman (Brahma-atma-aikyam) is expressed in another well—

known phrase found in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: “Aham Brahma asmi"
(I am Brahman).44

The liberation of the soul is achieved by knowing Brahman, by
uniting the individual Self with the Supreme Self.

Svetasvatara
Upanishad has the following to say on the subject:

10. That which is perishable is the Pradhana (the first), the
43. Khandogya Upanishad, VI, ix, 1-4. Muller, 22. 323., Vol. 1, p. 101.

44. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1, iv, 10. Muller, 9p. g;§., Vol. II,
p. 88.

 

 

 

 

72

immortal and imperishable is Hara. The one god rules the perish-
able (the pradhana) and the (living) self. From meditating on.hnn,
from joining him, from becoming one with him there is further ces—
sation of all illusion in the end.

11. When that god is known, all fetters fall off, sufferings
are destroyed, and birth and death cease.

From meditating on him
there arises, on the dissolution of the body, the third state,
that of universal lordship; but he only who is alone, is satisfikfi.

12.

This, which rests eternally within the self, should be
known; and beyond this not anything has to be known.

By knowing
the enjoyer, the enjoyed, and the ruler everything has been de-
clared to be three-fold, and this is Brahman.

In another place the same Upanishad has this:

7. Those who know beyond this the High Brahman, the vast,

hidden in the bodies of all creatures, and alone enveloping every-
thing, as the Lord, they become immortal.

It is clear, then, that the knowledge of Brahman means to the Vedanta

the experience, which in turn means immortality. The idea is singulanhy

monistic and experiential.

To dualistic-cognitive Yeats, this thoroughly monistic-experiential

perspective was hardly congenial. Although he conceded to the Vedanta

in the idea of the unintelligibility of the ultimate reality and even
adapted, though half—heartedly, the Brahman—Atman relationship to his
system, in which the Thirteenth Gone is "in every man and called by

every man his freedom,"47 Yeats found Heraclitus' idea of continuity

of life more congenial to him. After all, to be steeped in a Brahmanic

Vision meant to lose sight of the world of conflict, which was as real

 

45. Svetasvatara

 

Upanishad, I, 10-12. Ibid., pp. 235—36.
46. Ibid., p. 245.

47. g‘Vision, p. 302.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

73
to him as the world of unity, for unity arose out of conflict. Thus
Heraclitus' dictum, "Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes
the fairest harmony"48 was more easily accepted than the Vedantic con-
cept, "Brahmaatma-aikyam."

Thus, A Vision gives us little or nothing on the subject of the

 

soul's freedom; instead, it speaks about the transmigration of indi-
vidual souls. The book mentions, however, the Hindu idea of the states
of the soul in Book Three, in which four states of the soul that the
Upanishads describe are briefly explained. Yeats fails, however, to
relate those states of the soul to his concept of the Thirteenth Eggs.

Elsewhere, however, Yeats vaguely tries to relate the Hindu con-
cept of the soul's states to his system. In the series of essays and
introductions which he produced as a result of his association with
Shri Purohit Swami, Yeats discusses the question of the freedom of the
soul. The essays are informative but offer very little of Yeats's own
idea on the subject. From scattered passages and incomplete statements,
however, we gather that Yeats connected the Hindu concept of sushupti
(dreamless sleep) with his Phase One, the phase of the dark moon, and
Eggiyg (the fourth, transcendental state) with his Phase Fifteen, the
phase of the full moon:

I find my imagination setting in one line Tpgiygg-full moon,

mirror-like bright water, Mount Meru; and in the other Sushupti,
moonless night, 'dazzling darkness'—-Mount Ginir.4g

Mount Meru stands for the perfect freedom that Bhagwan Shri Hamsa at-

tained; Mount Ginar, on the other hand, stands for Sushupti which Shri

 

 

48. Fragment 98. Wheelwright, pp. 213., P~ 90-

49. Essays 22g Introductions, p. 472.

 

 

 

 

74
Purohit Swami attained.

Yeats, then, had presumably two ideas about the meaning of freedom,
although he held one superior to the other. Freedom, on the one hand,
means a state resulting from a free choice, where the effort and the
ahn are indistinguishable. 0n the other hand, it means that state of
bliss where the self is completely absorbed into its anti-self. The
former is a positive kind of freedom which is attained through positive
choosing; the latter is a negative kind which is attained because there
is no choice, no desire.

The positive freedom is attained at Phase Fifteen of Yeats's lunar
cycle, where the antithetical man gains his fullest expression. There
the Will completely absorbs the Creative 5129: and the figgk desired by
the Will submerges the Bgdy 2f Eggg. This is the state of perfect
beauty, so much so that it is not possible in human life:

Its own body possesses the greatest possible beauty, being indeed

that body which the soul will permanently inhabit, when all its

phases have been!*epeated according to the numgsr alloted: that
which we call the clarified or Celestial Body.
This is the state in which the dancer is indistinguisable from the
dance, for "all thought has become image."51 This state is related to

The negative freedom is attained at Phase One. There the Will is

completely absorbed into the Creative gigd and the Mask into the Bgdy

pf Fate. This is the state of complete objectivity, "complete passivity,

 

50. A Vision (1937), p. 136.

51. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

 

75
complete plasticity."52 Here the being is completely absorbed into its
supernatural environment and the mind and the body have become "the in-
strument of supernatural manifestation."53 The nearest that man can
come to this phase is the Phase of the Fool, that is Phase 28. This is

the dreamy state in which a person cares about nothing and lives accord—

 

ing to the way his environment shapes him, with "no act but nameless
drifting and turning."54 A person in this state lives in perfect harmony
with nature; birds and beasts are his friends. A passage from the poem,

"Two Songs of a Fool"55 is illuminating at this point.

I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire,
The speckled cat slept on my knee;

We never thought to enquire

Where the brown hare might be,

And whether the door were shut.

Who knows how she drank the wind

Stretched up on two legs from the mat,
Before she had settled her mind

To drum with her heel and leap?

Had I but awakened from sleep

And called her name, she had heard,

It may be, and had not stirred,

That now, it may be, has found

The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.

 

There certainly is a note of peacefulness and calm acceptance of the
grim realities of the world. The phase of perfect objectivity is a
step further than this phase of the Fool. There a person will shake
off the last link he has with the worldly self and melt into the ggdy

pf Fate. He attains his freedom by obliterating his identity:

 

52. Ibid., p. 183.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Collected ngmg, pp. 166—67.

.—_—.

 

 

76

When man identifies himself with his Fate, when he is able to say,
"Thy Will is our freedom" or when he is perfectly natural, that is
to say, perfectly a portion of his surroundings, he is free even
though all his actions can be foreseen, even though every action
He is all

is a logical deduction from all that went before it.
Fate but has no Destiny.

In relating Phase One to sushupti and Phase Fifteen to turiya Yeats

sought support for his ideas in the moon image that the Upanishads use
The Upanishads

to explain the soul's reincarnation and its escape.
explain that the soul that goes to the bright half of the moon is met
by "a person not human"57 and is led by him to "Brahman (the conditioned

Brahman)"58; and the soul that goes to the dark half of the moon is,
when it reaches the moon, "loved (eaten) by the Devas."59 Yeats noticed
a tremendous possibility that the image offered in supporting his own

system. He saw a gyric relationship in the bright and the dark sides

of the moon:
A European would...call the increasing moon man's personality, as

it fills into the round and becomes perfect, overthrowing the black
Am I not justified in discavering there the

night of oblivion.
conflict between subjectivity and objectivity, between Self and
Not—Self, between waking life and dreamless sleep?

The Heraclitian mode of thinking which inspired him to conceive the
Thus, Phase One, the phase of the

interlocking gyres is basic here.
dark moon, is related to sushu ti; and Phase Fifteen, the phase 0f the

 

56. 5 Vision (1937), p. 112.

57. Khandogya Upanishad, V, x, l. Muller, The U anishads, Vol. I, p.80.
58. M.
59._£§£g.

50. Ensazs

and Introductions, p. 470.

 

 

 

 

 

77

full moon, is related to turiya, the final escape:
The bright fortnight's escape is Turi a, and in the dark fortnight,

the ascetic who, unlike the common people, asks nothing of God or
Ghost, may, though unworthy of Thriya, find Sushupti and absorption

in God, as if the Soul were His food or fuel.

225223, then, meant for Yeats a freedom gained in the subjective phase
and sushupti was that gained in the objective phase.
What distinguishes Yeats's ideas of freedom from the Vedantic con-
cept is perhaps their extrovert nature. For Yeats freedom is necessarily
While Phase One means a complete

associated with the soul's environment.
absorption of the soul into its environment, Phase Fifteen means a com-
This is how Yeats in-

plete absorption of the environment by the soul.
terprets the Hiudu concept of turiya and sushupt'. Whether it occurs

in Phase One or Phase Fifteen, freedom means a vision of unity, a unity
This vision of unity is basically different

 

arising out of antinomy.
from the Vedantic knowledge of Brahman, which emphasizes introspection.62

According to the Upanishads the soul is not expected to go outside it.
It is expected to divest itself of all temporal attributes and intensely

meditate upon itself, for there is no ultimate reality outside it: "Sa

va ayam atma Brahma" ("That Self is indeed Brahman").63
According to the Upanishads, Atman (the Self) is the witness of the

experiences of three states: the states of‘waking, dreaming, and dreamless

 

 

61. Essays and Introductions, pp. 470f.

62. Rudolph Otto disintinguishes two ways of mystical knowledge: "the
mySthism of introspection" and "the mysticism of unifying vision."

The fonmer is characterized by a "withdrawal from all outward things

into the ground of one's own soul," while the latter "knows nothing

 

of 'inwardness'" but is characterized by "the emphasis on unity, and
See Mysticism East and West, a
by Bertha L.

the struggle against all diversity."
Cam arative Analysis 2! the Nature 2; Mysticism, tr.
Bracey and Richenda C. Payne, New York: Meridian Books, 1957, pp.29-69.

&3 5h“ daran aka EREEEEEEQ: IV, 1V, 5. Muller, The Upanishads, Vol. II,

 

 

 

 

78
The third, dreamless state is called subhupti and is the closest

sleep.
that the soul can come to the knowledge of Brahman in the relative world.

Atman completely detatched from the three states is one and the same as

the transcendental Brahman; and the knowledge of Brahman is the experi-
The method of attaining that

ence of freedom, which is called turiya.
experience described in the Upanishads is characteristically monistic

and experiential in that it negates all relative attributes of the Self,

which it calls unreal, and brings one to pure and undifferentiated con-

sciousness. Katha Upanishad explains how Brahman is attained as

follows.64
10. When the five instruments of knowledge stand still together

with the mind, and when the intellect does not move, that is called

 

the highest state.
ll. This, the firm holding back of the senses, is what is called
Yoga. He must be free from thoughtlessness then, for Yoga comes
and goes.
12. He (the Self) cannot be reached by speech, by mind, or by
How can it be apprehended except by him who says:"He is?"

the eye.
13. By the words "He is," is he to be apprehended, and by (ad-
mitting) the reality of both (the invisible Brahman and the visible
When he has been apprehended by

world, as coming from Brahman).
the words "He is," then his reality becomes immortal, and obtains

Brahman.
14. When all desires that dwell in his heart cease, then the

mortal becomes immortal, and obtains Brahman.
15. When all the ties of the heart are severed here on earth,
then the mortal becomes immortal——here ends the teaching.

flyflggfig Upanishad has the following:65
7. That (true Brahman) shines forth grand, divine, inconceiv-

Ibid., pp. 22f.

 

54. Katha Uganishad, II, Vi, 10—15.
65..Mundaka Uganishad, III, 1, 7-8. Ibid., p. 39.

 

 

79
able, smaller than small; it is for beyond what is far and yet
near here, it is hidden in the cave (of the heart) among those
who see it even here.

He is not apprehended by the eye, nor by speech, nor by
the other senses, not by penance or good works. When a man's

8.
nature has become purified by the serence light of knowledge,

then he sees him, meditating on him as without parts.
This

The experience of Brahman, then, is essentially introspective.
aspect of Vedanta that denies the world of names and forms was hardly
congenial to Yeats. He could not let the world of conflict go, even
though his ultimate aim was the world of unity. His unity was to arise
\

 

out of conflict.
The method of non-dualistic Vedanta, however, sets the goal of the
In order

ultimate experience too high for ordinary people to attain.
This

to attain oneness with Brahman, one must rigorously discard every

vestige of duality and bring his soul to its mirror-like clarity.
It must be difficult especially for

is more easily said than done.

those to whom the world of senses appears so real that the cognitive
perspective seems to be a valid way to true knowledge. It was, at any

rate, difficult for Yeats, to whom knowledge meant something "flowing,
concrete, phenomenal." It was natural, therefore, that he should have
felt sympathetic toward the Tantric philosophy.66

Unlike Vedanta, Tantra emphasizes the importance of the world of

Non-dualistic Vedanta insists that Brahman is attained
Tantra, on the

names and fonms.
only by divesting the soul of its phenomenal attributes.

66. Cuba believes that Yeats found the sources of his interlocking gyres
As to the source

 

and sexual mysticism of his later years in Tantra.

of the interlocking gyres, however, Yeats is silent about Tantra in

A Vision while he mentions several other possible sources of inspira-
As to sexual mysticism, he may have derived it from the Cabala

tion.
among others.

 

 

 

80
other hand, looks upon the world of duality as a manifestations of the

ultimate reality which can be transformed back into its original fonn.

Maya, according to Tantra, creates the world of names and forms in which
This process of polarization is called

various elements are polarized.
the "outgoing current" and it reveals reality in the state of evolution;

a reversal of this current, called the "return current," reveals reality
Based on this concept, the Tantric

in its original state of infinitude.
way of realization is to transform the outgoing current into the return

current. Hence, it emphasizes the sublimation of conflict into libera—

tion. The ultimate reality is not to be realized by negating phenomenal

attributes of the soul, but by positively affirming them, bringing to-
The physical union of man and woman is

gether the poles of antinomy.
thus one way to sublimate the polarity into the cosmic principle of

 

We find here Yeats's familiar idea of unity arising out

Siva—Sakti.

of conflict.
In Section VII of his essay "The Mandukya Upanishad" (1935), Yeats

comments on the Tantric way of realization:
An Indian devotee may recognise that he approaches the Self through

a transfiguration of sexual desire; he repeats thousands of times

a day words of adoration, calls before his eyes a thousand times
He is not always solitary, there is another

the divine image.
method, that of the Tantric philosophy, where a man and woman,‘when
in sexual union, transfigure each other's image into the masculine

and feminine characters of God....
Whether the idea of the consummated physical love as a resolution of
conflict was derived directly from the Tantric philosophy or not, the

idea expressed in this passage is the theme of much of Yeats's later
Yeats could not, however, wholeheartedly accept the Tantric

poetry.

 

 

67. Essays and Introductions, p. 484

 

 

 

 

 

81
concept of sexual union as the way of realization. Constantly haunted
with a sense of failure, Yeats maintained a skeptical attitude to any
claim of attainment of perfect knowledge. In "Solomon and the Witch,"
as it has been previously pointed out, there is no true consummation of
love: when the sexual act is over, both Solomon and Sheba are thrown
back into the cyclical process of life. In "Three Bushes," the lady,
the chambermaid and the lover are not united until after death. Cuchu-
lain of The iny Jealousy g: Ems: renounces his only chance of being
united with the supernatural Fand, and is brought back to the natural
world, where he returns not to his wife, who retrieved him from Fand,
but to his mistress, who herself realizes that her lover's heart is
subject to change.

To the Tantric philosophy, therefore, Yeats held an ambivalent
attitude, just as he maintained the same attitude to Vedanta. 0n the
one hand, he accepted the affirmative attitude of Tantra to the world
of duality; on the other hand, he was skeptical over Tantra's claim
that the perfect knowledge of reality can be attained by reversing the
outgoing current of maya. To Yeats, any symbolic forms or action were
caFable and incapable of revealing the ultimate reality. The sexual
union was no exception:

The present Pope has said in his last Encyclical that the natural

union of man and woman has a kind of sacredness. He thought

doubtless of the marriage of Christ and the Church, whereas I see

in it a symbol of that eternal instant where the antinomy is re-
solved. It is not the resolution itself.

Yeat's schooling in Indian philosophy is thus characterized by an

 

68. A Vision, p. 214.

 

 

 

 

 

82

absence of experience, of Brahmanic vision. In turning to the Upanishads
he fell into the very Vedantic abstraction which he disliked so much;
with Tantra he could not go all the way in the belief in sublimating
antinomy into pure consciousness. The monistic—experiential wisdom of
Hindu philosophers was an elixir he coveted, but the dosage they offered
proved to be too strong for him to swallow at once. Thus he wrote to
Sturge Moore in 1929:
My dreams and much psychic phenomena force me into a certain little—
trodden way but I must not go too far from the main European track,
which means in practice that I turn away from all attempts to make
philosophy support science by starting with some form of 'fact' or

'datum': that way lie those deep—sea fish Taylor objects to in the
extract and all the obscurantism of the Ratcatchers.

 

 

I . " ' Their Corre-
69. Ursula Bridge ed., W. B. Yeats and T. bturge Moore,
spondence 190l—1937,-LoHdo—Tn: ouEIédge 5 Regan Pail: T9337 1" 139'

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

The Flower or the Gyre

Yeats was introduced to the Noh drama of Japan by Ezra Pound, who
served him as a secretary during the winters of 1913—14, 1914-15, and
1915-16. Pound, while acting as Yeats's secretary, had a project of
his own, which was to edit and publish Ernest Fenollosa's work on the
Noh. The discovery of the Noh meant for Yeats a confirmation of the
aesthetic principles he was groping for since the publication of the
form of drama, an entirely new form for the West--the kind of drama
that does not represent the clash of characters, but a certain mood
for its theme. His infatuation with the Noh, however, did not wholly
result from his reaction against the realistic school of Ibsen, as has
been generally believed, nor from his disbelief in the systematic
tragedy of the Aristotelian or the Elizabethan type. It is true that
Yeats reacted against Ibsenite realism or the Aristotelian clash of
characters on the stage, but such an unfavorable reaction stemmed from
his basic dualistic doctrine of aesthetics, from which his theory and

practice of the Noh aesthetic precisely sprang. The Noh theory of

 

l. I accept the recent theory, put forward by Engelberg, Vendler and
others, that the discovery of the Noh meant for Yeats a confirma-
tion rather than a complete "about face" in his aesthetic belief;
but it is important not to see the Noh through Yeats's eyes in
appraising Yeats's principle in connection with the Noh: the dis—
crepancies that exist between the Noh and Yeats throw more light
on the subject than the similarities.

83

 

 

 

 

 

 

84

Yeats is a culmination of the years of his effort to formulate an ade—
quate aesthetic doctrine that parallels his antinomical view of the

universe. His essay, "Certain Noble Plays of Japan," which he wrote

for Pound's 1916 edition of Fenollosa's work on the Noh and which he
included as the opening article in the 1919 edition of $22 Cutting of

32 Agate, embodies the theories that he had been working out when he

discovered the Noh. The essay, therefore, which throws considerable

light on the meaning of the earlier essays, is understood better by
tracing the development of Yeats's theories in the earlier essays.
Pound completed his project and the book was published in 1916

with Yeats's introduction. In it Yeats exultingly wrote:

...I have inVented a form of drama, distinguished, indirect, and
symbolic, and having no need of mob or Press to pay its way—-an

aristocratic form.

This "aristocratic form" of drama which Yeats declares to have invented

has two basic elements, intimacy and distance. These seemingly contra—

dicting terms represent in truth the two sides of the sanw coin. By
intimacy is meant ridding the stage of all superfluous ornaments and

bringing the stage close to the audience so that the natural speech

of the common people may be clearly heard in its simplest way. It has

much to do with stagecraft. Distance means to keep all superficial,

realistic representations from the stage and bring the audience into

"a deep of the mind." Drama must deal with the essence of things, not

ever—changing phenomena. We already see Yeats‘s dualistic theory in

this intimacy—distance principle. The dualism, however, is not

 

2' EEEEXE £21 Introductions, p. 221.

 

 

 

 

85

irreconcilable but rather complementary. Intimacy is achieved only

when distance is doggedly kept from the pushing world of realism, while
distance is possible only when the actors and the audience commingle
in close intimacy and pass together into "a deep of the mind." Neither
is possible without the other. The intimacy-distance principle repre—
sents the aesthetic counterpart of Yeats's dualistic perspective of
cognition and experience. The idea of intimacy, with its conscious-
ness of stagecraft and dramatic form, constitutes the cognitive per-
spective; while the idea of distance, with its emphasis on psycho-

logical effect on the audience, constitutes the experiential perSpec—

tive. Each idea, however, carries within itself a polarity of cogni—

tiVe-experiential perspectives, as I shall presently show.
In the first four sectiOns of his essay, "Certain Noble Plays of
Japan," Yeats elaborates on these two basic elements of good art.

Intimacy, Yeats explains, comes from a simplification of the stage.

The theater since the Renaissance has grown less and less expressive
because it has tended to be elaborate; and that elaboration destroys
intimacy.
The stage-opening, the powerful light and shade, the number of
feet between myself and the players have destroyed intimacy.
I have found myself thinking of players who needed perhaps but
to unroll a mat in some Eastern garden.
The kind of drama that can create intimacy is of a drawing-room type
that needs no more than a few players and a few people of good taste

for an audience. It is an "aristocratic form," being free from the

 

 

3. Ibid., pp. 222f.

 

 

 

86

mob and the press.

What effects would this type of drama bring about on the audience
through an intimacy it creates? There are two. To begin with, because
it has rid itself of the physical distance and the loud orchestra, it
can now make the natural speech of the common people live. On a big
stage in a large theater the player must shout in order to be heard;
besides, he has a loud orchestra to compete with. He must cease to
speak like a camel-driver or a sailor, because his voice "can only
become louder by becoming less articulate, by discovering some new
musical sort of roar or scream."4 By ridding itself of this difficulty
the new drama can restore dignity to natural speech and song.

It should be again possible for a few poets to write as all did

once, not for the printed page but to be sung.

Yeats was a firm believer in the importance of the life and speech of
the common people. In this respect he is far from being aristocratic
in the ordinary sense of the term. In his letter to Dorothy Wellesley,
dated December 19, 1935, he wrote:

You have the best language among us because you most completely

follow Aristotle's advice and write 'like the common people.‘

You have the animation of spoken words and spoken syntax.

The essence of a culture is found in the folk tales and songs handed
down the generations by the people. In order to grasp the essence

one must go directly to conmon people. That was why he and George

 

4. Ibid., p. 223.
5. Ibid.

6. Letters, p. 846.

 

 

87

Pollexfen studied the songs and tales of the Irish country folk; and
for the same reason he advised Singe, when he met him in Paris, to go
to the Aran Islands and live among the islanders. The aristocratic
form of drama is thus deeply rooted in the life of the common people.
This explains the meaning of the remark that Yeats is reported to have
made to a Japanese poet, Yonejiro Noguchi, in an interview. Yeats,
commenting on the project Pound was carrying on at the time, said to
Noguchi:
In my opinion, the racial element alone is the most valuable in
any kind of poetry; and true literature must be the literature
of the folk strengthened, not weakened, by discipline. For this
reason I was delighted to read the Japanese Noh plays which the

late Mr. Fenollosa translated and my friend Pound is editing.
I was impressed with the Noh.7 (Translation mine.)

The remark is illuminating, for it not only reveals Yeats's motive

 

for adapting the medieval dramatic genre of Japan to his work, but
also explains one of the aesthetic principles he had worked out at
the time of his meeting with the Noh. True, the aristocratic form
of drama is intended for a small audience of good taste, but that
form will not impress the audience or Yeats unless the spirit of the
race or culture is animated in it.

Thus the aristocratic drama brings home to the audience the
spirit that runs in the life of the common people without the arti-
ficiality of oration and stage manners of a big theater. In the essay

on the Noh Yeats writes:

 

7. Yonejiro Noguchi, Airurando J6ch6, 1925. Quoted by Hisashi Furukawa
in Obei‘in no Noh—gaku Kenkyg (The studies of the Noh by Western

hands , Tokyo: Tokyo women's College, 1963, p. 15.

 

88

I love all the arts that can still remind me of their origin
among the common people, and my ears are only comfortable when
the singer sings as if mere speech had taken fire, when he
appears to have passed into song almost imperceptibly.
What Yeats is upholding here is naturalness, the kind of naturalness
that animates the ordinary life of the common people. He is against
all artificiality in the theater that creates on the stage an illusion,
realistic or otherwise.

The drawing—room type of drama has another effect tied in with
the naturalness of speech. Because it has rid itself of all artifi—
ciality that stands between the players and the audience, thereby
creating naturalness in acting, it has now made it possible for the
audience to take part in the aesthetic experience with the players.

In the essay on the Noh Yeats tells of a group of Spanish professional
dancerswhom hesaw dance in a drawing—room.

Doubtless their training had been long, laborious, and wearisome;

but now one could not be deceived, their movement was full of

joy. They were among friends, and it all seemed but the play of

children; how powerful it seemed, how passionate, while an even

more miraculous art, separated from us by the footlights, appeared
in the comparison laborious and professional. It is well to be
close enough to an artist to feel for him a personal liking, close
enough perhaps to feel that our liking is returned.9
In such an intimate atmosphere the player seems to "recede" into "the
deeps of the mind," and the spectator's imagination is stirred. In
such an atmosphere alone is it possible for the audience to share the

moment of the subjective experience of beauty with the players. Yeats

reached this realization when he saw a Japanese dancer, Michio Ito,

 

dance in a drawing—room. In a most inthnate atmosphere with no artifi—

 

 

8. Essays and Introductions, p. 223-

 

9. Ibid., pp. 223f.

 

 

89

cial lights that glare in the eyes, the Japanese dancer seemed to

Yeats to dwell in the world of beauty and pure imagination.

In the studio and in the drawing—room alone, where the lighting
was the light we are most accustomed to, did I see him as the
tragic image that has stirred my imagination. There, where no
studied lighting, no stage—picture made an artificial world, he
was able, as he rose from the floor, where he had been sitting
cross-legged, or as he threw out an arm, to recede from us into 1
some more powerful life. Because that separation was achieved
by human means alone, he receded but to inhabit as it were the
deeps of the mind. One realised anew, at every separating

strangeness, that the measure of all arts' greatness can be but
in their intimacy.

Such, then, is what Yeats means by "intimacy." What is of special

interest to us is the dualistic nature of the principle.

 

The type
of drama that aims at intimacy is necessarily aristocratic, for it is
intended only for a small audience of initiates. But the speech and
the atmosphere it needs have their origin in the life of the common

people. What it assumes is physical ease and naturalness, while what

it achieves is spiritual intensity. The former is conceived in Yeats's

cognitive perspective, while the latter is clearly rooted in his experi-

ential perspective.

a
The second principle that sustains good art is distance. "All

imaginative art remains,“ says Yeats in his essay on the Noh, "at a
distance and this distance, once chosen, must be firmly held against

a pushing world. Verse, ritual, music, and dance in association with

action require that gesture, costume, facial expression, stage arrange-

ment must help in keeping the door."11 For a moment one might think

 

10. Ibid., p. 224.

11. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

90

that this concept of distance is in direct contradiction with the
'previous concept of intimacy. True, in one respect it removes from
a play that which is emphasized in the concept of intimacy; that is,
it denies to a play an interest in familiarity. However, it must be
noted that this seeming contradiction is not a contradiction of logic,
but of perspective. While the principle of intimacy, by concentrating
on such formalistic aspects of drama as stage, audience, speech, con—
stitutes Yeats's cognitive perspective, the principle of distance con-
stitutes his experiential perspective by having in View mainly the ex-
periential side of drama. A play must be performed in a very intimate
atmOSphere with the audience and must take its stuff from Ithe familiar
life of the common people, but its effect is of a highly sophisticated
sort-an aristocratic form. Now the latter point--the aesthetic effect
of a play——is what is emphasized in the principle of distance.

In contrast to the "imaginative art" that remains at a distance
away from the pushing world, the "unimaginative arts" present the world
as it appears to our senses as such and for its own sake. Yeats was
against this sort of art because it denies one a reverie in the sub-

jective world.

Our unimaginative arts are content to set a piece of the world
as we know it in a place by itself, to put their photographs as
it were in a plush or a plain frame, but the art which interests
me, while seeming to separate from the world and us a group of
figures, images, symbols, enables us to pass for a few moments
into a deep of the mind that had hitherto been too subtle for
our habitation.

As Will be shown later Yeats was against the realistic drama of Ibsen

 

12. Ibid., pp. 224f.

Mi ___..___

 

 

 

 

 

91

because it was too preoccupied with the surface detail of life. The

Ibsenite drama, priding itself in giving the audience a real picture
of life, une tranche d5 vie, failed to fathom the deeps of the mind.

It gave a picture to the eyes, but not an intensity of experience to

the mind. His kind of drama, Yeats believed, would enable one to for—

get himself for a few moments and dwell in the subjective world of
passionate reverie.

There are two ways whereby distance is maintained in drama. One

is to exclude all artificiality from stagecraft, and the other is to

appeal, not to the physical reality of life, but to the tradition, the
tribal memory of beauty.

In order to achieve distance in drama, everything that is not

human must be removed, for lyrical intensity is attained only through
human elements.

As a deep of the mind can only be approached through what is most
human, most delicate, we should distrust bodily distance, mechanism,
and loud noise.13

Yeats's use of masks also originated in his distrust of surface detail.

Realistic facial expressions only obstruct lyrical intensity. In fact,

Yeats's distrust of physical vitality was so great that he seemed to

put more faith in the state of being dead:

It is even possible that being is only possessed completely by
the dead, and that it is some knowledge of this that makes us
gaze with so much emotion upon the face of the Sphinx or of
Buddha.14

 

13. Ibid., p. 225.

 

14. Ibid., p. 226.

 

 

 

 

 

 

92

Here again we see Yeats‘s dualistic perspective. A deep feeling of
life can be best expressed by a state resembling death.

Realism is only for the less refined minds, not for the subtle.
Even the humorous realism of the Elizabethan tragedy, which heightens
the tragic effect, was originally intended for the common citizens in
the pit.
eduCated by schoolmasters and newspapers, are without the memory of
beauty and emotional subtlety."15

What appeals, then, to the subtler minds? Yeats's answer is

tradition. All great art appeals to the collective memory of beauty.

A poetical passage cannot be understood without a rich memory,
and like the older school of painting appeals to a tradition,
and that not merely when it speaks of 'Lethe wharf' or 'Dido
on the wild sea banks' but in rhythm, in vocabulary....16

The position Yeats takes here is essentially the position he took in
1901, when he wrote in his essay, "Magic," that
what we call romance, poetry, intellectual beauty, is the only

signal that the supreme Enchanter, or some one in His councils,
is speaking of what has been, and shall be again, in the consum-

mation of time.

The principle of distance means, then, an appeal to the tradition,
the tribal memory of beauty, from which a lyrical intensity in art is
gained. Such an appeal, Yeats believed, is an Asiatic habit. The west,

ever preoccupied with the idea of progress and a belief in physical

 

15. Ibid., p. 227.
15. Ibid.

17. Ibid., p. 52.

Even today, realism "is the delight...of all those whose minds,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

93

reality, has all but lost the habit; it has barely kept it in lyrical

poetry. This is the reason why Yeats went to the Noh drama of Japan

for a model in dramatic form.

Europe is very old and has seen many arts run through the circle

and has learned the fruit of every flower and known what this
fruit sends u

l8 and it is now time to copy the East and live
deliberately.

II

The dualistic principle of intimacy and distance that Yeats dis-
cusses in the four sections of his essay, "Certain Noble Plays of

Japan," was not a new discovery for Yeats. It was something he had

been developing for quite SOme time before he was introduced to the

Noh. The dualistic principle already exists, as a matter of fact, in

in those essays the principle of distance is emphasized.
It is convenient to divide the development of Yeats's aesthetic
theory before meeting with the Noh into two periods: the one centering

following it--roughly after 1903. In the earlier period Yeats's

experiential perspective is predominant while in the latter period it

 

is definitely on the wane though never abandoned. On the other hand,

the cognitive perspective is considerably played down in the earlier

period, while in the latter period it assumes the predominant role in

Yeats's mind. It must be pointed out, however, that the experiential

perspective is never lost sight of throughout the periods; indeed, it

 

 

18. Ibid., p. 228.

 

 

 

 

94

constantly points to the ideal state of art.

I discussed the dualistic nature of Yeats's symbolic theory in

Chapter Two. I pointed out that Yeats's symbolism was the means to

attain a vision of reality, and that Yeats felt a cleavage between his

symbols and reality. Yeats's frustration stems from the dualistic

nature of his symbolic theory. Poetry does not have its own world;

it has only the evocative function. In his two essays, "The Symbolism

of Painting" and "The Symbolism of Poetry," he develops his theory of
symbolism:

All art that is not mere story-telling, or mere portraiture, is
symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which
mediaeval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade
their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy;
for it entanglesé in complex colours and forms, a part of the

Divine Essence.

So, art is, in one sense, a means of communication with the eternal

world that lies beyond the senses, and the symbols in a work of art

do work wonders when they are disengaged from the restrictions imposed

on them by the principle that makes that work of art.

...if you liberate a person or a landscape from the bonds of
motives and their actions, causes and their effects, and from
all bonds but the bonds of your love, it will change under your
eyes, and become a symbol of an infinite emotion, a perfected
emotion, a part of the Divine Essence; for we love nothing but
the perfect, and our dreams make all things perfect, that we

may love them.

A symbol must cut all its earthly links except the meditative faculty

19. Ibid., p. 148.

 

20. Ibid., p. 149.

 

 

 

 

 

 

95

of man in order to evoke the Divine Essence, and man must be in a deep

meditation in order to see the Divine Essence revealed in a symbol:

...one is furthest from symbols when one is busy doing this or
that, but the soul moves among symbols and unfolds in symbols
when trance, or madness, or deep meditation has withdrawn it
from every impulse but its own. 1

 

There is thus a strong mystical coloring in Yeats's concept of symbol-
ism. The purpose of art is essentially the same as that which religious
and visionary people seek; and symbolism alone approximates the state

desired in mysticism:

Religious and visionary people, monks and nuns, and medicine-men
and opium-eaters, see synmols in theirtrancesgfor religious and
visionary thought is thought about perfection and the way to per-
fection; and symbols are the only things free enough from all

bonds to speak of perfection.
The way of the artist, however, is different from that of the mystic,
for the artist works from imperfection to perfection. The.artist's
imagination is necessarily smaller than the mystic's.
The systematic mystic is not the greatest of artists, because his
imagination is too great to be bounded by a picture or a song,
and because only imperfection in a mirror of perfection, or per-
fection in a mirror of imperfection, delights our frailty.
The artist is concerned necessarily with the earthly things, the
shadows of reality. It is the artist's task to arrange colors and
forms so that they evoke reality. The physical world reflects the
21. Ibid., p. 162.
22. Ibid., p. 149.

23. Ibid., p, 150,

96

spiritual world, but it is the artist that animates the physical
world: it is the artist, in effect, that turns a skeleton of a bird
into a living bird. So great and so important is the task of the
artist. Yeats writes in the essay, "The Symbolism of Poetry":
I doubt indeed if the crude circumstance of the world, which
seems to create all our emotions, does more than reflect, as
in multiplying mirrors, the auctions that have come to solitary
men in moments of poetical contemplation; or that love itself
would be more than an animal hunger but for the poet and his
shadow the priest, for unless we believe that outer things are
the reality, we must believe that the gross is the shadow of
the subtle, that things are wise before they become foolish, and
secret before they cry out in the market—place.
And in the essay, "The Moods" (1895), he writes about the artist's
guiding principle:
We hear much of his need for the restraints of reason, but the
only restraint he can obey is the mysterious instinct that has
made him an artist, and that teaches him to discover nmnortal
moods in mortal desires, an undecaying hope in our trivial
ambitions, a divine love in sexual passion.
Thus, the artist is a sort of medium trying to communicate with
Spirits through earthly means. In order to succeed he must perfect his
skill-—an idea which becomes increasingly vital in Yeats's thinking
after the publication of Ideas 2: Good and Evil, as will be seen later.
The artist's skill must be as subtle as the Divine Essence which he
seeks to grasp, for

although you can expound an opinion, or describe a thing, when
your words are not quite well chosen, you cannot give a body to

24' Ibid., p. 1.58.

25. Ibid., p. 195.

 

 

 

 

 

97

something that moves beyond the senses, unless your words are
as subtle, as complex, as full of mysterious life, as the body
of a flower or of a woman.26

The artist, then, takes the stuff of his art from the earthly things

and turns it into an artistic whole and perfects it to the point where

it touches the Divine Essence. To put it in other words, the artist

 

must see that the Divine Essence is successfully brought down to the
world of the senses: he must "give a body to something that moves

beyond the senses."

It must be noted, however, that the stuff of poetry has no value

 

of itself for Yeats. It has only a functional value; it is important
in so far as it evokes eternity. Yeats is strongly against the kind
of art that delights in descriptions of external things. writing in

1899 to the editor of the Daily Chronicle, Yeats argued:

 

 

The literature and painting of our time, when they come out of

a deep life, are laboring to awaken again our interests in the .
moral and Spiritual realities which were once the foundation of

the arts; and the theatre, if it would cease to be but the amuse-

ment of idleness, must cast off that interest in external and

accidental things ghich has marred all modern arts, and dramatic

art more than any. 7

Yeats's reaction against the realistic drama of Ibsen stems from his
disbelief in nature pg; s3. In his essay, "The Tragic Generation," he
recalls his unfavorable reaction to Ibsen's A Doll's figusg, the first
Ibsen play to be performed in England:

I resented being invited to admire dialogue so close to modern
educated speech that music and style were impossible.

 

26. Ibid., p. pp. l63f.

27. The Daily Chronicle, Jan. 27, 1899. Letters, p. 310.

 

 

 

98

’Art is art because it is not nature,‘ I kept repeating to
myself....28

Yeats quite frequently expresses his peculiar distrust of modern edu-
cated speech. It sharply contrasts with his belief in the common
speech of the common people. The reason, of course, is that he believed

that ordinary people, particularly the uneducated, were the carriers
of archetypal ideas, which they handed from generation to generation

in folk songs and tales. The realistic drama was undesirable because

it neglected the folk tradition, taking more interest in modern city
life. Furthermore, the realistic drama described the details of
modern life for their own sake.

The type of drama that Yeats endorsed was a subjective type, which

represented man's inner feeling, not externality nor character. He

wrote to Fiona Macleod in 1897:

My own theory of poetical or legendary drama is that it should
have no realistic, or elaborate, but only a symbolic and decora—
tive setting. ...The acting should have an equivalent distance
to that of the play from common realities. The play might be
almost, in some cases, modern mystery plays.

The modern mystery play was what Yeats wanted in the theater. In one

sense Yeats is a reactionary. He would even carry his drama further

back-~perhaps to the original myth from which Neitzsche said tragedy

derives its birth. His essay, "The Autumn of the Body" (1898), indeed,

makes a parallelism in theory to Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy"——

a parallelism which Yeats confirmed later when he retracted the

 

 

28. Autobio ra hies, p. 279.

29. Letters, p. 280.

 

 

 

 

99

position. In that essay he says that the literature of Europe is
struggling against the "externality" which the scientific age has
brought into literature. European literature once looked upon the
world as "a dictionary of types and symbols,“ but it has increasingly
assumed a critical and interpretive position towards life. It has
become weary of its form-consciousness and has begun to seek, in the
Nietzschean term, a Dionysian ecstasy.
I see, indeed, in the arts of every country those faint lights
and faint colours and faint outlines and faint energies which
many call 'the decadence' and which I, because I believe that
the arts lie dreaming of things to come, prefer to call the
autumn of the body. An Irish poet whose rhythms are like the
cry of a sea—bird in autumn twilight has told its meaning in

the line, 'The very sunlight‘s weary, and it's time to quit
the plough.‘

 

Time is about to come for the literature of Europe to enter upon a new

era, a Dionysian era, which is characterized by a Dionysian urge to

 

transcend the Apollonian form, a return to the essences of things, a .
reversal of the process in which the literature of Europe became
Apollonian.

we are, it may be, at a crowning crisis of the world, at the

moment when man is about to ascend, with the wealth he has

been so long gathering up0n his shouldersi the stairway he
has been descending from the first days.

And the artist will take the lead in the ascending movement:

The arts are, I believe, about to take upon their shoulders the
burdens that have fallen from the shoulders of priests, and to

 

30. Essays and Introductions, p. 191.

31. Ibid., p. 192.

 

 

 

100

lead us back upon our journey by filling our thoughts with the
essences of things, and not with things. we are about to sub-
stitute once more the distillation of alchemy for the analyses
of chemistry and for some other sciences; and certain of us are
looking everywhere for the perfect alembic that no silver or
golden drop may escape. 2

Yeats was first introduced to Nietzsche by John Quinn and was absorbed

in reading his work for a while. In a letter written probably in

September 1902 he tells Lady Gregory how excited he is about Nietzsche.
Dear friend, I have written to you little badly of late I am
afraid, for the truth is you have a rival in Nietzsche, that
strong enchanter. I have read him so much that I have made my
eyes bad again. ... Nietzsche completes Blake and has the same

roots--I have not read anything with so much excitement since I
got to love Morris's stories which have the same curious astringent

joy.
Nietzsche saw two opposing art impulses in nature, represented respec-
tively by Dionysus and Apollo, from which music and tragedy developed
in the culture of the Aryan race. Dionysus represents an ecstatic
art impulse whereby the individual is drowned in an experience of
oneness with ”the mysterious Primordial Unity."34 0n the other hand,
Apollo represents a plastic art impulse which points to individuation
and "the pictorial world of dreams.”35 Music and tragedy, Nietzsche
believed, originated in the Dionysian impulse, which was later recon—

ciled by its contrary impulse, the Apollonian:

 

 

32. Ibid., p. 193.

33. Letters, p. 379.

Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy," Egg Philosophy pg
Nietzsche, Clifton P. Fadiman, trans, New York: The Modern
Library, 1954, p. 956.

34

35. Ibid., p. 957.,

 

 

 

 

101

Music and tragic myth are equally the expression of the
Dionysian capacity of a people, and are inseparable from each
other. Both originate in a sphere of art lying beneath and
beyond the Apollonian;.... Here the Dionysian, as compared with
the Apollonian, exhibits itself as the eternal and original
artistic force, which in general calls into existence the entire
world of phenomena; in the midst of which a new transfiguring
appearance becomes necessary, in order to keep alive the animated
world of individuation.

In Yeats's essay, "Autumn of the Body," the two art impulses are
dealt with. Although they are not given the Nietzschean terms and
though Yeats suggests in his letter to John Quinn that he arrived at
these concepts independent of Nietzsche, a parallelism between the
essay and Nietzsche's "Birth of Tragedy" is striking. What interests
us most, however, is not the parallelism itself. It is rather the
fact that the order of the impulses in Nietzsche's essay is reversed
in Yeats's. Nietzsche regarded the development of tragic drama as a
reconciliation between the Dionysian impulse and the Apollonian, or
the Apollonian imposition of the dream world on the Dionysian drunken
ecstasy. Yeats, on the other hand, saw an art—impulse pervading Europe
that tried to transcend the forms, and firmly believed that art would
carry man back to the primordial myth. At the time he WTOte "The Autumn
of the Body," then, he laid more emphasis on the Dionysian art-impulse,
that is, the experiential perspective, than on the Apollonian, that is,
the cognitive perspective.

It is interesting, however, that Yeats reverses the emphasis

shortly after his excitement over Nietzsche's theory. When IQEEE 2:

Good and Evil was published in 1903, Yeats's enthusiasm for DiOHYSUS

 

36. Ibid., p. 1087.

 

 

 

 

 

102

had waned. He wrote to John Quinn in May 1903 and told him of the

change of heart:

Tomorrow I shall send you my new book, Ideas pf Good E22 Evil.

I feel that much of it is out of my present mood; that it is true,
but no longer true for me. ... The book is too lyrical, too full
of aspirations after remote things, too full of desires. Whatever
I do from this out will, I think, be more creative. I will ex~
press myself, so far as I express myself in criticism at all, by
that sort of craft. I have always felt that the soul has two
movements primarily: one to transcend forms, and the other to
create forms. Nietzsche, to whom you have been the first to intro-
duce me, calls these the Dionisiac and the Apollonic, respectively.
I think I have to some extent got weary of that wild God Dionysus,
and I am hoping that the Far-Darter will come in his place.3

 

And he wrote in the same vein to George Russel (AB) around the same
time:
I am no longer in much sympathy with an essay like 'Autumn of the
Body,‘ not that I think that essay untrue. But I think I mistook
for a permanent phase of the world what was only preparation. The
close of the last century was full of strange desire to get out
of form, to get some kind of disembodied beauty, and now it seems
to me the contrary impulse has come. I feel about me and in me
an impulse to create form, to carry the realization of beauty as
far as possible.
It is difficult to say whether or not Yeats's change of attitude was
influenced by Nietzsche. Our main concern here is that Yeats's aesthetic
principle has a close affinity to the theory which Nietzsche develops
in "The Birth of Tragedy.” And what is important is that Yeats's sympa—
thy 1ies with the Apollonian perspective after the publication of Idegg
2: Good and Evil.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the cognitive

 

37. Letters, p. 403.

 

38. Ibid., p. 402.

 

 

103

perspective of Apollo has won Yeats from the hands of Dionysus. As I
stated earlier, the two perspectives have a gyric relation to each
other. A predominance of one does not mean a defeat of the other.
They are in reconciliatory conflict like Empedocles‘s concord and dis-
cord, or Heraclitus's mortals and immortals, "dying each other's life,
living each other's death," as Yeats says in g Xigign.
basic concept of art remains changeless. He still believes that art
is essentially affective. In the essay, "J. M. Singe and the Ireland
of his Time" (1911), he praises Singe for finding his art "where those
monks found God, in the depths of the mind."39 And he goes on to say:
Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which
does not persuade, which does not condescend, which does not
explain, is irresistible. It is made by men who expressed
themselves to the full, and it works through the best minds....40
Any art that is declamatory and explanatory does not stir imagination.
All good art, for Yeats, asks for emotional participation; it does not
ask for understanding, for, Yeats believed, "literature is a child of
experience, of knowledge never."41 "We should not," wrote Yeats in
1919 in a letter to Brinsley Macnamara, ”as a rule have to say things
for their own sake in a play but for the sake of emotion."42 Art,

therefore, is ultimately Dionysian rather than Apollonian:

 

39. Essays and Introductions, p. 341.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., p. 317.

42. Letters, p. 657.

—_—-

 

104

All art is dream, and what the day is done with is dreaming-ripe

and what art has moulded religion accepts, and in the end all is

in the wine-cup, all is the drunken fantasy, and the grapes begin

to stammer.4
Ecstasy as the end of art and the aim of the artist is doggedly kept in
view. At the same time, Yeats still keeps his belief in the dualistic
nature of art and the artist.

Yeats's dualistic concept of art and the artist is essentially the
same as that maintained before the publication of the Ideas 2f Good and
Evil, although his emphasis shifts. In one of the essays titled “Dis-
coveries" (1906) Yeats writes:

The end of art is the ecstasy awakened by the presence before an

ever-changing mind of what is permanent in the world, or by the

arousing of that mind itself into the very delicate and fastidi—
ous mood habitual with it when it is seeking those permanent and
recurring things.
What the artist aims at is eternity, but it is approached through the
things in this world. The aim of art is to arouse in our minds an
experience of that eternity, but that aim is achieved only by present-
ing to the mind ”what is permanent in the world," or recurring images.
If art keeps its house between time and eternity, so the artist finds
his place between the saint and the common world. In other words, the
artist must have a double perspective-experiential and cognitive.
His true concern is a vision of eternity, but his job is to give

expression to what he sees.

 

43. Essays and Introductions, p. 285.

44. Ibid., p. 287.

 

 

105

cognitive perspective becomes increasingly important for Yeats. He

had earlier believed that Europe was entering upon a phase in which

it felt a quickening of the Dionysian art-impulse, an impulse to get

out of form in art. He now believes that the contrary impulse has come
in him and around him. In his aesthetic he shows his interest more in
the form and content of art than in its aim, more in the creative func~
tion of the artist rather than in his visionary experience.

In the idea of the artist and art we find Yeats's shift of empha-
sis. He had earlier believed that the poet was to take upon himself
the task that fell from the shoulders of the priest. But he now
believes that the artist's proper domain is here in this world. He
had earlier maintained in such essays as "The Autumn of the Body" and
"The Moods" that the artist should have the Dionysian experiential
perspective-—"the mysterious instinct," as he calls it in the essay
"The Moods." Now he believes that Apollo should take the place of
Dionysus. The artist's job is not to transcend form but to order it

so as to achieve the desired effect. He writes in "Discoveries"

(1906):

All art is sensuous, but when a man puts only his contemplative
nature and his more vague desires into his art, the sensuous
images through which it speaks become broken, fleeting, uncertain,
or are chosen for their distance frgm general experience, and all
grows unsubstantial and fantastic.4

This is quite a switch of emphasis compared to what he envisaged as
the artist's "only restraint" in the essay "The Moods." The artist

should not be content with presenting a dim world of vague desires,

 

 

45. Ibid., p. 293.

 

 

 

106

which will only tire imagination.

If we are to sojourn there that world must grow consistent with
itself, emotion must be related to emotion by a system of ordered
images, as in the Divine Comedy. It must grow to be symbolic, that
is, for the soul can only achieve a distinct separated life where
many related objects at once distinguish and arouse its energies

in their fulness.

And this symbolic art must "arise out of a real belief" and take its
stuff from the procession of images sanctioned by "a crowd of believers
who could put into all those strange sights the strength of their be-
lief and the rare testimony of their vision."47 Thus the artist is
not allowed to forget himself in his personal ecstasy, but must give
expression to what he feels; and his manner needs discipline and a
sanction by tradition.

Yeats's shift of emphasis to the cognitive perspective now makes
it mandatory to make a clear distinction between the artist and the
saint. The artist, whose main concern is how to perpetuate in art
what is eternal, is essentially different from the saint, whose

interest is his own eternity. In one essay in "Discoveries" Yeats

discusses two types of asceticism: one is the type followed by the
saint who goes straight to eternity, and the other is the type followed

by the artist who evokes eternity by critically arranging images:

The imaginative writer differs Irom the saint in that he identi-
fies himself--to the neglect of his own soul, alas! —-with the
soul of the world, and frees himself from all that is impermanent
in that soul, an ascetic not of women and wine, but of the news—
papers. Those things that are permanent in the soul of the world,
the great passions that trouble all and have but a brief recurring

 

 

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid., p. 294.

 

 

 

 

107

life of flower and seed in any man, are indeed renounced by the
saint, who seeks not an eternal art, but his own eternity. The
artist stands between the saint and the world of impermanent
things, and just in so far as his mind dwells on what is imperma—
nent in his sense, on all that 'modern experience and the discus-
sion of our interests,’ that is to say, on what never recurs, as
desire and hope, terror and weariness, spring and autumn, recur,
will his mind losing rhythm grow critical, as distinguished from
creative, and his emotions wither. He will think less of what
he sees and more of his own attitude towards it, and will express
his attitude by an essentially critical selection and emphasis.4
In another essay in "Discoveries" Yeats places the saint and the
artist on the turning wheel of God, where the former goes to the center
while the latter remains on the ring. The saint longs for calm and
fixity while the artist yearns for life. The artist tries to eternal-
ize what is perpetually returning, to grasp eternity in recurring images.
His job is to animate what he sees around him and put into it the
divine essence. If he sought for what is fixed and still, then "his
style would become cold and monotonous, and his sense of beauty faint
and sickly...."49 The artist must be "content to find his pleasure in
all that is for ever passing away that it may come again, in the beauty
of woman, in the fragile flowers of spring, in momentary heroic passion,
in whatever is most fleeting, most impassioned, as it were, for its own
. - 't l r "50
perfection, most eager to return in 1 s g o y.
Yeats's wheel image is much the same as T. S. Eliot's, which also

has the center where all the opposites of the "turning world" are

reconciled. Like Yeats, Eliot recognizes the significance of the

 

48. Ibid., p. 286.
49. Ibid., p. 287.

50. Ibid., pp. 287f.

 

 

 

I"_‘__""""""""""""""“““““f::jlll||lI-—r
l
108

world of time in attaining a vision of eternity. Though the eternal
moment gained at the "still point of the turning world" is out of time,
it can be remembered and made significant only in time. Thus, for
Eliot, "Only through time time is conquered."51 Yeats, however, is

not so positive about the vision of eternity that the recurring images

 

of the turning wheel promise. The artist may, after all, be seeing
dreams in images that never completely recur:
Yet [the artist] must endure the impermanent a little, for these
things return, but not wholly, for no two faces are alike, and,
it may be, had we more learned eyes, no two flowers.52
Of course, Eliot, too, recognized the limitations of art. Art is in
time; as such, it is not eternal:
words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living

Can only die. words, after speech, reach
Into the silence.53

 

Eliot, however, believed that art can reach eternity by its form, which

is a resolution of movement and stillness:

Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves in its stillness.54

 

51. "Burnt Norton," II, 1. 44. T. §. Eliot, The Complete Poems 229 Plays:
Brace 8 Co., 1952, p. 120.

1909—1950, New York: Harcourt,

 

52. Essays and Introductions, p. 288.

53. "Burnt Norton," V. 11. 1—4. T. 3. Eliot, 22. ElE" p- 121-

54. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

109

Played music and written words pass away, but the inherent form remains
eternal. There is no beginning nor end in the form, which exists before
and after the music is played: "And all is always now."55 Yeats did not
share this belief. For him, art had only the evocative function; if it
did not evoke a vision of eternity, it was forever lost in the dark void
of time. If art had an eternal value, therefore, it must prove itself
serviceable in its evocative function.Yeats hadto construct his aesthetic
theory on the keel of the double perspective—-the monistic-experiential
and the dualistic-cognitive.

Perhaps it is in the theory of tragedy that we find a consummation
of Yeats's aesthetic. I have previously discussed Yeats's idea of
tragic art as exemplified in the work of Dante and Villon.56 Similar
ideas are developed already in the essays contained in TE; Cutting 2;
fig égg£_. Yeats's tragic theory may be reduced to the following
points: 1) Tragedy is the noblest of the arts. 2) Tragedy aims at
trance. 3) Tragedy arises out of conflict. 4) Tragedy is poetical.
These points are closely interdependent, but the second and the third
points are of particular interest to us.

Yeats thought that tragedy was the noblest art for a number of
reasons. First of all, tragedy had to do with vast emotions to the
neglect of the trivial sentiments of daily life. The vast emotions
that tragedy deals with are not confined to particular individuals
nor to particular ages; they belong to the Great Memory, from which

the individual draws emotions that are of universal and eternal value.

 

 

55. Ibid. "Burnt Norton," V. l. 13.

56. See Chapter II, pp. 26f.

 

 

110

Any art that fails to draw upon the Great Memory cannot be called

truly great. Spenser's art, Yeats thought, was mostly of this kind.

Spenser was the poet of his times and "his morality is official and

impersonal--a system of life which it was his duty to support,"57

which makes him a lesser artist than Dante. A poet should not be

state-oriented, like Spenser. He must work with vast emotions that

spring from the eternal element of his race, not from the daily life

that passes with time. The art that embodies vast emotions is tragic

art, for

in mainly tragic art one distinguishes devices to exclude or lesson
character, to diminish the power of that daily mood, to cheat or
blind its too clear perception. If the real world is not altogether
rejected, it is but touched here and there, and into the places we
have left empty we summon rhythm, balance, pattern, images that
remind us of vast emotions, the vagueness of past times, all the
chimeras that haunt the edge of trance....

The vast emotions that tragic art embodies lead to trance. It was

pointed out earlier that there was a mystical basis for Yeats’s idea

of the Great Memory. Yeats's idea of trance as the aim of tragic art

is a natural. outcome of his general theory of the Great Memory. It

stems from the monistic-experiential perspective. Tragic art helps
man obliterate his individual consciousness and allows him to sojourn

in the world of the Great Memory in a Dionysian ecstasy:

 

57- "Edmund Spenser," Essays and Introductions, p. 369. The essay on
Spenser was written in 1902 and first appeared as an introduction
to Poems g: Spenser (Edinburgh, 1906). It is noteworthy that
Yeats included this essay in The Cutting gf 3n Agate (1912),
together with such essays as "Discoveries" and ”Poetry and Tra—

dition."

 

58. Essays and Introductions, p. 243-

-1-

 

 

 

lll

Tragic art, passionate art, the drowner of dykes, the confounder
of understanding, moves us by setting us to reverie, by alluring
us almost to the intensity of trance. The persons upon the stage,
let us say, greaten till they are humanity itself. we feel our
minds expand convulsively or spread out slowly like some moon-
brightened image-crowded sea. That which is before our eyes
perpetually vanishes and returns again in the midst of the exdite-
ment it creates, and the more enthralling it is, the more do we

forget it.59

And this tragic art was, for Yeats, the supreme art, for "tragic

ecstasy...is the best that art-—perhaps life-can give."60

The monistic-experiential view of tragic art, however, is checked

by Yeats's dualistic—cognitive perspective. The aim of tragic art is

trance. That is fine; but it is also essential to consider of what

tragic art is composed. Yeats's dualistic-cognitive perspective

asserts itself strongly in his emphasis on conflict as the essential

element of the tragic and in his recognition of art as an embodiment

 

of ideas.

I previously pointed out that unity, for Yeats, arose out of con-

flict. Yeats grows increasingly emphatic about this process after the

was never abandoned till the end of his life; in fact, it takes more

and more violent expressions as in his later poems on sex. Before the

in art stemmed from imperfection, but he was full of "vague desires" for

perfection. Now he turns his artist's eye to "the foul rag—and-bone

shop of the heart" from which that perfection is supposed to proceed.

59. Ibid., p. 245.

 

60. Ibid., p. 239.

 

 

 

112

He now sees conflict not only in art but also in all human activities:

I think that all noble things are the hesult of warfare; great
nations and classes, of warfare in the visible world, great poetry
and philosophy, of invisible warfare, the division of a mind within
itself, a victory, the sacrifice of a man to himself.

Art, in particular, arises out of such warfare in the artist's mind.
Dante and Villon were two examples in whom the antinomical process took

place. The earthly Beatrice led Dante to the yellow rose of Paradiso.

If tragic art is created by a mind in which conflict is a real
crisis, tragic feeling has a strong hold on the minds of the people in

an age of conflict. People are held together by a tragic sense of life

when there is no security in their lives, but comic spirit becomes more

appealing, Yeats thought, as life grows safe. Yeats believed that this

is what happened in Ireland:

Poetical tragedy, and indeed all the more intense forms of litera-
ture, had lost their hold on the general mass of men in other
countries as life grew safe, and the sense of comedy which is the
social bond in times of peace as tragic feeling is in times of
war, had become the inspiration of popular art. I always knew
this, but I believed that the memory of danger, and the reality
of it seemed near enough sometimes, would last long enough to
give Ireland her imaginative opportunity. I could not foresee
that a new class, which had begun to rise into power under the
shadow of Parnell, would change the nature of the Irish movement,
which, needing no longer great sacrifices, nor bringing any great
risk to individuals, could do without exceptional men, and those
activities of the mind that are founded on the exceptional moment.62

The tragic, then, is equated with the heroic. The tragic spirit is an

inclination of the mind toward some sort of synthesis of conflicting

 

61. Ibid., p. 321.

62. Ibid., p. 259.

 

 

 

113

elements. It is an impulse toward a meaningful resolution of all an-

tinomies. Its starting point is the world of turbulency, war, multi-

plicity; its destination is the world of peace and unity. It embraces

no static vision, but enhances a spiritual progress from despair to
ecstasy. Its corpus is made of warring elements, but its soul is of

pure material. It mingles contraries, but it aims at a resolution of

those contraries. This idea of tragic process was never abandoned

throughout his life. As late as 1935 he wrote to Dorothy Wellesley:

I think that the true poetic movement of our time is toward some
heroic discipline. People much occupied with morality always
lose heroic ecstasy. Those who have it most often are those
Dowson described (I cannot find the poem but the lines run like '
this or something like this)

Wine and women and song
To us they belong
To us the bitter and gay.

'Bitter and gay,‘ that is the heroic mood. When there is despair,
public or private, when settled order seems lost, people look for
strength within or without. Auden, Spender, all that seem the new
movement look for strength in Marxian socialism, or in Major Doug-
las; they want marching feet. The lasting expression of our time
is not this obvious choice but in a sense of something steellike
and cold within the will, something passionate and cold.

 

The spiritual movement toward the heroic mood is what is enhanced by

tragic spirit. Its aim is "an act of faith and reason to make one
rejoice in the midst of tragedy."64
The tragic art, then, proceed from despair to ecstasy; it has a

vision of both eternity and time; it embodies both joy and sorrow.

The more conflicting the antinomical elements, the nobler the art,

 

 

63. Letters, pp. 836f.

 

64. Ibid., p. 838.

 

 

 

 

 

 

114

for the nobleness of the arts is in the mingling of contraries,
the extremity of sorrow, the extremity of joy, perfection of
personality, the perfection of its surrender, overflowing tur-
bulent energy, and marmorean stillness; and its red rose opens
at the meeting of the two beams of the cross, and at the tryst-
ing-place of mortal and immortal, time and eternity.

Another indication of the predominance of the cognitive perspective

interest in the role of ideas in art. Yeats's attitude toward ideas,

of course, was always ambivalent. He had earlier minimized their impor-
tance in art, though he could not eliminate them entirely. His associa-
tion with the Rhymers, French symbolists, and "the Aesthetic School" of
Arthur Hallam had made him sceptical about ideas, but he was, at the
same time, strongly attracted to the popular beliefs of the Irish

countryfolk. He notes this early contradiction of his aesthetic

principle in the essay "Art and Ideas":

Yet all the while envious of the centuries before the Renaissance,
before the coming of our intellectual class with its separate in-
terests, I filled my imagination with the popular beliefs of Ire-
land, gathering them up among forgotten novelists in the British
Museum or in Sligo cottages. I sought some symbolic language
reaching far into the past and associated with familiar names

and conspicuous hills that I might not be alone amid the obscure

impressions of the senses....

Although he alone among the Rhymers consciously followed Arthur Hallam's
criticism, Yeats was left discontented with the "delighted senses." Yet
his distrust of ideas was so great that he wrote against them in rather

strong words in a letter to George Russell (AE) in 1900:

 

 

65. Essays 22$ Introductions, p. 255.

66. Ibid., p. 349.

 

 

 

 

 

115

I do not understand what you mean when you distinguish between the
word that gives your idea and the more beautiful word. Unless you
merely mean that beauty of detail must be subordinate to general
effect, it seems to me just as if one should say 'I don't mind
whether my sonata is musical or not so long as it conveys my idea.‘
Beauty is the end and law of poetry. It exists to find the beauty
in all things, philosophy, nature, passion,-—in what you will, and
in so far as it rejects beauty it destroys its own right to exist.
If you want to give ideas for their own sake write prose.

In verse
they are subordinate to beauty which is their soul. Isn't this
obvious?

By 1909, however, the situation was completely reversed. He now

believed that ideas not only had their proper place in art but also

gave strength to it. In his book on Eastern Painting Laurence Binyon

showed Yeats that Whistler was wrong about Japanese painting, which,

Whistler said "in the confidence of his American naivete,"68 had no

literary ideas. Hallam and his aesthetic school dissatisfied him, for

they tried to sever the individual talent from tradition. Art, he came

to believe, embodied the archetypal ideas handed down the generations.

In his diary of 1909 he wrote:

Hallam argued that poetry was the impression on the senses of
certain very sensitive men. It was such with the pure artists,
Keats and Shelley, but not so with the impure artists who, like
Wordsworth, mixed up popular morality with their work. I now
see that the literary element in painting, the moral element

in poetry, are the means whereby the two arts are accepted into
the social order and become a part of life and not things of the
study and exhibition. Supreme art is a traditional statement of
certain heroic and religious truths, passed on from age to age,
modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.

is something more than the sensuous and individual in nature.

 

67

 

Letters, p. 343.
68

Essays 32d Introductions, p. 349.

69. Autobio ra hies, p. 490.

 

 

 

116

It is deeply rooted in the tradition, which gives art its sanction for

genuine feeling and archetypal ideas. In "Art and Ideas" (1913) he wrote:

The old images, the old emotions, awakened again to overwhelming
life, like the gods Heine tells of, by the belief and passion of
some new soul, are the only masterpiece.

The exclusion of ideas from poetry and the infatuation with momentary

sensation, which were a canon that Yeats and the Rhymers obeyed, "had

deprived [them] of the power to mould vast material into a single image."71

Archetypal ideas give art its life and power. One should not be afraid

to use them. “Why," asks Yeats in "Art and Ideas,"

should a man cease to be a scholar, a believer, a ritualist before
he begins to paint or rhyme or to compose music, or why if he have
a strong head should he put away any means of p'ower?72

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that Yeats valued ideas
for their own sake. Ideas were good insofar as they gave poetry its
life and power sanctioned by tradition.

Meanwhile, the true aim of art
remains ecstasy.

Arts are not mere containers of ideas; they have their
own life: "vast worlds moulded by their own weight like drops of water."73

While emphasizing the importance of ideas in art, Yeats never abandoned
the experiential view of art. In the same diary of 1909, in which he
discredited Whistler and Hallam, he states his experiential view of
tragedy:

 

70. Essays 23g Introductions, pp. 352—53.
71. Ibid., p. 354.

 

72. Ibid., p. 355.

73. Ibid., p. 354.

 

 

 

 

 

117

Tragedy is passion alone, and rejecting character, it gets form
from motives, from the wandering of passion; while comedy is the
clash of character. ... A poet creates tragedy from his own soul,
that soul which is alike in all men. It has not joy, as we under-
stand that word, but ecstasy, which is from the contemplation of
things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen, perhaps,
by all those that still live. ...is not ecstasy some fulfilment

of the soul in itself, some slow or sudden expansion of it like
an overflowing well?

Is not this what is meant by beauty?74

Yeats‘s attitude toward ideas in art was ambivalent.

 

It is best
expressed in a letter he wrote to his father in 1914. His double
perspective is most evident in the following words:

What you say is true about abstract ideas. They are one's curse
and one has sometimes to work for months before they are elimi—
nated, or till the map has become a country. Yet, in some curious
way, they are connected with poetry or rather with passion, one

half its life and yet its emamy.75

At the base of Yeats's tragic spirit, then, we find real dualism.

It follows from this that the tragic art for Yeats is also dualistic.

0n the one hand, it consists of conflicting elements: joy and sorrow,

 

stasis and motion, the eternal and the temporal, and so on. On the
other hand, it aims at a resolution of all these conflicts. Again,
on the one hand, it embodies ideas; while, on the other hand, it aims

at ecstasy. Yeats had a concrete formula for this dualism. The for-

mula was the double perspective for monistic experience and dualistic
cognition. The polarities of perspective had a gyric relation with
each other, in Yeatsian terms, with shifting emphasis. The monistic—
experiential perspective was emphasized before the publication of

Ideas 3: Good 329 Evil, while the dualistic—cognitive perspective was

 

74. Autobio a hies, pp. 470f.

75. Letters, p. 588.

 

 

 

 

 

118

emphasized afterwards.

Neither perspective was completely dominated by
the other.

I have traced the gyric movement of the double perspective
in Yeats's attitude toward art; it remains to see what significance

this movement has to his meeting with the Noh.

III

The Noh drama of Japan developed from an earlier dramatic form
called the Saru aku, which flourished as a mimetic comedy in Japan in

the middle of the Heian period (794—1185). The Sarugaku originated
in China as a theatrical art of the lower type and was imported into

Japan together with the Gagaku, a more refined type. The Sarugaku
developed in Japan into a sort of a musical comedy in which the main

features were humorous songs and dance.

.‘

The barugaku players were
usually of the lower class, who made their living solely out of the
use of their talent. Their performance was a part of the entertain-
ment for the aristocratic audience at religious festivals. Their
performance was characterized by humorous realism whereby the popular
manners were imitated. They were not concerned with dramatization of
historical events nor with literary or philosophical ideas. Indeed,
their performance was not genuinely "dramatic," for it did not involve

a clash of characters that makes plot possible. The performance was
done mainly by a single character and only occasionally by two.

During the Kamakura period (1192—1333), the Sarugaku took a definite
theatrical form. The performance was sustained by a plot involving two
or more characters. The theatrical development along this line produced
what was later called the fixgggg. In parallel with this another line

 

 

 

 

119

of development took place. The mimetic element of the b‘arugaku divested
itself of humorous realism and adopted dance and music, which were be-
coming increasinly popular, for its medium of expression. It moved away
from light humor and satire and tended toward gravity and refinement.
This line of development found its fulfilment in the highly sophisti-
cated form of theatrical art known as the Noh.

In the Muromachi period (1392—1573) the Noh theater enjoyed its
heyday under the patronage of the §hggu§, whose financial support made
it possible for the Noh players to concentrate on perfecting their art.
In its technical aspect the Noh art reached its supreme refinement
through the efforts of Kannami and his son Zeami, who left behind them
a unique Noh theory to which later Noh players were to turn for their
artistic authority. Kannami and Zeami brought about a revolution in the
art of the Noh by adapting to their performance the kusemai, a type of
dance accompanied by singing which had become popular since the end of
the Kamakura period. The adoption of the kusemai caused the Noh to take
quite a different direction from the original genre of the Saru aku, of
which the basic elements were humor and mimesis. Instead of realistic
representations and mockery of popular manners, the graceful presentation
of the essences of things in dancing became the main concern of the Noh
players. Kannami and Zeami perfected the new genre and postulated a
theory of it.

Of the two founders of the Noh drama, Zeami the son made outstand—
ing contributions to the development of the genre in his multifarious
capacities, as a player, stage director, playwright, as well as theorist.

One Japanese Noh scholar looks upon Zeami's genius as a combination of

 

 

 

 

120

Sophocles' and Aristotle's.76 Although such an estimation hardly does
Justice either to Zeami or to the Greek dramatist and the philosopher,
we do find in Zeami an extrordinary combination of the genius of an
artist and that of a systematic thinker. Trained directly and closely
by his father, Zeami's art was brought to perfection early in his life
and was high in favor of Shogun Yoshimitsu. Part of the Noh theory was
secretly taught him by his father, but he is generally credited with
its systematization.

Zeami is known to have written twenty-three books, of which eight-
een are extant. The books were meant to be secret, were jealously
guarded as a secret tradition by generations of Noh players, and were
not made public until after the Meiji Revolution (1868). Out of the
eighteen extant books the most important one is perhaps the Kadensho,
which was written by Zeami at the age of thirty—eight and is in the
form of a record of his father Kannami's secret instruction.77 Since
it would require a book to discuss the whole book, let alone the other
writings of Zeami, I shall discuss the three basic elements of the Noh
that are expounded in the book: the element of mimesis, the element of
22522, the element of hang (flower). In the book Zeami has explanations
of the form and content of the Noh plays and detailed instructions as
to the training of players and actual performance on the stage. Such
explanations and instructions on artistry are closely related to the
general theory of the Mob art; therefore, they will be dealt with as
76. Toyoichiro Nogami, geami Motokiyo, Tokyo: Sogensha, l9h2, p. 165.

77. It is generally agreed that the Kadensho is a faithful record of
Kannami's instruction. However,-EiEE€—the book was written by

Zeami who is credited with systematizing the Noh theory, I shall
hereafter refer to Zeami as the author of the book and the theory.

 

121

need arises in the discussion of the three basic elements mentioned
above.
Mimesis is an important element of art that the Noh inherited from

the 5arugaku. In the older genre it meant realistic and humorous repre-

sentations of manners, which were often exaggerated in order to heighten
the humorous and satirical effect. When it was inherited by the Noh it
underwent a considerable transformation.
In the first place, humor and satire disappear from Zeami's idea
of imitation. Instead, we find beauty and elegance as the end of the
mimetic art. Secondly, the superficial imitation of manners is replaced
by the imitation of the eSSences of human types. Thirdly, the concept
of imitation is raised to the transcendental level of "no imitation":
a perfect union of the imitator and the imitated.
In the prologue of the second essay of the Kadensho, Zeami explains 1
how important imitation is in the art of the Noh:
The objects of imitation are so numerous that they cannot be
described adequately. However, since imitation is extremely
important, the objects [of imitatioé} must be studied closely.
Now, the true aim of imitation is faithfully to represent
whatever is imitated .
The principle laid down here is not far from the modern concept of
verisimilitude. It is generally understood that Zeami's true aim
was to counterbalance the exaggerated practice of the earlier Sarugaku

players. Zeami, however, went further, for he hastens to qualify the

 

78. Asaji Nose, Zeami Jurokubushu Hyoshaku (An annotated edition of
Zeami's sixteen booksi, Tokyo: Iwanami, 1949, p. 35. 'This and
all subsequent English versions of the quotations from Zeami‘s
work are my translation. I have consulted the modern Japanese
versious by Asaji Nose and Kazuma Kawase when doubt arose in
construing Zeami's original version.

 

 

122

statement quoted above:

It is necessary, however, to know that there are different degrees
of imitation.7

, a.

Zeami distinguishes two general classes: nobility and peasantry. 0f the
two the former is more desirable as the object of imitation and should
be imitated closely, for noble persons have grace and beauty in their
manners. Zeami admits that it is impossible for the ungraceful Noh
players to imitate noble persons perfectly, but he says that they
should do their best "to imitate as faithfully as possible the persons
of the higher stations of life and such manners as have grace and
beauty."80 Of peasants Zeami had an extremely low estimation as the
object of imitation. They should not be imitated at all unless their
manners are graceful and beautiful. Thus it is plain that Zeami's
idea of imitation is strongly colored with aestheticism.

This aestheticism of Zeami was derived from the concept of yugeggl
which was highly appreciated in poetry and dance by the aristocracy and
warriors of medieval Japan. Zeami evidently tried to please his aris-
tocratic audience. Ungraceful manners of peasants, Zeami advises,
should not be presented to the noble audience, for "if they are pre-
sented, they are so vulgar that they will not be appreciated."82 Even
the imitation of an old man should be beautiful and pleasing to the

eye. It should be "as if a flower bloomed upon an old tree."83

 

79. Ibid.

80. Ibid.

81. The concept of 22522 will be discussed in detail later.
82. Nose, gp.gi£., p. 35.

83. Ibid., p. 43.

 

 

 

 

123

H
Zeami's mimetic theory was thus characterized by aestheticism; it i
was further characterized by the concept of essence ("hon—i"). Zeami I
contributed to the development of the Noh drama by purging it of vulgar 1
realism. Imitation for Zeami did not mean surface realism; it meant
to grasp the essence of what is to be imitated and present it in such
a manner as will give the audience a truth-like impression. We can
deduce from Zeami's second essay two ways whereby imitation may be
accomplished effectively. One way is to grasp some outstanding traits
of the object of imitation. The following suggestion on the imitation
of the Chinaman is illuminating:

No matter how one may try to be like a Chinaman in singing and

acting, one would not impress the audience; it is therefore

advisible to contrive one point of resemblance. This seeming

anti—realism is universally applicable in the act of imitation.

Anti-realism is not at all desirable; but since it is impossible

to imitate the Chinaman perfectly, a strange manner will impress

the audience.
It is clear that Zeami was not at all concerned with the surface detail
of the object of imitation. His interest was the effect of imitation
on the audience. bven the objects of imitation are reduced into three
main human types: the woman, the aged person and the warrior. This
alone is enough to prove Zeami's disinclination to surface realism.

The other way to accomplish imitation effectively is to grasp
what makes things appear the way they do; not the appearance itself,
but the cause of it; not human behavior itself, but the motive. Zeami

refers to it as the "hon-i" (or the heart) of things in his essays.

Zeami warns against the tendency of inexperienced Noh players to

 

84. Ibid., pp. 66f.

 

 

 

 

124

imitate the appearance and behavior of a character to the neglect of
what really makes the character appear and behave the way he does.

Concerning the imitation of madness he writes:

Even players with considerable experience simply act like a mad
man without knowing what made him mad with the result that the
audience is not moved. When madness caused by mental suffering
is to be imitated, one would certainly move and interest the
audience if one should endeavor to act madness mindful of the
mental suffering as the heart and the act of madness as the
flower (corpus) of his acting.85

we may say that what Zeami means by "hon—i" is the essence of things.
He believed that unless the essence of what is to be imitated is ex»
pressed it will not appear real. Simple feigning of the appearance

of an old man, for instance, would not make an actor look like an old

man; it is essential for the actor to grasp the old man's hidden mind.
an old man wishes to look young but his physical strength fails him.

In the last essay of the Kadensho Zeami gives the cue:

It is essential not to act like an old man. “ancing and acting
mean to tap the feet and wave the hands to the rhythm and music.
An old man's behavior is such that he would be slightly behind
the rhythm of the drum and songs. This gives us the principle
of imitation of an old man. As long as this principle is firmly
held in mind, other things should be done as gaily as possible.
For, an old man is wont to act young; however, since he is slow
of motion and hard of hearing due to his old age, his physical
strength betrays his wishes. To know this principle is essential
to the imitation of an old man. Thus, one should act young as
an old man wishes to act, which, after all, means to imitate the
mind and behavior of an old man envious of the young. However,
an old man could not help lagging behind the rhythm and music, no
matter how he tried to act like a young man. This "youngish
behavior" of an old man is what creates novelty: a flower blooms
upon an old tree.

 

 

85. Ibid., p. 48.

86/. Ibid., p. 229-

 

 

 

 

 

 

125

The uniqueness of Zeami's theory of imitation lies in the idea of

essence. The Noh since Zeami strictly adhered to this idea. In con-
sequence, it tended toward symbolism and patternization of movements.
It sacrificed surface realism to artistic expression of the essence of

things in the way that might impress the audience. Thus, according to
a modern Noh commentator, the ghost is more real than the living man,
for "the living man has individual traits and they are disturbing to
the Noh. When such superfluity is completely removed, there emerges
what constitutes the core of a character."87 The commentator ascribes
the reason why the Noh generally prefers the ghost as the main character
(the shite) to this belief in essence.

The theory of imitation assumes dualism for artistic expression
and creation as long as the act of imitation remains as such. That is,
mimetic art is impossible without the dualistic framework of the imi-
tator and the imitated. Zeami's theory, however, ultimately transcends

In.the essay on imitation in the Kadensho

 

this dualistic framework.

he started with "the true aim of imitation is faithfully to represent
whatever is imitated"; in the final essay in the same book he reveals
the ultimate aim of imitation in the following words:

In the act of imitation there is the level of no imitation. When

the act of imitation is perfectly carried out and the actor becomes
the thing itself, the actor will no longer have the desire to imi-

tate.88
This is echoed in another book, the Kaky : "In the imitation of all
human types, the actor should first learn to become the thing itself,

87. Masako Shirasu, Q‘EQE (The Noh), Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1963, pp. 96f,

88. Nose, 22. £33., p. 227.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

126

and then act."89 Thus in Zeami's theory the immediate aim of faithful
imitation is relinquished for the sake of the ultimate aim of no imi-
tation. The dualistic world of cognition, where imitation is possible,
is sublimated to the monistic world of experience, where the imitator
is fused with the imitated.

Another basic element of the Noh in the theory of Zeami is ygggg.
The meaning of ygggg has been subject to various interpretations.
Differences of opinion arise mainly from the historical consideration
of the term. Some interpreters of the term derive its meaning from
the Kokinshu,90 in which the earliest use of the word is found; some
trace the development of the meaning of the word in the poetic tradition
of medieval Japan; some try to find the use of the word in the intellec-
tual milieu of Zeami. Although it is admitted that such historical con-
siderations do throw much light on the meaning of the word, it is impor—
tant in our present discussion to concentrate on its meaning as it is
used by Zeami in his writing, for Zeami defines the term quite clearly
and uses it in that sense consistently in his theory of the Noh.91

Zeami's concept of ygggg is sensuous. He attached to the meaning
of the word no more than beauty and elegance as perceived by the human

senses. We see clearly what he means in the following definition found

 

89. Ibid., p. 295.
90. An anthology of Japanese poetry edited by Kino-Tsurayuki in 905.

91. Especially in relation to Yeats's understanding of the Noh, Zeami's
own definition of the word must be faithfully adhered to. To bring
various historical meanings of the word into the discussion of the
Yeats-Nob relationship only causes confusion. A good example is

Wilson's study in which the term "yugen" is taken to mean "ideal
beauty" and "mysterious calm," in which senses Zeami never used

the term.

 

 

 

 

in the ngyo:

Now then, what constitutes yugen? Firstly, surveying various
stations of life that exist in our society, we may perhaps say
that the noble manners and the distinguished appearance of the
peers represent the state of yugen. Yugen, then, lies in what

is simply beautiful and gentle. Gentleness of manners consti-
tutes the yugen of personality. Elegance of speech modeled

after the noble persons, which is constantly maintained even in
careless speech, constitutes the yugen of speech. And in music,
when the tune is of beautiful and flowing kind, gentle and ele—
gant to the ear, it constitutes the yugen of music. l’ance, when,
after a thorough practice, it pleases the eye by producing a beau-
tiful and quiet effect in the movement of the body, represents the
yugen of dance. And in the imitation of the three human types, ”
when the appearance is beautiful in each type, it represents yugen.92

According to this definition there is nothing mysterious or transcene

dental about the concept of yugen. Zeami meant by it that which pleases

the senses. It was an aesthetic device to check the danger of vulgarity

into which the mimetic art was apt to fall.

The sensuous nature of yugen is also emphasized in numerous

references throughout the Kadensho. In the sixth essay in the book,

for instance, we find:

The two (yugen and that which is trong) are found in the nature
of the things themselves. For instance, in human types, the
noble lady, the elegant lady, the beautiful lady, the handsome
man, and in plants, various kinds of flowers, are of yugen in
form. And, the warrior, the violent man, the demon, the god, the

pine tree, the cedar, etc. are strong things.

Elsewhere in the Kadensho Kannami says in reply to Zeami's question:94

"The main actor who appears beautiful, no matter how you look at him,

 

92. Nose, gp.gi£., pp. 358f.

93. Ibid., p. 193.

94. The reference is to the third essay, which is really a dialogue
between Zeami and his father, Kannami.

 

 

 

 

 

 

128

represents yugen."95 And concerning the training of a child in the art
of the Noh, Zeami says that the child of twelve or thirteen "is yugen
itself no matter how he acts, because he wears children's costume."96

Thus, in Zeami's theory, yugen is an aesthetic quality which is
sensuous in nature. When Zeami defined yugen as that which ”is simply
beautiful and gentle,"gge must have had in mind no more than the actor's
appearance on the stage. He repeatedly emphasizes the importance of
beautiful appearance throughout his essays. He thought, in fact, that
the act of imitation loses its purpose if the beautiful appearance of
the actor is lost sight of in his acting. He strongly urges the actor
to "learn the various aspects of yugen that have hitherto been enumerated,
absorb them into [his] system, and never leave [them] no matter what is
to be imitated."97 It should also be remembered, Zeami urges, that
"although various things may be imitated, what creates yugen is an '
appearance that is beautiful."98 For Zeami yugen meant "all the beau—
tiful things that are seen and heard."99

The relationship of the concept of yugen to that of imitation
is close, indeed. In one sense, as I pointed out earlier, yugen is
an aesthetic check upon the vulgarity of imitation practiced in the
earlier Sarugaku. Zeami's immediate aim as an innovator of the §§£g—

gaku was to transform the mimetic art into a more refined genre.

 

95. Nose, 92. gi£., p. 112.
96. Ibid., p. 13.

97. Ibid., p. 362.

98. Ibid.

99. Ibid., p. 365.

 

129

His ultimate aim, however, was to orient the basically mimetic art of
the Noh to the ideal of aesthetic experience. The human types are not
imitated Egg fig. They are imitated for the sake of beauty that they
produce. The ultimate aim of imitation is, therefore, to create yugen.
Thus in Zeami's theory the supreme level of imitation-—the level of no
imitation-is equated with the supreme attainment of yugen:
Know that all the beautiful things that are seen and heard repre-
sent yugen. One that enters the realm of yugen is he who makes
this principle his own working principle and becomes that which
embodies yugen. He who only wishes to attain yugen while neglect—
ing to study these aspects of it or to become the thing [of yugenfl
itself will never attain yugen.l
The supreme level of imitation, for Zeami, was the level of no imita-
tion. The actor was expected to attain the level at which he no longer
wishes to imitate but becomes the thing itself. Likewise, a true attain-
ment of yugen is to become the thing of yugen itself. One that wishes
to imitate or to attain yugen has not reached the supreme level of art.
The concept of imitation and the concept of yugen find their syn-
thesis in the third basic element of the Noh—-the concept of flower.
That is, when the act of imitation attains its supreme level, it enters
the realm of yugen, which produces an artistic effect that Zeami calls
Eggg, or flower. When an accomplished actor does his best, his perform—
ance is like the blooming of a flower, the sum total of his artistic
effort which is unique and interesting. Whether his performance is
a flower or not, of course, depends on the audience. If the audience

is duly impressed and attracted by it, then it may be called a flower-

 

100. Ibid., p. 365.

 

 

 

 

 

 

130

In order to impress the audience, however, his imitative act must have
reached its supreme level and have created yugen. In other words, the
actor must create beauty on the stage as naturally as the thing he is
imitating.

There are two important factors that make an actor's performance
bloom into a flower. To begin with, his performance must be interest-
ing to the audience. Unless the audience is impressed with the actor's
performance, the whole purpose of art is lost. Zeami is keenly conscious
of the audience as the sole judge of his art. It is not too much to say
that the purpose of putting his Noh theory into writing was to let his
posterity know how to impress the audience. His Noh theory is thus

characteristically audience-oriented. In the fifth essay of the Kadensho

he writes:

There are many ways to win fame in the art of the Noh. The accom—
plished artist finds it difficult to be appreciated by men of no
taste, while the unaccomplished artist is never appreciated by
men of taste. ... However, a truly accomplished artist who is
ingenious enough would act in the way that would impress even men
of no taste. An actor with such ingenuity and accomplishment may
be called the one who has attained the flower. An actor who has
attained this level of art will never be overwhelmed by a young
actor no matter how old he becomes. Such an actor would be uni-
versally recognized as an accomplished actor and would be appre—
ciated even by remote country folk. ..._The purpoSe of writing
this Kadensho is to reveal the true meaning of this accomplish—
nmnt of art.I

 

What Zeami aimed at, then, was a universal acceptance. In order for
his art to be accepted, he realized, his art must be universally
interesting, as a flower is.

The second factor that makes an actor's performance a flower
is uniqueness. If an actor is like any other actor and if his

101. Ibid., p. 151.

 

131

performance is always the same, he will tire the audience. He must be
different from other actors and he must always have a fresh charm.
A flower is universally appreciated because it blooms at a particular
time and is unique. If it was like any other flower and bloomed all
the year round, Zeami maintained, it would not attract us. The Noh
actor must have this uniqueness in his art.
In order to understand the meaning of flower in this secret
instruction, one should first observe how a flower of nature
blooms and thereby understand how all [art] came to be likened
to a flower. Now, people appreciate flowers because they are
all seasonal and have their own time to bloom. In the Noh, too,
the uniqueness with which it impresses the audience makes the
art interesting. Thus, "flower," "unique" and "interesting"
mean the same thing.10
The unique charm of a flower of nature, then, is something that an
actor must have in his art.
I hope I have clarified the meaning of flower in Zeami's Noh theory.
It is the sum total of an actor's artistic effort. It subsumes an act
of imitation on the part of the actor and the aesthetic quality of
yugen on the part of the imitated. The flower is the synthesis of the
two. It emerges when the act of imitation reaches its supreme level.
In Zeami's own words:
In the act of imitation there is the level of no imitation. When
the act of imitation is perfectly carried out and the actor becomes
the thing itself, the actor will no longer have the desire to imi-
tate. Whereupon, if the actor concentrates upon the "interesting,"

a flower will certainly emerge.

The flower is thus an aesthetic experience of the actor as well as of

 

102. Ibid., p. 213.

103. Ibid., p. 227.

 

 

 

 

132

the audience.

The Noh, it is clear now, is essentially an experiential art.
It is not interested in story nor in ideas; its sole interest is how
to create an aesthetic experience--the blooming of a flower. The whole
artistic endeavor--of acting and of writing Noh texts-~15 guided by
this interest. In the way of acting, a major part of the action is
devoted to the main actor's dance, and action Consists of little or
no conflict of forces. The narrative interest is slight and the stories
told are generally short and simple. A Noh writer is expected to choose
for his material well known stories in the classical Chinese and Japa-
nese literature that are particularly appropriate for producing yugen.
Originality is not therefore highly valued in the Noh. The narrative
element is valuable insofar as it produces yugen and helps the actor's
art bloom into a flower.

The ship; (main actor) is all-important in the Noh. An entire
piece is constructed around the §fli£§‘s performance. Zeami cautions
that rhetorical emphases must be placed in the Epigg's speech. In the
sixth essay in the Kadensho he warns against using important words in
speeches not spoken by the ghigg: “Do not use important words in places
that have nothing to do with the ghitg's speech or his action."104
The reason is that ”the audience is wont to be impressed with the
interesting speech and action of none other than the main actor."105
In the Nosakusho (the Art of Writing Noh Plays) Zeami writes: "Beauti-

ful words and well-known phrases must be used for the shite's speech."106

 

104. Ibid., p. 169.
105. Ibid., pp. 169f.

106. Ibid., p. 601.

 

 

 

— v

133

Minutest care must be taken even in the choice of words to be spoken by

the shite. The entire piece should naturally be oriented toward the

role of the main actor. Zeami even goes so far as to suggest that the

personality of the main actor should determine the nature of the whole

piece. In the Nosakusho he cautioned:

 

It is most important, therefore, to suit the material to the
personality of the shite in writing a Noh piece. A Noh writer
should be able to discriminate [the type of] the Noh that is ;
becoming to the character of the shite.107 ’
The whole piece in the Noh is constructed so as to make the bud of yugen {
that the shite has in him open into a beautiful flower. Of course, i
there is the waki (the side character), but his role is far less signifi-

cant in comparison to the shite's and his part is to help the shite, and

not to oppose him. In most Noh plays the waki is a journeying priest

 

 

who draws a story out of the shite, who tells the story——usually his
own story——in dance and songs. While the ghigg is telling his story,
the 335i quietly sits by the wgkifbashira (the pole of the waki), one
of the four poles that hold the ceiling of the Noh stage.

It must be remembered, however, that the narrative interest is
minimized in the Noh. The story is not told for its own sake, but is
used as a device whereby the beauty of yugen is effectively brought
about on stage. Using an original story in a Noh play is discouraged.
The measure of excellence of the Noh does not lie in originality but
in whether or not a flower has bloomed. A Noh writer, instead of
boasting of his originality, is expected to work on “authentic"

material, as Zeami calls it, which has been tested by tradition for

 

107. Ibid., pp. 651f.

 

 

 

134

the quality of yugen. In other words, the writer's craftsmanship is
far more important than his genius. In the sixth essay of the Kadensho
we find: "writing of the Noh text is of vital importance in this art.
A good Noh piece requires only craftsmanship, not profound learning or
genius."108 What, then, is a good Noh piece? Zeami's answer is: "A good
Noh piece is one that is authentic in the traditional literature and has
uniqueness, emphases and a quality of yugen."109

It is clear, then, that the Noh is a theatrical art centering around
the main actor, the §hitg, who appears before the audience as an incarna-

tion of yugen, a blooming flower. Its aesthetic is singularly monistic

and its ideal is experiential.

IV

The kind of drama that Zeami and his father, Kannami, tried to
found was thus monistic-experiential in nature. It is understandable,
therefore, that Yeats was strongly attracted to the Noh. Yeats was
opposed, we remember, to the traditional stage of the West where
characters clashed with each other and to the modern realistic school
which denied the audience passionate reverie. The Noh holds the posi-
tion antithetical to the drama of the West in theory and practice.

Generally speaking, what characterizes the Western drama is its

dualistic-cognitive nature. It assumes the world of duality in which

 

108. Ibid., p. 169.

109. Ibid., p. 173.

 

 

 

 

 

 

135

conflict of forces occurs. It also assumes the world of cognition in
which recounting a history of a conflict of forces is not only possible
but interesting. Its interest is in an exploration of human action,
and its finding is perhaps what we might call "human nature." In the
words of a modern student of drama: "Drama is one, and perhaps the
major, instrument invented by human beings for the exploration and
explanation of the nature of man."110

The mimetic theory of Aristotle is also rooted in the dualistic—
cognitive perspective. The idea of imitation is based on the dualistic
relation of the imitator and the imitated, and Aristotle let the two
remain separated. A human action, which is the object of imitation,
consists of a series of events. Thus, the history of a human action,
or the plot, gets the primary emphasis in Aristotle's theory. 0f the
six parts of tragedy, according to Aristotle, the plot is the most
important of all. In the Poetics we find:

But the most important of all is the structure of the incidents.

For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and

of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of

action, not a quality. Now character determines men‘s qualities,

but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse.
Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representa+

 

tion of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions.

Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the
end is the chief thing of all. 11

 

 

110. Hubert Heffner, "Towards a Definition of Form in Drama,“ Classical

 

Drama and Its Influence, M. J. Anderson ed., London: Methuen 8 Co.

Ltd. , 196575. 153.

111. Aristotle' 3 Theory_ of Poetry_ and Fine Art, translated and with notes

by S. H. Butcher, Dover Publications, Inc., 1951, pp. 25f.

 

 

 

 

136
The least important of all, by contrast, is the spectacle:

The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own,
but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected
least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may
be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors.112

We find a number of antitheses between Aristotle and Zeami. 1*‘or
Aristotle the plot is "the soul of a tragedy,"113 while, for Zeami, it
is a device whereby yugen is created. While Aristotle insists that an
action is to be imitated, Zeami is mainly interested in three human
types: aged person, woman, and warrior. The spectacle, which is of the
least importance in Aristotle's theory, is of prime importance in Zeami's.
The list of antitheses does not end here. They all come to this-that
the two dramatic theorists of the East and the West had perspectives
antithetical to each other: Zeami had the monistic-experiential per-
spective, which aimed at a resolution of duality and the creation of
a purely aesthetic experience in the realm of art; Aristotle, on the
other hand, had the dualistic-cognitive perspective, which affirmed the
world of duality where it was possible for the imitator to create a
sense of pleasure by a miming act, and which believed in the ability
of the mind to perceive the original action being imitated.

The didactic theory of Renaissance theorists is also dualistic—
cognitive in nature. Combining the Aristotelian mimetic theory with
the typically Renaissance love of didacticism, it assumed the dualistic
world of the imitator and the imitated, and emphasized the learning
process rather than pleasure. Thus, tragedy, says Sidney,

112. Ibid., p. 29.

113. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

137

openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that
are covered with tissue, that maketh kings fear to be tyrants,
and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humours; that with stir-
ring the effects of admiration and commiseration teacheth the
uncertainty of this world, and upon how weak foundations gilden

roofs are builded.

The didactic purpose is achieved by showing an illustrious example.
Here again the dramatic interest is in an exploration of human action,

which is antithetical to Zeami's interest in yugen.

The modern realistic drama, which antagonized Yeats so much, is

based on the dualistic-cognitive perspective beyond doubt. Although

Ibsen and his followers are admitedly different from their Greek and
Elizabethan predecessors in their concept of drama and its significance
to life, they nevertheless maintain the same dualistic-cognitive
interest in assuming a critical position to the social conventions

of their time and taking pathological interest in human action. The
only significant difference between the modern realists and the
ancients perhaps lies in the fact that the modern realists have

brought the dualistic—cognitive perspective to play in the immediate,

commonplace milieu. Thus, the modern realistic drama also tends

toward an exploration of human action.
Risking an over—simplification, it may be possible to say that
the main current of Western drama represents a school of aesthetic

that takes an active interest in an exploration of human action and

in reconstructing that action into a coherent whole. The work involves

dualistic thinking and a cognitive process of the mind. Whether this

formula is an over-simplification or not, it was this tendency to which

 

 

114. Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense 2: Poesy, Boston: Ginn C0., 1890,
p. 28.

 

 

 

 

 

138

Yeats responded unfavorably. Yeats was consistently against "all art

that is... mere» story-tellingll and declared “unimaginative” all arts
that "are content to set a piece of the world as we know it in a place
by itself, to put their photographs as it were in a plush or a plain
frame."115 The monistic-experiential pull was too strong for Yeats to
be completely at home in the dualistic-cognitive tradition of the West.
Now, it was this monistic-experiential pull that caused Yeats to

respond favorably to the Noh. Although there is no denying the fact

that lack of information led Yeats to some outrageous misconceptions,

such as confusing the Noh dance with the Joruri,116 his understanding

of the Noh is accurate in some respects. Insofar as the Noh tended

away from exploration and portraiture, Yeats found it quite congenial.
It would be jumping to a conclusion, however, to infer from the
above discussion that Yeats, repelled by the traditional dramatic
theory and practice of the west, completely baptized himself into the
Eastern school of Zeami. Yeats's perspective was neither completely
Eastern nor, of course, completely Western: his was a double perspec—

tive. He had, so to speak, one foot in the East and the other in the

west. He gained from this anomalous position something which earned

his dramas "a sphere by themselves"117 in the development of Western

 

115. Essays Egg Introductions, p. 224.

116. The Joruri is a puppet drama which has its own tradition; its
genesis is in the mist of history. "The most famous of all Japa-
nese dramatists" Yeats mentions in his essay "Certain Noble Plays
of Japan" is Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Joruri dramatist who lived
from 1653 to 1724. He is often called the Shakespeare of Japan.

117. Alladyce Nicoll, British Drama, an Historical Survey from the

 

Be innin s to the Present Time, London: George G. Harnap 8 Co.
Ltd., 1953, p. 410.

 

 

 

 

 

 

139

drama. However, he lost as much as he gained from either side. His
dramatic theory and practice consequently became characteristically
his own. His schooling in the Noh aesthetic and his Nob—like dramas
must be considered in this light.
In Sections V, VI, and VII of "Certain Noble Plays of Japan,"
Yeats explains the Noh drama of Japan. In these sections he points
out the qualities of "intimacy" and "distance" that he finds in the
Noh. He emphasizes its tendency away from surface realism. "No
'naturalistic' effect is sought," he observes.118 The use of masks,
the interest in the rhythm, and the simple and suggestive stage—setting
characterize the Noh. These characteristics help simplify the Noh.
Earlier in the essay Yeats said that the stage must be simplified
in order to achieve intimacy. The use of the mask helps in this,
because it has a stilling effect which helps produce deep feeling. The
mask will also suppress the realistic facial expressions of the actor.
Explaining the use of a mask in his own play, he writes:
A mask will enable me to substitute for the face of some common-
place player, or for that face repainted to suit his own vulgar
fancy, the fine invention of a sculptor, and to bring the audience
close enough to the play to hear every inflection of the voice.
A mask never seems but a dirty face, and no matter how close you
go is yet a work of art; nor shall we lose by stilling the move-
ment of the features, for deep feeling is expressed by a movement
of the whole body. In poetical painting and in sculpture the face
seems the nobler for lacking curiosity, alert attention, all that
we sum up under the famous word of the realists, 'vitality.‘119

Yeats's use of a mask definitely has a disciplinary purpose. The mask

is expected to check surface realism and direct the attention of the

118. Essays and Introductions, p. 230.

119. Ibid., p. 226.

 

 

 

 

 

 

140

audience to perceiving the inner truth. The disciplinary function of

the mask is generally acknowledged in the Noh. Zeami has very little

to say about the function of the mask, but his remark about the hitamen

(the unmasked face) is helpful:

It [the hitamen] imitates a living person and therefore should
not be difficult. Strangely enough, however, it is hardly worth
seeing unless the [actor's] art is superior. As for the manner
of imitation, it depends, of course, on individual cases. Some
try to make facial expressions different from their usual faces,
although there is no reason why they should counterfeit facial
expressions. It is unbearable to see such [an act of imitation].
One should imitate only the behavior and the general impression

of what he is imitating, and keep his face as ,it' usually is.120

Zeami abhorred the realistic expressions some of his contemporary Noh

players liked to make when they acted living persons without using

masks. Noh players today are still expected to keep a straight face

when they appear on stage without a mask on. A high standard of art

is required to create a deep feeling without resorting to facial expres-

sions. Thus in the Noh, facial expressions are subject to discipline.

In an imitation of a masked figure the mask does the disciplinary

function; in the case of an unmasked figure, an internal discipline

is necessary.

Like Yeats, Zeami also realized the artistic quality of masks.

In the Sarugaku-dangi he gives a list of masterpieces that were avail—
able for his use at the time. One of them even inspired him in his

dream. For Zeami, however, a mask was an instrument as well as a

work of art. He even advised that the top of a mask be cut off if it

got in the way of the head gear. He also advised that a player should

 

 

120. Nose, pp. 512., pp. 46f.

 

 

 

 

Ff——_

141

be careful about the choice of a mask and "should choose one that suits
the level of art he has attained."121 For Zeami, therefore, a mask was
more than a disciplinary device or a work of art: it was an instrument
that was to be actively used for creating yugen. In other words, a
mask was a component of the flower that bloomed on the stage. For Yeats
it was a device to create intimacy.

Yeats also found the interest in rhythm characteristic of the Noh.
His enthusiasm was particularly stirred by l) the fact that a dance,
“instead of the disordered passion of nature," marked the climax, 2)
seeming indifference to the human form, and 3) an intensity of rhythm.
These features cause the Noh to tend away from a “naturalistic" effect.
The rhythmical elements form, of course, the vital part of the Noh.
Zeami stipulated two rhythmical parts and three human types as the
essential elements of the Noh. The two rhythmical parts were song
and dance. The three human types included the aged person, the woman
and the warrior. A mimetic act of the three human types performed in
a dance accompanied by singing was to produce an effect of yugen.

Yeats was particularly impressed with the fact that it was not

the human form but the rhythm to which it moved that the Noh was

 

interested in.

The interest is not in the human form but in the rhythm to which
it moves, and the triumph of their art is to express the rhythm
in its intensity.

121. Nose, pp. 213., Vol. II, p. 565.

122. Essays and Introductions, p. 231.

 

142

The human form, however, is an indispensable element of the Noh. Yugen,

Zeami said, was derived from the form itself. Even an aged person was

a flower upon an old tree. Yeats's enthusiasm for the two rhythmical
parts of the Noh comes from his belief that words and music are the

archetypal media of the theatrical art. "The theatre began in ritual,"123

Yeats believed, and in ritual song had priority over action. In drama
song originally had the same position. "we have forgotten," Yeats

wrote to the editor of the Daily Chronicle, "that the Drama began in
the chanted ode, and that whenever it has been great it has been written
to delight our eyes, but to delight our ears more than our eyes."124
A dance, for Yeats, meant a human "body swayed to music," in “a series
of positions and movements."

That Yeats should have overlooked the importance that the Noh

places on the human form is an interesting fact. It clearly shows

the cleavage that lies between Yeats and Zeami in their artistic ideals.

Yeats had little faith in the human form for a number of reasons. For

one thing, he believed that drama began in ritual in the form of a

 

chanted ode, in which the magical pOWer of words was of prime importance.
As the happy shepherd sings, “Words alone are certain good," and the
theater “cannot come to its greatness again without recalling words to
their ancient sovereignty."125 The principle of intimacy was born of
this faith in words. Intimacy creates a natural atmosphere in which

words can fully exert their power.

 

123. Ibid., p. 170.

124. Letters, p. 309.

 

125. Essays and Introductions, p. 170.

 

 

 

 

 

143

A song, too, means a series of words that have "taken fire."
In order to be artistically effective, words must move imperceptibly

into chanting, and no artificiality must be allowed in the process.

What was the good of writing a love-song if the singer pronounced
love 'lo—o—o—o—o-ve,' or even if he said 'love,' but did not give
it its exact place and weight in the rhythm? Like every other
poet, I spoke verses in a kind of chant when I was making them;
and sometimes, when I was alone on a country road, I would speak
them in a loud chanting voice, and feel that if I dared I would
speak them in that way to other people.126

The relationship between music and speech is thus close. In "Poems
for Psaltery" (1907), a section added to "Speaking to the Psaltery,"

Yeats suggests that music developed from speech:

The relation between music and speech will yet become the subject
of science, not less than the occasion of artistic discovery. I
suggest that we will discover in this relation a very early stage
in the development of music, with its own great beauty, and that
those who love lyric poetry but cannot tell one tune from another
repeat a state of mind which created music and yet was incapable
of the emotional abstraction which delights in patterns of sound
separated from words.

And in a letter to the editor of the Academ , June 7, 1902, he makes
the same suggestion in simpler terms:
I imagine men spoke their verses first to a regulated pitch with-
out a tune, and then, eager for variety, spoke to tunes which
gradually became themselves the chief preoccupation until speech

died out in music.

The relationship between words and music was a theme which never left

 

126. Ibid., p. 14.
127. Ibid., p. 20.

128. Letters, p. 374.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

144

Yeats's mind throughout his life. Sometimes, as wilJ_bediscussed later,
he tended to separate the two by emphasizing one or the other; but
mostly he tried to fuse the two. Toward the end of life he wrote many
poems to old Irish tunes in an "attempt to unite literature and music."129
It was in restoring speech to its original importance that the
task of the modern theater lay. Yeats loathed the tendency of the tra—
ditional theater of the West in which action had become more and more
important, speech lost its original simplicity and naturalness, and
the stage-setting had become elaborate and artificial, destroying the
intimacy of art. In order for the theater to recover the greatness
it once enjoyed, speech must be restored to its former position:
Racine and Shakespeare wrote for a little stage where very little
could be done with movement, but they were as we know careful to
get a great range of expression out of the voice. Our art, like
theirs, without despising movement, must restore the voice to its
importance, for all our playwrights, Synge just as much as myself,
get their finest effects out of style, out of the expressiveness
of speech itself.
In an ideal drama, which means a tragic drama for Yeats, the human form
must be obliterated to find itself in the world of a passionate reverie.
Yeats saw this happen when Michio Ito danced in a studio, where "he was
able, as he rose from the floor, where he had been sitting cross—legged,
or as he threw out an arm, to recede from [them] into some more power-

ful life."131 This was possible, Yeats maintains, because the dance was

 

129. Ibid., p. 841.
130. Ibid., p. 441.

131. Essays 22d Introductions, p. 224.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

145

performed in a studio where intimacy was successfully kept, and in such
an atmosphere alone did he "see (Itd) as the tragic image that has

"132 A celebration of the human form tends,

stirred (his) imagination.
on the one hand, toward elaboration and artificiality and therefore

away from intimacy; on the other hand, it tends toward individuation

and therefore away from the passionate reverie. This is the tendency
that comedy and the modern realistic school of drama have taken.

By finding in the Noh the rhythm in its intensity, therefore,
Yeats found a tragic art in the Noh. By suppressing the interest in
the human form for the sake of the rhythm to which it moved, the Noh
succeeded, Yeats thought, in creating a passionate reverie. It succeeded,
in other words, in gaining distance by maintaining intimacy. Yeats
missed, however, an important element in Zeami's theory. The Noh, as
Zeami stipulated, consisted of two rhythmical parts and three human
types, and the formula, of course, is still kept today. The human form,
which is represented by three general types, holds a position equal in
its importance to the rhythmical parts. The five parts collaborate to
bring about the blooming of a flower, the beauty of which is yugen.

What Yeats missed, then, is the fact that Zeami aimed at the fusion of
the rhythm and the form, a purely monistic—experiential level of art.

Yeats also found that suggestiveness characterized the Noh. It
is quite understandable that this element should have appealed to Yeats,
for it was his belief that what destroyed intimacy in the drama of the
West was elaborate and artificial stage—setting. By pushing the stage

to extreme simplicity, leaving only such details as may be suggestive,

132. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

146

the Noh succeeded, Yeats believed, in creating intimacy. Zeami's main
interest was not, of course, in simplicity for its own sake, but in the
effectiveness of impression. He advised, for instance, the sacrifice
of truth to effectiveness, as we have seen in the case of imitating

a Chinaman. His concern was rather with an effective creation of the
beauty of yugen. Thus the dresses worn by the Noh players are far from
being simple or suggestive, but are quite colorful and elaborate. 0n
the whole, however, Yeats came close to Zeami in de-emphasizing the
elaborate surface details and substituting in their place "a child's
game become noble poetry," that sets before the audience "all those
things which we feel and imagine in silence."133

The foregoing discussion was meant to show how Yeats applied his
aesthetic principle of intimacy to the Noh. The application resulted
in a rather half-hearted understanding of Zeami's ideals: some essen—
tial elements Yeats seems to have understood, but he missed the impor~
tant concept upon which the life of the Noh artist and the Noh itself
depend, i.e., the concept of the flower. The failure or the omission
caused Yeats to take a significant deviation from the Noh in writing
his Noh—like dramas, as will be discussed later.

Along with intimacy, Yeats also found distance, the other one of
the twin aesthetic principles, attained in the Noh. Art attains dis-
tance from the pushing world of business, Yeats believed, by finding
its source of life in tradition. Yeats traced the beauty of the Noh

to its three—fold origin. From the courtly life of the medieval

 

133. Ibid., p. 231.

 

 

 

 

 

147

Japanese, Yeats thought, came the nobility of the love sorrows that one
finds in so many Noh dramas. In the Buddhist doctrine he found the
source of the intellectual subtlety. And finally, in the Shinto legends

and beliefs he found the sources of the narrative proper of the Noh

dramas.
0f the three origins what interested Yeats most was the Shinto

tradition, which he thought paralleled the Irish folk tradition. The

Noh dramatists, Yeats found, were keenly aware of the historical places
which were closely associated with the myths and legends of the Shinto
religion, and they expressed their emotion to the holy places in much

the same manner as the Gaelic-speaking country people of Ireland. With

these dramatists Yeats felt a close affinity:

The men who created this convention were more like ourselves than
were the Greekf32nd Romans, more like us even than are Shakespeare

and Corneille.

That Yeats should have felt a closer affinity to the Japanese Noh
dramatists than to the classical authors of the West, of course, is no

surprising matter in the light of his belief in the archetypal myths

as the true sources of all good arts. There is a definite anti-intel—

lectual element in his principle of distance.l35 Yeats put more faith

in the popular tradition than in the written. The archetypal beliefs

of a given culture are handed down the generations by the common people,

in whose life the beliefs are constantly animated and kept alive. The

 

134. Ibid., p. 233.

135. Frank Kermode notes an anti-intellectual tendency of Yeats's symbol-
ism in Romantic Image. The idea of the "thinking body" has a paral-
lel in Yeats's general view of an ideal culture--that a culture must
have a unity that finds its expression in every piece of art and fur—
niture around a single image as if it has been wrought by a single

mind.

 

 

 

 

 

148

archetypal beliefs are not mere abstractions, but are something that
has an emotional foundation in the flesh and blood of the people's
lives. Any art that attains distance, Yeats believed, appeals to the
archetypal beliefs and to the tribal memory of beauty, whereby a lyrical
intensity is achieved.

Now, Yeats thought that the Noh dramatists found their material
in the popular tradition of Japan. In some sense, Yeats was right, for
Zeami de-emphasized the value of originality on the part of the Noh
writer and emphasized instead the "authenticity" of the material; and
it is true that a lot of materials of the Noh are drawn from folk tra—
dition. However, Zeami's idea of "authenticity" was not restricted
to the materials of folk origin. 0n the contrary, he favored the
materials drawn from the written tradition of the classical literature.
He advised that the Noh dramatist should draw heavily on the classical
literature not only for the narrative but also for poetry and specific

passages that had become cliches. He advised especially the use of

 

5225a, a genre of poetry which was popular among the aristocrats at
Zeami's time. What Zeami aimed to achieve, after all, was not a mys-
terious art, but an art which had a beauty of universal appeal, drawing
upon the material tested and refined by the literary tradition. His
interest was neither in the narrative quality of the material peg s2
nor in its philosophical or intellectual subtlety, but in the beauty
it could help create. The mysterious and difficult part fell on the
actor himself in his art of creating beauty of yugen. Contrary to
Zeami's ideal, Yeats's aim was to create “an unpopular theatre and an

audience like a secret society where admission is by favour and never

 

 

II::::: .
149

to many,"l36but an art that could still remind one of its "origin among
the common people."137 The "Noh plays" Yeats wrote were meant to fit the
formula. Their materials were drawn from the popular legends and myths,
but they were highly sophisticated dramas intended for a small select
audience of initiates. One can well imagine how Yeats felt when 52 Egg
Hawk's Well was performed in a theater in New York without his permis—
sion. He wrote to John Quinn:
Fate has been against me. I meant these 'Noh' plays never to be
played in a theatre, and now one has been done without leave; and
circumstances have arisen which would make it ungracious to forbid
Ito to play Th3 Hawk as he will. I had thought to escape the press,
and people digesting their dinners, and to write for my friends.13
Thus, Yeats tried to fit the Noh into his dualistic formula of intimacy
and distance. He partly succeeded in the attempt, but he failed, at the
same time, to note the purely monistic—experiential nature of the Noh
which is crystalized in the concept of the flower.

The failure is aggravated by branding the Noh as a tragic art in

 

the Yeatsian sense. The age in which the Noh was perfected interested
Yeats unduly and led him to the false conclusion that the spiritual
milieu that fostered the Noh sought a heroic discipline and that the
Noh was its literary product. The misunderstanding is based on another
misunderstanding that the founder of the Noh was "a small daimig or

feaudal lord of the ancient capital Nara, a contemporary of Chaucer."139

 

136. Plays and Controversies, p. 212.
137. Essays and Introductions, p. 223.

138. Letters, p. 652.

 

139. Essays agd Introductions, p. 229.

 

 

 

 

 

150

Yeats believed that the tragic art arose in an age of uncertainty which
made the people's minds incline toward some sort of synthesis of con-
flicting elements, toward some Spiritual unity. And a tragic literature
could be created by a mind in which there was a real spiritual conflict--
like that of Dante. The Japanese warriors of the feudal age, Yeats
believed, combined in their minds the masculine worship of power and
the feminine sense of beauty. The Noh was a product of such a mind.
These plays arose in an age of continual war and became a part
of the education of soldiers. These soldiers, whose nature had
as much of Walter Pater as of Achilles, combined with Buddhist
priests and women to elaborate life in a ceremony, the playing
of football, the drinking of tea, and all great events of State,
becoming a ritual.
Thus, Yeats believed that the Noh was a product of a heroic age, devel—
oped and perfected by the artistic warriors whose spiritual thirst was
eased by drinking out of the fountain of beauty and archetypal beliefs

they uncovered in the art.

 

Yeats's meeting with the Noh, then, was only a part of the whole
cycle in which the gyric movement of the double perspective took place.
Yeats found in the Noh what he wanted to find. He interpreted the Noh
in a way that might reinforce his own theory. In some respects he came
quite close to the ideals set forth by Zeami; and, of course, he assim-
ilated some of the Noh conventions into his dramaturgy, such as dance,
chorus (which does not take part in the action), simple and suggestive
stage-setting, etc. On the other hand, either intentionally or uninten—
tionally, he overlooked some of the important elements of the Noh and im-

posed his own ideas on it. The Noh did not cause any change in his

 

14o. Ibid., p. 235.

 

151

double perspective. Furthermore, it gave him very little as the source

of his plays. The Noh actually helps us very little in understanding

his plays and his dramatic theory. It is more helpful, in my opinion,

to look for discrepancies, rather than similarities, that exist between

the Noh and Yeats's dramatic theory and practice.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE

The Flower That Never Bloomed

The double perspective with which Yeats viewed the Noh is also
carried into his "Noh" plays themselves. In this chapter I shall con—
centrate on the structural significance that the double perspective has
in the plays. The discussion of Yeats's obvious borrowings from the
Noh, such as dance, chorus, and musicians will be dispensed with. Also,
his obvious deviations from the Noh convention, such as the rhythmical
pattern of JQTEETEXE: the form of dancing (not the 1252!; dance that
Yeats obviously had in mind), and the types of costumes, will be exe
cluded from the present discussion.

0f the five plays written under the Japanese influence, four are
modeled after the Noh and one after the Kyogen. Since what Yeats calls
"noble plays of Japan" are the Noh plays, we should concentrate our dis-
cussion on the relationship between the Noh and his plays; but before
we plunge into our main discussion, I might briefly make a comment on
the Kyogen. Yeats seems to have known very little about the Kyogen, but
it is surprising that the distinction Yeats makes between tragedy and
comedy is actually quite similar to the kind of distinction that the Noh
and the Kyogen came to assume in the course of time. Although some schol-
ars of Japanese literature argue that the Kyogen and the Noh have independ—
ent origins, there is a general agreement that the two genres had a common
origin and that the Kyogen developed as a mimetic art of a lower type

while the Noh took a more refined and sophisticated line of development.

 

 

 

 

 

 

153

What distinguishes the Kyogen from the N011 is that its main interest is
in the comic, not beauty and elegance.»

The earliest authoritative reference to the nature of the Kyogen
is found in Zeami's Shudosho (1430), in which Zeami says: "It is gener-
ally known that in the Kyogen the actor's performance consists in im-
provisation or adaptation of an old tale or some interesting story to
his comical purposes."1 The reference is only preamble to what Zeami
really wanted to say, i. e., that the Kyogen actor should refrain from
vulgarism and aim at a refined type of laughter that is not incompatflfle
with ygggn of the Noh. There is no denying that Zeami‘s warning againt
vulgarism contributed to the development of the Kyogen into a refined
comedy rather than slapstick, but we can just as easily take the warn—
ing as an evidence that the Kyogen was a genre which essentially did
not fit the Nob schene.

The personal element is quite strong in the Kyogen, as Yeats per-
ceived it also in the comedy of the West. Laughter is largely derived
from ludicrous speech and behavior of the actors or from the comical
situation in which the characters find their interests conflicting. fit
fact, the Kyogen shows very little interest in non—human elements,
natural or supernatural, as a Japanese critic has noted.2 Characters
are clearly defined and in some Kyogen pieces they are fully developed.
Action or narrative is not shitgfcentered, and in many Kyogen pieces

the comical effect depends on the dramatization of the conflict between

the characters, resulting in the pain of one.

 

1. Nose, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 272.

2. Yoshio Araki and Sennojo Shigeyama, Kyogen, Osaka: Sogensha, 1956,
p. 123.

 

 

 

 

 

 

154

Yeats had in mind two antithetical types of poetical drama. One
was tragedy and the other was comedy. What distinguished comedy from
tragedy was that it was interested mainly in character and the clash
of character, from which tragedy always tends away, concentrating in-
stead on Iyric feeling. In great tragedies of the past, Yeats believaL
character had an insignificant place; while in comedies it received a
main emphasis. When character is present in such great dramatic works
of Shekespeare, it is defined only in the moments of comedy; and such
works are for Yeats tragi—comedy: "Shakespeare is always a writer of
tragi-comedy."3

Yeats’s idea of comedy is clearly based on his dualistic-cognitive
perspective. Comedy takes interest in character, which means to Yeats
individuation. (It should be remembered that Yeats defined tragedy as
"a drowner of dykes that separate man from man.") Individuation means
a display of energy, which results in action. The joy of comedy is
derived from that action:

Comedy is joyous because all assumption of a part, of a personal

mask, whether of the individualized face of comedy or of the gro-

tesque face of farce, is a display of energy, and all energy is
joyous.

And joy has to do with the active will:

Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which
knows triumph.

 

 

3. Essays 229 Introductions, p. 240.

4. Autobiographies, p. 471.
5. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

155

On the other hand, tragedy has to do with vision, a state of the soul,
not with the will or the display of energy:
The masks of tragedy contain neither character nor personal energy.
They are allied to decoration and to the abstract figures of Egypt~
ian temples. Before the mind can look out of their eyes the aetive
will perishes, hence their sorrowful calm. ...The soul knows its
changes of state alone, and I think the motives of tragedy are not
related to action but to changes of state.
Character and energy, action and will-these are essentially the mate-
rials of comedy. In order to take form, they must be put through a
process, and that process, when it is complete, gives us a sensation
of joy. Yeats, of course, was not so certain about his idea of comedy.
He Could not separate tragedy from comedy and keep than separate, plac—
ing one on the monistic-experiential end and the other on the dualistic-
cognitive end of his perspective. In Yeats one end always interfered
with and qualified the other. Thus he says at the end of Section XXIV

‘ of "Estrangement," which we have been following:

 

I feel all this [that the motives of tragedy are related to changes
of state) but do not see clearly, for I am hunting truth into its
thicket and it is my business to keep close to the impressions of
sense, to common daily life. Yet is not ecstasy some fulfilment
of the soul in itself, some slow or sudden expansion of it like
an overflowing well? Is not this what is meant by beauty?7

In Zeami and Yeats, then, we see contrary perspectives. Zeami tried

to qualify the dualistic-cognitive art (the Kyogen) with the monistic-

experiential scheme (the Noh), while Yeats let his dualistic—cognitive

Perspective interfere with his monistic-experiential perspective. The

interference is evident also in his "Nob" plays. As we shall see

 

5. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

 

 

 

— r
156

presently, character and action, comic materials according to Yeats's
dramatic theory, are carried into the plays.

There is no denying that in the four dance plays Yeats practices
his own principles of intimacy and distance. The plays have a relatively
small number of characters in them and need only a drawing room with no
elaborate stage-setting for perfonnance. The simplicity of the plays is
"no mere economy" but necessary in order to produce the desired effect,

a lyrical feeling. Distance is successfully maintained by removing
surface realism and taking the materials not from modern life but from
popular myths and legend.

When we compare the plays with the Noh plays of Japan, we cannot
but notice a wide gap between them. Yeats's plays are strongly charac-
terized by his dualistic—cognitive perspective, which is revealed in his
total disregard of Zeami's concept of flower and in his introduction
into the plays of his own tragic concept of conflict and of literary

ideas.

 

It is not certain that Yeats ever knew about Zeami's concept of
flower. Even if he did, the concept would have been hardly palatable
for Yeats. At any rate, he completely disregarded it in his "Noh" plays.
Zeami's concept of flower, as it was previously explained, subsumed two
basic concepts, i.e., the concept of yugen and the concept of imitation.
The concept of yugen rendered the Noh a singularly aesthetic and non—
literary art, which is not dissimilar to the sort of art envisaged in
the “aesthetic school" of Arthur Hallam, which Yeats had outgrown long
since. The concept of imitation was elevated by Zeami to the level of
"no imitation," a purely experiential level of art. This concept would

have been more congenial to Yeats, but it would have necessitated a

radical qualification of his concept of conflict.

 

u

 

 

 

157 1
Zeami made it clear that the sole aim of the Noh was to create the
beauty of yugen. The narrative element and the literary or philosophi-
cal ideas were therefore unimportant or subservient to the supreme aim.
Instead the two rhythmical parts of dance and song and the three human
forms constituted the vital part of the Noh; and as to speech, rich

allusion was valued instead of character-revealing words. Zeami empha-

 

sized that extreme care must be taken in the choice of material, keeping
in mind the ultimate aim of yugen. He even advised that beautiful words
or poetical passages from the classical literature be given to the shite.
In Yeats's plays we do not notice such an aesthetic consideration. His 1

plays cannot be said to be richly allusive. Nor do we find the charac-

 

ters to be conducive to the creation of beauty. The speeches, too, are
not particularly poetical or lyrical but character-revealing. Poetry
is given to the chorus rather than to the characters. Above all, the
plays are not free from ideas. At least, Calvary is one example which

is based on an idea, as Wilson has pointed out.

 

Reading Yeats's "Noh" plays, anyone who is familiar with the Jap-
anese Nob will immediately notice Yeats's heavy dependence on speech.
The Noh, as I have pointed out, depends heavily on the dance and song
for its aesthetic effect. Even the shite's role consists mainly in
the rhythmical parts and his speech is reinforced with beautiful words
and phrases chosen from the classical sources in order to bring about
an aesthetic effect. The Noh aims at a total aesthetic effect of yugen
through a fusion of words and music, and of form and rhythmical movement.
In Yeats's "Noh" plays words have their own ggiggg d'§§5§ by their com—
municative ability. The difference is clearly seen in the<:ase of Yeats's

The Dreaming sf the Bones and its model Eighikigi. In Yeats's play the

 

 

 

158

narrative part, the legend of Diarmuid and DerVorgilla, is done in the
speech of the Stranger and the Young Girl, the dead lovers in the mortal
fonm. In Nishiki i, the most prosaic part of the play, the legend of
the nishikigi and the hosonuno, is taken out of the context of the play
and recounted in what is called the 237522522: a narrative interlude

that takes place between the first act and the second. In the main

 

part of the play, the two rhythmical parts of dance and song form the
major part of the perfonmance. The arrangement is universally applied
to the two-act pieces of the Noh. The communicative and expressive finur
tion of words is thus curtailed in favor of their aesthetic quality. The
situation is all the worse for the modern audience of the Noh, to whom
the language of the Noh is frequently unintelligible due to its archaisn
and to the distorted pronunciation by the players, so much so that a
modern Noh commentator advises to read the Noh text before going to the
theater.8 Yeats would have abhorred such a failure of communication.

To him words meant the life of drama. The principle of intimacy and

 

his disbelief in surface realism stemmed from the conviction that words
must be restored to their ancient dignity.

The same conviction made Yeats suspicious about formal music. Ale
though it is true that he had a life-long faith in the union of words
and music and in fact wrote poems to old Irish tunes in his later life,
he consistently maintained, at the same time, a skeptical attitude
toward music in which the “natural music [bf the words] was altered."9
In his experiments with speaking verse in collaboration with Florence

Farr, he was frustrated by the interference of the rhythm of the music

 

8. Mario Yokomichi and Shozo Masuda, Egg to Kyogen (The Noh and the
Kyogen) Daidoshoin, 1959, p. 237.

9. ESsays and Introductions, p. 14.

 

 

 

 

159

with that of the verse. Although he detested "prosaic lifeless intona-
tions" of ordinary speech, he abhorred as much the artificiality of
music that killed the naturalness of the speech rhythm. Divining the

future of the "new art" of speaking verse, he wrote:

I am not certain that I shall not see some Order naming itself from
the Golden Violet of the Troubadours or the like, and having among
its members none but well-taught and well—mannered speakers who will
keep the new art from disrepute. They will know how to keep from
singing notes and from prosaic lifeless intonations, and they will
always understand, however far they push their experiments, that
poetry and not music is their object; and they will have by heart,
like the Irish File, so many poems and notations that they will
never have to bend their heads over the book, to the ruin of dra-
matic expression and of that wild air the bard had always about
him in my boyish imagination.

 

 

Music was necessary only in so far as it made poetry live; if it killed
the vividness of words, it must not be applied to poetry. By 1906
Yeats's skepticism over pure music became so strong that he would allow

only so much music as is inherent in the words:

 

Walter Pater says music is the type of all the arts, but somebody
else, I forget who, that oratory is their type. You will side

with the one or the other according to the nature of your energy,
and I in my present mood am all for the man who, with an average
audience before him, uses all means of persuasion-—stories, laugh-
ter, tears, and but so much music as he can discover on the wings

of words. I would even avoid the conversation of the lovers of
music, who would draw us into the impersonal land of sound and
colour, and I would have no one write with a sonata in his memory.11

The importance of words he stressed till the end of life. In "An Intro-

duction for My Plays," an essay he wrote for a complete edition of his
works which was never produced, he writes about the two dominant desires

in his theatrical activities:

 

10. Ibid., p. 19.

11. Ibid., pp. 267-68.

 

 

160

I wanted to get rid of irrelevant movement--the stage must become
still that words might keep all their vividness--and I wanted
vivid words.

Yet he firmly believed in the fusion of music and poetry, also. Writing

in the same essay, he stressed that poetry was meant for the ear alone:
I wanted all my poetry to be spoken on a stage or sung and, because
I did not understand my own instincts, gave half a dozen wrong or
secondary reasons; but a month ago I understood my reasons. I have

spent my life in clearing out of poetry every phrasevvritten for
the eye, and bringing all back to syntax that is for ear alone.13

Yeats's attitude to music was thus ambivalent. On the one hand, he be—
lieved in a fusion of music and poetry in which words passed impercept-
ibly into chanting, and on the other hand, he guarded the beauty of his
poetry against the spoiling effect of pure music.

The ambivalent attitude is carried into his "Noh" plays. The sing-
ing part is given to the chorus, which alternates the singing and the
speaking depending on what function it performs. When the chorus is
explaining the situation or making an editorial comment, it speaks; and
it sings when it expresses the inner feeling of the protagonist or in-
tensifies the lyrical feeling of the situation. Let us see how this is
done in 52 the Hawk's flgll.

In At the EEEELE yell two different attitudes to the supernatural
are dealt with: One is represented by the Young Man, who heroically
challenges the supernatural power in his own tenns (and therefore misses
it), and the other by the Old Man, who shrinks away unheroically from

it. After the song for the unfolding of the cloth, which calls “to the

 

12. Ibid., p. 527.

13. Ibid., p. 529.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

161

eye of the mind" the setting and the two characters to be involved in

the play, the First Musician sings:

/

The boughs of the hazel shake,
The sun goes down in the west.

The Second Musician continues the singing:

The heart would be always awake,
The heart would turn to its rest.

Then the First Musician speaks after the rolling up of the cloth:

Night falls; ,
The mountain-side grows dark;
The withered leaves of the hazel
Half choke the dry bed of the well;
The guardian of the well is sitting
Upon the old grey stone at its side,
Worn out from raking its dry bed,
Worn out from gathering up the leaves.
Her heavy eyes
Know nothing, or but look upon stone.
The wind that blows out of the sea
Turns over the heaped—up leaves at her side; -
They rustle and diminish.

The lyric that is sung by the First Musician and the Second Musician
emphasizes the lyrical atmosphere of the play which is created around
the two states of the mind-~the waking state, the heroic mind of the
Young.Man, and the resting state, the unheroic mind of the Old Man.

The lyric describes not the physical circumstance but the inner feelings
of the characters. The First Musician's speech, by contract, describes
the well, its surrounding and its guardian. The descriptive or narra-

tive element is strong in the SPEECh: While the lyrical element 18
strong in the song.

The alternating of the singing and the speaking is more skillfully

 

 

 

 

 

162

to the summit of the mountain, where the young rebel seeks refuge from
the British troopers and where the dead lovers seek "some one of their

race" to forgive their past crime so that "Lip would be pressed on lip":

 

First Musician (speakipg). They passed the shallow well and the
flat stone
Fouled by the drinking cattle, the narrow lane
Where mourners for five centuries have carried
Noble or peasant to his burial;
An owl is crying out above their heads.

(Sissies
Why should the heart ta e fright?
What sets it beating so?
The bitter sweetness of the night
Has made it but a lonely thing.
Red bird of March, begin to crow!
Up with the neck and clap the wing,
Red cock, and crow!

(They gg round phg stage once. :23 First Musician speak .
And now they have climbed through the long grassy field
And passed the ragged thorn-trees and the gap
In the ancient hedge; and the tomb-nested owl
At the foot's level beats with a vague wing.

 

 

 

 

Si i
My head is in a cloud;
I'd let the whole world go;
My rascal heart is proud
Remembering and remembering.
Red bird of March, begin to crow!
Up with the neck and clap the wing,
Red cock, and crow!

 

[They g2 round SEE stage once. Th5 First Musician speak .
They are among the s tones above the ash,
Above the briar and thorn and the scarce grass;
Hidden amid the shadow far below then
The cat-headed bird is brying out.

mil—Is)
The dreaming bones cry out
Because the night winds blow
And heaven's a cloudy blot
Calamity can have its fling.
Red bird of March, begin to crow!
Up with the neck and clap the wing,
Red cock, and crow!

 

 

 

 

163

The above rather lengthy quotation was made in order to show how the
speaking and the singing part are alternated by the Musician. The speak-
ing part is only descriptive or narrative, while the singing is lyrical.
Different interpretations have been offered as to the meaning of the
song. Wilson treats the three stanzas separately, giving an atmospheric
meaning to the first, a political meaning to the second, and the synthefis
of the two to the third.14 Vendler, on the other hand, takes the whole
song to be a description of the Young Man's inner feeling.15 Thus, to
Wilson, the Young Man is reminiscing about the unsuccessful but heroic
Easter rebellion during the ascent to the summit. To Vendler, the Young
Man is dreaming back with the ghosts. Although Wilson's interpretation
is ingenkms, it seems to me that the context of the play does not rethe
such an interpretation; moreover, there is no reason why the Young Man
should recall the Easter rebellion during the ascent. Vendler's reading
is forced just as much, for the Young Man is a living person and is in a
different gyre from the one the ghosts are in, and therefore cannot have
"joined the ranks of the 'rogues' who wander the hills."16 That is why
he does not know what the ghosts are and why they dance before they
disappear:
Why do you dance?
Why do you gaze, and with so passionate eyes?
One on the other; and then turn away,

Covering your eyes, and weave it in a dance?
Who are you? What are you? you are not natural.

It seems to me that it is false to ascribe the song to any one

character in the play. The song and the speech of the Musician are

 

14. Wilson, Yeats's Iconography, pp. 237ff.
15. Vendler, pp. 232., pp. lSOff.
16. Ibid., p. 191.

 

 

 

 

 

 

164

about the ascent to the summit, and it is necessary to read them hithat
context. The speech is a physical description of the ascent and the
song is the lyrical intensification of the ascent and a foreboding of
its outcome. The question is what the ascent means. At one level it
means an ascent from the natural world to the supernatural, the'hmunted
stones." At another level it is the dead lovers' ascent to consummated
love. At still another level it means an ascent of the dead lovers to
the primary phase where they try in vain to find their masks through an
absolving act of the Young Man. The crowing of a cock is longed for
because the ghostly night is feared and also because a new cycle is
about to begin, and is yet powerless to do so.

The speech of the Musician aptly describes the ascent by mention—
ing a cry of an owl in the last line of each paragraph, which indicates
the progress of the ascent. At the outset the owl cries above the
climbers' heads; then it beats its wing at the foot's level; and finally,
after the second stanza of the song, it cries “Hidden amid the shadow
far below them." At this time the climbers are almost at the summit.

The song, by contrast, shows no such progress, its aim being a
lyrical intensity. The first stanza re—emphasizes the atmospheric fear
that the opening chorus set up and the tragic nature (bitter sweetness)
of the night. The tragic sense is deepened by the loneliness of the
heart which longs for the crowing of a cook, a daybreak. The tragic
sense is emphasized because the ascent itself is tragic for the dead
lovers, who seek their masks wrongly; that is, the dead lovers seek an

absolution from one from whom it is least likely to come, an Easter
Rising rebel in flight. Furthermore, the dead lovers‘ predicament shows

that they are out of phase: they seek their masks in the objective

 

 

165
phase; that is, the fulfilment of their desire is subject to the absohb
tion of their past crime by one of their race. Thus, they desire their
own masks but their masks are entirely in the hands of another.

The dead lovers are presumably near Phase 15; and when their love
is consummated they will be the "creatures of the full" moon that
Robertes describes in "The Phases of the Moon."17 Their fright and
loneliness are akin to what Aherne and Robertes ascribe to the creatures
of Phase 15:

Aherne. It must be that the terror in their eyes

Is memory or foreknowledge of the hour

When all is fed with light and heaven is bare.

Robertes. When the moon's full those creatures of the full

Are met on the waste hills by countrymen

Who shudder and hurry by: body and soul

Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves,

Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eye

Fixed upon images that once were thought;

For separate, perfect, and immovable

Images can break the solitude

0f lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes.
In the antithetical phase, the creature can "let the whole world go,"
and proudly seek its own image. In The Dreaming g: thg Bones, however,
the dead lovers cannot seek their own images, because their union requires
an absolution by one of their race. They have an antithetical will, but
their lot is in the primary phase. When the Young Man declines to for-
give their past crime, therefore, they are swept away by the cloud. The
cloud of the second and the third stanza means, then, the primary phase
in which the moon is out of sight. In that condition the “dreaming bones
cry out/ Because the night winds blow/ And heaven's a cloudy blot."

l7. Collected Poems, pp. 160-64. See also 5 Vision (1937), p. 136, for
a description of the creature of Phase 15 seeking to live through
antithetical phases as if they had been primary.

 

 

 

 

166
Again in Robartes' words:
Because all dark, like those that are all light,

They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud,

Crying to one another like the bats; ....

The dead lovers of the play, however, are not dough-like creatures.
They are eager to get out of their phase. The refrain at the end of each
stanza signifies a longing for a new cycle. It is now common knowledge
that for Yeats a cock stood for a herald of a new era. The red cock of
March in the song is also expected to perform the same function as that
perfonmed by a cock in "Solomon and the Witch." The month of March is
especially appropriate, because in the Yeatsian system it is given Phase
15 and is the first month of the year.18 The refrain means, then, a
longing for a new era as well as for a daybreak. At the end of the play,
however, it is the cock of the natural world that crows "from far below"
telling that "now the night is gone," which means that for the ghost
lovers the chance for consummated love is lost and for the Young Man the
"sweet wandering snare" has lost its hold on him and he has returned to
the natural world.

"Calamity" in the third stanza must be taken as the end of a cycle
and the beginning of another. In Yeatsian tenms the end of a cycle is
always calamitous. A breaking up of an old cycle prepares for a new
revelation: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy

is loosed upon the world."19 According to A Vision:

The loss of control over thought comes towards the end; first
a sinking in upon the moral being, then the last surrender, the

18. A Vision, p. 196.

19. Collected Poems, p. 184.

 

 

 

 

 

 

167
irrational cry, revelation-the scream of Juno's peacock.20

Leda goes through the same process when attacked by Zeus in the form

of a swan:

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush, ‘
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

This violent act engenders the whole panorama of the history of the

Trojan war:

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.2

Whether the screaming of Juno's peacock occurred for Leda Yeats does
not say explicitly, for the poem ends in an ambiguous question in a
typically Yeatsian manner.

The foregoing discussion is meant to show how Yeats alternated
speech and song in his dance plays and what functions he gave them.
The use of speech and song reveals his double perspective of cognition
and experience. The fact that he uses song only sparingly and depends
largely on speech for communication indicates that he meant not to let
himself be completely engulfed in the impersonality of music. "Music

is the most impersonal of things," wrote Yeats in "Discoveries"(1906),

 

 

20. A Vision, p. 268.

21. "Leda and the Swan," Collected Poems, pp. 211-212.

 

 

 

 

 

 

168
"and that is why musicians do not like words."22 Conversely, Yeats
disliked pure music because it killed the personal and intimate effects

of words. Music can be beautiful, however, as long as it retains per-

sonal quality in its rhythm:

When, however, the rhythm is more personal than it is in these
simple verses, the tune will always be original and personal,
alike in the poet and in the reader who has the ri ht ear; and
these tunes will now and again have great beauty.2§
That was as much music as he allowed in his dance plays. He could not
accept Zeami's formula of beauty nor the Paterian creed of art. In his
adaptation of the Noh to his drama, the cognitive perspective played a
considerable role; to the extent that it checked him from being com-
pletely infatuated with the East, his plays remained cognitive in nature
and Western in essence. 0n the other hand, it checked him also from
attaining his ideal form of art, i.e., "a mysterious art,...doing its
work by suggestion, not by direct statement, a complexity of rhythm,
colour, gesture, not space—pervading like the intellect but a memory
and a prophecy."24
The dualistic—cognitive perspective kept Yeats from adapting to
his plays still another feature of the Noh. What characterizes the Noh,
in contrast to the drama of the West, is the meagerness of the plot; and

as much plot as there is, the action is shite-centered, involving no

 

antagonist in conflict with the shite. The waki, secondary character,

is not usually involved in the shite's action. He is only an interlocutor

 

22. Essays End Introductions, p. 268.

230 Ibid., p. 21.

24. Plays 39d Controversies, p. 213.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

169

who draws a story out of the ghigg. In one sense he is the point of
view in the play through which the audience sees the action. The ab-
sence of conflict between the ghipg and the E551 has led a Noh scholar
to the conclusion that the ppipg is the sole "actor" in the Noh while
the Egg; represents the audience.25 For Zeami, whose aim of art was to
create the beauty of yugen through dance andsong,an elaborate plot
involving a clash of characters was not necessary. His interest, after
all, was not in a study of human actions but in aesthetic experience.

Yeats's deviation from the Noh model is decisively shown in the
structure of the dance plays. The dance plays actually do not depend
much on dance and song but on words, as I have shown above, and on the
plot for their artistic effects. There is a decided dualistic interest
on Yeats's part. That is, the tragic ecstasy depends largely on how
the action develops and that action consists in conflict. Of course,
Yeats's ultimate aim in tragic drama was ecstasy and he would not endorse
Aristotle's emphasis on plot as the "soul of tragedy"; however, the
Yeatsian tragic ecstasy arises necessarily out of conflict, and Yeats
creates action out of that conflict.

In contrast with the shite-centered and conflict-free Noh plays of

 

Japan, Yeats's dance plays are characterized by plurality of characters
and conflict-laden plot.26 What is more, all of Yeats's plays end in

a failure to resolve the conflict to which the characters have been sub-
jected, while Japanese Noh plays usually end in a Nirvanic vision or a

redemption of the spirit.

 

25. Toyoichiro Nogami, Egg: Kenkyp pg Hakken (The Noh: Studies and
Discoveries), Tokyo: lwanami Shoten, 1930, p. 3.

 

26. See Hiro Ishibashi, Yeats Egg phg Egh: Types pf Japanese Beauty Egg
their Reflection 12 Yeats's Play . Yeats Centenary Paper . Anthony
Kerrigan, ed. Dublin: The Dolmen Press, 1966.

 

 

 

 

 

170

In 55 phg E§E§l§.EEEl the main characters are the Old Man and the
Young Man, who have come to the remote shore with a common quest, the
spring of eternal youth. Both miss what they seek because of their in-
herent weaknesses, the Old Man being cowardly and the Young Man earthly
and heroic. It is difficult to say which is the main character. They

have equal weight in tenms of their quest and their failure. Perhaps

 

they represent "two moods of the heart," as Vendler suggests.27 What
interests us here, however, is that in actual performance the attention
of the audience cannot be focussed on a single character; and, we must
follow two lines of action, the Young Man's and the Old Man's. Moreoven

a very important piece of performance, dance, is given to the Hawk-woman,

 

who is the opposing force to both seekers.
The Noh made a complete cycle when A3 252 Hawk's Well, translated
with considerable modifications by Mario Yokomichi, was first perfonned

at Somei Noh Theater in Tokyo on October 20, 1949. The comparison be-

 

tween the Japanese version and Yeats's original play shows us essential
differences that distinguish Yeats's dance plays from the Noh. In the
Japanese version the Old Man becomes the phipg (main actor) and the
Young Man becomes the 3351 (interlocutor). The play begins with the
Young Man's revelation of his identity followed by a journey to the re-
mote island of the West Sea, where he is met by the Old Man, the wreck
of a once youthful traveler, who takes the newcomer to the Hawk's well
and tells him of its curse upon himself. The opening of the play, the
journey and the conversation are done strictly in accordance with the
Noh convention. The conversation is followed by the Hawk—Woman's dance

accompanied by the alternated singing by the chorus and the HawaWoman

 

27. Vendler, op. cit., p. 208.

 

 

171
herself. The dance concludes the first part of the play. In the second
part, the ghost of the Old Man appears before the Young Man and tells
him that he is what has become of a young traveler who was enchanted by
the well until he became a ghost. Then the ghost reveals to the Young
Man his agony in a dance and fades into the dark of the mountain like

a wind.

 

_53 Egg flgwk p Egll, then, suffered considerable changes when it
was added to the Noh repertory. The most important change was that the
role of the Young Man was reduced from a heroic character to a mere
point of view. With the reduction the play lost the heroic thread of ‘

the Cuchulain legend and gained the singleness of aesthetic effect that i

 

is derived from the Old Man's ghostly affliction turned into a flower.

The change was necessary in order to maintain the shite—centeredness of

 

the Noh scheme. And yet a Japanese Noh critic criticizes the Japanese

version for putting too much weight on the role of the tsure (Hawk-

 

 

Woman).28

The plurality of characters is a feature that is shared by the
other dance plays of Yeats. In Th5 Dreamipg pf SEE §ppg§ the young
Irish rebel corresponds to the waki of the Noh, but he is more than a
point of view through which we see the action of the play; rather, he
is a definite character who not only has his own thread of action but
also is involved in the action of the protagonists and actually inter-
feres with their interests by denying them a forgiveness that is neces-
sary for a consummation of their love. In Th3 gply Jealousy pf Egg:
there is a similar situation. Emer corresponds to the gap; but again

she is more than a mere point of view but is actually the main.character

28. Akira Maruoka, Gendai pp ESE (The Noh Today), Tokyo: Nogaku Shorin,
1954, pp. 14f.

 

 

 

: 7
172

whose distress (jealousy and love for her flirting husband) is dramatized.
The play is complicated further by the sub-plot in which Cuchulainls mam»
tation by the Woman of the Sidhe is dramatized. Thus, it is necessary
for the audience to follow two threads of events in order to understand
the meaning of Emer's problem.

Calvary is a curious work. It is a Epipp-centered piece that pro-
duces a single impression like a Noh play, but the relationship between
the EEEEE and other characters is inverted. In a Noh play the §§;£§?9
is the actor in the strict sense of the term: he is the one who ggpg and
the 3231 is the point of view through which we see him act. In Calvary
Christ, who corresponds to the phipp, is more like the 335;, because
through his conversation with other characters-—Judas, Lazarus, and the
Roman Soldiers——we came to know their feelings. he is the point of view
placed in the center of action that whirls about him. He is so central
in the play that he is almost a mere point, which we hardly notice with-

out the light thrown upon him by other characters from the periphery.

 

And yet he is more than the gpgi, for everything happens to him and he
is ultimately changed when, at the end of the play, he cries: "My Father,
why hast Thou forsaken Me?" In CalvaryI too, we must pay attention to
both threads-—Christ's and the other characters'.

Another feature that distinguishes Yeats's dance plays from the Noh
is the conflict-laden plot. There is a definite plot in all dance plays
of Yeats, and the plot consists in a development of a spiritual conflict
of the main character with the opposing forces, which is left unresolved
at the end. No dance plays of Yeats can be appreciated apart from this

29. The word "shite" literally means in Japanese "the one who does."

 

 

 

 

 

EII:______________________________________'—'—'—'——'—'—'—'—'—'—'—"""""""""""‘“—‘—‘—‘—"—‘————‘—’“—5‘4"’ ’ ‘

173

plot, for they are not mere dancing and singing nor are they free of
ideas. There is a definite exploratory interest in the plays. we are
not supposed to be interested in the beauty of the dancing and singing
but in the words that express the conflict the characters go through;
and that conflict is ultimately to bring us a tragic ecstasy.

£2 £2: fléflhii WEI; is a play which develops the internal conflict
of the protagonists whose spiritual quest for eternity is doomed to fail-
ure because of their weaknesses. The Old man fails to drink of the well
because of his cowardice and his petty, selfish motive. He recoils from
the well when the Guardian of the Well starts dancing, and sleeps through
the dance; when he awakes he discovers the stones of the well wet but
finds no water there. The Young Man's quest is also thwarted by the
Guradian of the Well, but unlike the OhLMan he heroically goes after her:

Run where you will,

Grey bird, you shall be perched upon my wrist.

Some were called queens and yet have been perched there.
But, of course, the Young Man is really enchanted by the bird and led
away from the well as if he was in a trance, dropping his spear. When

he returns to the well, the water has already plashed and gone again.

 

g; 222 Eéflhii Wpll, then, is a dramatization of internal conflicts.
When we see the play we make explorations in the minds of the Young Man
and the Old Man, which reveal to us not only the spiritual make—up of the
two but the nature of their quest as well. The plot-~the development of
the conflict—-is what sustains the play; without it the play would not

exist. The exploratory interest is minimized in the Noh and it is an

 

element in which Yeats's dance plays differs from the Noh. When we com—
Pare fig 522 Hawk‘s Well with Yokomichi's Japanese version, we immediately

notice the difference. In the Japanese version the Young Man's thread

 

 

 

 

 

174

is entirely eliminated as a narrative element, and the Old Man's en-
chantment with the well, not his failure, is the theme. The Old Man
expresses the agony of his spiritual thraldom in a dance according to
the Noh convention, which is to say that the Japanese adaptation follows
Zeami's fonmula for the Noh of the Spirit: "a flower upon a rock.“ It
is difficult to see the Old Man of pp 252 EEEELE WEI; as a flower of any
sort; and Yeats's aim was not to make a flower out of the Old Man either:
Yeats's aim was for us to see the conflict itself and its tragic outcome,
and not to gain an esthetic experience. That is the note the songs for
the unfolding and folding of the cloth stress at the end of the play.

The entire lyric is a vision of a disaster in a vain human quest for the
supernatural. The first three stanzas, the song for the unfolding of
the cloth, point out the tragic nature of the quest and stress a sense
of total defeat. The first stanza contrasts the human and the super-

natural and hails the return of the "human faces,/Familiar memories."

 

The second stanza expresses a total resignation to the cycle of birth

and death of nature:

Folly alone I cherish,

I choose it for my share;

Being but a mouthful of air,

I am content to perish;

I am but a mouthful of sweet air.

If the "folly" is accepted in the second stanza, "wisdom" is rejected

in the third stanza:

O lamentable shadows,
Obscurity of strife!

I choose a pleasant life

Among indolent meadows;

Wisdom must live a bitter life.

An easy life in the natural world is chosen instead of the tragic life

 

 

 

I r
175

of wisdom which "must live a bitter life." The life of wisdom is a life
of conflict, an "obscurity of strife," and is shunned by the weak mind.
The song is associated by different critics with the Old Man and with
the Young Man alternately, but I think such associations are without
sufficient ground and are, in fact, unnecessary. The song decribes
lyrically a disaster that fell on the weak mind that attempted to grasp
something beyond its power. The Old Man must be strong enough to face
the terror of the supernatural in order to experience it; and the Young
Man must forsake his earthly heroism. They must have the self that seeks
what is most unlike itself, its mask.

The song for the folding of the cloth is a mockery of the weak mind
by the supernatural presences. The empty well and the leafless tree, the
withered images of eternity (of. "Among the School Children") which the
weak mind cangrasp at best, ironically praise the kind of people who
would not even attempt the supernatural quest, being content with their

own lives:

 

'The man that I praise,‘

Cries out the empty well,

'Lives all his days

Where a hand on the bell

Can call the milch cows

To the comfortable door of his house.
Who but an idiot would praise

Dry stones in a well?‘

'The man that I praise,‘

Cries out the leafless tree,

'Has married and stays

By an old hearth, and he

On naught has set store

But children and dogs on the floor.
Who but an idiot would praise

A withered tree?I

 

Notice the humorous and self-mocking tone of the song. The well and the

tree are mocking themselves by saying that only an idiot would praise

 

 

 

 

 

IIIIIIIIIIIII:—_________________________________________________________________________—_—__—__'figiif

176

them, but are, in reality, deriding the weak mind that cannot grasp re-
ality, deriding the weak mind that cannot grasp reality but its shadows.

At 222 Hawk's Well is, then, a study in the conflict of the mind
seeking the supernatural, which ends in failure. It exposes the “vanity
of human wishes.” It ends on the note it started with:

What were his life soon done!

Would he lose by that or win?

A mother that saw her son

Doubled over a speckeled shin,

Cross—grained with ninety years,

Would cry, ‘how little worth

Were all my hopes and fears
And the hard pain of his birth!‘

The Only Jealousy g: Emer is also a study of conflict. As in At
the Hawk's Well, two threads of conflict are brought together at the end
of the play. One thread is Emer's involving Cuchulain, and the other

is the Woman of the Sidhe's also involving Cuchulain; the two threads

are brought together to a conclusion, but not a resolution, by uniting

 

Cuchulain to his mistress, Eithne Inguba.

Emer is Cuchulain's wife, who has only "two joyous thoughts," a
memory of her happiness in her husband's love and a hope to regain that
happiness, and who would not feel jealous of her husband's earthly loves
but "valued every slut above her." Her only jealousy is directed toward

the supernatural Woman of the Sidhe. She tries hard to retrieve her

husband from her supernatural rival but is told by Bricriu, the Woman of

the Sidhe‘s rival spirit from the court of Manannan, that Cuchulain's
life can be retrieved only if she renounces all hope of reunion with.hhm.
By the supernatural sight given by Bricriu she sees her husband being
tempted by the Woman of the Sidhe and about to yield, when she gathers

up her courage and renounces her husband's love forever. Thereupon

 

 

 

 

177
Cuchulain wakes and throws himself not into Emer's arms but Eithne
Inguba's, which.means a failure of love on Emer's part.

The Woman of the Sidhe's chance is just as bad as Emer's. She needs
Cuchulain's kiss in order to attain a perfection of beauty and personalhw.
But Cuchulain is hard to win because of his earthly ties that linger with
hhm in memory of Emer. Thus when Emer pays her due price for Cuchulain's
life, the Woman of the Sidhe has to free him.

The play is about failure of love on both the natural and the super—
natural planes. The play begins with the opening lyric for the folding
and unfolding of the cloth, which presents Yeats's familiar theme of
feminine beauty. The first stanza envisages a woman's beauty as a frail
sea—bird, a symbol of earthly beauty which has taken the human soul cen—
turies of intellectual labor to exalt. As Vendler has pointed out, the
stanza anticipates "The Statues," but it is also reminiscent of "Adam's
Curse," in which three parallel labors-the poet's, the woman's and the

lover's-are dealt with in a tone of disillusionment. The "beautiful

 

mild woman" of the poem, presumably Maud Gonne's sister Kathleen, says
that "To be born woman is to know-/...That we must labour to be beauti—
ful." Yeats replies: "It‘s certain there is no fine thing/ Since Adam's
fall but needs much labouring."

If the earthly beauty of a woman is like a frail sea-bird exalted
by the "sedantary soul/ In toils of measurement," yet frail enough to
be dashed to the thne~bound earth at any moment, it is also a sea-shell
rejected by the sea of Anima Mundi and stranded on the human shore ~—

a hollow image of eternal beauty. The stanza is again reminiscent of
"Adam's Curse," which symbolizes a profound sense of failure of love by

a hollow moon and a shell.

 

 

178

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;

We saw the last embers of daylight die,

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

An empty sea-shell is used in "Ancestral Houses" as a symbol of the vain
glory of humanity that enploys art to create an exalted image of beauty

which will in time be inherited only by a mouse:

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams

That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung

Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,

And not a fountain, were the symbol which
Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.

Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone

The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known;

But when the master's buried mice can play,

And maybe the great—grandson of that house,

For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse.

A sea-shell is also used in "The Sad Shepherd" as a symbol of time's
destruction of once meaningful words turned into "inarticulate moan."
The second stanza of the opening lyric of Emer has the sea—shell

washed upon the strand by "the vast troubled waters" in a storm that

"arose and suddenly fell" during the night. The shell, in other words,

was rejected by the sea, that dispenser of time that rejected the shell

of the "Ancestral Houses" and destroyed the song of the Sad Shepherd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

179

And thus it was through an act of violence and degradation that a femi-
nine beauty was brought into existence on earth:

What death? what discipline?

What bonds no man could unbind,

Being imagined within

The labyrinth of the mind,

What pursuing or fleeing,

What wounds, what bloody press,

Dragged into being

This loveliness?

The opening lyric, then, points up the two—fold natue of the earthly
beauty of a woman. Viewed from the mundane world of time, it is an ex—
alted yet frail sea—bird which was made air-borne with much labor but
is liable to fall to the ground. Viewed from the world of eternity, it
is a hollow image of eternal beauty that takes an act of violence and
degradation foreordained by the great sea of eternity in order to exist
in the world of time. Both qualities are rejected by the sea, which
cries outside the fisherman's but where Cuchulain's body is laid:

White shell, white wing!

I will not choose for my friend

A frail, unserviceable thing

That drifts and dreams, and but knows

That waters are without end

And that wind blows.

The earthly beauty of a woman is represented in the play by Emer
and Eithne Inguba. They are bound together against the forces of the
supernatural. Emer does not feel jealous to Cuchulain's earthly lovers,
including Eithne, but feels jealous of the Woman of the Sidhe alone.
When Eithne comes into the fisherman's but to see Cuchulain's body,

Emer asks her help to get Cuchulain back to life by saying:

We're but two women struggling with the sea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

180

Eithne on her part does not feel inimical to Emer. So, when finer invites
her to sit by Cuchulain's bed, she says hesitantly:
No, Madam,

I have too deeply wronged you to sit there.

It is only after Ener's strong urging that she comes near Cuchulain's
body and tries to wake his spirit.

Both Ener and Eithne are hollow images of consummate love, for they
are both subject to time's devastation. Although they are assigned to
Phase 14 by the Woman of the Sidhe, I am not certain that the context
of the play requires them to be perfectly phasel.3o As a matter of fact,
they could belong either to Phase 14 or 16, according to}; Elsi—on. It
seems to me that it is sufficient to have them together as an incarnation
of earthly beauty opposed to supernatural beauty. Their earthly and cyc-
lical nature is recognized and confessed in their own words. Finer, her
hour passed, lives with only two thoughts--— a memory of Cuchulain's love
and a hope to regain it. When Bricriu urges her to renounce Cuchulain's
love forever in order to save him from the hands of the Woman of the
Sidhe, she replies:

I have but two joyous thoughts, two things I prize.
A hope, a memory, and now you claim that hope.

She ultimately renounces that hope in order to retrieve Cuchulain from

 

30. Wilson assigns Ener to Phase 22 but Eithne to Phase 14, taking a cue
from Fand's reference to Cuchulain's earthly loves and also from the
cry of the sea when Eithne enters the fisherman's hutlike "an Aphro-
dite." (Wilson, Yeats's Iconography, p. 109.) However, it should be
noted that Fand's reference is not made to one woman but to "many a
woman/That did not reach beyond the hmnan" (Collected Plays, p. 191),
and that when Eithne enters the fisherman's hut, Ener is also at the
scene.

 

 

 

 

 

the spirit of the sea, condemning her own love to eternal failure.

181

Eithne Inguba, too, realizes her earthly and cyclical nature when she

speaks to Emer of her own status to Cuchulain:

Women like me, the violent hour passed over,
Are flung into some corner like old nut-shells.

 

Thus, for both Emer and Eithne there is no chance of eternal love.
Their love is like Sheba's-qmomentary and cyclical in nature.

In contrast to the opening lyric, the closing lyric concerns itself
with the supernatural beauty-the beauty of Phase 15. The stanzas, ex—
ceptthe refrain, refer to an inhuman beauty that has almost attained
Phase 15. The figure is a cold "statue of solitude," but its heart is
strangely beating fast. Fran such a cold figure, though it may attract
the attention of the world,

He that has loved the best

May turn...

His too human breast.

When it attains the zenith of its perfection, the figure becomes a pure
image in which thought and body are fused:

What makes your heart so beat?

What man is at your side?

When beauty is complete

Your own thought will have died

And danger not be diminished;

Dimmed at three—quarter light,

When moon's round is finished
The stars are out of sight.

This is the attainment of Phase 15, which nullifies the meaning of the

figure's craving for love. 5 Vision has this description:

Now contemplation and desire, united into one, inhabit a world

 

 

 

 

182

where every beloved image has bodily form, and every bodily form

is loved. This love knows nothing of desire, for desire implies

effort, and though there is still separation from the loved obgect,

love accepts the separation as necessary to its own existence. 1
At Phase 15 thought has become an image and that image has a bodily form.
Aherne in "The Phases of the Moon" describes the condition, using Dante's
analogy:

All dreams of the soul

End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.

Yeats envisages thought as a process of the mind toward its object;
and all thought necessarily tends toward extinction, because there will be
no thought when it finds its object. Thought, thus, implies effort and
strife in the antinomical world. When Phase 15 is attained all is re—

solved into a single incarnation of beauty, which is free from effort

and thought:

As all effort has ceased, all thought has become image, because
no thought could exist if it were not carried towards its own

extinction.3

The attainment of Phase 15 means an end of process. In terms of the

closing lyric:

Your own thought will have died
And danger not be diminished;

Which is to say that thought is fused into the body. The word "danger"

has perplexed Yeatsian critics. Wilson's interpretation is as follows:

 

 

31. A Vision, p. 136.

32. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

183

All beautiful women have the most absolute need for man's compan-
ionship; it is their only escape from solitude. But beauty is no
protection from loss; even in the fifteenth rebirth, when physical
loveliness is 'complete' and all 'thought' dies in self-absorption,
the 'danger' of dereliction and loneliness will remain; for man,
loving the imperfect as he does, 'cannot hear very much reality,‘
and will tend to turn away.
Wilson looks upon the loneliness of a being at Phase 15 as a danger, but
solitude is a reality to such a being, as Robartes says in "The Phases
of the Moon":
All thought becomes an image and the soul
Becomes a body: that body and that soul
Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle,
Too lonely for the traffic of the world:
Body and soul.cast out and cast away
Beyond the visible world.
Furthermore, Wilson's interpretation makes it necessary to read the con-
junction "And" in the line "And danger not be diminished" as "But."
Vendler, who assigns the stanza from the third line down to Fand speak-
ing to Emer, gives the following interpretation:
Though human beauty may have temporary victories, in reality these
are ephemeral, and the danger of losing Cuchulain to the othervmrld
is not diminished by this temporary setback.
This reading would have hmer a victor, which she is not. By renouncing
Cuchulain's love Emer lost him forever. Her loss of Cuchulain is not a
danger; it is a reality. Again, Vendler's interpretation requires chang—
ing the conjunction "And" to "But."

My own reading may be just as forced, but it at least eliminates the

 

 

33. Wilson, Yeats's Iconography, P. 126.

34. Vendler, op. cit., p- 234-

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII:::;________________________________w 447 ,4

 

 

 

 

 

184
syntactic difficulty. The lines three, four and five belong together
syntactically, the third line ("When beauty is complete") being the sub-
ordinate clause and the fourth and the fifth ("Your own thought will have
died/ And danger not be diminished") being the main clause. Since the
fourth line and the fifth are connected by the conjunction "and," the
ideas expressed in them should not be contradictory to each other. I
take the ideas to refer to Yeats's concept of a Unity of Being as a per-
fectly proportioned human body in which thought has reached its extinc-
tion, finding itself in the "body which the soul will permanently
inhabit."35 What is not diminished at Phase 15 is the importance of the
body, which learned men such as mathematicians, theologians and lawyers
call "danger."

Although Yeats's dualistic-cognitive perspective tended to leave
him to the "toils of the sedantary soul," his monistic-experiential
perspective constantly gave him an incentive to free himself from his
antimonical thinking. In such moments he would disparage the tendency
of abstract thinking that "those learned men who are a terror to children
and an ignominious sight in lovers's eyes"36 are given to. These learned

men

have followed some abstract reverie, which stirs the brain only
and needs that only, and have therefore stood before the looking-
glass without pleasure and never known those thoughts that shape
the lines of the body for beauty or animation, and wake a desire
for praise or for display.

___‘

35. A Vision, p. 136.

 

36. Essays E29 Introductions, p. 292.
37. Ibid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

185
The position of the "learned men" is exactly the position taken by the
dancer, possibly Iseult Gonne, in "Michael Robartes and the Dancer," in
which the dancer is determined to school herself in modern intellectual,
abstractionist morality in spite of Michael Robartes' argument that the

woman's beauty lies in "uncomposite blessedness." To Robartes' eulogy

of the "thinking body" the dancer replies:

I have heard said
There is great danger in the body.

To which Robartes makes a comment in a question:

Did God in portioning wine and bread
Give man His thought or His mere body?

Robartes' final say in the argument is:

I have principles to prove me right.
It follows from this Latin text
That blest souls are not composite,
And that all beautiful women may
Live in uncomposite blessedness,
And lead us to the like-—if they
Will banish every thought, unless
The lineaments that please their view
When the long looking—glass is full,
Even from the foot-sole think it too.

The danger in the body that the dancer heard about should not be feared;
it is actually the eternal form of beauty that every thought dies into.
This, it seems to me, is what the word "danger" in the final lyric of

Emer means.

The final triplet of the stanza is a repetition of the same idea:

Dimmed at three—quarter light,
When moon's round is finished
The stars are out of sight.

 

—_—i

 

 

 

 

186
When the moon reaches its fulfilment, that is, Phase 15, all else in.
the sky disappears, being absorbed into the light of the moon, as thought
is absorbed into the body.

The closing lyric of the play means in the last analysis the fu-
tility of love between the supernatural and the natural. It takes two
to love. In the supernatural realm, when the being reaches its perfect
fulfilment its object is absorbed into it. From such a supernatural
being, though it may be a form of absolute beauty, the natural man turns
"his too human breast," which finds it difficult to take a supernatural
flight because of the weight of the manory of the earthly love.

The refrain is a choral cement on the unsuccessful meeting between
the supernatural and the natural:

0 bitter reward

of many a tragic tomb!

And we though astonished are dumb

0r give but a sigh and a word,

A passing word.

This is a tragic vision of failurenthe failure to achieve the Unity
of Being at Phase 15. The failure falls on both Cuchulain and
the Woman of the Sidhe . Why on the Woman of the Sidhe ? In order
to understand this, we must carefully read the description of
the Woman of the Sidhe and the closing lyric. Although the clos-
ing lyric is about the beauty at Phase 15, it does not describe the
absolute beauty itself. It describes a being that has nearly achieved
a perfection at Phase 15. It pictures the " statue of solitude "

as walking in the but with "Its strange heart beating fast." The last

Stanza except the refrain repeats the same emphasis on the beating heart,

and pictures the figure with a man at its side, an object of love that

 

—¥—

 

 

 

 

 

187

has not yet been absorbed into love as it should be at Phase 15. Fur—
thermore, the description of the perfected beauty is done in the future
tense, which means that the figure has not reached Phase 15 yet.

The description of the Woman of the Sidhe in the play proper also
indicates that the Woman has not quite reached Phase 15. When she ap-
pears before Cuchulain she radiates with such beauty that Cuchulain asks:

Who is it stands before me there

Shedding such light from limb and hair

As when the moon, complete at last

With every labouring crescent past,

And lonely with extreme light,

Flings out upon the fifteenth night?

Cuchulain sees her as a being at Phase 15: she is beautiful and lonely

like the full moon. The Woman of the Sidhe answers Cuchulain, however:
Because I long I am not complete.

She needs Cuchulain's love in order to be complete. She then asks Cuchu-
lain why he hides his face from her, and when Cuchulain answers that old
memories are the cause, she says:
Could you that have loved many a woman

That did not reach beyond the human,

Lacking a day to be complete,

Love one that, though her heart can beat,

Lacks it but by an hour or so?
The Woman of the Sidhe is not quite the being at Phase 15, as Wilson would
have us believe; and her thread of action arises out of conflict and ends
in failure due to the very imperfection. Wilson, who believes that
Hggoromo, a Noh play, influenced Yeats's Emer, sees in the Tennin a pro-

totype of the supernatural beauty:

 

 

 

 

 

188

Fand's symbol is the 'full moon' of 'perfect fulfilment,‘ to quote
the passage from Eggoromo on which Yeats depends, and to which he
will have attached one does not know what mystique. She belongs,
consequently, to the fifteenth, supernatural incarnation....38

Wilson takes not only the Tennin but also the bird symbolism, the fisher-

man and the whole sea-side atmosphere to have influenced Yeats's work.
That is reading too much of Hggcromo into the play, for a parallelism
cf characters and their action, not to mention the plot itself, cannot
be worked out satisfactorily: In Hggoromo the one who loses and recovers
that which belongs to her is the Tennin, supernatural beauty; while in
Yeats's play it is Emer who loses and retrieves what belongs to her. In
Hagoromo the fisherman, the natural being, is the robber and the Tennin,
the supernatural being, is the victim; but actually there is little con-
flict between them, for the fisherman returns the feather mantle to the
Tennin readily and regrets his attempt to keep it. Besides, there is no
real reason why the fisherman should hang on to the feather mantle. The
rape of the feather mantle is nothing more than a device to draw a dance
out of the Tennin. In The ley Jealousy pf @225, however, Fand, the
supernatural being, is the usurper and Emer, the natural being, is the
victim; and there is a real cause of conflict between them. The con-
flict is not a device but is the drama itself.

Wilson's interpretation of Yeats's play is based on further mis-
understandings of Hggoromo. He takes the Tennin to be the moon—goddess
Who "dances among her attendant nymphs, for 'there are heavenly nymphs,
Amaotome, one for each night of the month'; in the play fifteen of these
nymphs wear the white and fifteen the black kimonoes."39 The play makes
38. Wilson, Yeats's Iconography, p. 110.

39. Ibid., p. 84.

 

 

 

 

189

it clear that the Tennin is one of the thirty Amaotome, heavenly nymphs,

each of whom performs a nightly service at the Katsura Palace of the

Moon. Even Pound's frequently garbled translation makes this clear:

Tennin: I also am beavenyborn and a maid, Amaotome. Of them
there are many.

The dance she dances for the fisherman is not "a dance of pleasure," but J 1

is a ritual dance which, according to the Japanese tradition, was taught

by a divine being who descended from heaven on the sands of Arito-hama

in Suruga, and which was hence adopted by the Imperial Court as a ritual

dance.40 The dance of the full moon was considered to bring about abun— {

dance of heaven's grace which was shed universally upon earth like the I

moon's light.

Wilson also takes the bird-symbolism in Hagoromo as representing

the souls of the dead that "cross and recross above the 'waves' of the
| postmortem state."41 In Hagoromo the chorus refers to two kinds of
birds: One is the supernatural bird of Buddhist heaven, the kgryobinga,
the other kind includes such birds of nature as geese and plovers. The
supernatural bird's voices, which the Tennin is accustomed to hearing,
become fainter and fainter, emphasizing a sense of separation that the
helpless Tennin feels. The sight of the natural birds that fly homeward
with ease and freedom causes her to grieve over her lost freedom. While
it may be asking too much of Wilson to have a correct understanding of

the Noh play by Pound‘s inadequate translation, we may, at the same time,

 

rightly say that he has taken some liberties with the meaning of the play

in connection with Yeats's‘Emer. Even if Wilson was right in assuming

 

 

40. Mankichi Wada, Yokyoku Senshaku, Tokyo: Sankaido, 1950, p. 140.

 

41. Wilson, op. cit., p. 85.

 

 

 

 

 

190

that Yeats was inspired by Hagoromo in writing his hhgh, we must say
that the poet drastically modified his model to suit his purpose, for
he dramatizes the conflict which is all but meaningless in the original
and leaves that conflict unresolved, while the Noh ends the play in a
dance of the full moon, "a shadow of the moon's fulfilment and truth's
eternity and perfection.“'42

I have gone into a lengthy discussion of 2h; 9211 Jealousy gfi Eggs,
because its debt to Hagoromo and other Noh plays is overestimated and
its essential difference from the Noh drama is generally overlooked.
The case of Ihg Dreaming g: hhg §222§ is a little different. It differs
more obviously from its Noh model than the previous one. The ending
of the play, which leaves the ghosts of Diarmuid and Dervorgilla for—
ever separated, makes a sharp contrast with that of Nishikigi, the
model, which redeems the dead lovers from their love sorrows and con-
summates their love through the service of the journeying priest. Even

Wilson has to recognize this,43

although he ignores its significance.
Shotaro Oshima ascribes the difference to the general inferior quality
of the Noh literature, and fails to account for Yeats's deviation from
the Noh; however, he is aware of the difference.

I discussed the nature of conflict that makes the drama of the
dead lovers of Th2 Dreaming g: Ehg hghgg when I dealt with the function

of alternated singing and speaking in the play. Here I shall discuss

only the structural significance that the conflict has to the play.

 

 

42. wada, 22' 953., pp. 142f.
43. Wilson, Yeats's Icono ra h , p. 218.

44. Shotaro Oshima, h. h. Yeats 229 Japan, Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1965, p. 59.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

191

In Nishikigi the 335i! the itinerant priest, is a mere point of
view as far as the audience is concerned, and has no antagonistic in~
terest as far as the dead lovers (the ghihg and the EEEES) are concerned.
He is simply a functional character, who keeps the show going. In.Thg
W 23 ghg £99.92: the Young Man (the 32121.) is definitely involved
in the dead lovers' action. He is not a neutral traveling priest of the
Noh play, but a person who has a good reason.to:feel hostile to the dead
lovers. The Young Man!s and his people's suffering was actually caused
by the dead lovers, "that most miserable, most accursed pair/ Who sold
their country into slaveryfi45 The fulfilment of the dead lovers' wishes
thus depends upon the will of the Young Man, one of their race, who ulti-
mately refuses to forgive them. Thus, the plurality of characters and
the conflict engendered between them.constitute a significant difference
between the play and its Noh model.

The conflict, furthermore, is left unresolved at the end of the play
and the ghosts of the dead lovers vanish in<iespair as the dawn descends
upon them. The tragic senseis heightened when we realize that the Ybung
Man is not aware of the true identity of the ghosts until they dance a
dance of frustrated love, repeating, "Seven hundred years our lips have
never met," and finally fade into the cloud that envelops the sunmit in
a moment. As the play ends with the Young.Man's

I had almost yielded and fogiven all-
Terrible the temptation and the place!

we descend the mountain and hear with the Young Man the cries of red

cocks that come from.the natural world far below:

g

45. Collected Plays, p. 282.

 

 

 

 

192

My heart ran wild when it heard
The curlew cry before dawn '
And the eddying cat-headed bird;
But now the night is gone.

I have heard from far below

The strong March birds a-crow.
Stretch neck and clap the wing.
Red cocks, and crow!

With whom are we to sympathize? Are we to feel pity and fear for the

fate of the dead lovers? Or are we to f eel justified in the Young Man's

final decision? Yeats's intention is neither. A tragic sense is gen-

erated precisely from such a conflict.

The play as a whole, however, presents the history of a conflict

and its failure. At one level it represents an ascent to the supernat-

ural and descent to the natural, as the setting (a mountain) appropriately

shows. At another level it represents the dead lovers' failure to achieve

their Unity of Being. At still another level it represents an unresolved

conflict within a nation, an unreconciled quarrel between the ancient

and the present generation of the Irish race.

The major point of difference between 11215 RM 9}; the 133255 and
Nishikigi lies in this. In W, as in other Noh plays of spirit,
the main interest is in the beauty of the love sorrows of the dead lovers

and of their consummated love, a beauty expressed in singing and dancing,

not in character-revealing words and action.

In Calan we finally have a single action in which Christ is the
He is more like the waki of

Of

actor. Christ, however, does not do much.

a Noh play whose function is to officiate the shite's performance.

course, Christ is not completely a passive observer like the waki in

the Nob; on the contrary, he is the observed: everything happens to him

and our interest is in what would becane of .him at the end. The single-

 

 

193

ness of action in Calvary is maintained, therefore, not by the active
performer §_h_i_._1;_g but by the passive character of Christ; not the subject-
ivity of the ships but by the objectivity of Christ, to use Yeatsian
terms. The action is forwarded, therefore, by the antagonistic forces
surrounding Christ. Once again we can throw much light upon the play
by finding discrepancies that exist between the play and the Noh.

There are three major points at which Yeats deviates from the Noh
convention. Like the other plays for dancers, the play is characterized
by a plurality of characters, although it is free from a plurality of
actions. Secondly, the play dramatizes an idea.46 Thirdly, the drama }'
consists of a conflict that ends in irresolution.

The plurality of characters characterizes Yeats's dance plays and
makes it mandatory for the audience to pay attention to all the charac—
ters that appear on stage. Calvary is no exception despite the fact
that Christ is the main character who never absents himself throughout
the play. Unlike the other plays, however, the play is unified by a
single action that centers about Christ, who finds himself in conflict
with the entire world surrounding him. At the exoteric level, at least,
the conflict is not as canplex as it is in the other dance plays. How-
ever, we must watch every character that comes in the way of Christ and

see what sort of conflict develops between them.

The play, however, has a hidden conflict in the character of Christ,

which does not reveal itself until the end when Christ cries out: "My

 

46. Some philosophical (Buddhist) interpretations of the Noh are offered
by Japanese scholars. Mamoru Iwami says that the Noh dramatizes the
Buddhist concept of Maya by the shite's performance. See Mamoru
Iwami, Nihon Geido _t_o M £13 Kokor‘o (The Japanese Art and the
Heart of Buddhism}, Kyoto: Nagata Bunshodo, 1958, p. 1.17.

 

 

 

194
Father, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" The meaning of this cry is the theme
of the play, and it reveals the nature of Christianity as Yeats under-
stood it.

Various interpretations of the meaning of the play are offered by
the critics of Yeats's drama. Critics generally agree that the play is
about a relationship between the objective and the subjective cycles.
They disagree widely, however, in assigning the cycles to the characters.
Wilson, who believes, perhaps unfairly to Yeats, that Yeats condemned
Christianity as "a dark religion," turns the play into a thesis of com-
parative religion,47 giving a superior status to the heron symbolizing
the subjective religion and stigmatizing Christ's rule "as something
essentially sordid."48 To Wilson the characters that appear before
Christ, insisting on their subjectivity, are the heroic figures who
endeavor to keep their solitude and freedom amidst the dark tide of the
inferior religion. Vendler disagrees with Wilson, believing that Yeats's
sympathies were divided.49 Vendler's main disagreement with Wilson, how-
ever, is that Christ comes frbm Phase 15 of the primary cycle, thus mak-
ing the play's theme "interaction of objective and subjective life, the
double interlocking gyres."5o Regrettably, however, Vendler does not
satisfactorily relate this underlying pattern to the actual events that

take place in the play. Nathan follows Wilson and Vendler in assigning

Christ to the objective cycle and the other characters to the subjective.

 

47. Wilson, Yeats's IConography, p. 167.
48. Ibid., p. 191.
49. Vendler, 92. 333., p. 174.

50. Ibid., p. 173.

195

He differs from his predecessors, however, in seeing dual nature in
Christ: "though His divine nature is objective, His human nature, de-
rived from the dying subjective cycle, experiences the agony of man out
of phase and deprived of the possibilityh-in.His isolated state-of
completion."51 This seems to be an arbitraryview unwarranted by the
text.52 Peter Ure presents a unique view, assigning Christ to the same
cycle as the other characters. Making much of the closing lyric, Ure
argues that the conflict occurs between Christ and the other characters
because the subjective Cod tries to make the subjective men into his
objects:

God had not appeared to them, but this God is like them. ...The

stillness and loneliness of Christ are enhanced, and the songs

are tied into the main antithesis of the play. As Yeats would

have put it when writing in another mode, it is the subjective

God who calls upon.men to be his objects, who pours his own
spirit into them.53

Ure's view is interesting, but it does not explain Christ's isolation
from God.

I have briefly discussed the view expressed by the four critics
amentioned above to show how diverse interpretations of the play have
been offered. My own interpretation is indebted to all four and others,
but differs from any of them in looking upon the play not as a thesis
on impersonal cycles but as a dramatization of Christ's spiritual con-

flict and the failure to resolve it.

 

51. Nathan, Q. g.’ p. 204.

52. Nathan's authority here is a passage in;§ Vision, which I shall
later quote. In the passage Yeats says that the man in Christ was

antithetical like his age; but Calvagy does not dramatize Christ
the antithetical man but the antithetical Son.

53. Peter Ure Yeats the Pla i ht, a Commenta gnfiCharacter and Desigg
E the Major Plays, New Yor : Barnes 8’ No e, Inc, I933, p.1I9.

 

 

 

196

Christ's conflict and failure to resolve it is deeply rooted inlfis
dual nature as the Son of God. As the Savior, Christ is subjective in
nature; and as the instrument of God, he is objective in nature. This
dual nature of Christ caused Yeats to deviate cosiderably from the Noh
convention. Christ, as I have already pointed out, holds a curious
position as a character in that he does very little to forward the ac-
tion and yet is the leading character whose progress is the drama itself.
He has the characteristics of both the shite and the waki of the Nob:

He not only acts out his fate like the shite of the Noh, though passively,
but also creates a dramatic situation for the other characters to act out
their lives. Thus, in Yeatsian terms, he is both subjective and objec-
tive. This dual nature of Christ on the structural level of the play is
closely related with its thematic level.

As Peter Ure and Leonard E. Nathan after him have pointed out,54
the play is about "a dreaming back" of Christ's passion. This is made
clear by the chorus immediately after the opening lyric is sung:

The road to Calvary, and I beside it

Upon an ancient stone. Good Friday's come,

The day whereon Christ dreams His passion through.

In "the dreaming back" of his passion Christ is caught between his two
opposing natures and falls into what Yeats in A yigigg calls the gig—
:c_i_m_;a_g_g _f_‘o_r 1:115 Ghostly $213.55

The opening lyric stresses the note of conflict, indicating that

 

54. Ure, gp. £22., p. 117. Nathan, pp. 335., p. 202.

55. A Vision, p. 239.

 

 

 

 

 

197

daemonic relationship between the subjective white heron56 and God is
impossible: "God has not died for the white heron." They cannot die
each other's life. And they cannot live each other's death either;
hence, the re-emphasis on the note of conflict in the closing lyric:
"God has not appeared to the birds." Peter Ure is right about God being
subjective, for He chooses himself and Christ. When a subjective crea-
ture is confronted with the subjective God, there can be only an irre-
concilable conflict. Christ, however, has a dual nature. As an instru-
ment of God, raising Lazarus from the dead and subduing Judas, he is
subjective, but as God's choice he is completely objective in nature,
willing nothing but God's will. This dual nature Christ makes clear
in his exchange of words with Lazarus. When Lazarus complains that
Christ is traveling to death he is denied, Christ says:

But I have conquered death,

And all the dead shall be raised up again.

But when Lazarus complains that his freedom and solitude (the subjective
condition) are invaded, Christ says: "I do my father's will." In define
ing humanity, Christ is as subjective as God himself, but in so doing
he is not willing of himself but of God. His words to Judas aptly
reveal his dual nature: "My Father put all men into my hands."

The dual nature of Christ has also the support of A Zigigg, in
which Christ is said to have in him pity and love. Love is objective
in nature and belongs to contemplation, while pity is subjective in
nature and belongs to action. It was the latter, pity, in Christ that

created Christendom:

 

56. For a discussion of the bird-symboliSm of the play, see Wilson's
Yeats's Icono ra h , Chapter V and Yeats's own explanation in his
notes to the play in Plays and Controversies, p. 459.

 

 

 

198

We say of Him because His sacrifice was voluntary that He was love

itself, and yet that part of Him which made Christendom was not love

but pity, and not pity for intellectual despair, though the man in

Him, being antithetical like His age, knew it in the Garden, but

primary pity, that for the common lot, man's death, seeing that He

raised Lazarus, sickness, seeing that He healed many, sin, seeing

that He died.

Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we

love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation,

not to action, for we would not change that which we love.
What we see in Calvary is this pity for the primagy (objective) creatures
in open conflict with such subjective creatures as Lazarus and Judas. His
sacrifice, of course, was love itself, because it meant for him to be
chosen by God, to become an instrument of God. However, that love is not
complete unless his pity has found its object; that is, unless God's will
is fulfilled through him. Thus when he is repelled by Lazarus and Judas
and is finally shown the meaning of the repulsion by the Roman Soldiers
who dance a dance of God's chance, not choice, Christ cries out in despair:

"My Father why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

Christ's predicament is what Yeats calls the Victimage for tbs

 

Ghostly Self. When the bond between an incarnate Daimon and a Spirit
2: the Thirteenth Cone is severed, the incarnate Daimon turns his natural
craving into the supernatural; and this supernatural craving is a crav-

ing for a supernatural guide:

In the whirling of the gyres the incarnate Daimon is starved in its
turn, but starved not of natural experience, but of supernatural;
for compelled to take the place of the S irit, it transforms its
natural craving-~Eli! Eli! Lama Sabacthani!?-—and this state is
called Victimage_ for the —Ghostly_ Self, and is described as the sole
means for acquiring a supernatural guide.5

 

 

57. A Vision, p. 275.

 

58. A Vision, p. 239.

 

 

 

 

199
In the relationship between a 252922 and a 233222 one is tyrant and the
other is victim, living each other's death and dying each other's life:
when one is subjective the other is objective. When some act prevents
the union of two incarnate Daimons, the state is called Victimage :25
the heeg. Now, this Victimage sometimes coincides with Victimage :95
the Ghostly Selt:
Sometimes, however, Victimage the the Ghostly Self and Victimage

£25 the Dead coincide and produce lives tortured throughout by
spirituality and passion. 9

 

Christ's passion comes from this coincidence of Victimages. The sub—
jective Christ is starved because he could not "save" the world, which
is totally subjective and seeks only solitude and freedom. He therefore
turns to God, transforming his natural craving into a supernatural crav-
ing for divine guidance. In other words, when God's will does not seem
to work through him, Christ feels abandoned by God. The loss of subjec-
tivity toward the world means a loss of objectivity toward God. Such
is Christ's problem, and it arises from his dual nature of subjectivity
and objectivity.

This explains why Christ is such a curious character in the play.
He does very little to forward the action and yet he is the main character
around whom events take place and without whom events would never take
place. He is the observed throughout the play and yet he is the actor
in the true sense of the tenm, for he alone shows a significant change:
from serene confidence to agonizing despair. He is the window through
which we get a glimpse of the world of God's Chance and yet it is his

fate in which we are interested. In Christ, in other words, Yeats cum-

 

59' Ibid., Do 240.

 

 

 

 

 

200
bined the ehtte and the yhhi of the Noh. He gave Christ the subjectivity
of the ehtte and the objectivity of the 33h}. The polarity, however, is
deliberately left unresolved. The subjectivity in Christ fails to find
its mask and the objectivity in him feels abandoned by its supernatural
Self. This is the idea that Yeats dramatizes in Calvagy.

In all four plays for dancers Yeats's theme is a failure of experi—
ence. Yeats sees the world in eternal conflict and leaves it at that.
The main interest of the plays lies in a study of action, human or super-
natural, that takes place in the antinomical processes of the universe.
The plays present singularly dualistic-cognitive perspective, though
their monistic-experiential aspirations are quite apparent on both the
thematic and the dramaturgic levels. The flower that Zeami fostered in
the Noh never bloomed in Yeats, though the roots, one might say, were

secured.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER SIX

Conclusion

Yeats's career is characterized by a vacillation between the saint
and the artist. Throughout his life he pursued these two objectives
through religious practice, various types of psychic research and exp
periment, and creative activities. In pursuit of sainthood, Yeats
ardently searched for a transcendental world and endeavored to know
that world immediately and concretely; in his artistic pursuit, he was
keenly aware of the phenomenal world, from which he derived material
and inspiration for his creative activities.

Yeats's life, however, was not a war fought between the saint and
the artist. There certainly was a conflict between the saint and the
artist; however, the matter was not so simple as to be called a war in
which one must emerge as the victor. The conflict was rather a comple-
mentary sort, in which "one lived the other's death and died the other's
life," to use the Heraclitian expression that Yeats borrowed from the
ancient Greek philosopher. Neither the saint nor the artist could
ultimately claim Yeats's soul, for Yeats was both and neither.

At the base of Yeats's vacillation there was an insoluble double
perspective of the monistic-experiential and the dualistic-cognitive.
The double perspective operated in Yeats's mind throughout his life,
though, at times, one pole was stronger than the other. When the
)nonistic-experiential. perspective was stronger, Yeats aspired to
sainthood. He was dominated by this perspective during his theosophist

days, his Cabalistic infatuation, and his Hindu discipleship. However,

201

 

 

 

 

 

 

202

when the dualistic-cognitive perspective was predominant, he con—
centrated on his career as an artist. The Apollonic impulse (the

term he borrowed from Neitzsche) set in when this perspective had a
hold of Yeats's imagination. The first major change came about 1903,
when IQEEE gt 9229 the Eye; was published. Yeats announces this change
explicitly in his letters to John Quinn and George Russel (AE).

The double perspective, however, finds its microcosm in each of
Yeats's pursuit. Yeats the saint was not free from the pull of the
dualistic-cognitive pole, and Yeats the artist always oriented his
work in the direction that his monistic—experiential pole urged him to.
Thus, we find his visionary documents characterized by intellectual
abstraction and the dualistic view of reality. h Vision is such a
document. 0n the other hand, his creative theory and work are charac-
terized by saintly aspirations and the monistic view of art. Thus his
tragic theory and dramatic work are characteristically monistic in
spirit, though always at their base is the dualistic-cognitive regard

for the phenomenal world.

 

Thus, Yeats's dualism, which has been the subject of much discus-
sion among the critics of Yeats, should not be considered, in a simple
two—dimensional fashion, as a war between two conflicting forces, such
as: the self and the soul, as Bowra sees them; Easternism and Western-
ism, as Engelberg divides them; the mystic and the non~mystic, as
Vendler would divide. Yeats's dualism had a more complex mechanism than
all these dichotomies. Generally speaking, as I have already pointed
out, his interest was divided into that of the saint and that of the
artist. In each interest, however, there was a polarity of perspectives.

Whichever interest he pursued,the polarizedperSpectivesinterestingly

 

 

 

 

203 “r
modified and complemented each other.
II

Yeats's relationship with the East has attracted the attention of
the critics of Yeats. The subject can be an interesting case study of

the East—West relationship; however, any such study must take into

 

consideration the complex nature of Yeats's thought. Yeats's meeting
with the East should not be considered as an either-or case. He was
not totally converted, nor did he flatly reject the East. He reacted
to the East rather interestingly; he revealed his basic perspective
which was characterized by a polarity of the monistic-experiential and
the dualistic-cognitive. This study has focussed on the way Yeats
reacted to the East, which, as far as the poet was concerned, was
largely represented by Hindu philosophy and the Noh drama of Japan.
In the study I have pointed out that Yeats reacted to the East with
his double perspective, accepting so much of it as the perspective
permitted him to. On the whole, however, I have found the dualistic-
cognitive perspective the stronger of the two, though Yeats himself
did try to be free from its hold.

Schooling himself in the Eastern traditions, Yeats's main interest
rested in the soul's emancipation, with which Hindu thought was con-

cerned, and in the archetypal patterns and tragic vision of the Japa-

 

nese Noh drama as he saw it. Both traditions had something that would
satisfy Yeats's monistic—experiential aspirations. Hindu thought
offered him the concept of non—dualistic Brahman, which is comparable

to his Thirteenth 8 here, while the Japanese Noh offered him a concrete

 

 

 

204

form of art which was characterized by the principles of intimacy and
distance, the two principles that he thought were the measure of art's
greatness.

Yeats, however, could not go all the way with the East. The dual-
istic—cognitive perspective modified his monistic-experiential interest
in the Eastern traditions. Consequently, he missed what is most
strongly emphasized in the Eastern school of thought: the experience
that constitutes an emancipation from the dualistic world of names and
forms. Yeats's failure to attain that experience is rooted in his
basic mode of thinking.

Like the being in his own system who finds itself between the fill;
and the Eggk, between the warring forces of the gill and the Creative
higd, Yeats himself finds his place between the wisdoms of definition
and non—definition. The mask he seeks is the wisdom of non-definition,
but his Creative fligd is always aware of the Eggy gf E322, which per-
petually destroys this attainment, "thereby leaving the Kill to its
own 'dispersal'."l Being at Phase Seventeen, Yeats cannot submerge the
gggy 2; £333 into the EEEE: nor the Creative fligd into the Eill, though
his momentary vision corresponds to the image of "Shelley’s Venus
Urania, Dante's Beatrice, or even the Great Yellow Rose of Paradiso."2

The antinomy also shows itself in the way Yeats sees things. Yeats‘s
approach is fundamentally rationalistic and cognitive, although his
ideal is the experience of unity. Central in his thought is his aware—

ness of conflict in human experience, and the world of unity and

 

l. g Vision (1937), p. 142.

2. Ibid., p. 141.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

205

eternity is enclosed in the phaseless Thirteenth S here, which defies
human understanding. While he does not deny the importance of the
world of unity, Yeats insists that one should make what he can out of
the world of duality:

The soul cannot have much knowledge till it has shaken off the

habit of time and of place, but till that hour must fix its

attention upon what is near, thinking of objedts one after
another as we run the eye or the finger over them.
The world of objects is what the Eastern sages discard as mere shadows
of reality.

In a sense Yeats is caught in his own trap. He has made an elabo-
rate system of the universe, realizing, when the labor was over, that
his true business was to get out of the system; but it is too late,
for the system entwines him like a living snake.

Yeats struggles to free himself from the antinomies of the world,
and there are moments when he seems to resolve the conflict. In the
poem called "Demon and the Beast," for instance, we have:

For certain minutes at the least

That crafty demon and that loud beast

That plague me day and night

Ran out of my sight;

Though I had long perned in the gyre,

Between my hatred and desire,

I saw my freedom won

And all laugh in the sun.

Though briefly, he enjoys the happiness of liberation, being out of

the tension between the subjective and the objective. The freedom is

presumably won in the primary phase, for "all laugh in the sun."

 

3. Mythologies, p. 358.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

206

Then the poet grows warm and intimate toward life around him:

But soon a tear—drop started up,
For aimless joy had nude me stop
Beside the little lake

To which a white gull take

A bit of bread thrown up into the air;
Now gyring down and perning there
He splashed where an absurd
Portly green-paced bird

Shook off the water from his back;
Being no more demoniac

A stupid happy creature

Could rouse my whole nature.

Yet the happiness is not without this realization:

Yet I am certain as can be

That every natural victory
Belongs to beast or demon

That never yet had freeman
Right mastery of natural things,

and he only wishes that he

may find out a way

To make it linger half a day.

Yeats, then, being trapped in his own system of antinomies, vior
lently tries to escape it, but he cannot quite escape the system, nor
this world itself. As he acknowledges at the end of g Xigigg (1937),
Yeats estranged himself from the final enlightenment by resorting to
intellection and symbolism in his approach to the ultimate reality.
His intellect labored for years but was not rewarded with a final
vision, and he laments this fact. He did not lack "the ideas of

India" or of the final emancipation; he was, no doubt, given those

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

207

ideas by his instructors,4 but he lacked a personal experience. Yeats
was never able to lift himself up to the realm where the sages of India,
Christian mystics, or Existentialists5 were able to ascend. Toward the
end of his life Yeats still sees things in conflict. Indeed he seems
to affirm the conflict more strongly than ever. In one of his last

essays we find:

Opposites are everywhere face to face, dying each other's life,
living each other's death. When a man loves a girl it should
be because her face and character offer what he lacks, the more
profound his nature the more should he realise his lack and the
greater be the difference. It is as though he wanted to take
his own death into his arms and beget a stronger life upon that
death.6

 

Until death Yeats seems to have been unable to see life in any way
other than in conflict. The idea of conflict is repeated in his
letter to Ethel Mannin, dated about three months before his death:

To me all things are made of the conflict of two states of
consciousness, beings or persons which die each other's life,

 

4. Compare his poem, "Gratitude to the Unkown Instructors":

What they undertook to do

They brought to pass;

All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass

with a passage from D. T. Suzuki's book: "When yOu have satori
you are able to reveal a palatial mansion made of precious stones
on a single blade of grass...." (Essays in Egg Buddhism, London:
Rider & Co., 1950, p. 34.)

 

5. Virginia Moore notes similarities between Yeats and the Existen—
tialist thinkers; it seems to me, however, that the important
Existentialist concept of the "Absolute Choice," or "projecting
into Nothingness," is practically absent from Yeats's system. See
Virginia Moore, Thg Unicorn, William Butler Yeats's Search fog
Reality, New York: Macmillan, 1954, p. 435.

6. 93 £22 Boiler, Dublin: The Cuala Press, 1938, pp. 22f.

 

 

 

 

208

live each other's death. That is true of life and death them—
selves. Two cones (or whirls), the apex of each in the other's

base.

Of course, Yeats tried to resolve the antinomy, but his mind was con-

stantly made aware of it. He could not resolve it within himslef.

Instead, he came to accept the antinomy in a sort of tragic spirit:

Cast a cold eye
0n life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

Yeats, in the last analysis, is a failure as a visionary poet; but

as Hazard Adams says, his true greatness lies in that he turned his

failure into creative energy.

 

7. Letters, pp. 917f.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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