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Xerox University Microfilms 900 North Zaab Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 49100 ll i! 75- 19,461 LENSE, Edward Louis, 1945- W. B. YEATS IN PARADISE. The Ohio S ta te U niversity, Ph.D ., 1975 Language and L ite ra tu re , modern Xerox University Microfilms Ann Arbor, Michigan48100 j j .......................... _ 4 0 1975 EDWARD LOUIS LENSE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. W. B. YEATS IN PARADISE DISSERTATION Presented in Par tlal Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Dactor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio S tate U niversity By Edward Lense * * * * * The Ohio State University 1975 Reading Committee: Approved By Gordon K. Grigsby, Adviser Morris Beja Anthony Libby Depart TABLE OF CONTENTS VITA................................................................................................................................ i i CHAPTER ONE Introduction ......................................................................... 1 CHAPTER TWO A ncient Ire la n d Knew I t A ll Part 1 ... Introduction ......................................... 61 P a rt 2 . Hollow I^rnds and H illy L a n d s 75 P a rt 3 . T ir na n O g .............................................. 95 Part 4 ... Getting There ..........................................113 Part 5 ... Paradise Lost .................................... 140 CHAPTER THREE . * Two Ways o f Looking a t a Golden B i r d ........................ 182 CHAPTER FOUR .... The Fifteenth Phase of the Moon and the Clarified Body ...................................................... 230 BIBLIOGRAPHY 278 VITA Edward Lense Home: 33 East 17th Ave. 17312 Campus: The Ohio State Univ. Columbus, Ohio 43201 Department of English (614) 291-2046 164 Vest 17th Avenue Columbus, Ohio 43210 EDUCATION 1969-present The Ohio State University Ph.D. expected December 1974 M.A. December 1972 (by Qualifying Examination) 1968-69 New York University B.A. September 1969 1963-66 Capital University DISSERTATION D irector: P ro f. Gordon K. Grigsby Title: "W.B. Yeats in Paradise: The Other Vorld as T^r na nOg. Byzantium, and the Fifteenth Phase of the Moon" HONORS 1969-73 University Fellow at Ohio State' 1970 Vandewater P riz e in Poetry (Ohio State Univ.) 1969 Dean's List, New York University TEACHING EXPERIENCE English 100, 101, 102 (Freshman Compo­ s itio n ) English 301 (Advanced Composition) English 160 (Introduction to Literature) English 260 (Introduction to Poetry) English 261 (Introduction to Fiction) English 266 (Creative Writing, Poetry) TEACHING INTERESTS Creative Writing; Composition, Twentieth Century British and American Literature, including contemporary literature PUBLICATIONS Poems in l i t t l e m agazines: Epos. Escut­ cheon, The Graduate Voice. North Country A nvil, The Ohio a Journal Poems in c o lle c tio n s (published through the Columbus Gallery of Fine A rts ): Sand and Snow, Stopped Dead i i i l l ACADEMIC SERVICE Editor, Escutcheon. 1970-72 E lected member o f: English Department Graduate Committee, 1972-73 English Department Council and Graduate Faculty Council, 1970-73 University Senate, 1973-74 RECOMMENDATIONS Prof. John B. Gabel, Chairman, Depart­ ment of English Prof. Gordon K. Grigsby (Advisor) P ro f. D aniel R. Barnes Prof. Morris Beja Prof. Donald W. Good Prof. Robert C. Jones W. B. YEATS IN PARADISE Chapter One Poetry concerns Itself with the creation of Paradises. I use the word in the plural for there are as many paradises as there are individual men — nay — as many as there are separate feelings. — J. B. Yeats in a letter to W. B. Yeats (1) This advice, written in 1914, was entirely unnecessary since Yeats had been creating paradises in his poems for nearly thirty years. They ranged from the elaborate Symbolist constructions of The Shadowy Waters and The Wanderings of Plain to the almost straightforward Imagery of poems lik e "The Man Who Dreamed o f F aery lan d ." All th e s e , and th e forms of Paradise that he created for his later poetry, are tied together by one concept: that human life would be perfect if it were not tied to a physical world subject to time and decay, and that Paradise is therefore a state of human perfection. It is not a change from human conscious­ ness, or even from the body (in an ideal form), but human life made perfect. It is a state that can be reached, occasionally and momentarily, in this life, but which can be fully realized only after death. The sort of Paradise that Yeats constructs falls somewhere in the ambiguous area between religious belief and simple manipulation of con­ ventional symbolism. It is unlikely that Yeats ever expected to reach heaven on a dolphin's back, or that he thought the Isles of the Blessed 1 are in the Atlantic Ocean; he hedged a great deal about whether he ''believed1' in the system of A Vision. But he did think of the Great Memory as something th a t re a lly e x is ts , and looked on Images as tokenB of a quite real spiritual world. The images that he returned to again and again, including the various Paradises that run through all of his work, are among the Images that he thought are stored in the Great Memory, and that, therefore, represent a spiritual reality. They are also part of the psyche of every man. At times Yeats overlaid the archetypal linages with more personal symbolism, and wrote poems that turned the images into mostly "literary" constructions (The Shadowy Waters is the most complete example of this process), but thatdoeB not mean th at he regarded any o f the b a sic Images o f P aradise such as T lr * na nOR or the Fifteenth Phase of the Moon as literary counters. There is a constant tension between personal imagination and the spiritual world, as he conceived it, in Yeats's poetry. As a result of this tension, things that seem at first to be almost arbitrary images shade into his religious beliefs. It is rarely clear, for example, whether he intended to use t£t na nOg. the land of Youth, because it is an ancient tradition and so a potent literary symbol or because he felt that it puts the mind in touch with a higher order or reality. I think th a t i t 1b usually pointless to try to distinguish between metaphor and direct statement whenever Yeats is talking about the Other World, exact­ ly because he saw such images as both metaphors and direct representa­ tions of the spiritual world. So, to keep my language as simple as possible, I shall talk about "this world" and "the Other World" as if both were equally accessible places, and reserve the sticky questions 3 of what Is "real" and what is "metaphorical" for close readings of specific poems. One thing that is certain about the Other World Is that It can be described as a state of being. It Is not a stasis, but something like ordinary human life raised to a higher power. It Is the way of life le d by th e s p ir its of The I s l e of Dancing In The Wanderings o f P la in , the lords and ladles of Byzantium, and the bodiless spirits under the full moon. Although Yeats generally preferred to represent It by linages like these, he did at times use more abstract language, and called it "Unity of Being," or, several times, "fulness of life." This last phrase comes close to defining what It is like when the visionary Martin describes Paradise in The Unicom From the Stars; No man can be alive, and what is Paradise but fulness of life, If whatever he sets his hand to In the daylight cannot carry him from exal­ tation to exaltation, and if he does not rise Into the frenzy of contemplation In the night silence. (2) In other words, It Is first of all freedom from all the distrac­ tions of normal life.

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