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WB Yeats, TS Eliot, and a Modern(Ist) Old Nihilism

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WB Yeats, TS Eliot, and a Modern(Ist) Old Nihilism BALAVAGE, ELYSIA C., Ph.D. Annihilation and Utter Night: W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and a Modern(ist) Old Nihilism. (2019) Directed by Dr. Anthony Cuda. 265 pp. “What is the source of refreshment in nihilism?” T. S. Eliot asks in a 1950 interview with Leslie Paul. Although Eliot was perhaps speaking rhetorically, his question is a perceptive one. After all, if nihilism depends on humans’ empty existence to exist, then how can such an idea sustain itself? How can we resuscitate God after Friedrich Nietzsche infamously declared Him dead in 1882, an event that paved the way for the ominous nihilism of The Will to Power (1901)? More broadly, how can nothing function not only as something, but the thing that will save modern value systems from the infinite abyss? To address these quandaries, it takes an intimate and extensive knowledge of two competing perceptions of nihilism: Nietzsche’s “new” 20th-century nihilism, an idea that declares all values meaningless, and the “old” nihilism that Nietzsche abandons. For Nietzsche, nihilism is a cataclysmic event, and the nothingness left behind is absolute. It stands menacingly on the other side of the threshold, threatening modernity with complete collapse. On the other hand, Benedict de Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, and Georg W. F. Hegel—the philosophers of old nihilism—see creative potential in nothing and interpret God not as deceased, but reimagined. In this dissertation, I argue that W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot each pose similar questions in their work, and their knowledge of nihilist philosophers guide them toward a generative view of nothingness. My project expands and complicates the impact of Nietzsche’s nihilism on modernism. Through a brief historical exploration of nihilism, I show that the new Nietzschean nihilism commonly understood to have heavily influenced modernism—both as a literary and philosophical movement—is contested by a productive nihilism which predates Nietzschean publication and subsequent influence, thus eliciting divergent interpretations of loss and nothingness. While much scholarship focuses on modernism from the perspective of Nietzschean nihilism, I identify a countercurrent within literary modernism that draws upon an “old” tradition of nihilism that removes the negativity of nothingness, reclaims absolute annihilation, and instead imbues it with the generative capability to resist total emptiness and desolation. Specifically, my project analyzes Eliot’s and Yeats’s readings of Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel, who all participate in an “old” tradition of nihilism that Nietzsche abandons. The poets’ readings of “old nihilism” forge a generative view of nothingness in their work, which thus shields them from the loss of value that the new nihilism fosters. In this way, the metaphysical notion of God is not “dead” for modernism, but reimagined. ANNIHILATION AND UTTER NIGHT: W. B. YEATS, T. S. ELIOT, AND A MODERN(IST) OLD NIHILISM by Elysia C. Balavage A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2019 Approved by _____________________________ Committee Chair © 2019 Elysia C. Balavage APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation written by Elysia C. Balavage has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair___________________________________ Committee Members___________________________________ ___________________________________ ____________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee __________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1 II. “THE DESERT IS IN THE HEART OF YOUR BROTHER”: MODERNISM’S NEW AND OLD NIHILISM..............................................10 III. “THE DARK GROW LUMINOUS”: YEATS READING NIHILISM .......................................................................41 IV. “SURELY SOME REVELATION IS AT HAND”: YEATS, DISASTER, AND THE GENERATIVE VOID ...............................96 V. “THEY ALL GO INTO THE DARK”: T. S. ELIOT READING NIHILISM .............................................................142 VI. “NEITHER PLENTITUDE NOR VACANCY:” T. S. ELIOT, ABSOLUTE NEGATION, AND THE GENERATIVE VOID ..........................................................................191 VII. CONCLUSION: RECLAIMING THE NIHILIST: MODERNISM READING NIETZSCHE .....................................................237 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................247 iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION “What is the source of refreshment in nihilism?” T. S. Eliot asked in a 1950 interview with Leslie Paul.1 Eliot may have been posing a rhetorical question, but it is nonetheless an incisive one. After all, if nihilism depends on the vacuity of human existence, if it relies upon emptiness for its own fulfillment, how can such an idea sustain itself? How can we resuscitate God after Friedrich Nietzsche infamously declared Him dead in 1882,2 an event that paved the way for the ominous nihilism of The Will to Power (1901)? More broadly, how can nothing function not only as something, but the thing that will save modern value systems from collapse? To address these quandaries, it takes an intimate and extensive knowledge of two competing perceptions of nihilism: Nietzsche’s “new” 20th-century nihilism, a philosophy that declares all values meaningless, and the “old” nihilism that Nietzsche abandons. For Nietzsche, nihilism is a cataclysmic event, and the nothingness that it leaves in its wake is absolute. It stands menacingly on the other side of the threshold, threatening modernity with complete collapse.3 On the other hand, Benedict de Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, and Georg W. F. Hegel—the philosophers of old nihilism—see creative potential in nothingness and interpret God not as dead but 1 Leslie Paul, “A Conversation with T. S. Eliot,” The Kenyon Review 27, no. 1 (1965). JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4334503. 11. 2 Nietzsche first writes the phrase “God is Dead” in The Gay Science (1882), section 108. The death of God enables the possibility of nihilism because there is nothing to fill the void left by His absence. 3 Nietzsche uses this metaphor in section one of The Will to Power. 1 reimagined. W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot each pose similar questions in their work, and their knowledge of nihilist philosophers guides them toward a view of nothingness that is, ironically, generative and creative. The careers of Yeats and Eliot physically intersected at a lunch on early December 1922, but the pair also aligned themselves intellectually through their fascination with nothingness. The poets met for the first time before 1915 during Eliot’s ventures in London and, after not seeing each other for seven years, they dined together in London’s Savile Club in 1922. 4 Eliot, who desired prominent contributors for his then- fledgling Criterion, seemed to enjoy their meeting greatly. In a letter to Ottoline Morrell, he showed appreciation for his private, extended conversation with Yeats, and called the elder poet “one of a very small number of people with whom one can talk profitably about poetry, and I found him altogether stimulating.”5 For his part, Yeats remarks that he felt “charmed” by Eliot, so the positive feeling was evidently mutual. Each poet experiences encounters with nothingness that leave him feeling both fascination and fear. The young Eliot of “Silence” (1910) saw a metaphysical revelation in the “terrifying” emptiness of an urban stillness. In The Trembling of the Veil (1918), Yeats sees nothingness as a state that will reveal a truth about the self. He envisions St. Simon 4 Eliot knew Yeats since at least 1915. In a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner from that year, Eliot revealed some details of his literary life in London: “The last time I was here I had the pleasure of meeting Yeats: he is now in Ireland, I believe because a play of Lady Gregory’s is coming to the Abbey. I am hoping for his return – he is a very agreeable talker.” 5 T. S. Eliot, The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Vol I, eds. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden (New Haven: Yale University Press), 2011. 806. 2 Stylites “upon his pillar” and St. Antony “in his cavern,” both saintly figures committed “to know themselves for fragments, and at last for nothing; to hollow their hearts out till they are void and without form” and finally to “summon a creator by revealing chaos.”6 Their interest in nothingness only intensified through a shared and extensive study of philosophy, with both poets encountering philosophers who pose generative views of nihilism. Eliot’s studies at Harvard led him to discover minds like Benedict de Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Friedrich Nietzsche; Yeats’s interest in mysticism, Platonism, and philosophical idealism garnered a similar result. Yeats considered Spinoza a mystical philosopher above all else and observed that Hegel “made all things end in God’s realization of himself.”7 In Nietzsche, Yeats found a “strong enchanter” whom he read so much that it “made [his] eyes bad again”.8 The pair also commented on each other’s philosophies on multiple occasions. Eliot expressed admiration for Yeats’s Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918), a work of philosophic reflection, in a review for The Egoist.
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