Wb Yeats' Prose Fiction and the Late Nineteenth
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OCCULTURE: W.B. YEATS’ PROSE FICTION AND THE LATE NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY OCCULT REVIVAL A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY LAURA A. SWARTZ DISSERTATION ADVISOR: DR. PATRICK COLLIER BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUNCIE, INDIANA DECEMBER 2009 OCCULTURE: W.B. YEATS’ PROSE FICTION AND THE LATE NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY OCCULT REVIVAL A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY LAURA A. SWARTZ APPROVED BY: Committee Chairperson Date Committee Member Date Committee Member Date Committee Member Date Dean of Graduate School Date BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUNCIE, INDIANA DECEMBER 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My first thanks goes to my committee chair, Dr. Patrick Collier, who not only provided invaluable feedback, research suggestions, and encouragement but also scheduled, coordinated, and facilitated communication with the other members of the committee. I want to express my gratitude to the rest of my committee, Dr. Lauren Onkey, Dr. Kecia McBride, and Dr. Frederick Suppe, for their input and suggestions through this process. The generosity of Dr. Anemarie Voss in awarding me a Voss Scholarship provided me with critical financial support in conducting my research. Thanks also to the faculty and staff of the Ball State University Department of English for helping me achieve this goal. My research would have been much more difficult were it not for the friendly, caring, and exceptional staff of Ball State University Libraries Interlibrary Loan department. For outstanding assistance in obtaining the image of Yeats’ Rose Cross Lamen, my deep gratitude goes to Máire Ní Chonalláin and everyone at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin. Máire also guided me in obtaining permission from the Yeats estate, for which I extend gratitude to Emma Jamison, Linda Shaughnessy, and their colleagues at A.P. Watt, Ltd. in London, and also to Gráinne Yeats. I am also grateful to the staff at the Lily Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, for assistance in examining their collection of Yeats items. Finally, for a listening ear, beer, and a lot of encouragement, I thank my teaching mentor and friend Mary Clark-Upchurch. I also want to thank Richard Willis for friendship, encouragement, cinematic diversions, theatrical excursions, and lunches at Scotty’s. ii OCCULTURE: W.B. YEATS’ PROSE FICTION AND THE LATE NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY OCCULT REVIVAL ABSTRACT In addition to being a respected poet, dramatist, essayist, and statesman, William Butler Yeats was a dedicated student of the occult and practicing magician for most of his adult life. In spite of his dedication, Yeats’ commitment to occultism has often been ridiculed as “bughouse” (as Ezra Pound put it), shunted to the margins of academic discourse, or ignored altogether. Yeats’ occult-focused prose fiction—the occult trilogy of stories “Rosa Alchemica,” “The Tables of the Law,” and “The Adoration of the Magi” and the unfinished novel The Speckled Bird —has often received similarly dismissive treatment. Some critics have accused Yeats of being an escapist or of being out of touch with the intellectual currents of his time. However, Yeats was in touch with the intellectual currents of his time, one of which was the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occult revival. This was not a fringe movement; it was one which intersected with some of the most pressing social and cultural issues of the time. These include the dissatisfaction with mainstream religions, the renegotiation of women’s roles, the iii backlash against science, and nationalism and the colonial enterprise. This intersection is what I have termed occulture. The central purpose of this dissertation is twofold. First, I demonstrate the cultural and academic relevance of the occult revival by analyzing its connections to these critical issues. Second, I situate the occult trilogy and The Speckled Bird as artifacts of the occult revival and its associated facets. Through its main characters, the occult trilogy illustrates a fragmented self associated with literary modernism and with scientific challenges to individual identity from Darwin, Freud, and others. In addition, these three stories exemplify a sacralization of the domestic sphere which conflicts with the officially-sanctioned sacred spaces of mainstream religions. The Speckled Bird also reconfigures the sacred space as Michael Hearne contemplates a magical order with Irish nationalist implications. In examining these works within this historical context, I present them as texts which engage with the social and cultural landscape of the time. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. i Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................ vi Abbreviations .................................................................................................................... vii Chapter One—Introduction ............................................................................................1 Origins of this Project ...........................................................................................5 Definitions ............................................................................................................14 What is the Occult? .................................................................................14 Spiritualism and the Society for Psychical Research .........................23 The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, and Hermeticism ..................................................................31 Alchemy ...................................................................................................43 Magic .........................................................................................................45 Theosophy ................................................................................................48 Dismissing—and Addressing—the Occult Revival .......................................51 The Scholarly Conversation on Yeats and the Occult ....................................56 Chapter Two—Occulture: Occultism and the Occult Revival ................................84 Disillusionment with Traditional Religions, and the Influence of Emmanuel Swedenborg .....................................................................................86 Occultism and Gender ......................................................................................101 Occultism and Science ......................................................................................114 Occultism, Colonialism, and Nationalism.....................................................124 Yeats and the Culture of the Occult ...............................................................135 Chapter Three— The Occult Trilogy: Self and Space in an Occult Context ........137 Chapter Four—The Speckled Bird : Sacralizing Ireland ............................................182 Chapter Five—Conclusion...........................................................................................214 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................225 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 1: The back of a Golden Dawn Tarot card ..........................................................37 Fig. 2: The face of the Golden Dawn Tarot Eight of Swords card ...........................37 Fig. 3: W.B. Yeats’ Golden Dawn Rose Cross Lamen ...............................................37 Fig. 4: The Kabbalistic Tree of Life ..............................................................................39 Fig. 5: Madonna in the Rose Garden by Stefan Löchner ............................................. 192 vi ABBREVIATIONS Titles of Works by W.B. Yeats CL1 Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, Volume 1 CL2 Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, Volume 2 CL3 Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, Volume 3 CW1 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 1: The Poems CW2 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 2: The Plays CW3 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 3: Autobiographies CW4 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 4: Early Essays CW5 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 5: Later Essays CW6 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 6: Prefaces and Introductions CW7 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 7: Letters to the New Island CW8 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 8: The Irish Dramatic Movement CW9 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 9: Early Articles and Reviews CW10 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 10: Later Articles and Reviews vii CW12 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 12: John Sherman and Dhoya CW13 The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume 13: A Vision (1925) M Mythologies SB1 The Speckled Bird (1976) SB2 The Speckled Bird (2003) V A Vision and Related Writings (1990) Titles of Secondary Sources FOS1 Foster—W.B. Yeats, A Life: Vol.1 The Apprentice Mage FOS2 Foster—W.B. Yeats, A Life: Vol. 2 The Arch-Poet viii “That is probably old Cornelius Patterson; he thinks they race horses and whippets in the other world, and is, so