no. So AE: A MYSTICAL POET Syed Amanuddin A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 1970 Approved by Doctoral Committee il ABSTRACT AE’s position as a mystical poet has not been' questioned by his critics, but critical interest in his work has been mostly confined to his biography and philosophy and there has been no adequate study of the body of his work to affirm his position as a mystical poet. The present study concentrates on the collaboration between the poetic and the mystical consciousness in AE through an examination of his ideas of poetic theory and specific poems. AE’s theory of poetry is based on his mystical assump­ tions. He expected poetry to concern itself with the'vision of the ultimates, the intoxication with divine things, and the unified experience of Man, God,•and Nature. His views of imagination, meditation, vision, and the creative process e- volve out of his belief in an internal creator in man with the wisdom and memory of the spirit. AE’s meditations were intent on the discovery of the nature of soul and spirit and in their revelatory process const tained the elements of imagination and vision. But his vision ary experience was not always preceded by the meditative ac­ tion. On the basis of their dominant experience most poems of AE may be divided into two groups: Poems of Meditation and Poems of Vision. AE’s poetry of meditation is remarkable for its medi­ tative structure based on the progression of mystical experi­ ence and for its language of symbol and image supplied by the same experience. The tendency to use the language of symbol and image is greater in his poetry of vision where he attempts to capture’ the elusive experience of the Ultimate in intelli­ gible human terms. Sometimes this tendency stimulates his mythical imagination and the experience is concretized in terms of myths. And the myth of the Mighty Mother based on his experience of the divinity of the earth is the .most sig­ nificant expressive symbol used in AE’s poetry. XXI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study began in India six years ago under the supervision of Dr. V. A. Shahane of Osmania University but could not be completed there for several reasons. It fits into the cosmopolitanism of AE that a study of his work that began in India should be completed at an American university. I am grateful to Bowling Green State University for providing me with this opportunity. British Council, Madras, Bombay University Library, Cornell Library, and the Inter-Library Loan facility at Bowling Green were of'immense help. My Committee members—Drs? Eckman, Leland, Nemeth, and Wymer— took abundant interest in this study. Dr. Eckman and Dr. Leland helped me at the right moment with their valuable suggestions. The Chairman of my Committee, Dr. Wymer, de­ serves special thanks for the time he spent with my work and his inspiring guidance. It may not be out of place to thank Irfan, Rizwan, and Ashraf Amanuddin for sacrificing their interests when this study was underway and for tolerat­ ing the eccentricities of a scholar. My neighbors showed unusual restraint in their complaints about the harsh music of the typewriter disturbing their sleep. The final copy was typed by Sally Malott who worked fast on it yet with patience and care. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter One INTRODUCTION ......... ........... 1 Chapter Two THEORY OF POETRY.......................... 13 Chapter Three POETRY OF MEDITATION ...................... 26 Chapter Four POETRY OF VISION.......................... 58 Chapter Five THE MYTH OF THE MIGHTY MOTHER........... 86 Chapter Six THE MYSTICAL POET........................ 101 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY .......... 116 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION In a letter to Charles Weekes, the publisher of his first book of poems, AE wrote: My dear boy, a man’s success or failure is always with his own soul. You would like to see me well known, writing wise and beautiful books, hailed by the applause of the best critics. I might be all this and a failure in my own eyes, wretched and unhappy. I am working for causes I feel to be good. I don’t care in the least for recognition. In fact I loathe personal publicity. I can’t say that I have lived up to my highest possibili­ ties. Nobody does, but I have not sunk to my worst, and many people do. I will go back to the stars without any flourish of trumpets, but I won’t weep as I go back or whine about circumstances.! These words summarize for us AE’s attitude to life and writing. He was not after literary success or personal publicity. His mission in life was to work for causes he felt to be good and to live up to his highest possibilities, accepting with total resignation whatever life had in store for him. Complaining about the miseries of existence or es­ caping into a lethargic retirement in a hermitage was not AE’s way of life which was essentially one of action: ”1 simply want to live a natural energetic life and if a poem ever takes me along the way I will welcome it but won’t go 1 Letters from AE, ed. Alan Denson (New York, 1961), p. 61 2 out of my way to look for one.” Writing poetry was only a small part of AE’s life of action which involved him in such diverse pursuits as mysticism, journalism, painting, art criticism, and cooperative economics. But the apparent con­ tradictions in his life and diverse pursuits did not preclude him from the practice of a single philosophy of life based on what he called the spiritual point of view: With man and his work we must take either a spiritual or a material point of view. All half-way beliefs are temporary and. illogical. I prefer the spiritual with its admission of incalculable mystery and romance in '• nature, where we find the infinite folded in the atom, and feel how in the unconscious result and labour of man’s hand the Eternal is working Its will.3 The spiritual point of view not merely admits the mystery of existence but also recognizes the power (will) of the Eternal in human action. Elsewhere AE writes that everything for which he had an "inner approval" was related to the "search of the spirit" and all his "wanderings of imagination" led him to his "destination as a mystical poet."^ In the beginning of his poetical career, AE seems to have had some doubt about his being a genuine mystic. He wrote to Dowden in response to his review of his (AE’s) first 2 Letters, p. 60. 3 "Art and Literature," Imagination and Reveries (Lon­ don, 1925), p. 52, 4 Song and Its Fountains (London, 1932), p. 94« 3 book of poems, Homeward: Songs By the Way; I am glad you have regarded me rather as a mystical poet than as poetical mystic. To the title of mystic I have really no claim. I am not capable of leading the pure ascetic life in thought and act which alone could develop any spiritual insight worth acquiring. Meanwhile I try only to put into intelligible form such beauties as I can feel.5 It is possible, however, AE was trying to be modest while denying himself the title of the mystic, for, his next letter to Dowden clearly brings out his convictions as a poet and mystic: The choice of symbolism and a method of thinking is a matter of temperament. I can only work within a little space at present; while I see with you quite clearly that the truest mystical spirit will and must finally unite itself with exact observation of fact and mastery of details: still I think that facts and details with many of us hardly subserve the purposes of soul. We are for the most part overpowered by material forms.... To get free; to be able to rise from the region of dependent things into the self existent spiritual life is the first need of the mystic.... I was pagan in my childhood and have grown naturally into Indian methods of thought and so I must continue until I can see the True without a veil.65 AE’s distinction between mystical poet and the poetical mystic is not without significance, if by the term poetical mystic, we mean a mystic whose interest in writing poetry is limited to the articulation of the ’’facts and details” of his mystical experience. A mystical poet is not so much con- 5 Letters, p. 10. 6 Ibid., pp. 12-13, 4 cerned with a factual report of the experience as with the poetic communication of the experience. In other words, the poetical mystic is primarily a mystic while the mystical poet is as much interested in his art as in his mystical experience The purpose of this study is to emphasize this fundamental relationship between the poet and the mystic in AE in order to establish his title as a mystical poet. Critical studies of AE do exist. But most of them are in the form of articles, memoirs, and studies in Irish literary history. A.C. Bose, Earnest Boyd, William Clyde, John Eglinton (W.K. Magee), Darrell Figgis, Grace Jameson, Francis«Merchant, and James O’Brien are the chief critics of AE. Among them Francis Merchant’s AE: An Irish Promethean is the only full-length published study of AE. But the emphasis in this work is on AE the man and his many-sided achievements.