Maria Camelia Dicu THE WORLD IN ITS TIMES. A STUDY OF YEATS’S POETIC DISCOURSE VERSUS THE CONCEPT OF HISTORY Maria Camelia Dicu THE WORLD IN ITS TIMES. A STUDY OF YEATS’S POETIC DISCOURSE VERSUS THE CONCEPT OF HISTORY Maria Camelia Dicu THE WORLD IN ITS TIMES. A STUDY OF YEATS’S POETIC DISCOURSE VERSUS THE CONCEPT OF HISTORY EUROPEAN SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTE, Publishing Impressum Bibliographic information published by the National and University Library "St. Kliment Ohridski" in Skopje; detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet at http://www.nubsk.edu.mk/; CIP - 821.111(417).09 COBISS.MK-ID 95022602 Any brand names and product names mentioned in this book are subject to trademark, brand or patent protection and trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. The use of brand names, product names, common names, trade names, product descriptions etc. even without a particular marking in this works is in no way to be construed to mean that such names may be regarded as unrestricted in respect of trademark and brand protection legislation and could thus be used by anyone. Publisher: :European Scientific Institute Street: "203", number "1", 2300 Kocani, Republic of Macedonia Email: [email protected] Printed in Republic of Macedonia ISBN: 978-608-4642-09-1 Copyright © 2013 by the author, European Scientific Institute and licensors All rights reserved. Kocani 2013 THE WORLD IN ITS TIMES. A STUDY OF YEATS’S POETIC DISCOURSE VERSUS THE CONCEPT OF HISTORY Maria CAMELIA DICU December, 2013 Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ 4 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5 1. Yeats’s Biography as an Anglo-Irish Artist .............................................................. 14 1.1 The Artist Grows of Historical Extremes ................................................................... 15 1.2 The Sign of a Father – An English Artist ................................................................... 19 1.3 Imaginary Background in his Mother’s Irish Family ................................................. 32 1.4 At Lady Augusta Gregory’s Estate ............................................................................. 41 1.5 Maud Gonne................................................................................................................ 53 2. Yeats within the Irish Revival....................................................................................... 66 2.1 Yeats’s Return to Tradition ......................................................................................... 66 2. 2 The Irish Literary Theatre .......................................................................................... 80 2.3 In the Whirl of Irish History ....................................................................................... 91 3. Yeats’s History as a Concept ........................................................................................ 96 3.1 Paul Ricoeur’s Treatise History, Memory, Forgetting in a Most Actual Interpretation of History as a Concept ..................................................................................................... 96 3.2 The Poet’s Involvement in Local and European History .......................................... 108 3.3 Yeats and the Doctrinaire Point. Reinventing the Modern English Verse .............. 117 3.4 Yeats vs. Imagism and the Haiku; Yeats and T.S. Eliot ........................................... 128 4. Yeats’s Historical Cycles in Poetic Representation .................................................... 140 4.1 The Way to The Tower or Art is Higher than Life ................................................... 140 4.2 The Tower – A Spiritual Travel into the European Past; Present Artistic Values and Higher Poetic Creation .................................................................................................... 150 4.3 The Winding Stair or Coming Back to the Human and Local History ..................... 167 4.4 Love Structuring Artistic Creation – from Love to Poetry ....................................... 183 4.5 Coming Back to the Writer in Point of Local History .............................................. 189 5. Yeats’s Celtic Heliolatry and/or Elitism ..................................................................... 194 5.1 Michael North’s Study Political Aesthetics of T.S Eliot, Yeats, Pound ................... 194 5.2 “The Second Coming” – a Poem on Gloomy Premonitions ..................................... 207 6. The Artefact and Artist in Yeats’s Poetry ................................................................... 217 6.1 The Young Artist in Search of the Perfect Poetic Expression .................................. 217 6. 2 The Artist – a Passionate Man Writing for Men and Praising Feeling .................... 222 2 6. 3 “The Dolls” .............................................................................................................. 226 CONCLUSIONS............................................................................................................. 231 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 244 Rezumat .......................................................................................................................... 258 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 266 Résumé ............................................................................................................................ 274 APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................... 283 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the course of writing this book, my doctoral thesis, I owe many thanks to many people who gave their moral, spiritual or material support to me. First I would like to pay my gratitude for the professors in Irish Studies specialization, “Babes Bolyai” University of Cluj Napoca, where I earned the Master’s Degree, and especially to Liliana Pop, who told me about Yeats International Summer School and made me trust into myself. I also owe special thanks to Yeats Society in Sligo, the organizer of the international event and who also enabled me to participate in two editions. Yeats International Summer School helped me in making the decision on the subject matter of my Ph D. Thank you, Margaret and Noel Raftery, Joyce and Martin Enright, Georgie and last but not least, Stella Mew, the CEO of Yeats Society. Yesats International Summer School meant a lot to me, both personally and professionally. I had the great opportunity of meeting great scholars who through their lectures highlighted the study of Yeats, man and poet, and studying in Sligo, the place he loved and cherished all his life, made my endeavour even more constructive. Many thanks also to Mr. Pierce Loughran for awarding me the two scholarships. I would like to thank professors Liviu Cotrau, Dan H. Popescu, Sorin Pârvu and F. Burdescu for their specialized support in conceiving and concluding the thesis. Thank you, Associate professor/ reader Dan H. Popescu and Doctor Sorin Virtop for your warm recommendations. Thank you, ESJ team for enabling me to publish my book with you. Yet, above all I am grateful to my family, especially my husband Florin whose spiritual and material support helped me surpass all the difficulties that arose; to my son, Manuel, whose advice really mattered to me; to my parents who were next to me all this time. Thank you, Kristin Lambert! God bless them all! 4 Introduction William Butler Yeats is a renowned Anglo-Irish poet, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 and a representative symbolist poet, who placed his love for his origins, literature, philosophy and history as a primary focus in his art and in his support of the Irish Revival. The world he presents in his work is a mixture of natural, human and cultural values, a cauldron of Anglo-Irish history expanding its essence towards universal history. W. B. Yeats’s concept of history is a subjective one, in which his origins of an Anglo-Irish individual, his family bonds, education and studies, as well as his spirituality are interconnected and come as whirls in his poems. This issue is articulated on the grounds of legends and Irish folklore, in some sort of archetypal presentations, in which sources have blended with his cultural studies, his friendship with great English poets and his duty of changing the poetic expression of the time into something very modern, and at the same time rooted in Ireland’s mythological past, something personal, and yet national, which was not just a copy of the European poetic patterns. His entire poetical creation is delivered to the reader as an organized whole that combines Yeats’s three great passions: the one for literature, the one for history and the one for philosophy. Other important elements in this framework are his interest in occultism, hermetic studies, theosophy, cabalistic teachings, Rosicrucian philosophy, alchemy, astrology, magic, spirituality, as well as his frustrated love for Maud Gonne. These elements from which Yeats has drawn his subject matter were kept and improved throughout his entire poetic creation, although he continuously perfected his poetic expression. From his first collection