WEBVTT 00:01.140 --> 00:02.810 Professor Langdon Hammer: Let's see. 00:02.810 --> 00:08.330 On your handout I have Yeats on the subject of magic. 00:08.330 --> 00:13.630 This goes back in time from the text we were discussing last 00:13.628 --> 00:17.308 time in the teens and twenties to 1901. 00:17.310 --> 00:24.340 And I wanted to introduce it to you as some of Yeats's 00:24.337 --> 00:31.627 reflections on the general question of the occult and of 00:31.629 --> 00:37.809 the symbolic in his poetry; a kind of preparation in his 00:37.807 --> 00:41.717 thinking for some of the poems we discussed last time, 00:41.720 --> 00:44.010 such as "The Second Coming." 00:44.010 --> 00:47.360 He says, "I believe in the practice and philosophy of what 00:47.358 --> 00:51.028 we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the 00:51.034 --> 00:55.154 evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they 00:55.145 --> 00:58.285 are." That's important, I think. 00:58.290 --> 01:02.080 And you remember Yeats in "The Second Coming," there's a beast 01:02.083 --> 01:06.003 that's kind of--He doesn't know what it is, and here he's saying 01:06.001 --> 01:07.371 something similar. 01:07.370 --> 01:11.040 He also speaks of his belief "in the power of creating 01:11.040 --> 01:14.370 magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the 01:14.365 --> 01:17.685 depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; 01:17.689 --> 01:21.439 and I believe in three doctrines," which he will 01:21.444 --> 01:26.444 conveniently put forward for us: (1) That the borders of 01:26.437 --> 01:29.997 our mind [and he has that in the singular there] 01:29.998 --> 01:33.818 are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow 01:33.824 --> 01:37.664 into one another, as it were, [that's probably an 01:37.655 --> 01:41.885 important qualification] and create or reveal a single 01:41.885 --> 01:44.035 mind, a single energy. 01:44.040 --> 01:48.600 [In effect, at work in our common imaginations.] 01:48.599 --> 01:51.689 (2) That the borders of our minds are shifting, 01:51.689 --> 01:55.049 and that our memories are part of one great memory, 01:55.048 --> 01:58.338 [what he calls] the memory of Nature herself. 01:58.340 --> 02:01.720 (3) [And this is the most important thing.] 02:01.724 --> 02:06.404 That this great mind and great memory [this kind of unitary 02:06.397 --> 02:09.137 repertoire of spirits and memories] 02:09.137 --> 02:11.147 can be evoked by symbols. 02:11.151 --> 02:17.341 [From Magic] This is something poetry can 02:17.337 --> 02:20.427 activate and draw upon. 02:20.430 --> 02:24.930 That "Spiritus Mundi" that Yeats refers to in "The Second 02:24.934 --> 02:28.234 Coming," well, this is Yeats talking about 02:28.231 --> 02:31.151 that idea here. It is something, 02:31.147 --> 02:35.047 as he stresses, that can be evoked by symbols, 02:35.051 --> 02:39.041 by poetic symbols, and this he intends to do in 02:39.042 --> 02:43.742 his poetry. In fact, Yeats sees his poems 02:43.740 --> 02:50.250 as a kind of summoning of spirits or evocation of spirits, 02:50.248 --> 02:52.758 as he refers to it. 02:52.759 --> 02:57.269 Last time I talked just briefly about Yeats's interest in 02:57.267 --> 03:01.047 automatic writing, a practice that he engaged in 03:01.051 --> 03:06.131 with his wife. Well, his poems themselves have 03:06.134 --> 03:12.584 an occult dimension of evoking this "great mind" and the 03:12.583 --> 03:17.863 spirits contained therein through symbols. 03:17.860 --> 03:21.720 He also stresses that the borders of our minds, 03:21.724 --> 03:26.854 and of individual identity, are ever shifting and unstable, 03:26.849 --> 03:31.859 and that, well, behind all these ideas, 03:31.856 --> 03:40.016 I think, is a sense of the poet as a figure who channels in his 03:40.024 --> 03:44.314 life, as well as in his writing, 03:44.308 --> 03:51.098 channels spirits and presences, and voices, importantly. 03:51.099 --> 03:56.339 And this is related to Yeats's idea that the poet – and this 03:56.341 --> 04:01.411 is something he wrote about in the prose I asked you to read 04:01.410 --> 04:06.050 for today – that the poet is more type than man. 04:06.050 --> 04:08.940 On page 884, late in his life, 04:08.943 --> 04:14.133 writing a kind of summary comment on his work for the 04:14.132 --> 04:19.522 collected edition being produced by the publisher, 04:19.519 --> 04:24.299 Scribner's, he writes certain important summary propositions 04:24.296 --> 04:27.936 about his work but about poetry in general. 04:27.940 --> 04:31.350 And he says on page 884: A poet writes always of 04:31.349 --> 04:34.459 his personal life, in his finest work out of its 04:34.459 --> 04:37.899 tragedies, whatever it be, remorse, lost love or mere 04:37.901 --> 04:40.981 loneliness; he never speaks directly as to 04:40.978 --> 04:44.208 someone at the breakfast table, there is always a 04:44.208 --> 04:46.768 phantasmagoria. Dante and Milton had 04:46.769 --> 04:50.679 mythologies, Shakespeare the characters of English history, 04:50.681 --> 04:53.381 of traditional romance… [and so on. 04:53.379 --> 04:58.819 He says, the writer] …is more type than man, 04:58.818 --> 05:01.838 more passion than type. 05:01.839 --> 05:05.029 He is Lear, Romeo, Oedipus, Tiresias; 05:05.029 --> 05:09.179 he has stepped out of a play and even the woman he loves is 05:09.181 --> 05:12.261 Rosalind, Cleopatra, never The Dark Lady. 05:12.259 --> 05:15.119 [Well.] He is part of his own 05:15.115 --> 05:20.725 phantasmagoria and we adore him because nature has grown 05:20.726 --> 05:24.106 intelligible, and by doing so [we apprehend] 05:24.113 --> 05:25.713 a part of our creative power. 05:25.712 --> 05:28.802 [From A General Introduction for My Work] 05:28.800 --> 05:32.780 In the poet and in his work nature grows intelligible. 05:32.779 --> 05:39.219 This is an important idea for Yeats and it suggests that 05:39.215 --> 05:44.125 though work is rooted in life for Yeats, 05:44.129 --> 05:48.949 it's always a life transformed, fed through this 05:48.948 --> 05:53.048 "phantasmagoria" that he's discussing, 05:53.050 --> 06:00.150 which is important because at once Yeats is insisting on the 06:00.153 --> 06:07.863 personal nature of his poetry and of the experience it offers, 06:07.860 --> 06:11.310 and yet he's also, interestingly, 06:11.312 --> 06:16.602 a curiously impersonal figure, impersonal poet. 06:16.600 --> 06:22.760 On page 887 he says, towards the top of the page: 06:22.760 --> 06:27.070 06:27.069 --> 06:34.149 Talk to me of originality and I will turn on you with 06:34.154 --> 06:36.254 rage. I am a crowd, 06:36.247 --> 06:39.387 I am a lonely man, I am nothing. 06:39.390 --> 06:43.110 Ancient salt is best packing. 06:43.110 --> 06:46.120 The heroes of Shakespeare convey to us through their 06:46.115 --> 06:49.115 looks, or through the metaphorical patterns of their 06:49.121 --> 06:51.301 speech, the sudden enlargement of their 06:51.299 --> 06:54.059 vision, their ecstasy of the approach of death… [And so 06:54.061 --> 06:55.791 on.] [From A General Introduction 06:55.788 --> 07:00.068 for My Work] And this is the kind of 07:00.073 --> 07:07.913 impersonal channeling of emotion that Yeats, himself a kind of 07:07.905 --> 07:13.165 actor in his poetry, wishes to convey. 07:13.170 --> 07:18.630 On your handout there's another quotation from late in Yeats's 07:18.627 --> 07:21.667 life that I wanted to emphasize. 07:21.670 --> 07:26.520 He says--and here's that Yeatsian word "all" again--he 07:26.518 --> 07:29.558 says: When I try to put all 07:29.559 --> 07:33.659 into a phrase I say, "Man can embody truth but he 07:33.664 --> 07:37.584 cannot know it." [Man can embody truth but he 07:37.578 --> 07:40.848 cannot know it.] "I must embody it in the 07:40.846 --> 07:42.886 completion of my life. 07:42.889 --> 07:46.319 The abstract is not life and everywhere draws out its 07:46.318 --> 07:48.768 contradictions. You can refute Hegel but not 07:48.774 --> 07:50.444 the Saint or the Song of Experience. 07:50.443 --> 07:52.783 [From a letter to Lady Elizabeth Pelham] 07:52.780 --> 07:55.630 That's a wonderful claim. 07:55.629 --> 08:00.389 "You can refute Hegel but not the Saint or the Song of 08:00.392 --> 08:05.582 Experience." "Man can embody truth but 08:05.578 --> 08:10.348 cannot know it." This is an important 08:10.346 --> 08:13.766 formulation. I think of it as a kind of 08:13.770 --> 08:18.050 reply to that famous question in "Leda and the Swan"; 08:18.050 --> 08:22.770 that is, "did she put on his knowledge with his power / 08:22.769 --> 08:27.139 before the indifferent beak could let her drop?" 08:27.139 --> 08:33.569 The answer that Yeats is giving here is different from saying 08:33.566 --> 08:37.846 either "yes" or "no" to that question. 08:37.850 --> 08:41.820 It's more like saying "yes and no," I think. 08:41.820 --> 08:46.850 Truth is something to be embodied in Yeats, 08:46.848 --> 08:53.348 embodied rather than known; embodied in the sense of lived, 08:53.353 --> 08:57.173 not merely understood but experienced. 08:57.169 --> 09:00.069 But also, I think, embodied because it is 09:00.073 --> 09:04.503 specifically a thing of the body and involves an experience of 09:04.502 --> 09:06.972 the body, as much as, or more than, 09:06.971 --> 09:10.181 the mind. What kind of knowledge, 09:10.179 --> 09:14.969 if any, can be had from the shattering experiences of 09:14.972 --> 09:19.492 revolution or rape, those models of history that I 09:19.488 --> 09:21.698 proposed last time? 09:21.700 --> 09:28.230 Remember how Yeats represents history as rape in "Leda and the 09:28.233 --> 09:31.203 Swan." He sees it there as an 09:31.201 --> 09:35.231 experience of violence, of sexual violence, 09:35.232 --> 09:40.802 involving the intercourse of opposites: of god and man, 09:40.799 --> 09:43.919 eternity and time, male and female, 09:43.923 --> 09:49.163 the will and patterning force of the one thing against the 09:49.161 --> 09:53.021 other, imposed on it by brute force. 09:53.019 --> 09:58.439 What kind of knowledge can be had from that experience? 09:58.440 --> 10:03.660 "Leda and the Swan" seems to say a knowledge of the body, 10:03.662 --> 10:06.742 of the necessity of embodiment. 10:06.740 --> 10:10.980 In the late Yeats, in the poems that I'll be 10:10.982 --> 10:15.722 discussing today, there's no knowledge apart from 10:15.717 --> 10:20.337 the body. And this is something to 10:20.340 --> 10:27.440 contrast with the early Yeats and its high idealism, 10:27.437 --> 10:35.367 and its drive to exist in an abstract and ideal world. 10:35.370 --> 10:42.900 Late Yeats: this is a poetry written in age and written about 10:42.901 --> 10:48.641 age and aging; age seen and experienced as the 10:48.639 --> 10:55.259 failure and corruption of the body, to which the soul is 10:55.257 --> 10:59.987 bound. In "Sailing to Byzantium," a 10:59.985 --> 11:07.535 transitional poem to later Yeats, on page 123 in your book, 11:07.537 --> 11:11.497 Yeats says: An aged man is but a 11:11.498 --> 11:16.248 paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, 11:16.245 --> 11:21.575 unless Soul clap its hands and sing, 11:21.583 --> 11:26.573 and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal 11:26.573 --> 11:31.633 dress… The poet speaks of his soul 11:31.627 --> 11:40.037 there as "sick with desire / and fastened to a dying animal"; 11:40.044 --> 11:42.994 that is, the body. 11:42.990 --> 11:47.680 And yet, for all of the complaints about the body here 11:47.680 --> 11:52.990 in this poem and in other late Yeats, the poet doesn't reject 11:52.990 --> 11:56.480 it; doesn't reject that dying 11:56.477 --> 11:59.457 animal, doesn't scorn it. 11:59.460 --> 12:04.540 Instead, Yeats affirms it, affirms the body, 12:04.541 --> 12:07.261 in its corrupt state. 12:07.259 --> 12:11.989 He, in fact, sings and sings louder for it 12:11.991 --> 12:15.691 in this late poetry; sings louder, 12:15.690 --> 12:19.710 as he puts it, "for every tatter in its mortal 12:19.707 --> 12:23.427 dress." This is the extraordinary 12:23.426 --> 12:30.206 energy of Yeats's late poetry, what he calls--The word he has 12:30.209 --> 12:36.849 for the energy of this poetry, of this attitude towards life 12:36.851 --> 12:42.981 is "joy" or "gaiety," words that recur throughout these poems: 12:42.976 --> 12:45.766 "joy," "gaiety," or sometimes 12:45.773 --> 12:49.893 "madness." Joy and gaiety are both states 12:49.892 --> 12:56.242 of mind associated with madness in these poems – the body's 12:56.238 --> 13:00.068 truth, felt as an experience of joy or 13:00.072 --> 13:05.932 of gaiety as arrived at through a kind of shattering of the body 13:05.929 --> 13:10.019 and of the rational mind and its working. 13:10.019 --> 13:17.549 Gaiety for Yeats seems to represent some reconstitution of 13:17.547 --> 13:23.357 mind and body, some experience of their unity 13:23.357 --> 13:29.957 out beyond an experience of tragedy and grief. 13:29.960 --> 13:33.910 This is a point of view specifically associated in 13:33.905 --> 13:39.295 Yeats's late poetry with old men and with women – particularly, 13:39.299 --> 13:42.419 but not only, old women, as he says on page 13:42.421 --> 13:46.881 886, back in that General Introduction for My Work. 13:46.880 --> 13:50.030 13:50.029 --> 13:51.689 This is interesting. 13:51.689 --> 13:56.089 He's talking here about the kind of style he wishes to 13:56.086 --> 14:02.266 create in poetry which involves, for him, making the language of 14:02.273 --> 14:08.103 poetry coincide with that of passionate normal speech. 14:08.100 --> 14:12.070 He says: I wanted to write [a version of Frost's 14:12.066 --> 14:14.906 ambition, though conducted differently] 14:14.910 --> 14:19.850 in whatever language comes most naturally when we soliloquise, 14:19.850 --> 14:22.570 as I do all day long, upon the events of our own 14:22.569 --> 14:25.689 lives or of any life where we can see ourselves for the 14:25.693 --> 14:29.563 moment. I sometimes compare myself with 14:29.558 --> 14:35.598 the mad old slum women I hear denouncing and remembering; 14:35.600 --> 14:38.530 "how dare you?" I heard one of them say to an 14:38.527 --> 14:41.037 imaginary suitor, "and you without health or a 14:41.037 --> 14:44.197 home." If I spoke my thoughts aloud 14:44.203 --> 14:48.203 they might be as angry and as wild. 14:48.200 --> 14:55.950 So this is a kind of model for the late Yeats in poetry, 14:55.949 --> 15:02.289 the voice of the angry and wild slum woman. 15:02.289 --> 15:10.669 Well, in order to get at this style in action in Yeats's late 15:10.665 --> 15:18.895 poems, I want to look back a little bit at a poem that looks 15:18.900 --> 15:24.900 back on "Easter, 1916," the poem I discussed 15:24.902 --> 15:32.582 last time, as well as Yeats's own earlier poetry, 15:32.580 --> 15:37.360 and that is the poem called "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con 15:37.360 --> 15:39.410 Markievicz," on page 126. 15:39.409 --> 15:46.479 It's a kind of postscript to "Easter, 1916," written in 1929. 15:46.480 --> 15:51.380 Con Markievicz was the only surviving leader of the Easter 15:51.375 --> 15:55.835 Rising, condemned to death, but then her sentence was 15:55.841 --> 15:59.071 transmuted. What is it? 15:59.070 --> 16:04.810 Yes, thank you: commuted, not transmuted. 16:04.809 --> 16:11.619 Well, Con Markievicz is, in a sense, a figure like Leda. 16:11.620 --> 16:17.170 She is someone who has suffered the traumatic violence that 16:17.174 --> 16:19.094 engenders history. 16:19.090 --> 16:25.160 Yeats's elegy here recalls her youth and that of her sister, 16:25.160 --> 16:30.510 both friends of the younger Yeats: Eva Gore-Booth; 16:30.509 --> 16:34.739 a youth spent in the Sligo mansion, Lissadell, 16:34.740 --> 16:37.560 where Yeats visited in 1894. 16:37.559 --> 16:42.879 At that point Yeats was--1894, Yeats is twenty-nine, 16:42.884 --> 16:47.274 and the two women were slightly younger. 16:47.270 --> 16:49.890 Let me read the beginning of it. 16:49.889 --> 16:52.959 The light of evening, Lissadell, 16:52.960 --> 16:59.290 Great windows open to the south, Two girls in silk kimonos, both 16:59.290 --> 17:02.940 Beautiful, one a gazelle. 17:02.940 --> 17:07.300 But a raving autumn shears Blossom from the summer's 17:07.297 --> 17:10.307 wreath; The older is condemned to death, 17:10.310 --> 17:15.730 Pardoned, drags out lonely years Conspiring among the ignorant. 17:15.730 --> 17:18.430 I know not what the younger dreams-- 17:18.430 --> 17:21.920 Some vague Utopia--and she seems, 17:21.920 --> 17:26.270 When withered old and skeleton-gaunt, 17:26.270 --> 17:28.680 An image of such politics. 17:28.680 --> 17:34.230 Many a time I think to seek One or the other out and speak 17:34.230 --> 17:37.740 Of that old Georgian mansion, mix 17:37.740 --> 17:41.970 Pictures of the mind, recall That table and the talk of 17:41.972 --> 17:45.962 youth, Two girls in silk kimonos, both 17:45.960 --> 17:52.160 Beautiful, one a gazelle. Here, female beauty, 17:52.155 --> 17:57.395 nineteenth-century manners, and aristocratic culture are 17:57.396 --> 18:01.966 all held together as if expressing each other and 18:01.970 --> 18:05.020 associated with each other. 18:05.019 --> 18:11.329 Yeats's nostalgic vision of them is charmed and static, 18:11.331 --> 18:14.021 interestingly static. 18:14.019 --> 18:20.729 See how the verb is withheld in the first sentence of the poem, 18:20.733 --> 18:26.583 and then in the closing lines of that first strophe? 18:26.579 --> 18:31.089 Well, in order to give us that image, "two girls in silk 18:31.092 --> 18:35.702 kimonos, both / beautiful, one a gazelle," which he 18:35.703 --> 18:40.523 returns to, it's as if the action itself were being 18:40.523 --> 18:46.313 withheld from this charmed world and time slowed down or even 18:46.306 --> 18:50.006 stopped, making a picture, 18:50.006 --> 18:52.736 an image, a haiku. 18:52.740 --> 18:57.550 But all of this is overthrown, "changed utterly," by the 18:57.551 --> 19:03.151 radical politics that altered Ireland during Yeats's lifetime, 19:03.150 --> 19:07.810 that announced the coming of modernity and that these two 19:07.812 --> 19:11.562 women themselves participated in centrally. 19:11.559 --> 19:14.719 Politics makes them ugly to Yeats. 19:14.720 --> 19:18.660 It's as if they might have maintained their beauty had they 19:18.661 --> 19:20.361 only refrained from it. 19:20.359 --> 19:24.689 You could look at a similar attitude in "A Prayer for My 19:24.688 --> 19:29.098 Daughter," another important big Yeats poem from slightly 19:29.095 --> 19:31.135 earlier, where Yeats says, 19:31.143 --> 19:35.173 "An intellectual hatred is the worst, so let her think" – his 19:35.168 --> 19:38.088 daughter – "that opinions are accursed." 19:38.090 --> 19:40.350 Women shouldn't have them. 19:40.349 --> 19:46.239 This is not an attractive side of Yeats, at least for people of 19:46.236 --> 19:48.986 our moment and sensibility. 19:48.990 --> 19:53.700 There's a kind of, well, masculinism in Yeats, 19:53.704 --> 19:59.364 and it's part of what I meant last time when I spoke of 19:59.362 --> 20:05.232 Yeats's anti-modernism or his reactionary modernism. 20:05.230 --> 20:08.510 And it's here, too, in this poem. 20:08.509 --> 20:11.539 But the attitude here, as in "Easter, 20:11.541 --> 20:16.091 1916" and Yeats's other great poems, is complicated. 20:16.089 --> 20:21.909 For all of Yeats's reactionary moods, even for his indulgence 20:21.910 --> 20:26.470 in nostalgia here, he's not a nostalgic poet. 20:26.470 --> 20:31.290 And this poem I think shows us what I mean by that. 20:31.289 --> 20:36.509 Look at how the poem changes as it develops, as it moves to this 20:36.511 --> 20:40.501 second strophe, and Yeats turns from the frozen 20:40.499 --> 20:45.069 image of the past to address those two sisters directly, 20:45.074 --> 20:47.684 saying: Dear shadows, 20:47.681 --> 20:51.921 now you know it all, All the folly of a fight 20:51.920 --> 20:54.470 With a common wrong or right. 20:54.470 --> 20:58.810 The innocent and the beautiful Have no enemy but time; 20:58.810 --> 21:06.070 Arise and bid me strike a match And strike another till time 21:06.071 --> 21:09.201 catch; Should the conflagration climb, 21:09.200 --> 21:11.520 Run till all the sages know. 21:11.520 --> 21:15.740 We the great gazebo built. 21:15.740 --> 21:21.190 They convicted us of guilt; Bid me strike a match and 21:21.187 --> 21:26.147 blow. The poet and the women together 21:26.154 --> 21:30.794 become "we" in the poem's last sentence. 21:30.789 --> 21:34.569 "They," the "they who convicted us of guilt," well, 21:34.570 --> 21:36.390 that's hard to identify. 21:36.385 --> 21:39.425 Who is that? I think it's possible to see 21:39.426 --> 21:43.236 that "they" as the sort of general forces of modernity, 21:43.240 --> 21:48.160 of everything at odds with the aristocratic culture Yeats and 21:48.163 --> 21:50.793 these women shared, inhabited. 21:50.790 --> 21:54.680 "We the great gazebo built." 21:54.680 --> 21:58.520 I stumbled and put "built" in the wrong place when I read it. 21:58.520 --> 22:01.160 It's a strange line. 22:01.160 --> 22:08.390 I am told that it plays on a slang phrase then current, 22:08.391 --> 22:14.451 "to make a gazebo of yourself," meaning "to make a spectacle of 22:14.450 --> 22:16.780 yourself and a fool of yourself, publicly." 22:16.779 --> 22:21.979 The footnote to your Norton here suggests that 22:21.976 --> 22:28.066 the gazebo is a summerhouse and by extension – it's quite an 22:28.072 --> 22:32.372 extension – the nationalist movement, 22:32.369 --> 22:36.579 and then, "even the whole temporal world." 22:36.579 --> 22:39.309 Those are some real extensions, aren't they? 22:39.309 --> 22:43.569 It's a little hard to know what to do with this gazebo. 22:43.569 --> 22:48.329 Does it, in fact, represent the nationalist 22:48.328 --> 22:53.428 movement that culminated, or one form of which 22:53.427 --> 22:57.957 culminated, in the Easter Rebellion? 22:57.960 --> 23:04.660 Does it represent Yeats's own early cultural nationalism and 23:04.657 --> 23:11.237 the work represented in The Wind Among the Reeds and 23:11.242 --> 23:13.742 other early poems? 23:13.740 --> 23:15.500 Well, it's a little hard to say. 23:15.500 --> 23:21.640 I tend to see that gazebo or summerhouse as a version of 23:21.643 --> 23:26.893 Lissadell itself, this home that the poem evokes 23:26.894 --> 23:34.494 and that is representative of a nineteenth-century world of art, 23:34.490 --> 23:39.210 of pleasure, of rarified and delicate and 23:39.206 --> 23:45.216 ideal beauty – a world very important to Yeats. 23:45.220 --> 23:51.990 As Yeats--as his thought develops in the course of this 23:51.990 --> 23:59.640 poem, he turns from nostalgia to affirmation and seems to join 23:59.638 --> 24:07.408 the sisters in the actions that they chose through some kind of 24:07.412 --> 24:13.892 sympathetic identification; Yeats who had seemed to stand 24:13.886 --> 24:16.056 apart from it, against them, 24:16.061 --> 24:18.721 in the first part of the poem. 24:18.720 --> 24:26.070 The women represent for Yeats a kind of self-destructive energy, 24:26.071 --> 24:32.371 and it's something he too, I think, is willing to share 24:32.372 --> 24:36.252 and enter into. He speaks of the destruction of 24:36.249 --> 24:39.459 the world that they shared, of a house that they had built, 24:39.460 --> 24:45.110 one that he mocks as this "great gazebo," as something 24:45.106 --> 24:50.206 noble and beautiful, perhaps, but also fragile and a 24:50.211 --> 24:54.221 spectacle and unable to stand up to history. 24:54.220 --> 24:59.730 Time is the enemy in the poem, and Yeats joins forces with the 24:59.732 --> 25:04.452 women at the end, and in doing so joins forces 25:04.445 --> 25:10.325 with time and sets a match to it, as if time itself were 25:10.330 --> 25:11.400 tinder. 25:11.400 --> 25:14.880 25:14.880 --> 25:20.010 Yeats imagines a kind of active arson in this poem. 25:20.009 --> 25:25.609 Fire is symbolically important throughout his poetry. 25:25.609 --> 25:30.859 In "The Song of the Wandering Aengus," I talked about the kind 25:30.858 --> 25:35.678 of flickering passion and the fire in the head that sends 25:35.676 --> 25:37.996 Angus out on his quest. 25:38.000 --> 25:44.330 Fire reappears with increasing frequency in the late poetry. 25:44.329 --> 25:49.089 In your RIS packet, I gave you the short poem "Two 25:49.089 --> 25:51.129 Songs from a Play." 25:51.130 --> 25:55.940 The first stanza of that interesting poem repeats themes 25:55.943 --> 25:59.623 from "The Magi" and "The Second Coming." 25:59.619 --> 26:04.319 You can look at it with those poems in mind where Yeats 26:04.317 --> 26:09.617 imagines a new world coming into being, ushered in through the 26:09.623 --> 26:11.453 blood of the old. 26:11.450 --> 26:18.690 This idea leads him to the meditation that's in the second 26:18.693 --> 26:22.773 stanza there. Everything that man 26:22.766 --> 26:26.586 esteems Endures a moment or a day. 26:26.589 --> 26:31.779 Love's pleasure drives his love away, 26:31.779 --> 26:35.059 The painter's brush consumes his dreams; 26:35.059 --> 26:38.339 The herald's cry, the soldier's tread 26:38.340 --> 26:44.240 Exhaust his glory and his might: Whatever flames upon the night 26:44.240 --> 26:49.290 Man's own resinous heart has fed. 26:49.289 --> 26:52.979 "Man's heart" in Yeats is "resinous"; 26:52.980 --> 26:56.720 it's a sticky filth that flames. 26:56.720 --> 27:02.720 The longing heart accumulates desires that become in time a 27:02.716 --> 27:07.986 kind of volatile waste, which can't be contained. 27:07.990 --> 27:12.970 The heart is combustible, like the energy that insists on 27:12.969 --> 27:16.969 birth in "The Magi" or "The Second Coming." 27:16.970 --> 27:20.760 And this is our glory, Yeats says. 27:20.759 --> 27:25.849 Again, notice how bodily, how material and physical 27:25.851 --> 27:29.621 Yeats's images of human energy are. 27:29.619 --> 27:36.299 Let's turn back to The Norton Anthology and look at 27:36.304 --> 27:40.764 the poem "Vacillation," on page 131. 27:40.759 --> 27:45.719 This is a meditation that comes in several parts. 27:45.720 --> 27:53.430 As Yeats's work develops, he creates a kind of poem that 27:53.427 --> 27:58.737 comes in parts; that is, you might think of it 27:58.737 --> 28:04.687 as a kind of sequence poem in which, with increasing daring, 28:04.690 --> 28:11.450 Yeats explores contending viewpoints seeking some kind of 28:11.451 --> 28:14.491 synthesis. That's what's going on here. 28:14.490 --> 28:19.730 There's a similar kind of structure in other late Yeats's 28:19.731 --> 28:23.701 poems. Yeats at first thought to call 28:23.703 --> 28:26.393 this poem "What Is Joy?" 28:26.390 --> 28:31.140 It takes up his lifelong quest to reconcile extremities, 28:31.135 --> 28:36.495 opposites – in his thought, in his experience – and to 28:36.502 --> 28:40.062 achieve some kind of unity of being. 28:40.059 --> 28:44.919 What is the goal of "Wandering Aengus"? 28:44.920 --> 28:49.780 Between extremities Man runs his course; 28:49.780 --> 28:53.680 A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy 28:53.680 --> 28:57.270 All those antinomies Of day and night; 28:57.270 --> 29:01.770 The body calls it death, The heart remorse. 29:01.770 --> 29:08.280 But if these be right What is joy? 29:08.279 --> 29:14.369 Here, in the first part of the poem, Yeats talks about death 29:14.367 --> 29:19.937 and remorse as the end of all debate, the last word. 29:19.940 --> 29:24.440 We're all going to die and we're all going to regret what 29:24.437 --> 29:27.927 we did. But this understanding of the 29:27.934 --> 29:32.724 end of things is only the cancellation of all those 29:32.718 --> 29:37.788 antinomies in a kind of failure to reconcile them; 29:37.790 --> 29:39.980 and it doesn't satisfy Yeats. 29:39.980 --> 29:43.670 He's asking, in effect, "how can we be 29:43.665 --> 29:50.235 joyful in the face of death and in the face of certain remorse?" 29:50.240 --> 29:53.960 Or, "how is it that somehow we are?" 29:53.960 --> 29:56.160 He wants to explain this. 29:56.160 --> 30:03.760 He wants to find a way to not so much redeem as affirm time 30:03.756 --> 30:11.876 and age and understand them not simply as a cause of despair or 30:11.875 --> 30:15.145 as a cause of defeat. 30:15.150 --> 30:19.200 The poem then tries out different answers, 30:19.202 --> 30:24.152 answers that alternately explore transcendental and 30:24.145 --> 30:26.315 secular solutions. 30:26.319 --> 30:31.599 And the poem vacillates, as it were, between them. 30:31.599 --> 30:36.509 In Section III below, Yeats says, "Get all the gold 30:36.512 --> 30:39.852 and silver that you can"--"Provide, 30:39.852 --> 30:43.802 provide!" But just as in Frost, 30:43.799 --> 30:48.249 this strategy isn't going to work. 30:48.250 --> 30:52.480 So, therefore, we must take up, 30:52.477 --> 30:56.417 he suggests, an ascetic path, 30:56.423 --> 31:00.983 engaging only, as he says, in "those works" 31:00.976 --> 31:03.996 that are fit "for such men as come / proud, 31:04.001 --> 31:06.811 open-eyed and laughing to the tomb." 31:06.809 --> 31:12.699 In Section IV then, the next, on the next page, 31:12.703 --> 31:17.063 blessing is not, on the other hand, 31:17.059 --> 31:20.389 something to work for. 31:20.390 --> 31:26.310 Rather, it's a potential fire that flashes up momentarily 31:26.311 --> 31:29.811 within us. My fiftieth year had come 31:29.808 --> 31:32.898 and gone [when I first read this poem that 31:32.900 --> 31:41.850 seemed a really long way in my future, as perhaps it does to 31:41.848 --> 31:45.638 you], I sat, a solitary man, 31:45.640 --> 31:50.240 In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup 31:50.240 --> 31:52.740 On the marble table-top. 31:52.740 --> 31:56.270 While on the shop and street I gazed 31:56.270 --> 32:02.450 My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less 32:02.450 --> 32:05.120 It seemed, so great my happiness, 32:05.119 --> 32:09.469 That I was blessèd and could bless." 32:09.470 --> 32:17.610 It's a serendipitous and moving, momentary experience 32:17.611 --> 32:24.211 Yeats describes. And notice that it's the body 32:24.211 --> 32:30.211 that blazes: soul and body or soul and heart. 32:30.210 --> 32:35.930 These are antinomies that the poem is exploring. 32:35.930 --> 32:43.280 Yeats insists that the heart is an organ of the body, 32:43.275 --> 32:46.095 and located in it. 32:46.100 --> 32:47.240 This is important. 32:47.240 --> 32:52.290 In the sixth section, down below, he speaks of "man's 32:52.292 --> 32:54.432 blood-sodden heart." 32:54.430 --> 32:59.930 This is another turn on that image of man's "resinous heart." 32:59.930 --> 33:07.640 In Section VII, "Soul" and "Heart" argue. 33:07.640 --> 33:13.590 The vacillation and debate become quickest here as one 33:13.590 --> 33:21.000 point of view gets one line and the other the rhyming next line. 33:21.000 --> 33:25.410 33:25.410 --> 33:27.840 The Soul. 33:27.839 --> 33:30.699 Seek out reality, leave things that seem. 33:30.700 --> 33:32.760 [That's what the Soul instructs us. 33:32.764 --> 33:35.324 The Heart responds.] The Heart. 33:35.319 --> 33:38.259 What, be a singer born and lack a theme? 33:38.259 --> 33:41.589 The Soul. Isaiah's coal, 33:41.591 --> 33:44.591 what more can man desire? 33:44.589 --> 33:45.589 The Heart. 33:45.585 --> 33:47.865 Struck dumb in the simplicity of fire! 33:47.869 --> 33:50.199 The Soul. Look on that fire, 33:50.203 --> 33:51.923 salvation walks within. 33:51.920 --> 33:53.560 The Heart. 33:53.555 --> 33:57.975 What theme had Homer but original sin?" 33:57.980 --> 34:04.540 It's a wonderfully compressed argument in which the Soul and 34:04.535 --> 34:11.305 the Heart make competing claims for Christianity and classical 34:11.313 --> 34:13.983 and literary wisdom. 34:13.980 --> 34:18.850 Yeats counterposes Isaiah's prophetic coal to the blazing 34:18.845 --> 34:22.675 body of Section IV, where fire is spontaneous, 34:22.682 --> 34:26.322 imminent, something that arises from the body. 34:26.320 --> 34:30.870 There then follows in that last section a kind of comic 34:30.867 --> 34:35.497 conclusion where the poet chooses to side with Homer, 34:35.500 --> 34:41.710 and implicitly with poetry, against the theologian Von 34:41.712 --> 34:48.162 Hügel who's a kind of comic figure at the end there. 34:48.160 --> 34:52.210 "Vacillation." The poem was written following 34:52.206 --> 34:55.496 a series of poems called the "Crazy Jane" poems, 34:55.500 --> 34:59.090 written as a kind of summary of them, a kind of resolution of 34:59.087 --> 35:01.057 the debates that go on in them. 35:01.059 --> 35:05.849 You have just one of them in your Anthology, 35:05.846 --> 35:08.906 but it is one of the greatest. 35:08.910 --> 35:13.110 It is back on page 130. 35:13.110 --> 35:19.330 In the "Crazy Jane" poems, the Bishop, who is Crazy Jane's 35:19.327 --> 35:23.797 antagonist, has the part of Von Hügel, 35:23.800 --> 35:30.590 the position of the Church authority, and Jane speaks for 35:30.590 --> 35:35.840 Yeats and for poetry; for Homer, too, I suppose. 35:35.840 --> 35:40.620 Crazy Jane is one of Yeats's masks or roles. 35:40.620 --> 35:43.510 She is a mad peasant woman. 35:43.510 --> 35:49.640 She speaks from the point of view of a cracked or shattered 35:49.640 --> 35:54.820 mind, in the tradition of a Shakespearian fool. 35:54.820 --> 35:59.550 She speaks what Yeats calls in his general title for this group 35:59.553 --> 36:02.763 of poems Words for Music Perhaps. 36:02.760 --> 36:09.040 The poem's connection to music signifies the difference in 36:09.040 --> 36:14.770 point of view in these poems from reasoned speech. 36:14.769 --> 36:21.529 It also seems to relate these poems to folk forms and to the 36:21.532 --> 36:23.942 wisdom of the folk. 36:23.940 --> 36:30.760 Jane speaks in praise of love, in praise of satisfaction. 36:30.760 --> 36:34.840 She speaks of the necessary unity of body and soul, 36:34.843 --> 36:38.603 which for her entails a defense of the body, 36:38.599 --> 36:45.969 defending, as she does, its knowledge and its goodness. 36:45.970 --> 36:48.510 As a character she is sour. 36:48.510 --> 36:55.890 She's rank, ill-tempered, pungent in all senses. 36:55.890 --> 36:59.890 Well, let's look at this debate. 36:59.889 --> 37:01.799 I met the Bishop on the road 37:01.800 --> 37:04.580 And much said he and I. 37:04.579 --> 37:07.189 "Those breasts are flat and fallen now 37:07.190 --> 37:11.810 Those veins must soon be dry [this is the Bishop, 37:11.807 --> 37:17.017 speaking to her of her body]; Live in a heavenly mansion, 37:17.020 --> 37:20.780 Not in some foul sty." 37:20.780 --> 37:26.680 [To which Jane replies.] "Fair and foul are near of kin, 37:26.680 --> 37:30.470 And fair needs foul," I cried. 37:30.469 --> 37:32.759 "My friends are gone, but that's a truth 37:32.760 --> 37:37.950 Nor grave nor bed denied, Learned in bodily lowliness 37:37.950 --> 37:41.290 And in the heart's pride. 37:41.289 --> 37:47.059 [And she continues.] "A woman can be proud and stiff 37:47.060 --> 37:51.220 When on love intent; But Love has pitched his 37:51.224 --> 37:54.434 mansion in The place of excrement; 37:54.430 --> 37:59.370 For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent." 37:59.365 --> 38:03.705 ["Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop"] 38:03.710 --> 38:08.680 The points of view, again, are those of the sacred 38:08.678 --> 38:12.428 and profane, the soul and the body, 38:12.429 --> 38:16.839 the promise of a heavenly mansion, and the reality of a 38:16.836 --> 38:19.036 life lived in a foul sty. 38:19.039 --> 38:24.649 The Bishop claims one side of debate, Jane claims the other. 38:24.650 --> 38:27.570 But unlike the Bishop, she doesn't want to reject the 38:27.567 --> 38:29.247 other and this is important. 38:29.250 --> 38:33.500 Speaking for the body, she speaks for the potential 38:33.496 --> 38:35.616 unity of body and soul. 38:35.619 --> 38:41.709 In answer to the promise of the Bishop's heavenly mansion in 38:41.711 --> 38:45.741 another life, she claims another sort of 38:45.737 --> 38:48.517 house, what she calls love's 38:48.523 --> 38:53.873 "mansion," which is noble itself and which is to be lived here on 38:53.868 --> 38:57.498 earth. "Love has pitched his mansion 38:57.495 --> 39:00.465 in / the place of excrement." 39:00.470 --> 39:02.490 This is an outrageous claim. 39:02.490 --> 39:04.310 What does it mean? 39:04.309 --> 39:06.619 Look at the claim it's paired with. 39:06.619 --> 39:12.999 "For nothing can be sole or whole / that has not been rent." 39:13.000 --> 39:18.710 Why is it necessary to rend something, to make it soul or 39:18.713 --> 39:21.743 whole? Is it necessary? 39:21.739 --> 39:28.369 Only that which is broken, Jane claims, 39:28.371 --> 39:35.321 is unified. That which appears whole is not. 39:35.320 --> 39:40.940 Yeats seems to be insisting through Jane on the necessity of 39:40.938 --> 39:45.698 shattering experience to achieve unity of being, 39:45.699 --> 39:50.229 which Yeats imagines, again, as the union of 39:50.234 --> 39:54.014 opposites. Again, think of the rape of 39:54.011 --> 39:57.491 Leda. This is the type of the violent 39:57.490 --> 40:02.670 union that Yeats imagines in which the divine enters the 40:02.672 --> 40:06.382 human, and the human finds access to 40:06.381 --> 40:09.541 the divine through the bestial. 40:09.539 --> 40:13.779 And the bestial is identified in Yeats with the heart and with 40:13.775 --> 40:16.895 the irrational and with the uncontrollable. 40:16.900 --> 40:20.970 40:20.969 --> 40:29.879 Yeats's late poems speak from the point of view of Jane, 40:29.884 --> 40:35.134 more often than not, and yet powerfully, 40:35.126 --> 40:40.236 we do see him vacillating from different--between different 40:40.242 --> 40:44.962 points of view. We have really no time left to 40:44.963 --> 40:49.563 explore them, but I want to just point you to 40:49.560 --> 40:55.410 two important late poems that seem to represent different 40:55.410 --> 41:01.510 attitudes in late Yeats, that contrast the kinds of 41:01.510 --> 41:05.290 claim that can be made for art. 41:05.289 --> 41:11.849 One of them is the moving valedictory to his work that is 41:11.848 --> 41:16.648 called "The Circus Animals' Desertion," 41:16.650 --> 41:25.000 where the poet imagines his imagination as having arisen on 41:24.999 --> 41:31.729 ladders, if you will, out of what he calls "the foul 41:31.733 --> 41:35.503 rag and bone shop of the heart." 41:35.500 --> 41:43.040 And in conclusion he imagines giving up that terrific drive 41:43.043 --> 41:50.203 towards imagination and idealization and a return to the 41:50.197 --> 41:55.007 "rag and bone shop of the heart." 41:55.010 --> 42:01.410 That's an image of art ultimately leading out of art to 42:01.405 --> 42:05.665 a kind of state of de-sublimation. 42:05.670 --> 42:13.750 Contrast this poem to "Lapis Lazuli," a beautiful and moving 42:13.748 --> 42:22.098 late poem on page 135 that is full of echoes from that general 42:22.101 --> 42:29.771 introduction to his work that I quoted from earlier. 42:29.769 --> 42:38.259 Here, Yeats presents us with an image of art in the form of a 42:38.255 --> 42:46.285 lapis lazuli Chinese carving, and he describes the figures on 42:46.287 --> 42:50.287 that carving, who are in some sense 42:50.288 --> 42:56.938 representatives of an attitude, again, beyond tragedy, 42:56.940 --> 43:04.290 beyond the kinds of social and political apocalypse that Yeats 43:04.289 --> 43:11.879 faced in his career and that he describes also in this poem. 43:11.880 --> 43:16.990 And Yeats concludes, well, with an image of the 43:16.992 --> 43:24.082 artwork that I'll read for you, that is fascinating in itself 43:24.079 --> 43:30.679 but is also, as I suggest, an image of Yeats's late ideal 43:30.684 --> 43:34.344 for what art should be like. 43:34.340 --> 43:37.170 He says: Every discolouration of 43:37.171 --> 43:43.571 the stone [this is on page 136], Every accidental crack or dent 43:43.570 --> 43:46.940 Seems a water-course or an avalanche, 43:46.940 --> 43:50.600 Or lofty slope where it still snows 43:50.599 --> 43:52.969 Though doubtless plumb or cherry-branch 43:52.969 --> 43:55.019 Sweetens the little half-way house 43:55.019 --> 43:59.209 Those Chinamen climb towards, and I 43:59.210 --> 44:04.800 Delight to imagine them seated there [at their altitude, 44:04.796 --> 44:10.786 looking at the world from within the perspective of art]; 44:10.789 --> 44:14.269 There, on the mountain and the sky, 44:14.269 --> 44:17.059 On all the tragic scene they stare. 44:17.060 --> 44:22.170 One asks for mournful melodies; Accomplished fingers begin to 44:22.165 --> 44:25.055 play. Their eyes, amid many wrinkles, 44:25.063 --> 44:27.073 their eyes, Their ancient, 44:27.066 --> 44:29.476 glittering eyes, are gay. 44:29.480 --> 44:35.850 And there is finally, again, an affirmation of this 44:35.848 --> 44:41.578 joy and gaiety, here seen as a property of the 44:41.579 --> 44:43.999 artwork itself.