In this study, I will focus on “Byzantium” and explore how the poem mirrors the essence of Zen Meditation. Not only is the poem patterned after the progressive procedure of Zen meditation, but they also reflect the fundamental concerns of Zen meditation, such as the problem of duality, the concept of time, and an aspiration for freedom from the limitation of this life. These features of Zen meditation are expressed through the use of specific symbols, the implications of setting, and various poetic techniques. The purpose of this study is to provide another way to read the poem by analyzing it in the context of Zen meditation. The structures of the poem are loosely patterned after a typical process of meditation through which the meditator reaches Unity of Being. The process of Zen meditation is nicely depicted in the ten pictures titled “The Boy and the Ox,” each of which shows the gradual development of the meditator’s search for his won nature or Buddhahood. For the convenience of my discussion, I will simplify the ten stages of Zen meditation to four−confusion, immersion, union and return−which, I believe, cover all the important procedures in the meditation. The first stanza of “Byzantium” exhibits some typical features related to its meditative scheme, in which we can feel the sense of confusion on the part of the meditator or poetic persona. In other words, the meditator sets out his meditative journey to search for an answer for his sense of confusion or clear it. The second to the fourth stanzas are equivalent to the second stage (immersion) and the third stage (union or seeing the vision) of meditation. The last stanza parallels the final stage of Zen meditation (return). In “Byzantium,” we see the reflection of Zen meditation. The structural patterns of the meditative poems generally correspond to the four stages of Zen meditation: confusion, immersion, union or seeing the vision of the unity, and return. Yeats’ use of poetic techniques such as line scheme, use of number symbolism, and the arrangement of stanzas are closely associated with the meditative scheme of the poems. In addition, the major concern of the poems is reminiscent of that of Zen meditation in that they confront the problem of duality, which sets up the occasion for meditation. The agony of duality results from the concept of time. Thus, the meditator tries to reconcile the dichotomous elements, resulting in the state of freedom from time. More than anything else, the purpose of Yeats’ meditative poem lies in the poet’s aspiration for self-awakening, as in Zen meditation. The poem is Yeats’ record of his life-long efforts to meet his “fourth self” or Great Self.

The order of poems plays a very important role in Yeats's book of poems without understanding which his poetry cannot be fully appreciated. Hence, understanding Yeats's poems requires looking into not only a relationship between the poems placed side by side in his Book of poems but also the principle of arranging the entire poems. The purpose of this paper is to find out a principle with which Yeats placed his 37 poems for The Wind Among the Reeds. The principle, if there is any, brings us closer to why Yeats moved "The Fiddler of Dooney" from the 11th place in the 1899 edition to the 37th in the 1909 edition. My argument is that Yeats's arrangement of poems selected in The Wind Among the Reeds reflects his poetics which he formed in between 1890's and 1910's. Reading Yeats's essays, “Nationality and Literature" (1893), “The Theater" (1899), "The Symbolism of Poetry" (1900), and “What is Popular Poetry?” (1901), we see that the poet talks about different subjects matters but reveals his idea of how the literature develops. Yeats believes that literature goes through three developmental stages: the epic period; dramatic period and the period of lyric poetry. The epic phase is marked by great racial or national movements and events; the dramatic phase mainly deals with characters who lived in them; and the lyric phase focuses on pure emotion or mood, the seed of which again grows into a tree of epic literature by stimulating human sensibilities. This cyclical pattern of literature, which Yeats compares with the growth of a tree, is a model after which the poems of The Wind Among the Reeds are arranged. That is, the opening poem, "The Hosting of the Sidhe" reflects the epic concern by dealing with great Irish people and soil; the second poem, “The Everlasting Voices," in which great racial or national movements disappear, talks about old human hearts; and the third poem, “The Moods,” shows the lyric phase concentrating on the birth of mood and its immortality. The following 34 poems are arranged in such a way as to mirror the epic-dramatic-lyric pattern; dramatic poems outnumber the epic and lyric poems. This pattern shows Yeats's message: literature goes through this three developmental stage and the parts do not exist in isolation from the whole. Yeats also announces that he is the poet of Irish people, drama, and lyrics.

One of the most important characteristic features of Yeats’s book of poems involves the fact that the poet intended his entire volumes of his poems to function as a single, unified work of art. In other words, the meaning of an individual poem in any Yeats’s book of poems cannot be fully appreciated without considering its relationship with the poems placed right next to it. Talking about one individual poem alone in a volume is like interpreting one chapter of a novel without linking its meaning to the next chapters. For this reason, understanding Yeats’s poems requires looking into a relationship between the poems and the principle of arranging the entire poems in a book of poems. In this paper, what I am trying to achieve is to answer the following three questions. First, what is a governing principle of ordering poems in Yeats's second book of poems, The Rose (1983)? Second, how such a structure or an arrangement helps to convey the thematic concern of The Rose effectively? Lastly, how Yeats develops himself as a poet after publishing his first book of Poems Crossways (1889). When we compare the method of ordering The Rose poems with that of Crossways, we see that Yeats slowly matures as a poet as he ages. Crossways consists of two groups of poems each with a religious and political context, respectively. In the first group, Yeats places poems dealing with balancing the conflicting forces of action and stasis, the ideal and the real, and imagination and actuality. The second group includes poems balancing private and public, past and present, and Catholic and Protestant, high and low classes, and unionists and nationalists. Yeats's ultimate message: just as we need a reconciliation of opposing religious elements, so we should achieve a harmony of different political groups. The Rose, on the other hand, reminds us of a kind of well-structured drama with the prologue poem working as the first act of a play. The first poem holds the key to the arrangement of 23 poems in The Rose. In other words, each line of “The Rose upon the Rood of Time” foretells how the entire 23 poems will be placed and foregrounds the main message of the book of poems. The first poem talks about a reconciliation of opposing forces and this message is repeated throughout the book by dealing with the idea of balancing two antinomian ideas. In addition, the time of each poem moves in-between the present and the past and eventually advances into the future, as is foreshadowed in the preface poem. The presence of the poet can also be felt throughout the book of poems. In The Rose, we meet a poet who keeps emphasizing the importance of maintaining a balance between mysticism and realism, reconciling his joy of love and pain of his failure, and announcing his love of Ireland or his nationalist ideals. Through The Rose, Yeats repeats the importance of balancing religion, people, and love. Although the second book of poems contains different poems and structural pattern compared with the first book of poems, his basic message remains the same: mysticism should be reconciled with realism and nationalism.

In this paper, I argue that W. B. Yeats’s pursuit of universalism was rekindled by his rediscovery of the East through Tagore. Yeats’s political experiences during the 1910s also influenced his fascination with universalism. I will first discuss the significance of Yeats’s fascination with Tagore in relation to his rediscovery of the importance of East, particularly India, not only for spiritual reasons, but also for political reasons. That is, Tagore ultimately gave Yeats an opportunity to see India as a place to reconcile his split allegiance to both Romanticism and nationalism, and to art and politics. The East, for Yeats, is the place to swerve from his Romantic predecessors for political reasons. At this time, a return to East was especially important to him because it also offered a psychological vindication for his political setback—being attacked for his anti-nationalism—during the Playboy riots. That is, the pursuit of Eastern values, particularly Indian values, became his way of fighting colonialism, as well as for finding spiritual wholeness. By the time Yeats returned to the East, Yeats also began to witness the most turbulent and dramatic political events of his life such as the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish and English War, and the Irish Civil War, which Yeats viewed as the culmination of the hatred between political groups and parties. His rediscovery of Eastern values through Tagore and his political experiences at that time slowly led Yeats to develop a concept of universalism: the unity of East and West. In other words, Yeats’s continuous movement towards universalism during this period was the necessary and inevitable course to deal with his political experiences: his psychological need to purify the bitterness and hatred Irish politics breeds into his mind, and his need to offer a more inclusive political vision to the Irish politicians who fight out of hatred of opposing parties. What Yeats basically wants to do by pursuing universalism is to create a citizen of the universe whose consciousness transcends the distinction between one and many, present and past, and East and West. Poems such as “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Among School Children,” and “Byzantium,” written after 1919 express Yeats’s universalist idea of reconciling East and West employing a meditative scheme. It is unmistakable that all three poems encapsulate Yeats’s universal consciousness, but we also see that they are also tinged by Yeats’s skepticism about the transcendental state, as well as about universalism, in one way or another. Yeats’s doubt about universalism betrays his conflicting political agenda: his belief in the Anglo-Irish aristocratic government. Looking at other poems (“The Wild Swans at Cool,” “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” “An Irish Airman foresees his Death,” “A Prayer for my Daughter”) published in the same period reveal his covert allegiance to the Anglo-Irish aristocratic tradition.

The paper searches and analyzes the image of Iseult Gonne in some of Yeats's poems. It is not difficult to locate Iseut's images in most of the poems that contain her image, except the poem, "Long-legged Fly." In this poem the young girl at puberty practicing a tinker shuffle picked up on a street is said to be Maud Gonne, as definitely noted by Jeffares. But this paper claims that she is Iseult Gonne on the basis of Yeats's recording what he has witnessed, the young girl barefoot dancing and singing, thinking that nobody is looking at the edge of the water and sand at Normandy. And one of the important poems that immortalizes Iseult is "To a Child Dancing in the Wind," singing what's permanent in the present Iseult, against the passing of life and time. This concern deeply permeates most of Yeats's Iseult poems, as one of them being "Two Years Later" and another is a poem, "Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?" (written in 1936, three years before he died in 1939) in which the poet calls Iseult's husband a dunce, because Yeats loves and pities Iseult so much. To Yeats and in his poems, Iseult Gonne symbolizes eternal beauty or something that should remain for good. Not only that, but also the most beautiful and strongest of Iseult Gonne poems is "Owen Aherne and his Dancers" written immediately after Yeats's marriage to Georgie, with two sections, once the first being called "The Lover Speaks" and the second "The Heart Replies." As the image of dance indicates, it is about Iseult Gonne, with Yeats in disguise. It signals a new beginning for Yeats in relation to his poetry and to his life-long love Iseult.

Yeats published a total of four books of In the Seven Woods over 19 year period starting from 1903 through 1922. A comparison of these four books demonstrates how constantly and diligently he repositioned the order of poems, not to mention correcting lines and changing the titles of some poems. It was 1908 when the order of poems was finally fixed. Yeats's habitual rearrangement of his poems suggests that the poet was still struggling to reshape his intention. The fixation of order of poems in the 1908 volume of In the Seven Woods then implies that Yeats finally found himself satisfied with the message he tried to orchestrate through the volume. If so, what is an organizational principle shaping the final version of In the Seven Woods? And what message is Yeats going to send through the book of poems? The purpose of this paper is to answer these to questions. Here my argument is that what Yeats finally chose for the skeleton of the 1908 and 1922 volume was a meditative structure. That is, the final order of poems has been evolved over the years in such a way as to reflect a meditative structure. In other words, In the Seven Woods, as a meditative sequence, consists of three stages of a composition of place, analysis and colloquy, which resemble the process in a meditative poem. Hence, his poetic message for the volume is also concerned with the purpose of meditation--specifically the Yeatsian concept of meditation--that is, transcending human limitations by dissolving antinomies. There are two axes in In the Seven Woods: one--vertical--axis is made by an individual poem; the other--horizontal--axis is built by an arrangement of poems which provides another poetic statement. Here we have an individual poem which, when viewed separately, mainly deals with his emotional turmoil and deep psychic unrest due to his troubled love experiences with Maud Gonne. Here we also have a whole group of poems which are carefully framed to elevate his personal bitterness and anxiety to the collective problems of human beings due to their inability to deal with antinomian principles. Through In the Seven Woods, the main character, or Yeats, sets out a meditative journey, a progressive movement toward a state beyond time or an aconceptual state where the meditator finds an answer for his quest for oneness. In the end, however, Yeats shows his strong skepticism about the possibility of achieving oneness.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between W.B. Yeats's obsession with mysticism and his nationalism in his early years (1885-1895). My basic argument is that he knocked at the door of mysticism to find a metaphysical symbol with which he could unify politically, religiously, and culturally divided Ireland. In fact, Yeat's turn to mysticism in his early years attracts many scholars's attentions. But a reading of many studies on this topic leads us to believe that Yeats studied mysticism for other purposes. Elizabeth Cullingford and Richard Ellmann argue that Yeats's preoccupation with mysticism was his antipathy to materialism which was prevalent due to the Industrial Revolution. Seamus Dean explains Yeats's interest in mystical and occult traditions as his efforts to establish an Irish cultural identity. Denis Donoghue maintains that Yeats wanted to separate Irishness from Englishness by dedicating himself to the study of mysticism. In addition to these purposes, I believe, one of Yeats's political agenda was to unify various cultural, religious, and political forces of Ireland before the turn of the century. Yeats firmly believed that the identity of the Irish should be based upon intellectual life and spiritual principles which could solve and transcend the cultual, religious, and political discords of Ireland. The spiritual creeds Yeats was looking for should be founded on the common Irish spirit which could appeal to the Irish whether they were Anglo or Gaelic, Protestants or Catholics, or Unionists or Separatists. In other words, spiritual principles should not be confined to one church. In this sense, Yeats’s choice of Indian thought and occultism is suitable because they have universal appeal. Yeats believed that Indian thought would provide Ireland with the common spiritual tradition which predated both Catholicism and Protestantism. Furthermore, the religious concepts of pantheism and mysticism were the very ideas Yeats needed to bring the conflicting religious and political parties into perfect harmony and balance. Namely, Yeats tried to find a metaphysical model for the unity of Catholics and Protestants through the mystical union.

예이츠 비평가들은 예이츠의『갈림길』(1889)을 주로 영적인 측면의 화합을 추구하는 작품으로 보는 경향이 있다. 1948년 리차드 엘만이 예이츠의 시는 궁극적으로 화합된 의식을 좇고 있다고 갈파한 이래 이 말은 예이츠 비평의 정석처럼 되어 버렸다. 많은 학자들은 비록 왜 예이츠가 영적 화합을 그토록 갈망하는 지에 대한 이유에 대해서는 각기 다른 설명을 제시하고 있지만 그가 『갈림길』에서 영적 화합을 추구하고 있다는 사실은 부인하지 않고 있다. 1996년에 발표된『예이츠와 연금술』에서 윌리암 고르스키는 아직도 예이츠의 영적 화합의 추구에 대해 다른 결론을 내리기가 힘들다고 결론 짓고 있다. 이러한 결론은 결국『갈림길』의 일부의 시만 다룬 결과임을 알 수 있다. 즉, 예이츠 학자들은 주로 이 시집의 전반부의 시들만 다루고 후반부의 시들 즉, 몰 메기의 발라드 , 여우사냥꾼의 발라드 , 등과 같은 시들은 언급을 하지 않고 있음을 알 수 있다. 물론, 학자들의 이러한 접근 방법 및 결론이 전적으로 그르다고는 할 수 없지만 나는 이 논문에서 『갈림길』을 영적 화합의 추구로만 보면 예이츠의 의도를 부분적으로만 이해하는 것이라고 주장하고 싶다.『갈림길』의 의도는 이 시집에 수록된 총 16 편의 시의 의미와 그 시들의 유기적인 관계를 잘 분석하여 결론을 지어야 한다는 것이다. 이 시들은 일정한 원칙 하에 배치되어 있는데 그 원칙을 살펴보면 각기 8 편의 시가 한 그룹을 형성하도록 되어 전부 두 그룹이 만들어져 있다. 처음 그룹의 시들을 살펴보면 은 각각의 시가 동과 정, 이상과 현실, 순간과 영원 같은 반대의 요소들로 균형을 이루고 있고 두 번째 그룹의 시들은 공과 사, 과거와 현재, 카톨릭과 프로테스탄트, 상류와 하류, 그리고 연방주의자와 분리주의자 같은 반대의 요소로 균형을 이루고 있음을 알 수 있다. 첫 번째 그룹은 영적 화합을 추구하고 있으며 이 의미는 우리가 아는 대로 동과 정의 두 반대 요소가 다 필수적이라는 것이다. 다시 말해 이 두 요소가 잘 조화를 이룰 때 우리의 영적 해방이 이루어진다는 종교적인 메시지가 담겨있는 것이다. 마찬가지로 우리는 똑같은 원리를 두 번째 그룹의 시에도 적용해야 하며 그 의미는 카톨릭과 프로테스탄트 같은 적대 세력이 서로 화합해야 아이랜드에 진정한 평화가 온다는 것이다. 다시 말해 상반된 두 요소 즉 영혼과 육체, 사랑과 미움을 모두 받아들이는 것이 새로운 자아 형성을 위해 필수적이듯이 상류층과 하류층, 연방주의자와 분리주의자들 모두를 받아들이는 것이 새로운 아이랜드의 건설을 위해 좋다는 것이다. 정확하게 말해서, 갈림길은 아이랜드의 정치적 분열을 치유할 수 있는 화합의 모델을 종교적인 개념을 통해 제시하고 있다는 것이다.

예이츠의 학교 어린이들 사이에서 (1927)와 파운드의 빌라네레: 심리적인 시간 (1916) 은 모두 장소의 개념을 시의 주제와 연결시키고 있다는 점에서 공통점을 발견할 수 있다. 이는 두 시인이 모두 외부경치의 묘사로 서두를 장식하는 낭만주의 명상시의 영향 아래 있었다는 것을 보여주고 있다. 그러나 두 시인이 사용한 장소의 개념과 각 시의 주제를 연결시켜 보면 두 시인의 다른 성향을 알 수 있다. 먼저, 학교 어린이들 사이에서 에서 예이츠가 사용한 교실은 생로병사 같은 인간의 한계를 상징적으로 표현하며 그 새장 혹은 감옥의 좁은 방과 같은 한계성을 어떻게 극복하느냐가 이 시의 주된 관심사라고 할 수 있다. 이 시의 마지막 시구 (“춤과 춤추는 이를 어떻게 구별할 수 있을 것인가?”)는 비록 학자마다 그 해석을 달리하여 아직도 논란이 있는 게 사실이지만 나의 소견은 예이츠가 추구해온 합일의 신비적인 힘을 결정적으로 표현한 것이라고 해석하고 싶다. 즉, 처음에 설정된 인간의 한계를 극복하는 길은 합일의 힘 뿐이라는 것이다. 다시 말하면 인간의 주관적인 힘에 더욱 더 무게를 두는 낭만주의의 전통을 그대로 간직하고 있음을 알수 있다. 한편, 파운드의 빌라네레: 심리적인 시간 은 집의 묘사로 그 서두를 장식하고 있는데 우리는 그 집이 화자의 시각 (주관적인 관점)을 제한하는 역할을 하고 있음을 알 수 있다. 이러한 장소의 선택으로 인간이 필연적으로 경험하게 되는 주관의 한계(집의 내부에서 밖을 보는데는 분명한 한계가 있음으로)를 극복하게 하려는 파운드의 치밀한 계산이 깔려있는 것이다. 파운드의 방법은 객관적인 시각을 받아들이는 것이다. 그래서 보다 다양한 관점을 유지하여 주관의 한계를 극복하려는 것이 다. 그러나 이 시에서는 파운드가 기다리고 기다리던 객관적인 관점은 이루어지지 않고 주관적인 관점의 한계만 드러낸 채 끝을 맺는다. 이는 예이츠와는 달리 파운드는 주관적인 힘 그리고 인간의 상상력의 힘에 대한 한계를 인정하고 있다는 의미이다. 예이츠의 상상력에 대한 동경으로 시를 쓰고 그에게 인정받으려고 노력했던 파운드가 이제는 예이츠의 시적 노선에 대해 조금씩 거부반응을 보이기 시작했다고 할 수 있을 것이다. 예이츠가 그 자신을 마지막 낭만파 시인이라고 말하고 있는 것과는 대조적으로 파운드는 이 시를 기점으로 이후에 보다 주관이 배제된 형식으로 객관적이고 사회적, 그리고 정치적인 시들을 발표했음을 알 수 있다. 이는 시가 시인의 내적세계라는 좁은 울타리를 나와 보다 이 사회의 발전에 적극적으로 참여해야 한다는 파운드의 시학으로 해석할 수 있을 것이다.

예이츠의 “Among School Children”을 분석해 보면 이 시가 시적 구조와 예이츠의 “Among School Children” 에 내재한 성서의 세계, 이미저리, 그리고 이 시의 궁극적 메시지가 성서를 그 모델로 하여 지어졌음을 알 수 있다. 이 논문의 목적은 이 시의 삼단계 시적 구조가 기본적으로 성서의 삼단계 구조를 모방했음을 주장하는 것이다. 즉 이 시가 내포하고 있는 각 파트의 주요 이미지 즉 학교 교실, 노령화에 대한 시인의 무기력함, 그리고 댄서의 이미지가 결국 성서에 나오는 이미지 즉 성서 처음의 한 장소에서 다른 장소로 이동하는 모습, 그 이후 끊임없이 되풀이되는 인간의 나약함, 그리고 성서 마지막의 요한 계시록에 나오는 신비의 결혼을 변형한 것이다. 이 시의 주제 중의 하나인 Unity of Being의 실현이 인간의 한계를 해결할 수 있다는 것도 신과 인간의 결혼으로 천국을 이룩할 수 있다는 성서의 종교적 비전을 연상시킨다. “Among School Children”의 내면에는 바이블의 세계가 존재하고 있는 것이다.

This article touches upon Yeats’s relationship to the spiritual traditions of the world in the 1930's. During this period when he was immersed in Eastern, especially Indian philosophies, Yeats affirmed his desire to pursue the marriage of East and West for political and psychological reasons. An analysis of the poems from A Full Moon in March (1935) reveals that Yeats believes that the idea of the East-West marriage works as an antidote to the persistent political problems of Ireland -- the battle between Catholics and Protestants -- which again haunted Ireland after de Valera became the president of Ireland in 1932. Yeats’s Supernatural Songs is a testimony to his ideal of wholeness which he expresses through his pernona-hermit Ribh. Yeats’s attempt to reconcile the conflicting forces of East and West (evolved from Catholics and Protestants) reflects the poet’s Romantic ideals so that the East and the West (the colonized and the colonizer) co-exist harmoniously by discarding one’s own weaknesses and accepting the other’s merits. His life-long efforts to pursue the political unity of his country and the world also show his practical character in that he is always thinking about the possibility of maximizing the potential of each component of a group. We, however, also see that Yeats is not completely free from his Protestant prejudice even when he strongly urges the unity between two opposing political parties by making a subtle connection between a religious hermit and Parnell. It is no wonder that Supernatural Songs also has poems which express Yeats’s skepticism about the possibility of conveying the idea of oneness to the everyday world, as well as his resistance to the mystical concept of oneness.