Reading on "The Wind Among the Reeds": Two-Way Dreaming Process of Speaker-Hearer toward Supremacy
Yeats's "The Wind Among the Reeds" shows that the sound/voice he finds in the reeds of his mind is reshaped at the first phase as the host(ghost) of the air and at the later phases as a specific object, such as a Perfect/White Beauty. In the present valley where the passion of the Shadowy Horse runs rampantly, the poet yearns for the unappeasable host(ghost) to be animated or transformed into a meaningful expression, the soul of language, and its own self-expression. This repetitive images have three self-expressive entities: Speaker, Hearer, and Dreamer. The dreamer mourns and pleads for the ideal objectivity of his beloved Beauty, and speaks to the blessed. By speaking or expressing, he transforms himself into a creative speaker. He speaks out his heart, moods, love towards the Secret Rose. At the same time he hears himself. The signifier of the speaker reiterates itself as the signified for the hearer. The hearer, losing all travail of passion and windy voices, understands his own passivity and past greatness. This dual process of "speaking himself hear" and "hearing himself speak" turns out to be "auto-affection". The external love toward the Beauty reverses to the internal love. It is the absolute reduction of his poetic mind and purity to fit for univesality. His subjectivity, voices, consciousness, and passions, by way of the immediate repetition/reduction/auto-affection, turn ino heart-rendering poetry of affectivity and universality. It is one of the elements that make his poetry great.