Every artist tries to attempt to search for ‘self’ through his own medium. It is the same with a writer, especially a poet. W.B.Yeats, a poet and poetic dramatist, had also tried to achieve ‘Unity of Being’ through his poems and poetic dramas. But in the case of Yeats, the development process of his ideas and theories is said to have played an important part in his search for self, that is, Unity of Being. The purpose of this paper is to examine and define the search for self through the development process of his ideas and thoeries. Yeats's dissatisfaction with science, materialism and empiricism led him to join the Dublin Hermetic Society in 1886 in which he acquired “the doctrine of reincarnation”, “the theory of correspondences,” and the idea that “all existences are arranged cyclically” from Madame Blavatsky, the leader of the Society. Turning against the Society's asceticism and Blavatsky's dogmas, Yeats took part in the so-called “the Order of Golden Dawn” led by MacGregor Mathers. Yeats was initiated into Mathers' Kabbalism, European Rosicrucianism. So he came to believe that there exists the symbolic system in the process of human soul. He also studied William Blake and was interested in Blake's ideas of “the four Zoas” and “the four-fold vision.” He developed Blake's ideas into his own theory of “Quarternity” as well as into his idea of four Faculties (Will, Mask, Craetive Mind, and Body of Fate). In 1925, he compiled the ideas and theories which he learned from various sources into a systematic organization in A Vision, in which he described his vision chiefly in terms of the idea of the “Great Wheel”. Yeats's vision of cyclical progress of human soul revealed in the idea of the “Great Wheel” is thus not only the ground of his understanding of human life and national history but a part of his search for self, his Unity of Being.

• 김태윤 | Kim Tae Yoon