Extensive Limit and Intensive Infiniteness of Language in Yeats's Later Poetry
Symbolism is central in Yeats’s work. His symbols can be thought of as many sided crystals, which “grow from solutions of traditions, from the dissolved thoughts of many minds”(Henn 146). They are the context of meaning, allowing for multiple interpretations and variations within themselves. Yeats believes the perceived difference between the language of poetry and that of ordinary speech to be arbitrary, arguing, “we should write out our thoughts in as nearly as possible the language we thought them in.” After 1900 Yeats’s style changed radically as he worked toward simplicity, reducing the use of adjectives, and aiming for a harmony of metaphor, symbol, and diction more natural, vigorous, and sincere. The most complex facet of Yeats’s poetry is perhaps its linguistic subtlety and nondiscursiveness. He does not tell the reader what to think, but aims to evoke emotion or feelings through particularly resonant imagery. This article aims to argue that symbols in Yeats are not fixed at an unique point, but ubiquitous at any point, and therefore are infinite. The first part of the article examines, in the process of proving infinity in symbol, picturesque images in later poems, which are analyzed from the point of view of Benjamin’s language theory. The second part addresses the argument that Yeats intends to reveal, through picturesque images, not material objects but emotion and feelings, or the mental life via images. The last part argues that symbols in Yeats’s poetry are infinite, as reflects the infinitude of language as his medium.