Yeats and Blake consistently used rhetorical counter-questions whenever they expressed spiritual ambivalence of human existence throughout their poetry. Although Yeats was influenced by Blake, he explored different subject matters to express diverse ambivalence. While Yeats focused on ambivalent fusion of spiritual and physical conflicts, Blake focused on ambivalent integration of theological, social, and moral conflicts.
Yeats used rhetorical counter-questions to express the ambivalent unseen reality in "The Second Coming," "Among School Children," "Leda and Swan," and "Meditations in Time of Civil War." "Beast" in "The Second Coming," "dancer" in "Among School Children," Helen in "Leda and Swan," and "dream" in "Towards Break of Day" connote fusion images of opposing objects to evoke many aspects of one thing by using rhetorical counter-question.
Also, Blake used rhetorical counter-questions to express the ambivalent spiritual, social, and ethical reality in "Tyger" and "A Little Boy Lost." Especially, Blake qualified spiritual ambivalence through various images of fire in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" in that fire includes associated meanings of heaven and hell. Most of Blake's spiritual poems often begins with a rhetorical counter-question and ends with a rhetorical counter-question to strengthen the significance of ambivalent archetypal cycle.
Although both poets differ from each other on human spiritual value, they used rhetorical counter-questions to free from religious, political, moral, social, and traditional repression in their poetry. In this sense, men are making meanings through their mystic imagination which is free from religion and tradition rather than scientific reason. Therefore, Yeats and Blake used rhetorical counter-questions to qualify open aspects of human imagination and to complete archetypal counter cycle.

• 이한묵(명지대학교) | Lee, Hanmook