This article discusses A Vision so it could be of some help to reading some of Yeats's metaphysical poems. It is true that some of his metaphysical poems are so beautiful but that it is not easy to grasp what they really want to say to the readers, and how and why they appear so haunting and attracting to the general readers. Equally important is that the book itself is a poem of supreme beauty. There are two versions of A Vision. The first version Yeats privately published in 1925. His wife Georgie was a medium, through whom Yeats had talked with his teachers/gods for seven years; as a result, he created a system that classifies man into 28 types following the 28 phases of the moon, made a theory of reincarnation, a history of the world, based on the cyclical and antithetical nature of the moon and the gyre. The second version became a new book. Yeats revised the first version, deleting, adding, polishing much of it, and published it two years before he died. While composing the first book, Yeats said he did not read philosophy, because he did not want himself to be under the influence of the philosophy and distort what his teachers said through the automatic writing. He did read philosophy, however, for four years, to understand his wife's automatic writing accurately, when he revised it for the second publication. Yeats questioned what he had invented, and further contemplated big questions intellectuals of his time raised. All of these efforts grew to be the book of the century that is most elaborate, most abstract and most concrete as well. It is both a book of beauty itself and a book for reading his poetry and plays and his thoughts.

• 이영석(한양대학교) | Rhee, Young Suck