The philosophical idea behind ‘The Celtic Twilight’ has never properly been studied. My firm belief is that our full understanding of the work of Yeats is impossible without our thorough recognition of his philosophical idea behind ‘The Celtic Twilight’ in his poetic development. That is why I am going to offer this study as a beginning of the exploration of ‘The Celtic Twilight’ in order to throw light on his literary ideal in his formative years. The Celtic Twilight School, of which W. B. Yeats was the acknowledged, became fashionable during the nineties and had considerable influence: its delicate impressionism, its shadowy themes, other-worldly longings and subtle wavering rhythms were in accord with the Fin de Siecle Movement. ‘The Celtic Twilight’ of the last decade of the century was no new phenomenon in literature. It was essentially a re-naming and re-ordering of a familiar trait, the ‘folk spirit’, marked by the heightened passions and superstitions common to all literature rising from the people, and given new life by the recent scientific studies of folklore and myth culminating in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough in 1890. In addition, it possessed a strong tendency towards melancholy which attracted the mystics of Maeterlinck’s school. But the new elements in ‘The Celtic Twilight’ was a sense of place, as opposed to a vague atmosphere. Life and mood became more pointed by the close relationship between nature and emotion. In a general sense this element of the Celtic spirit could be considered a natural outgrowth of the Pantheism or nature-worship of the Romantics influenced by the mystics’ renewed interest in Druidism; more specifically it arose from a self-conscious intellectual attempt to inject fresh life into well-known themes and develop a new approach to old form. The symbolist turns from the barren glass of the outer world to the truth embodied in his own heart. To be brought beyond the limitations of his individual being, however, and into communion with the Great Mind and Memory of the Universe, he needs also a ‘traditional mythology’. Yeats turned for this tradition and mythology to the legend and folklore of his own country, for like Synge and Lady Gregory he believed that Irish peasant was untouched by the materialism and scientific investigations resulting from the restless Renaissance, that the Irish peasant still maintained contact with the mystery and imagination that existed before man fell a slave to the external world. His search, consequently, was for the traditions which lay buried in peasants’ huts and cottages. Yeats was an Irish poet on one hand, and a poet interested in magic and occult on the other. Beginning in 1889, he began to integrate his interests and goals, attempting to become one man - an Irish poet, using Irish subject matter, welding into his technique and statements the substance of magic and mythology. As a poet with ambitions to make a ‘new utterance’, Yeats depended on what he could make of the Celtic past for two main reasons: first, his interests and beliefs had directed him toward finding a kind of Ur-mythology from the time when he first discovered the correspondence between Indian, Hermetic, Theosophic, and Blakean thought; second, and of equal importance, was his position as an outsider in contemporary Ireland, his position as an Anglo-Irishman. Yeats turned to pre-Christian Celtic mythology for the basis of his subject matter both to root his poetry and his own sense of being an Irish poet; he sought a mythology for his poetry and for himself. And he claimed that the artists through their “contact with the soil”, that is, the folk, could create a national literature, since folklore is “the soil where all great art is rooted”. Then he studied and used magic, visions, profound legends, Celtic mythologies, poetic traditions, folklore, and history of the Celtic past to make ‘the old culture of Celtic Ireland’ and ‘exaltation of life itself’ come alive and reaffirm the power of imagination and hope. Accordingly his poetry of ‘The Celtic Twilight’ is an affirmation of folklore and mythology. Folklore and mythology are the tools with which to open the Celtic past, make it present, and thus create a great art rooted in the soil of Folk-belief. Folklore was in Yeats’s eyes the perfect expression of the intermediate world in which gods and mortals met, because the peasants regarded the natural objects around him as signs of divine essences. They had, like the ancient Greeks, mythologized their ‘haunted’ surroundings in stories passed on to many later generations through an oral tradition, thus not only preserving the truth about the divine reality, but also producing a heritage still applicable to everyday life. Yeats claimed that Ireland had created ‘the most beautiful literature of a whole people that had been anywhere since Greece and Rome’, while English literature is ‘yet the literature of a few’. The reason was that ‘Irish stories had been made to be spoken or sung’, while English literature ‘had all but completely shaped itself in the printing-press’. Therefore Yeats’s literary ideal was to bridge the written and unwritten traditions, to establish a learned literary tradition on emotions that came from the heart of the people, and to create from the shock of new material and from a tradition that had never found expression in sophisticated literature a new style, a new mood of the soul. In his poetic career he has sought out an ‘image that blossoms a rose’ deep in the heart, an image that makes ‘all nature murmur in response if but a single note be touched’, and has created a literature that ‘taps the secret spring of all our lives’ and achieves the enduring beauty of great art.

This paper is to get away from contemporary literary criticism and discourse concerning Yeats and Eliot. This is not to ignore the features of contemporary culture which are changing rapidly, including modernism to postmodernism. Yet, I want to focus on the poem itself. With the poems of both poets dealing with the same topic coincidently, I concentrate on the different aspects of modern poetry and importance of style from the two poets. Also, I believe that such aspects and difference in style will dedicate to understanding contemporary culture from their different points of view of the world and religion. This view helps us to understand today’s cultural facets from which we can experience a variety of lifestyles. Especially, religious points of view by the two poets help us see the relations of religion with today’s culture, the religion which might not be considered serious today in a general sense. The poem, “The Magi,” is thus delivered in this paper to see such religious significance as suggested from various literary symbols they are using in their poetry. Eliot tries to find the way in which ultimate happiness of human beings comes from the life in religious dimension; whileas Yeats wants to possess a complete life on a different level, that is the world of poetry. Such visions are well suggested in the poem, “The Magi.” Eliot discovers a Christian life from which people can experience a new vision in today’s difficult times. Yet, Yeats explores a new life in arts. The former is dreaming of a Christian kingdom while the latter is dreaming of a visionary kingdom. These differences command the style and form of the two poets. In this respect, Yeats gets over Eliot’s prejudice on him. So, the two poets should not be evaluated on the basis of time. They should be taken into account from a variety of perspectives, not from any fixed ones, with the different values they are suggesting beyond time and place.

This paper starts with the hypothesis that Irish literature should be different from English literature in theme, feeling and the technique of expression. The differences the writer has found so far are as follows: the search for the father-omphalos, the personification of nature, the recognition of sex as an origin of creation, the search for aesthetics of darkness, the attachment to silence, the spirit of wandering, the cyclic view of the world and dramatic self-awareness, etc. Since the end of the 19th century, the Irish writers’ strong attachment to their own tradition has been expressed as their reaction to a sense of lack as reflected in terms such as “center,” “omphalos,” and “search for father.” This phenomenon accounts for the birth of Irish national literature. From Oscar Wilde and Bernard Show in the 19th century to the recent poet, Seamus Heaney, they tried to deanglicize and create their own literature. But through this process, they have not neglected the chance to become a master of the international literature, by using the language of enemy. And each writer has a peculiar method of deanglicizing. For example, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Show who contributed to cosmopolitanism of modern Irish literature attacked and illuminated the English audiences by the reversing play-role. Understanding the enhanced nationalism, W.B. Yeats and other revivalists of Irish literature integrated English culture and tradition into the nationalistic movement. This is why their works were called “the cracked glass of the servants.” J. Joyce and other modernists, in a genuine sense, sought for their original nationality and to do this, they tried to recognize the picture of themselves as paralysis. From the establishment of the Irish Republic to the recent, strong nationalism and internationalism, as it has grown as one of the European countries, have been reconciled. Modern Irish literature has succeeded in regaining its own tradition and reaching top as one of the international literatures, getting through the five phases. During the first phase it showed the spirit to reverse the English cultural system and value by preempting the role of the English. The second phase is the period when they stimulated the national feeling and praised national heros. At the third phase modernists including Joyce, Kinsella, and Clarke attacked the nationalism of the second phase, saying that it was like a bubble full of the imagination the English wanted, and they exposed the realistic viewpoint of Irish life to their literary works. The fourth phase shows the reconciliation between parochialism of P. Kavanagh and cosmopolitanism of J. Montague. The fifth phase shows that with the enforcing of nationalism caused by the Ulster Trouble, harmony of nationalism and internationalism has been sought. The most important element that has led modern Irish literature to the top level is the spirit of omphalos through their confidence in their own culture and the sense of lack, and thereby the attachment to losses in language, land and tradition. Besides these, modern Irish writers haveoriented from the early period the Irish Republic towards an international country. The harmony of regionalism and cosmopolitanism, as well as that of individual interests and community interests, has led the Irish Republic to become one of the best postcolonial countries and cultural models.

보다 풍요하고 진실된 예이츠 시 원전 연구를 위한 방법론 개발의 한 일환으로서 시학 설정을 통한 비교연구를 시도하였다. 시학이 시문학 비평의 일반적 원칙을 설정하는 작업이라고 할 때, 예이츠 시와 동양시학을 비교연구 하면서 상호공통점과 그 성격을 발견할 수 있었다. 그 과정에서 선시적 직관적 이해를 중시하면서, 예이츠의 시적 특성을 몇가지 측면에서 정리할 수 있었다. 우선 그의 아일랜드 특성과 동양적, 더 나아가 한국적 정서의 공통성을 이원적으로 살펴보았다. 그 중에서도 감정의 승화과정이 동양적 공통성을 보이며, 한국의 한(恨)과도 유사한 감성 형태를 보여주었다. 다음으로, 그의 시는 드라마 중심보다는 서정시 중심의 표현 형태를 가지며, 그의 시성향은 자기 승화적인 점진적, 발전적, 긍정적 성향을 보이며, 영적 성장의 최후단계에서만 약간 망설이는 정신성이 발견된다. 또 그의 시는 언어중심보다는 총체적 상황(Context) 중심으로 이해되어야 하며, 그의 시는 동양시처럼 전거적(典據的)이기보다는 개인 창조력 중심의 시성이 강하다. 그의 시는 계량적 요소(시형론, 음운 등)보다는 내용적 요소가 중시되어야 한다. 이렇게 잠정적으로 설정된 예이츠 시학의 틀로서 “내전 시대의 명상시(Meditations in Time of Civil War)”의 일곱 번째 시, “나는 증오와 충심(充心) 그리고 무심(無心)의 환영을 보노라(I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart’s Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness)”를 보편적, 비교문학적 해석으로 적용해보았다.