예이츠의 춤 이미지는 ｢장미 연금술｣(Rosa Alchemica)에 등장한 화자의 다이몬과의 춤 이미지를 이해하면 보다 더 정확하게 이해할 수 있다. 예이츠의 춤은 1) 환상을 불러일으키는 상징, 2) 꿈을 꾸기, 3) 대립적인 마스크의 발견 4) 자신의 마스크를 착용하고 다이몬과 불멸의 춤을 추기, 5) 꿈에서 깨어나 현실로 되돌아오기와 같은 순환적 과정을 겪는다. 이러한 순환에서 무용수는 춤과 춤사위, 육체와 정신, 자아와 영혼을 하나로 통합하고, 탐욕, 성냄, 어리석음을 완전히 소멸시켜 불교의 열반의 과정과 같은 의식에 도달함으로써 마침내 ‘존재의 통합’을 이룩한다. 그래서 춤 이미지는 ‘존재의 통합’에 이르는 다양한 방법 중의 한 가지 과정이며, 이 과정이 바로 메루산의 산정에 도달하는 길과 유사하다.

예이츠의 후기 작품은 󰡔비전󰡕에 제시된 가이어의 원리측면에서 볼 때 보다 더 정확하게 이해될 수 있다. 가이어는 4가지 능력들인 ‘의지’, ‘마스크’, ‘창조적 정신’, ‘운명체’로 구성되어 대립과 갈등을 일으키면서 1상에서부터 28상까지 순환을 한다. 이러한 순환에서 의식은 2번의 통합을 성취하는데, ‘대립적’ 상에서는 ‘존재의 통합’을, ‘기본적’상에서는 ‘신과의 통합’과 ‘자연과 통합’을 성취한다. 예이츠의 ‘존재의 통합’은 ‘대립적’ 상에서 비극적 삶을 있는 그대로 수용할 때에 비극적 환희에 도달하는 지혜를 얻어 그 결과로 성취된다.

This paper is an attempt to discuss Yeats’s ultimate reality. Yeats’s Unity of Being can be said to be similar to the system of Upanishad’s AUM because AUM is the combination of Brahman and Atman. Upanishad’s ascetic realized that Atman, reaching to a state of Turiya, can be Brahman. Subject and object, Atman and Brahman, dancer and dance, and the Four Principles and the Four Faculties also become one in Turiya. As we would identify Atman with our self, Brahman is our self-consciousness. Moreover, if we would identify Atman with our body, Brahman become a cosmos that reveals itself. Yeats understood the Self, the ultimate reality, through Upanishad. His macrocosm was made up of Husk, Passionate Body, Spirit, and Celestial Body and his microcosm was made of Will, Mask, Creative mind, and Body of Fate. In A Vision, the Four Principles, which consists of Husk, Passionate Body, Spirit, and Celestial Body affected individually and complementarily the Four Faculties which consists of Will, Mask, Creative mind, and Body of Fate. Spirit and Celestial Body are mind and its object, while Husk and Passionate Body are sense and the object of sense. Will and Mask are will and its object, while Creative Mind and Body of Fate are thought and its object. The whole system is based upon the belief that the Self falls in human consciousness. Robartes, from self-contained energy of contemplation, encompassed cyclic system in “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes”. He strayed away from the physical world, found his way into the supernatural world, and returned to the physical world again. Robartes's first vision is the state of total objectivity in which no human life exists. It is identical with U of Upanishad and Mask of the Four Faculties. And his second vision is, then, the state of total subjectivity, Sushupti, which unifies subject and thought, object and idea. It is the same as M of Upanishad and Creative Mind of the Four Faculties. However, he momentarily reaches eternity, Turiya, through the multiple contemplation. It is AUM of Upanishad and Body of Fate of the Four Faculties. In Turiya, Brahman and Atman, Buddha and Sphinx, dancer and Helen are integrated into one and accomplish the ultimate reality as a phaseless sphere. In conclusion, Yeats showed Unity of Being in “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes”. His Unity of Being is a kind of Turiya of Upanishad. He attains the Ultimate Reality completely, in which subject and object, macrocosm and microcosm, Brahman and Atman, the Four Principles and the Four Faculties are unified in the space without the time. He achieves the ultimate reality as an eternal instant. This ultimate reality is Yeats’s Unity of Being.

From the beginning of his career as a poet, William Butler Yeats made serious efforts to learn and master the complex and abstruse Indian religious-philosophical- artistic system and tried to learn Indian philosophy system which he could use in his poems and other works. But what he borrowed from his Indian sources depended upon what he liked at a particular phase of his career, and upon his own ideas of art during that phase. Whether he liked the ascetic aspects or the life-affirming aspects of Indian philosophy was decided by his temperament as well as his changing ideas of art. For example, in the early part of his life when he was so feeble and weak as to escape into unrealistic world, his interest in asceticism, contemplation and the search for truth was strengthened through his own reading and associating with Chatterji. In his middle phase of life, after meeting Tagore and reading his Gitanjali, he learned the Upanishadic idea of the self. In his later part of life when he affirmed and accepted life and this world as a natural condition, he met Shri Purohit Swami. Under the influence of Swami his ideas of art once again favored celebrating the supernatural, but simultaneously they were glorifying human passions. Sexuality and passion appeared to him aspects that could be sung about with intimacy. Instinct began to appear to him very sacred. He was turning to another phase of Indian philosophy which attributes sacredness to spontaneity. Yeats began to integrate the natural and the supernatural through his art so that his art becomes a new religion with spiritual overtones and with the warmth of the passions of life.

Imagination is an important instrument in a poet’s creation. Imagination is sometimes said to be derived from the longing and desire for the absent objects. Therefore the dynamic imagination, necessary for creating good poems, can be sustained by the opposition and conflict between dualistic worlds such as the ideal and the realistic, eternity and time. But sometimes poets are tempted to be absorbed into abstract imagination with which they can escape into supernatural world while ignoring the real world. This abstract imagination can be called the limits of imagination. This paper is aimed at studying how abstract imagination worked in W. B. Yeats’s early poems and what kind of poetic world he reached after overcoming the limits of his imagination. In his early poems, unrealistic and ideal perfection was sought as a result of his self which was too weak and feeble to accept the painful world. As a reflection of his weak self, unrealistic images distant from here and now, such as legendary heroes, fairies and the eternal rose, were used in his early poems and created an eternal world into which he could escape from the real. But as his self developed and changed into a more mature and harder state, he was able to accept and overcome the despair and tragedy caused in his actual world. In his later period his self developed and intensified enough to accept even death as his natural destiny, and to remake himself and the world with his creative mind, with which he could overcome the limits of imagination. Finally after overcoming the limits of his imagination, he attained a state of wisdom called ‘tragic gaiety’. Tragic gaiety is a kind of vision in which Yeats was able to embody eternity in the temporal world.

This paper aims to study the transformation of Yeats and his poems through alchemy. Yeats was a spiritualist who believed in the soul and life after death. However, European society and culture had been dominated since the 18th century by rationalism and materialism, which were opposed to spiritualism. Thus the period and society in which Yeats lived were diffused with materialism and rationalism. The prevailing commercialism, materialism, realism and democracy of the period were derived from such materialistic and rational thought. Nevertheless, spiritualistic movements which tried to restore spirit and inspiration developed both before and after the beginning of the 20th century. Mysticism, symbolism, the pre-Raphalite movement and aristocracy could be said to be included in these movements. Yeats was also deeply interested and involved in mysticism and symbolism, especially alchemy which had been handed down secretly as a part of mysticism. To him alchemy functioned as a kind of instrument for transforming and developing himself and his art. Alchemy originally aimed to transform base metals into gold, to extract the fine from the coarse, and to redeem spirit from matter. But some philosophers and artists allowed themselves to become objects of alchemical transformation. They were inclined to use alchemy as an instrument to achieve their spiritual development and secular perfection. In his earlier period, Yeats tried to escape into the “essence” through alchemical practice, but later he used alchemy as a means to develop and create himself and his art. For example, in his earlier poems, he attempted to fly into the supernatural world through the rose image which he learned from alchemical principles, and he was able to attain a spiritual union with Maud Gonne through a spiritual marriage. The rose and the spiritual marriage, however, can be said to be unrealistic concepts in which there is only an ascent to heaven but no a descent back to earth. But after his marriage with Hyde-Lees, he recognized and accepted the materialistic world, including desire and the life instinct, by fulfilling both the ascent to heaven and the descent to earth as part of alchemical principles. Therefore he can be said to be an alchemical poet who was able to achieve secular perfection and spiritual development in the materialistic world through alchemical discipline and development.