W. B. Yeats began to write his works when Ireland was struggling for its independence from England. Young Yeats hoped to be a national poet and was naturally concerned about the future of his fatherland. The way Yeats chose for his country was a cultural one, not a military or political one. He believed in the Irish people’s artistic sensibilities and believed that his country could be a healthier and better country than England through the ’Unity of Culture’. Yeats was attracted to drama because of its usefulness as a public art. He wanted to establish a national drama based on Irish folklore and myth. He believed that drama could achieve or revive the ’Unity of Culture’ which he equated with the national unity of Ireland. Yeats’s main idea was that to achieve ’Unity of Culture’, the support of common people for art would be essential. Yeats’s early play, The King’s Threshold shows the unity of the poet and common people well. The story is based on an Irish myth. The king, a man of action, banishes Seanchan the poet, a man of words, from his court (affairs of state) and the poet choose to die on a hunger-strike for his rights in the court, that is, for the value of art in society. The poet works for the common people and expects their support, of which the king is much afraid. The King’s Threshold dramatizes the theme that concerned Yeats so deeply, the role of art in society. And another main point of the play is that poetry transcends politics. Yeats satirizes the defects and deficiencies of a society which no longer recognizes the artist’s role. But the poet dies, and we are not shown any effect that his death may have had on either society or the individual. The modern Irish people were not what the young poet had expected. Though the young poet’s dream for the ’Unity of Culture’ may be naive, the play shows us Yeats’s view of art and his belief in the poet’s role in society.

G.M. Hopkins had stayed in Ireland for 5 years until he died and spent his hardest time in his livelihood but best time for his literature. He had converted to Catholic in his youth and became a priest at last, in spite of the objection of his family. That is a kind of ideal-searching decision but it also means a spiritual seclusion in England which is ruled by Anglican Church. As a priest he was full of humanity, love of people, especially for low class poor persons, and always felt pity for their miserable lives. And he wanted all the English people choose the real religion, Catholic, and get bettered in their spirit, but he cannot but disappointing in their vulgarity and hypocrisy. Anyhow he had very sensitive and self-conscious personality to cope with all this situation bravely. When he went to Ireland as a teacher of Greek in University College, he might have felt a kind of friendship to Irish people through their religion, Catholic. But Irish people has had deep hostility to English people because of their historical background. And there was booming a mood of nationalism against England in those days when Hopkins stayed in Dublin. Of course, it was very hard to teach Irish young students full of hostility to English people. And his health grew worse and worse. In that miserable situation, he seemed to feel a kind of desperation that God discarded him. We can find his alone and isolated situation in the sonnet “To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life“ and more deep and private sentiment in another sonnet “I wake and feel the fell of dark“. It is ironical that his hard life made him write such good sonnets. His hard life was over with the sonnet “Thou art indeed just, Lord“ where he reconciles with his God at last. In conclusion, his staying in Ireland was a good opportunity for his poetry, his literary achievement.

예이츠(W. B. Yeats)는 화가를 아버지로, 화가 수업을 받은 시인이었다. 시인으로 성장하면서 문인 못지 않게 여러 화가들과 예술가적 환경에서 생활하였는데, 그의 저술 여기저기에 회화에 대한 언급이 많다. 따라서 그의 시의 형성에는 화가적 시학이 깊이 뿌리내리고 있다고 보아도 틀리지 않다는 전제가 이 논문의 바탕이 된다. 그리고 그의 시작 초기에 결정적 영향을 준 사람이 시인이며 화가인 영국의 대표적 낭만주의 시인인 블래이크(William Blake)이다. 예이츠는 이 시인을 두 번에 걸쳐 편집하고, 곧 이어서 두 편의 글 “회화의 상징성” (1898년)과 “시의 상징성” (1900년)을 발표한다. 이 작업을 통해 예이츠시의 골격이 형성되었다고 해도 과언이 아니다. 이 시기의 시들은 회화의 상징주의와 잘 비교 대조된다. 이 시기 이전의 예이츠는 힘이 부족한 것처럼 보인다. 예이츠시는 본질적으로 고전적인 회화적 형상성을 처음부터 보이나 상징적 특정이 가미되면서 시는 더욱 깊어진다. 예이츠 시의 또 다른 특성은 추상성이다. 이 특성은 예이츠가 의도적으로 시도했다기보다 선구적인 그의 기질이 이런 시를 만들게 했다고 보인다. 추상주의 미술은 아직 등장하지 않았으나, 예이츠는 “추상”이라는 용어를 종종 사용한다. 이러한 회화와 시 읽기에서 다루어지는 작품과 작가는 들라크루와(Delacroix)와 예이츠, 예이츠와 셰익스피어, 「레다와 백조」(Leda and the Swan)와 「비너스와 아도니스」(Venus and Adonis), 블래이크와 예이츠 및 「방울 달린 모자」(The Cap and Bells,) 귀스타브 모로(Gustave Moreau)와 예이츠, 모로의 회화작품들, 「쿨 장원의 야생 백조」(The Wild Swans at Coole)와 후기인상파 화가들 및 모로, 예이츠와 화가 시인 컴밍스(e e cummings) 등이다.

Baile and Aillinn, based on a pagan myth of ancient Ireland, is a long narrative poem which expresses Yeats’s private love story along with his deep interest in his fatherland and its national literature. Naturally, Yeats enlarged the simple plot of the story which tells about the two lovers’ death and their going to live in Aengus’s land among the dead. He also partly created his own private myth in order to transmit his many-folded intent. By clothing each mythical character with a role and symbol appropriate for his purpose, he succeeded in making his poem overcome the limitation of private utterance and making it a poem with both individuality and universality. The death of Baile and Aillinn has a duplicate symbolic meaning. Firstly, their death is an inevitable ritual process to get an eternal beatitude through the union after death and a sort of sublimation of a tragic love, in which we can glimpse at the poet’s plaintive love for Gonne. Secondly, their death is a kind of ritual murder symbolizing a Messianism of the Irish desiring for liberation from inveterate poverty and oppression over time. In conclusion, Baile and Aillinn is an excellent piece showing Yeats’s seasoned poetic technique of creating a poem with new meaning through mythologizing with great subtlety not only his own autobiographical elements but also the national feelings of the Irish people.

Yeats was interested in imagination as he was familiar with the function and value of imagination. For him, Imagination is a kind of creative principle; it is like an almighty divine god. By using and developing the power of imagination we can do anything. The ultimate aim of imagination is to create a paradise in this world from now to eternity. It is, however, too difficult to make such images, as we wish to. Though difficult, it is not impossible to do so. According to Bergson, the possible and the real are not essentially different qualities; they are originally the same attributes; furthermore, all material things are to be formed by the gathering together of images―the world of imagination consists of numerous images. Thus, we, with the marvellous power of imagination, can have the infinite power and intelligence, which resemble those of God. Nonetheless, we are sad for many human conditions that restrict us. But Yeats praises the human souls that overcome such conditions with full arduous life. As he awakens mentally, he comes to find the concept of taking pains -labor-; he needs to make constant efforts to realize the imagination as he wants it, wholeheartedly. To Yeats, such a hard process of living itself is man's sublimity. He concludes that in struggling against the terrible condition of life man will come closer to the attributes of God.

“Politics,” the last of W. B. Yeats’s Collected Poems (Richard Finneran’s New Edition), ends with the poet's wish for fulfillment of sexual desire and love: “But O that I were young again / And held her in my arms.” Yeats wrote this poem in May 1938, eight months before his death. In another poem, “A Prayer for Old Age,” written in 1934, the poet prays that he “may seem . . . A foolish, passionate man.” In these and other poems of Yeats’s last years, “lust and rage” really seem to “dance attendance upon [his] old age” and “spur [him] into song” (“The Spur”). This paper is an attempt to understand the last years of Yeats’s life and poetry in terms of sexuality and love. The first part of this paper discusses the Steinach operation which Yeats underwent in 1934, when he was 68 years old. Although it is uncertain that the operation had brought the poet the expected “second puberty,” it seems to have had an psychologically positive effect upon his writing of poetry. During the last five years after the operation, Yeats wrote almost fifty poems, which is surprising number considering his old age and precarious health. In this part of the paper, the present writer reads some poems in which the poet's feeling and thought about sexuality and love in these final years of his life are most clearly expressed: “A Prayer for Old Age,” “The Spur,” “The Wild Old Wicked Man,” and the sequence of “Supernatural Songs.” After the operation Yeats met Margot Ruddock, Dorothy Wellesley, Ethel Mannin, and Edith Shackleton Heald, all of them being young, pretty, and intelligent women. They were poets (Ruddock and Wellesley), a novelist (Mannin), and a journalist (Heald). The second part of this paper deals with the poet’s meetings with these women, and reads the poems which are based upon, and reveal the nature of, their relations: “Margot,” “Sweet Dancer,” “A Crazed Girl,” “To Dorothy Wellesley,” and “The Three Bushes.”

The focus of study in this paper is put on the comparison of symbolism manifested in the world of W. B. Yeats’ poetry and the thoughts of Master Won-hyo.. The comparing works include the identification of their understanding ways of life. The symbols in common to bridge W. B. Yeats and Master Won-hyo are, for instance, circle, cone, cycle, sphere, spiral, wheel, vehicle, etc. Such a sign symbolizes a round thing, in another expression, the world or the cosmos where man belongs to. The phenomenological world or the cosmos by oriental thoughts is represented as the 28 phases of the moon, ranging from the dark moon(objectivity) to the full moon(subjectivity), which according to W. B. Yeats’ theory are identified the same kinds of character of man. Won-hyo(元曉, 617～686), a life-long friend of another Buddhist Master Ui-sang., insisted on the necessity for every living being to return to the foundation of the One Mind(一心), which is the original state of being, in another words, or “Ultimate Reality” to which every living being has to return. The Hwa-yen Sutra(華嚴經), a rare scripture of Mahayana Buddhism(大乘佛敎), emphasizes that the Ultimate Reality is the Source of One Mind of Won-hyo. We can say that Mahayana Buddhism teaches every living being the way to return to the world of the Ultimate Reality by great vehicle of "Mahayana"(大乘) in sanskrit. Another principle of Hwa-yen philosophy may be expressed as "All in one, one in all. One is all, all is one"(一中一切一切中一, 一卽一切一切卽一). "The Six Aspects"(六相) is interpretated by the principle. The mutual relationships are harmonized between the whole and a part, between the unity of the whole and the diversity of the part, and between the completion of the whole and the self-denial of the part. The One Mind is synonymous with the Great Vehicle with great wheels, which return to the Source of One Mind, the original state of being, or the Ultimate Reality( or Nirvana). The meaning of the One Mind may be expanded to the synonym of the existential world or the cosmos, at the center of which the One Mind lies. Accordingly, The One Mind, the Great Vehicle or Great Wheel and the World has a similar analogy, which make a system of symbolism, so called “Yeatsian gyre theory.” Yeats imagined a spiral, which he preferred to call a gyre) or whirling cone. Then two such cones were drawn and considered to pass like the human soul through a cycle from subjectivity to objectivity. These cones were imagined as interpenetrating, whirling around inside one another, one subjective, the other objective. The cones were not restricted to symbolizing objectivity and subjectivity. They were beauty and truth, value and fact, particular and universal, quality and quantity, abstract and concrete, and the living and the dead. Yeats thought that he had discovered in the figure of interpenetrating gyres the archetypal pattern which is mirrored and remirrored by all life, by all movements of civilization or mind or nature. Man or movement is conceived of as moving from left to right and then from right to left. No sooner is the fullest expansion of the objective cone reached than the counter-movement towards the fullest expansion of the subjective cone begins. These movements slide to the 28 phases of the moon. The dark moon, in the course of wane and wax sways to the full moon. The different 28 patterns of the moon is mirrored by all life or mind, ranging from the highest state of subjective mind(the 15th phase: the full moon) to the highest cast of objective mind(the 1st phase; the dark moon). In the long run, the world which Won-hyo and Yeats seek for as an ideal space of mind is a unified one, into which melted are the binominal opposites such as objectivity and subjectivity, the sacred and the profane, the bishop and Jane, fair and foul, the dancer and the dance, beauty and truth, value and fact, particular and universal, quality and quantity, abstract and concrete, and the living and the dead.

W. B. Yeats is one of the most important philosophical poets who tried to incorporate history, society, art, and literature in their poems. He proved that the human desire to create the 'Self' through the literature was possible. The developmental process of his literature shows a long way to his destination : freedom of the human soul. It was natural that he has accepted various Eastern and Western philosophies to achieve his goal. Yeats utilized the Indian thoughts in his works and he did it through his own ways. Moreover, he popularized the Indians spiritual life in his works. He tried hard to give an organic unity to his whole works. Especially, he expressed the results of his efforts along his life for his desire for the spirit and its freedom in a raw. It was an unavoidable thing to accept the Oriental thoughts to him, and they effected so much to him to remain in his spiritual world. Among them there was a Cyclical System from the Indian philosophy as a mystic experience to resolve the conflict. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the influences of Eastern philosophy on Yeats. Secondly, the developmental process of Cycle whose completed forms, such as a gyre or a circle, can be found in A Vision, are traced through the analysis of Yeats’s verse. The ultimate role of the system is the realization of the Unity of Being, which is the state of harmony and unity through the conflicts of the opposites such as life and death, subjectivity and objectivity, and soul and body, etc.

W. B. Yeats poetic purpose is to advocate to Sophia who is suffering in the world with mankind as a hidden God and the feminine principle in Christian Gnostic myth. He searched for two of Sophia’s aspects: Mother and Daughter Sophia. Yeats believed that Mother Sophia abodes in heaven. On the other hand, Daughter Sophia is suffering in the world, and he thought himself as a chosen man of the sole priest for Daughter Sophia. Yeats tried to dedicate his life for Daughter Sophia from his early rose poetry. The immortal rose is a symbol of Helen of Troy or Countess Cathleen who sacrificed her life for rescuing her people’s souls. Yeats also waited for the time of the recovery of Sophia’s glory again. The decided time is coming to follow the theory of the Gyres in A Vision. After dominating the masculine gyre for 2000 years, the androcentric society will disappear by returning to the feminine gyre. Yeats thought the new age would be dominated by Sophia who was not only feminine but androgynous. Yeats also called the new age a ‘rosy peace’ which is a symbol of ’Unity of Being’ and the immortal world. Yeats was eager to search for achieving ‘Unity of Being’ by uniting with Sophia. As he got older, he was a passionate old man who still indulged in Sophia. Yeats believed in Sophia as a hidden and defeated god. But when decided time comes, Sophia will be recovered her glory. In “The second coming,” Sophia as an androgynous god, is symbolized by the sphinx. Yeats often used to the sphinx image to explain Sophia. Especially, the sphinx is identified with the Judge of the Last Judgement. It is important to the symbol of Sphinx’s eyes; ‘a blank and pitiless as the sun.’ The sun symbolizes God’s fury of the Last Judgement as well as the unchangeable supernatural world. Sphinx’s eyes of the sun image are compared with the cat’s eyes of the moon. The moon is a symbol of the wheel of reincarnation and mortal world. In A Vision, the moon has 28 aspects as a symbol of the wheel of reincarnation. Sophia has controlled the souls after death by following the rules of the moon’s 28 aspects. Yeats symbolized Sophia as the Judge of all souls by portraying her as a ‘cook.’ On the contrary, when the sphinx comes, there will be no more the moon’s changeable aspects in the world. Therefore, although the sphinx looks like an evil image, it is only a symbol of Sophia. Yeats always wanted to be Sophia’s sole priest. So he was a Christian Gnostic priest just as W. Blake. In fact, he identified with Ribh who was his poetic hero as well as the Christian Gnostic priest. God’s fury and the rough sphinx image are paradoxical symbols of the God’s glory and the age of the rosy peace. The sphinx’s ‘pitiless eye’ is connected with the horseman’s ‘cold eye’ on his epitaph. The ‘cold eye’ is symbolized to achieve Yeats’s final poetic purpose, ‘Unity of Being.’ That is, the symbol suggested that Yeats would be a Daimon after his death.

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.

Yeats’s study of fairy had occupied him steadily for fifteen years from 1887 to 1902. He continued to study in connection with spiritualism until 1915. Yeats’s own collection of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry had been published in 1888, Irish Fairy Tales in 1892 and The Celtic Twilight in 1893 before he met Lady Gregory. Any theory about nature of the fairy-faith shared with her came from Yeats, and he claims originality. In writing The Celtic Twilight(1902) his study of fairy was deepened by his collecting trips with Lady Gregory. The result of Yeats’s collaboration with lady Gregory was not to appear until 1920 when she published her two volume edition of Visions and Beliefs in West of Ireland, “Collected and arranged by Lady Gregory: with two essays and notes by W. B. Yeats.” Yeats’s essays(both dated 1914) were “Swedenborg, Mediums and Desolate Places” and “Witches and Wizards in Irish Folk-lore.” Like all the Irish antiquarians, Yeats also commonly referred to the fairies as “the people of Raths,” “the Danaan nations,” “The Tribes of the Goddess Danu,” In Fairy and Folk Tales he explains the Galic terms. The Irish word for fairy is sheehogue[sidheog], a diminutive of “shee” in banshee. Fairies are deenee shee[daoine shee](fairy people) In Irish tradition anyone may be taken by the sidhe, but there is, in fact a hierarchy of those who are most desirable. Yeats follows this tradition in one of his first poems about the sidhe, “The Stolen Child.” As Yeats understood the Irish tradition, the sidhe can do nothing the help of mortals and it is for this reason that they must always seek out humans. When the sidhe takes someone that person is said to be “away.” As a spiritualist would interpret this, it means that the soul has left the body and is travelling with the fairies. Often when appears ill or asleep or “lies in a dead faint upon the ground” it is because that the person is “away.” The Sidhe, according to Yeats’s countrymen, never takes anyone or anything without leaving some changeling in its place. In The Only Jealousy of Emer―Yeats’s most successful and moving dramatization and use of a changeling― Emer guesses that Cuchulain is “away.” When people are taken to live with the sidhe, they take on supernatural powers and work and live just as the Shape Changers that they are amongst. The chief distinction to be made between the shide and the dead is that the dead returns to the earth as ghosts of their former selves, whereas the sidhes are the everlasting ones. The idea that the fairy faith is in reality a doctrine of souls was lent supported by the fact that the country people say that almost all who are dead are taken by the sidhes. As the place where souls temporarily reside, the middle land of the sidhe is the Bardo of the Tibetans, the summerland of the Spiritualists, and ethereal world of theosophy and magic. Yeats saw his studies of spiritualism as a continuation of his studies of fairy, both of them as leading to the beginning of his philosophy. His study of fairy led him to the formulation of two theories that makes his system possible―that of Anima Mundi and that of the “airy body” or “vehicle” of the soul. A Vision is the result of his study about the fairy.

예이츠, 엘리오트, 조이스등 모더니즘 문학작품 속에서 독자는 서구문명을 비판하는 목소리를 들을 수 있다. 모더니즘 문학은 르네상스 이후 4세기를 주도하면서 이루어낸 영국적 실용가치관이 주도한 현대문명을 비판한다. 가까이는 영국빅토리아 시대의 극단적인 형태의 정치, 경제, 도덕, 문화에 대한 공격인 것이다. 즉, 정치에 있어서는 제국주의, 경제에 있어서는 자본주의, 도덕과 문화에 있어서는 속물주의, 종교에 있어서는 기독교에 대한 반성과 해부를 그 특징으로 한다. 무엇보다 예술이 도덕, 정치, 종교의 시녀의 역할에서 벗어나 예술자체로 독립할 것을 주장한다. 따라서 예술은 그 실용성보다는 미 자체로 다시 태어날 것을 주장하고 있다. 예이츠의 부르주아 문명에 대한 비판은 그의 영적이고 시골적인 것을 찬미하는 기질과 그의 18세기 앵글로 아이리쉬 문화에 대한 애착 그리고 순진하고 신선한 원시성을 지닌 아일랜드 풍물에 대한 매튜 아놀드 같은 이의 찬미에 힘입어 주로 실용적 가치관으로 무장한 아일랜드 중산 계급의 심미적인 결핍을 공격하는 양상을 띤다. 한편, “재림”이라는 시에서는 서구문명의 해체까지를 예언하며, 또 한편으로 “비잔틴으로의 항해”에서는 예술에 의해서만 지배되는 세계를 그려낸다. 그의 문명비판의 특징을 좀 더 확실히 규명하기 위해, 서구 문명을 소유와 지배로 규정한 아도르노와 비교해 본 결과, 예이츠가 부르주아의 소유욕을 비판할 지라도 아도르노처럼, 서구 문명에 내재된 착취, 지배라는 사회학적 억압기재를 찾아내지 못했다. 돈과 실용적 가치관으로 무장한 자본주의에 심취한 부르주아는 죽음을 미적으로 승화시킬 능력이 없고 성적에너지를 자연스럽게 구가할 수 없었으므로 그의 공격 대상이 되었을 뿐이었다. 다시 말하면 예이츠는 아도르노처럼, 문명을 지배와 억압이라는 사회학적인 차원으로 비판하기보다는 시적 가치와 미적인 삶을 충실히 구가할 수 없게 하는 파괴자로 인식한 것이다. 그런데 예이츠가 지배의 구조를 서구 문명 안에서 찾아내지 못한 것과 달리 그는 예술로만 지배되는 이상적 국가를 제시한 점은 그 역시 부르주아로서의 지배 욕구를 나타낸 것으로 볼 수 있다. 다시 말하면 예이츠는 문명의 속성인 지배를 향유한 계급으로서 지배와 착취의 현장을 외면했으며 피지배자들을 동정하기보다 그들의 미적인 결핍을 지적했다. 특히 그가 예술로만 지배되는 파시즘적인 미학을 가진 것에서 그의 부르주아로서의 지배이데올로기는 살아있다고 말 할 수밖에 없다. 예이츠와 대다수 아일랜드인의 공동 목표는 아일랜드적 문화를 만들려는 데서는 공통점을 보일지라도 정치와 경제적 독립을 이루는 면에 있어, 서로의 감각은 매우 큰 차이를 드러냈다고 평가된다. 그 당시 대다수의 아일랜드인들이 예이츠의 문학을 “노예의 깨어진 거울”로 평가 절하시킨 것이라든지 아일랜드 내에서 예이츠 미학에 대해 별로 호응이 없었던 것도 예이츠가 자신의 시에서 착취당하는 자와 착취의 현장을 외면한 것과 어느 정도 관련이 있다. 즉, 정치와 경제, 사회계급에 민감했던 아일랜드 중산계층은 예이츠의 예술 지상국 창조를 하나의 환상으로 보았을 가능성과 자신들에 대한 예이츠의 공격을 새롭게 도전하는 노예에 대한 상전의 방어로 보았을 가능성을 열어놓는다.

Yeats published the first edition of A Vision in 1925 and the revised edition in 1937. He had poured the most intense concentration of his intellect into it for 20 years. It may be regarded as the greatest of Yeats’s works, containing some of the most penetrating and beautiful prose that he wrote. It is essential to any understanding of many of his most notable poems and plays. But many critics agreed it was difficult to read and understand; it is extraordinarily distilled, yet complex in an extremely precise way. In this thesis I compared “Unity of Being” in Yeats’s A Vision with “Dao” in Lao Zi’s Dao De Jing. I interpreted the similarity between the theories of Yeats and Lao Zi. In A Vision Yeats explained 28 incarnations according to the 28 phases of the moon, the Great Wheel and the deliverance of the bond of rebirth. His major symbols are the gyres, the double triangle or the primary or objective and the antithetical or subjective. The Four Faculties(Will, Mask, Creative Mind, and Body of Fate) and the Four Principles(Husk, Passionate Body, Spirit, and Celestial Body) are related to the two contrasting tinctures. The antithetical gyre is lunar, aesthetic, expressive, multiple, hierarchial, aristocratic, artistic, particular, creative. The primary gyre is solar, moral, dogmatic unifying, humane, democratic, scientific, abstract. There is a state of perpetual conflit between the gyres and the moment of harmony of the gyres. The gyres are living each other’s death, dying each other's life. In Dao De Jing Lao Zi explained the dual character of the “Dao” operate as Being-Without-Form and Being-Within-Form, or Heaven and Earth, interrelated so closely the two sides of a coin. Yeats wanted to teach us what is the ultimate reality is and we can attain the “Unity of Being” at the moment of harmony of antinomies. The ultimate reality because neither one or many, concord nor discord, is symbolized as a phaseless sphere, but as all things fall into series of antinomies in human experience it becomes, the moment it is thought of, what he describe as the Thirteenth cone. Lao Zi insisted, “the world is oneness, or unity, emerging from the moment of the Dao.” Yeats also told us, “Eternity, though motionless itself, appears to be in motion.”

최근 들어 지식인들 사이에서 가장 많이 논의되는 것은 ‘세계화’(globalization)에 관한 것이다. 이것은 정보 통신 발전에 힘입어 시, 공간이 가까워짐으로써 생긴 현상으로서 경제 문화의 국경선 넘기 및 ‘지구가족’ 이라는 동료애를 강조하는 특성이 있다. 한편 이것을 사회주의 국가의 붕괴로 인한 최근현상으로 보는 이도 있고, Anthony Giddens 같은 이는 그것을 15세기부터 확산된 자본주의의 연장 및 현대화, 서구화, 그리고 심지어는 미국화와 동일한 개념으로 정의 내린다. 따라서 이것 역시 현대화처럼 여러 문제점을 내포할 수 있다. 특히 오랜 식민으로 제 문화를 잃어버린 나라들에 있어서 ‘세계화’는 또 다른 형태의 식민화로 인식될 여지가 있기 때문이다. 이 논문은 ‘glocalism’을 이 거대한 세계화의 조류 속에서 살아남는 방법으로 제시하면서 가장 이상적인 모델을 찾아보려 했다. 그런데 세계화의 날개를 타고 아일랜드를 문학관광국으로 만든 현대 아일랜드 문학 역사는 이상적 ‘glocalism’의 한 예로 볼 수 있고 그 중에서도 그 구체적 예를 윌리엄 버틀러 예이츠와 셰무스 히니에서 찾을 수 있다고 생각한다. 그들의 시를 세 단계로 나눈다면, 그 첫 단계에서는 고유문화 및 민족 정신을 고취시키는 지역화(localism)를 강화시키는 단계이고, 두 번째는 자신의 문화가 갖는 ‘hybridity’를 인정하고 한편으로는 저변으로 평가되었던 자신들을 중심으로 이동하는 세계화(globalism)로의 확장단계다. 그리고 마지막 단계는 이 둘을 양립시킨 이상적 ‘glocalism’의 단계로서, 이 단계는 이제까지의 대립구조가 사라지는 ‘Utopia’를 만들 수 있는 가능성을 열어놓는다. 아울러 이 논문은 예이츠와 히니 시의 ‘glocalism’ 과정에서 포스트 콜로니얼 저항 담론도 함께 찾아 보려했다. 그런데 예이츠의 저항은 19세기말부터 20세기 문화 비평가들이 가졌던 산업자본주의 문화가 지닌 속악한 속물성에 대한 것이다. 그의 시의 첫 단계로부터 마지막까지 아일랜드고유의 지역문화의 우수성을 주장함으로써 지역문화의 세계화를 주장한다. 그러나 그에게서는 히니에게서 보여지는 상실감과 정치적 저항은 보이지 않는다. 셰무스 히니는 급진적 저항성을 띤 작가로 평가되지는 않지만 그의 시에는 정치적 저항과 억압에 대한 자유추구의 정신을 찾을 수 있다. 각 단계에 속하는 작품을 통해 구체적으로 검증한 결과 다음과 같은 결론에 이르렀다. 예이츠나 히니의 ‘glocalism’은 민족 고유문화 발굴작업을 통한 지배문화에 대한 저항에서 시작해 단순히 지배문화를 수용한 것이 아니고 주체적 사고하의 수용인 전유를 거쳐 세계화의 날개를 달았다. 그 다음은 지역문화가 지닌 편협성을 배제시켜 지배문화와 지역 문화를 양립할 수 있게 했고 새로운 창조가 가능한 호미바바(Homi Bhabha)식의 ‘a third space’(제 3의 공간)를 향해갔다. 즉, 이 두 시인의 ‘glocalism’ 단계에서 저항, 전유, 새로운 휴매니즘의 창조라는 포스트콜로니얼 저항담론을 찾을 수 있었다. 물론 예이츠의 경우에는 정치적 저항보다는 후기 산업사회와 문화에 대한 저항이었고, 전유에 있어서도 전유의 주체가 히니와 달랐다. 한편 이 두 작가를 통해 추론된 이상적 ‘glocalism’이란 무조건 세계화를 수용한 것이 아니고 지역주체들이 지역성의 장점을 발굴해 세계화 속에 내포된 억압에 유연하게 저항할 때 가능했다. 아울러 그것은 지역 문화가 갖는 편협성을 청산해 세계화와 양립시킬 수 있는 공간을 마련할 가능성을 제시할 때야 완전할 수 있음을 알 수 있었다.

이 논문은 Yeats의 Autobiographies에 나타난 시정신의 성장 과정을 추적한다. 시와 시인을 별개로 볼 수 없다는 전제로, 그의 자서전을 면밀히 검토한다. 논문의 앞쪽은 자서전이 형성되어 가는 과정을 추적한다. Yeats의 자서전은 다른 자서전과는 많이 다른 것으로 이해된다. 즉, 여러 권의 자서전적인 글들로 구성되어 있다. Reveries에서는 자신의 어린 시절은 대체적으로는 연대순으로 런던, 더브린, 슬라이고, 등을 오가면서 체험했던 것들을 기록했고, 가장 긴 부분인 The Trembling of the Veil에서는 journal형식의 글을 다듬어서 자전적인 글로 다듬은 것이고, Dramatis Personae 역시 journal을 다룬 것이나 주로 극작 및 극운동과 관련 된 글로 되어있고, 1908년 이후에 쓰여진 journal entry들에서 선정하여 Estrangement와 The Death of Synge을 쓴다. 그리고 마지막의 The Bounty of Sweden의 글은 1923년 Sweden에서 노벨문학상 수상 때의 그 나라에 대한 인상을 적은 글이며, “The Irish Dramatic Movement"는 Yeats가 수상당시의 수상연설문이다. Autobiographies는 젊은 작가들에게 많은 영감과 방향을 제시하고 있다. Yeats가 추가하고 있는 것은 인생 그 자체를 어떻게 예술로 표현할 것인가를 온 몸과 마음으로 고뇌한 작가로 드러나 있다. 그의 자서전은 진솔한고 진지한 자기모색의 과정을 보여주고 있다. 그래서 우리에게 가깝게 다가온다. 또한, 그의 자서전이 쓰여지는 과정은 인생의 모든 향기와 땀과 고뇌와 이상과 꿈이 뒤엉켜있다. 그의 자선전 속에 등장하는 인물들은 다양하다. 저명한 인물들의 이름도 많이 오르내리고 있으나, 정작 상당한 양의 자리를 차지하고 있는 인물들은 거의 무명이다. 이들은 그의 자서전 속에서 빛을 발하고 있다. 이것은 바로 Yeats의 인생을 대하는 태도 때문이다. 그들과의 관계를 통하여, Yeats의 본 모습이 들추어지고 있기 때문이다. Yeats의 자서전의 특징은 수없이 굽고 휘감긴 오솔길과 같다. 인생이란 그런 것 아닌가. 그가 항시 염두에 두고 추구한 것들은 Life, art, imagination, speech, tradition이었다. 문학에서 이 요소들 중 어느 하나가 부족해도 온전할 수 없다.

우리가 예이츠의 시를 이야기 할 때 늘 빠지지 않고 등장하는 단골 메뉴 중의 하나가 그의 신비주의(mysticism)의 심취이다. 그리고 예이츠 연구가들은 신비주의가 그의 시에 어떤 영향을 끼쳤는가에 대해 아니면 그의 사상, 보다 구체적으로 말해서 그의 A Vision에 어떤 영향을 끼쳤는가에 대해 많은 관심을 기울여 왔다. 전자에 속하는 비평가들은 David Pierce, Virginia Moore, Harbans Bachchans, M.C. Flannery, Remesh Chandra Shah, 그리고 William T. Gorski 등이 있고, 후자에 속하는 학자들은 Richard Ellmann, Graham Hough 등이 있다. 이들이 예이츠의 신비주의의 심취를 바라보는 시각은 텍스트(Mysticism)와 리더(Yeats)의 관계에서 리더를 무시한 텍스트에만 초점을 맞춘 결과가 아닌가 한다. 즉 신비주의의 영적인 면이 예이츠가 신비주의를 받아들이는 태도를 결정지었다는 것이다. 물론 이런 면을 부정하기는 힘들 것이다. 그러나 예이츠가 영적인 성장만을 위해 신비주의를 공부했다는 것은 예이츠의 시를 이해하는데 있어서 신비주의의 영향의 중요성을 심각하게 제한하는 결과를 초래하는 것으로 믿는다. 다시 말해 예이츠와 신비주의와의 평생에 걸친 애정관계에 대한 부분적인 모습만 제공하게 된다는 것이다. 나의 논지는 텍스트와 리더의 관계에 있어서 리더 즉 예이츠의 입장을 다각도에서 고려하면서 이 문제를 접근해야한다는 것이다. 예이츠는 무척이나 실질적인 사람이라는 점이고 그의 신비주의에 대한 접근은 항상 그가 신비주의를 어떤 목적으로 이용하려 했나를 따져보아야 한다. 다시 이야기하면 리더의 실용성이 신비주의의 영적인 면을 콘트롤한다는 말이다. 그리고 무엇보다도 그가 신비주의에 심취할 때 그가 처한 정치적인 상황 또한 간과해서는 안될 중요한 요소라는 점도 고려해야 할 것이다. 예이츠는 19 세기 말 분열된 아일랜드의 정치적 상황을 어떻게 하면 치유할 수 있을까를 고민하던 정치적 성향이 짙은 시인이었으며 신비주의를 연구하던 중 아일랜드의 정치적 분열을 화합시킬 형이상학적인 모델을 신비주의에서 찾게 되었다는 것이 나의 주장이다. 신비주의의 기본 원리 즉, 상반된 세력의 합일이 깨달음에 도달하게 하는 초석이 된다는 것에 기초, 카톨릭과 프로테스탄트, 연방주의와 독립주의로 분열된 나라의 화합을 신비주의 색채가 짙은 그의 시로써 해결책을 모색하려 했던 것이다. 그는 죽기 한달 전 Ethel Mannin 에게 편지를 보내 “Am I a mystic? No, I am a practical man.” 이라고 쓰고 있다. 이 두 줄이 그의 평생에 걸친 신비주의와의 관계를 요약하는 말이라 할 수 있다. 그것은 예이츠는 실용적인 사람이며 그의 시학은 늘 사회에 도움이 되고 또 사람을 변화시킬 수 있는 매개체가 되어야한다고 믿는 그의 실용성의 결정체이다. 그는 종교적인 vision이 아일랜드가 처한 정치상황을 화합의 길로 안내할 것을 믿었다. 물론 그 자신 프로테스탄트의 출신으로 그가 결코 버리지 못한 가톨릭에 대한 편견과 종교적 vision에 대한 그 자신의 회의감 때문에 그의 믿음이 많이 퇴색되기는 했지만 말이다.

There were so many common thoughts in Yeats’s poetry and Lao tzu’s philosophy on the Feminine Principl.” Both Yeats and Lao tzu lived in turbulent times. They thought the cause of anarchy in their world resulted from the True God’s absence as the Feminine Principle. Thus they were eager to support it as the Primary principle in the world. Yeats was a gnostic visionary. He believed in God’s androgynous Trinity; Man, woman and child. A Child is a daughter or a son. Yeats refused to accept the masculine Trinity. Yeats searched for the hidden Goddess who is called Sophia or Binah as the dark Mother in the Cabalah. Binah is identified with Saturn(male). So Sophia is androgynous. Yeats called Sophia by many names. Those included Rose, Countess Cathleen, Nimah, Helen and Jane as the symbol of immortal Beauty. All of his poetry owes much to a symbolism derived from the Rosicrucianism, Cabalism, Christian Gnosticism and Orientalism. Orientalism included the Taoism of Lao tzu. I read that Yeats was deeply impressed by the Chinese book, The Secret of the Golden Flower, which is explained Taoism. Because Taoism is s common with Yeats’s main poetic theme, which is the Feminine Principle and the hidden God. Although Lao tzu lived about 2,500 years ago, he had almost the same idea as Yeats. His main theme is Tao, the way which symbolizes the Feminine Principle, like Sophia in Christian Gnosticism and Cabalism. We can say Tao is intangible and permanent, governing the impermanent became it symbolizes the Mother of all beings. Tao especially symbolizes darkness. Thus I can say that “dark Sophia” in Yeats’s poetry is identical to Tao. Lao-tzu described that Tao stands for the feminine archetypal imagery such as water, darkness, valley, cave, abyss. Especially Lao tzu’s heavenly Virtue, Tao is called “Hyeon-bin” which means a black female. Thus Tao is identified with the dark Mother, Sophia in Yeats’s poetry. Also Lao tuz eulogized the virtue of Tao as water. For example, Lao tzu explained that “water’s virtue is the highest goodness.” This symbol of water symbolizes the Feminine Principle like Sophia’s characteristics in Yeats’s poetry. Thus, they all refused to accept the andro-centric society.