In such poems as “The Dialogue of Self and Soul” and “Vacillation”, the antinomies and oppositions which I have traced in the previous issue of this Journal develop in a very complex manner within the frame of such figures as “the sword” and “the tower”, “brand” and “flaming breath”, “burning leaves” and “green lush foliage moistened with dew.” And they are always posited as implying the antinomies of life and death, remorse and joy, body and soul, earthly life and heaven. In the process of vacillating between “extremities”, Self and Heart which figure not only the body but also the poet’s self declines Soul’s request to “seek out reality, leaving things that seem.” Even though Heart vacillates between antinomies, always looking towards what are opposites to itself, it chooses Homer and his unchristened heart as its example and determines to “live tragically.” By opposing the life of a Swordman to that of a Saint and receiving Homer as the figural example of his art, Yeats puts the foundation that his lyric should be understood as tragedy. “The Gyres” and “Lapis Lazuli”, two tragic lyrics composed in Yeats’s last years, embody his idea of the tragic lyric as well as his tragic world view. In “The Gyres”, the poet, invoking his muse “the old Rocky Face” to look forth and view the world’s overall collapse, “but laugh in tragic joy”. And in “Lapis Lazuli”, the tragic heroes of the Shakespearean tragedy are displayed as the opposing powers or qualities to “the hysterical women” of the modern world. In both of these poems, the poet’s tragic joy or exultation springs from the tragic vision that all things “fall and are built again.” The very eternal recurrence of the battle of antinomies and opposite forces is the source which enacts the poet’s strength and energy to exalt in the midst of despair. Therefore, we may be able to say that the poet’s magical aesthetic which is based on the absolute power of death and the tragic sense of life elevates his lyrics to the height of disruptive tragedy, letting the poet to enact tragic authority at the same time.

Most of Yeats’s works are composed of antitheses which are defined by their rhetoric, form, tone and thematic motifs. If the antitheses are Yeats’s central means of perceiving and interpreting the world, what kinds of experience are posited at the center of his life, and in what way and manner are his conceptions of “unity of being” and “unity of culture” connected with his experience of “tragic joy”? This essay attempts to approach the basic frame of Yeats's mind which perceives and interprets the world as composed of contraries, antinomies and antitheses. In such context, Yeats's idea and experience of tragedy are shown to be constructed ideologically in the situation that is divided by the two classes, namely the declining Anglo-Irish Protestant and the powerfully ascending Catholic middle classes. Yeats’s conception and experience of tragedy are connected with what Michel Foucault calls “the absolute power of death”. Yeats thinks that if the modern poet could enact the poetic authority, he should be able to embody the ancient forms of power. Hence his ideology of tragedy and authority which leads him to enact the oral tradition of ancient magical arts. Yeats thinks that, through the poetic mode of ancient magical arts, modern lyric poet can enact the absolute power of death, breaking the comedic power of modern individualism. Yeats's ideology of tragedy and authority, however, is in constant contradiction with “the life-administering power” of modern world. In spite of his desire to enact the tragic power of ancient bard, the space of his later lyrics remains the complex site of ideological conflicts between the residual forms of traditional Anglo-Irish culture and the dominant cultural forms of modern individualism. (The second part of this essay will be continued in the next issue)

Unlike his early symbolic mode that is based on the natural representation of organic universe, Yeats’s later works are constructed in the allegorical mode which is based on the antinomies and oppositions that can be defined by rhetoric, form, tone and thematic motifs. If the antinomies are Yeats's central means of perceiving and interpreting the world, what kinds of experience are posited in the center of his life, and in what manner are those experiences represented? The aim of this essay is to approach, through his poetic sequence “Meditations in Time of Civil War”, Yeats’s frame of mind which perceives the world as a series of fixed set of antinomies. Yeats’s later lyric mode is connected, in a very complex manner, with the contradictions and conflicts which arise from what Michel Foucault calls “the absolute power of life and death” and “the life-administering power”. He believed that if the political power and the family authority were to be maintained in modern Ireland, he as poet should embody the ancient forms of power in the aesthetic domain. Such idea leads him to enact in his own works the oral tradition of ancient poetry. He thinks that, leaning on the model of ancient magical arts, modern lyric poet could embody the absolute power of death in his poetry. The literary mode which enacts such power and authority can function as one of the main agents that break the comedic power of modern individualism. Yeats’s idea of absolute power and authority is, however, in constant contradiction with the life-administering power of modern society. Therefore, despite the poet’s strong desire to enact the tragic authority of ancient bard, the poetic space of “Meditations in Time of Civil War” remains the complex site of contradictions and conflicts between the residual forms of Anglo-Irish traditional culture and the dominant cultural forms of modern individualism. It is a disruptive space in which what Fredric Jameson calls the “reversibility” and “disjunction” of modern literary text are embodied in thematic, figural and formal levels.