이 시의 중심 이야기 즉 여신 이퍼와 젊은 전사와의 사랑의 이야기는 보통 정치적, 예술적 의미로 받아드린다. 그러나 이야기 속에는 예이츠와 모드 곤과의 좌절된 사랑의 의미뿐만 아니라 예술가로서 이를 어떻게 극복할건지에 대한 의미도 숨어 있다. 이퍼와 젊은 전사의 사랑 이야기 속에는 시인과 모드 곤과의 관계가 숨어 있다. 이퍼가 자신을 버린 젊은 전사를 원망하는 마음은 자신을 버린 모드 곤을 향한 예이츠의 마음이라는 말이다. 이퍼의 아픔은 고반이 빚은 술로 치유된다. 여기에서 술은 예술을 상징한다. 즉 시인은 스스로 좌절에서 벗어나는 길은 앞으로 창작활동 뿐이라는 점을 천명하고 있다.

예이츠의 후기시를 이해함에 있어 여성이미지는 매우 중요한 요소이다. 시인은 대표적인 여성이미지로서 모드 곤과 크레이지 제인을 제시하여 아일랜드인의 개인적, 역사적, 민족적 정체성에 대한 상징으로 삼아왔다. 특히 상류계층의 양심적 지 식인의 대표인 초기시의 모드 곤과 달리 후기시에서 큰 비중을 차지한 창녀 크레이지 제인의 상징적 역할은, 궁극적으로 시인이 거칠고 조악하지만 적나라한 삶의 이중성을 가감 없이 수용하는 아일랜드 민중의 지혜에 대한 신뢰를 드러낸다. 그러나 예이츠는 여기에 그치지 않고 모드 곤과 크레이지 제인의 한계를 극복하고 동시에 그들의 상징 성을 통합하는 여성이미지를 꾸준히 제시하고자 노력하는 데 바로 댄서이미지가 그것 이다. 예이츠에게서 댄서란 앞서 두 여인의 이미지가 상징하는 양심적 지성과 민중적 삶의 지혜를 연결하는 동시에 각각이 지니는 한계를 극복하는 이미지로서 예이츠 후 기시의 궁극적인 여성이미지이면서 민족적 구원을 약속하는 상징이다.

As Maud Gonne had been regarded as one of the most important factors in Yeats’s life and literature, this study aims to analyze her images reflected in the poet’s poems which were published in 1910s and 1920s. Maud Gonne is presented as a political icon of that time in Ireland in Yeats’s poems. Unlike his early poems, where Maud Gonne is idealized as a goddess, a heroic figure of unbounded nobility and courage, Yeats presents her as a tragic warrior who devotes herself to political activities for violence and destruction in this period. At the same time, Yeats shows his holding back of approving Gonne’s political role of female warrior. The number of poems related to Maud Gonne also is decreased when Yeats realizes that Maud Gonne devoted herself too much on the political matters.

I look at the images of Maud Gonne in Yeats's "Bronze Head." The bronze head is a sculpture made by Lawrence Campbell, which is in the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin. When Yeats saw it, he must be shocked; she is old, and yet she looks "magnificent." In the bronze work, Yeats sees Maud Gonne as "human, superhuman," and "supernatural," as well. He puts down all that occurs to him, from the very first encounter, when "she walks like a goddess," not without wildness, though, to the image of Cathleen-like soul, to the image of her being supernatural with a sterner eye. All this enriching vision is made possible in this last poem of his; it is a conclusion to his poetry that is a history of a great heart craving for life for anther great heart; it is the best paean dedicated to a Goddess in his heart.

It is well known that Yeats loved Maud Gonne all through his life. Even after she married John MacBride and he married George Hyde Lees, he couldn’t stop loving her. He proposed to her many times not only before she married but also after she became a widow. But she didn’t accept his courtship, saying that platonic love could make their love everlasting. She even said that the poems were their children for she made them possible by “sowing the unrest & storm.” This kind of love and/or friendship made Yeats write lots of poems about her and his longing for her love. The poems about her began to be written in his early youth in The Rose. After that many poems were written on and off through his long poetic career to Last Poems. The poems about her are more than fifty or so. The poems portrayed her as an ideal beauty like Helen and/or as a goddess of love and beauty like Aphrodite. Sometimes he complained her not accepting his courtship. At times he blamed her for engaging in the political movement of Ireland’s independence too deep. From time to time he lamented her marrying a “drunken, vainglorious lout.” But he loved “the pilgrim soul” in her all through his life. Though Yeats complained and blamed and lamented Maud Gonne’s human aspect, he idealized her divine aspect in his poems. He idealized her as a Rose, Helen of Troy and/or Aphrodite. That was the best way to keep her beauty everlasting. Though she suffered many human difficulties, she was an ideal beauty to Yeats to the end.

In the history of literature, women have appeared more as subsidiary figures to inspire or help male authors than as creators of literature themselves. Dante’s Beatrice, Petrarch’s Laura, and Dorothy Wordsworth can be cited as classical examples. Maud Gonne, Yeats’s lifelong lover, does not go beyond the boundary. In his poetry, Yeats portrayed her as an embodiment of eternal beauty, femme fatale like Helen of Troy or Deidre of Ireland, heroic figure of unbounded nobility and courage. But Yeats did not always praise and idealize her. He showed his dissatisfaction with her violent political activities and in his poetry she appeared as a heedless, overly proud woman who had wrought her own misfortune. But however diversified and numerous her images may have been, she exists in his poetry as objectified images shaped by Yeats’s transformed imagination. But in 1997, Maud’s letters to Yeats during the entire period of their acquaintance were published. Through them, we can get access to her as ‘a speaking subject’ uttering her own thoughts and emotions. We can acquire firsthand information on their relationship and direct response to the various incidents. By analyzing her letters in detail, I tried to present hitherto unknown aspects of Maud Gonne and shed light on some misunderstandings about her. For example, some critics denounced her indifference to Yeats’ poetry. But in her letters, she continually advised him not to let other activity ― be it political or theatrical―deprive him of his time and energy to engage in his proper work-writing of poetry. And her sincere concerns for the poor, the suffering, and the underpriviledged and her sympathetic understanding of women’s situation in Ireland have been hitherto unappreciated. As this essay’s main concern is Maud Gonne as a speaking subject of the letters, its aim is not an authoritative biographical study on Maud Gonne, but to view her life from a new perspective.

Based on the assumption that Maud Gonne was one of the most important persons in Yeats’s life and art, this paper is an attempt to understand the “labyrinthine” nature of their complex relationship. However, the present writer is not trying to dig into their lives for the specific facts which might be used to support his argument; rather, he is trying to read some of Yeats’s poems in such a way to illuminate his relation to Gonne. That is, through the close reading of related poems, the present writer examines how Gonne is thematically and formally represented in Yeats’s poems, how the representations change through the years of his life, and how they are related to other aspects of his poetry. The first introductory part of this paper very briefly surveys the life of Gonne, how her relationship with Yeats began and continued, and how she influenced him in writing his poems. Although it is true that she brought into his life “an overpowering tumult,” it is also true that between fifty and sixty of Yeats’s poems were created in the wake of their relationship. The main part of the paper analyzes Yeats’s poems chosen from his early, middle and late period of life. Some poems, such as “The Sorrow of Love,” “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” “Adam’s Curse,” “No Second Troy,” “The Cold Heaven,” “A Prayer for my Daughter,” “Among School Children” are more closely and thoroughly read than others. In reading the poems, this paper tries to show how the poet’s representations of Gonne in the poems reveal not only the actual situations of their relationship at the moment of their writing but also the aesthetic and political ideologies of the poet himself at that moment.