이 논문은 예이츠와는 다른 면모를 보이는 3편의 시를 다룬다. 「참사」에서는 예이츠의 「1916년 부활절」에서 영웅적 태도를 눈에 보이게 칭찬하는 것에 대 한 비난을 암시한다. 그리고 히니는, 근본적인 인간적인 것에 근거하는 통찰을 보이기 는 하지만, 보다 믿을 만한 윤리적 기준을 예이츠의 「어부」에서 찾는다. 「밀짚 매듭」은, 의도적으로 보다 겸허한 상상을 하지만, 엑프레스틱한 시인데, 이 시는 「비잔티움으로의 항해」에 나타나는 이미지의 반향이 나타난다. 마지막으로, 『헛것 보기』 시집에 서 히니는 형식, 인생과 영혼 사이의 관계에 대해 예이츠와 철학적 대화를 시도한다. 예이츠의 사색을 심각하게 받아들이면서도, 히니는 인생은 별개의 영혼의 차원에서보 다는 내면으로부터 이해되어야 한다고 확신한다.

The Tower, published in 1928, is Yeats's finest single volume of poetry, and it might also be the finest single book of poems published in the twentieth century (O'Donnell 89). Many poems of the volume confront the problems of growing old. This paper attempts to read three poems selected from The Tower--"Sailing to Byzantium," "The Tower," and "Among School Children"--in terms of their representations of old age and its relation to desire and the imagination. In "Sailing to Byzantium," the poet begins by declaring that Ireland is "no country for old men." He complains that here all are "caught in that sensual music" and "neglect monuments of unageing intellect." "The Tower" also begins with the poet's confused question: "What shall I do with this absurdity . . . this caricature, decrepit age?" He complains about his old age because it makes his body "a sort of battered kettle at the heel," and that body can deride his imagination and its work. The poet's complaint or anxiety about old age in these poems comes from the fact that his old age and bodily decrepitude make it hard to satisfy his desire. In "Sailing to Byzantium," lack of satisfaction makes him unhappy in Ireland and wish to leave. Also in "The Tower," unsatisfied desire makes his heart "troubled," and so he is even tempted to give up poetry and choose philosophy. However, ironically enough, unsatisfied desire makes his imagination stronger than ever. Now, in spite of his bodily decrepitude, his imagination enables him to travel to the "holy city" of Byzantium, and there pray to the sages there that he may be changed into a golden bird, "an artifice of eternity." In "The Tower," the poet sends his imagination forth and calls "images and memories" to ask questions of them. In the process of calling images and asking questions, the poet restores his belief in the power of the imagination, and, because of this belief, he can leave his "pride" and "faith" as poet to the "young upstanding men" of Ireland. "Among School Children" confronts the problem of physical ageing a little differently. The poem shows the poet walking through the schoolroom and dreaming of "a Ledaean body" (Maud Gonne). His imagining her as a child and then thinking of "her present image" leads to the meditation not only on the general human fate of ageing but also on the images which "break hearts" because they do not touch the reality of life. Not only the passage of time but also the false images make human life exhausted and unhappy. To solve the problem, the poet's imagination creates two images of unified being: the "blossoming" tree and the "dancing" body. Where life is blossoming or dancing, the poet says, "The body is not bruised to pleasure soul." What he is trying to say is that life is an ongoing process, and so we must accept it as it really is.

The last century saw three great poets: Yeats, Eliot, and Stevens. They each had created new poems different from the previous ones. The current topic finds Eliot most discordant from the other two, who has started from Romantic poetics. By "Romantic" I mean that the poet grew out of Romantic poetics and/or is Romantic temperamentally. In Eliot's case, because of his stance on Romanticism and his educational background, unfortunately, both poets and scholars have been blinded to the fact that Eliot is deeply Romantic, stylistically and temperamentally. Read any portion of any poem by Eliot; it is there in the very poem, such as "Prufrock." It indeed is a good poem, witty and modern. But the drawback with Eliot is he is exclusive, thus the poetic range is limited. Compared with him, Stevens is a pure Romantic, who profoundly succeeds in renewing Romantic poetics in modern times, as evidenced in "Sunday Morning." Which is the counterpoint to Milton's "Paradise Lost." Of course, in terms of poetic gestures. Yeats is, compared with Eliot and Stevens, unique. He is against science, and goes back to myths and folklore and man. His "Long-legged Fly" is the epitome of his great poetics, a victory over the materialistic society of last century. Still, it is hard to understand how he could go over what seems to have been an impossible barrier, with such an outmoded thing, as mysticism, mythology, Romanticism, that all thought dead.

존 애쉬베리의 작품『세 시』는 T. S. 엘리엇의 모더니즘 시『네 사중주』에 대한 포스트모던적인 반향이다. 엘리엇은 “육화”를 “회전하는 세계” 속에서 궁극적인 “정점”으로 동일시함으로써 기독교적인 중심을 갖는다.『세 시』를 면밀히 분석해보면 애쉬베리가『네 사중주』의 특정한 언어와 생각에 공명하고 있다는 것을 알 수 있다. 그는 우리가 시간에 포섭되는 것을 거스르는 엘리엇의 기독교적인 주장을 해체하고자 했다. 엘리엇의 기독교적 세계관에 기반한 유럽중심적인 고착이 자신들만의 문화적 구조를 바탕으로 세계관을 발전시키는 비서구사회의 독자들에게 문제시될만한 영향을 만들어내는 반면에, 애쉬베리의 보다 평등한 중점은 비서구사회의 문화적 구조에서도 보다 폭넓게 해석될 수 있다. 한편, 애쉬베리의 비정치적인 주체적 병합은, 즉 탈중심화된 주체는 그 자체가 유럽중심주의라는 측면에서 문제시 될 수 있다. 포스트모더니즘 비평가들이 논의해온 것처럼, 탈중심화된 정체성은 비서구사회와 소수민족들이 정체성에 목소리를 부여하는 순간 특권을 갖는다. 애쉬베리의 엘리엇에 대한 비위계적이고 탐구적인 비평은 유럽중심주의에 반하는 좀 더 성공적인 미적 대응 방식을 제시할 수 있다.