예이츠와 셰익스피어는 극작품에서 유령이나 요정과 같은 초자연적인 존재를 많이 사용했는데 작품에서의 활용은 목적이 다를 뿐만 아니라 접근 방법이 다 르다고 할 수 있다. 셰익스피어는 초자연적인 존재들을 인물들의 인간성을 부각시키는 데 사용된다. 특히 마음속에 숨겨진 욕구나 감정 또는 무의식을 드러내는데 사용한다 는 것을 주목해 볼 수 있다. 셰익스피어의 유령은 인간들과 닮아 있고 인물들의 반응 을 적극적으로 끌어낸다. 예이츠의 유령들은 추상적이고 동떨어진 느낌을 주는데 이런 방식의 표현은 셰익스피어와 다른 목적을 가지고 있기 때문이다. 본 논문은 유령 이야 기를 다룬 대표적인 드라마 셰익스피어의 􋺷맥베스􋺸와 예이츠의 􋺷에머의 유일한 질투􋺸 를 중심으로 살펴본다.

예이츠는 인생과 예술에서 인간의 조건을 초자연계와 관련지어 정의하고, 인간의 가장 중요한 경험은 초자연적 실재를 경험하는 것이라는 소신을 연극에 적 용하려고 노력했다. 따라서 그의 연극적 과제는 어떻게 초자연적인 존재를 관객이 이 해할 수 있도록 무대 위에 올리는가 하는 것이었다. 􋺷유리창에 새겨진 글자들􋺸은 무 대, 인물, 언어 등에 있어 사실주의적 틀 속에 서양인들이 익숙한 강령회(séance)를 극 중 극 형식으로 집어넣음으로써 초자연적 존재를 관객들이 무리 없이 받아들이는 과제를 해결하였다. 최면상태의 영매는 18세기 작가 스위프트의 애정관계를 전달하는데, 예이츠가 이상적 시대라고 생각한 18세기와 현대 아일랜드를 대조시킴으로써 현대 아일랜드의 타락상을 보여주고, 현대 아일랜드가 스위프트 시대의 마스크를 씀으로써 위 대한 문화를 가진 나라가 되기를 희망했다.

이 논문은 예이츠의 “초자연적 노래”를 잘 이해하기 위해 연구한다. 기 독교교리에 대한 예이츠의 견해, 언어의 사용, 시의 진행 순서 등을 논의한다. 이 시 의 초자연적인 것에 대한 특이한 접근은 학자들에게 여러 가지 문제를 야기하며, 또 이 시가 초자연적인 것만을 다루지는 않는 것 같지도 않다. 벤들러도 지적한 것처럼 이 시 “초자연적 노래”는 기괴한 것과 원시적인 것에 대한 하나의 모더니스적 시학을 구체화하고 있다.

사무엘 테일러 콜리지는 영국의 낭만주의 시대를 열었고,예이츠는 낭만 주의 정신을 물려받은 현대 시인이다.콜리지가 예이츠에게 준 영향은 다른 낭만주의 시인들에 비해 결코 적지 않다.특히,바다를 배경으로 선원들의 초현실적인 경험을 다루고 있는 예이츠의 극작품 그림자 드리운 바다 와 콜리지의 시,“노수부의 노래” 는 두 시인의 시대적 차이에도 불구하고 상징적 기법,작품의 배경,분위기 등 에서 매우 유사한 작품이다.두 작품 모두 바다,새,사중생,해와 달 등에 유사한 상징적 의미를 부여했다는 점에서 예이츠가 콜리지에게서 많은 영감을 얻었음을 확인 할 수 있다.

Yeats and Murakami are writers who believe in spirits. They both treat them as if they are real. Yeats's Purgotory is a story of Father and Son, Father killing his own son to disrupt the cycle of Life that is tainted, whereas Kafka on the Shore is a story of Mother and Son, Mother causing all the tragedies in Kafka's father, sister, and himself. Kafka's mother is a person of Memory that stays constant, which is the origin of all the tragedies, and refuses to flow with time; and Son intervenes in her Fate, changing her and himself. The leitmotif of the novel is the Oedipus complex. In the meantime, Purgatory is a practice of Yeats's religious system of Life and humanity. In the play, the two kinds of people are illustrated by Father and Son; Father can see the invisible, ghosts, but Son cannot. The play is based on the conception of souls being born again and again in endless cycles. To disrupt it Father kills his own Son, as he had killed his own Father. It is beyond the moral of the world, killing his own son, following his own belief. Both works could be read as a metaphor of life. One relies on psychology, and the other relies on mythology. Murakami may have read Yeats, and Yeats might be interested in Murakami if he lived and read him. Murakami is in a position to deal with this kind of subtle subject in a subtle way, because he is a writer of the East well versed in the West. In the same way, Yeats was in a unique position, who was familiar with things eastern. Hence, their works manifest strong inclinations toward mysterious milieu, most prominently what is supernatural.

Building on the readings of Yeats’s esoteric poems and A Vision, I pose to rethink the dimensions of his occultism, more specifically his reflection on an encounter with the supernatural beings. The need for rearticulation of the role of relation to the other gains urgency because the supernatural beings are by nature obscure, indistinct, and indefinite. They resist too much clarification and determination that may reduce their complicated and irreducible beings to distinct concepts. The difficulty, therefore, lies in the question of how Yeats could present the beings in a manner as precise, proper, and rigorous as possible and at the same time he could respect and honor the mode in which the beings conceals themselves in the mystery, by letting them be the mystery that they are. Applying the concept of “ecstasy” and “epiphany” to Yeats’s three poems, my paper investigates how each poem reflects and illustrates the nature and the structuality of “ecstasy” and “epiphany.” In “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes” the girl dancing between a Sphinx and a Buddha in the fifteenth night is the anti-self of Yeats. In a moment the girl, the Sphinx, the Buddha and the poet himself had overthrown time in contemplation. They remain motionless in the contemplation of their real nature. when Robartes meets the girl, he can be a totally subjective mind, overcome the illusion of duality, and find a “revelation of realty.” They finally all integrated into one and accomplish the ultimate reality as a phaseless sphere. This poem Robartes shows how ecstasy or epiphany in an encounter with the supernatural being not only arises from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen but also escapes from the barrenness and shallowness of a too conscious arrangement. In the second section of “Vacillation,” Yeats presents a ritual ceremony in which “Attis’ image” is hung between the two parts, uniting death with eternal life, assuring immortality. He who performs this rite “May know not what he knows but knows not grief.” Yeats in his poetry consistently and repeatedly alludes to an ancient sacrificial ritual and the imitations of ritual techniques through words and rhythms. For him, the ritual enacts an inner vision of permanent beauty and harmony and enables us to participate in the transcendental experience of a rite. Yeats often clearly sees and evokes the effects of sacrifice to ensure symbolize the transcendental vision of whole beyond ordinary experience or expression. Yeats showed Unity of Being in “Byzantium.” He attains the Ultimate Reality completely, in which subject and object 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.

This paper is to discuss the supernatural ecstasy in the “Supernatural Songs”. When focusing his poetry on the physical, Yeats turned his attention more and more toward the East. While seizing upon an increasingly physical and sexual emphasis, Yeats's secular spiritualism moved in an Eastern, monistic direction. As far as he was concerned, sexual spirituality was much more compatible with indian spirituality. To embody these instincts and passions, he posited a mythical character by the name of Ribh as the cental character of the “Supernatural Songs”. He tried to display a transcendental ecstasy. He associated early Christian Ireland with India. He described the fictional character of Ribh as an early Christian hermit, who is ninety years old. In the East, Yeats found a propensity toward unity of being that would underscore the essential unity of flesh and spirit so necessary to his thought. The “Supernatural Songs” thus brought together an Eastern amalgamation of Christianity and Asian religiosity, merging the supernatural-spiritual with the natural-physical. Yeats espoused tantric sex, a form of Kundalini, with its emphasis on self and the sexual act as the way to spiritual energy and fulfillment. The word Kundalini means coil, which Yeats reflects in the serpent imagery. In conclusion, Yeats found an imaginative way whereby he was able to fuse the spiritual with the physical in the “Supernatural Songs”. This secular spirituality allowed Yeats the sexual freedom he sought for. The intense moment of climax is that conflagration in which all antinomies are resolved, time stands still, and natural bonds with supernatural. His emphasis on unity of being is compatible with an Eastern worldview, which merges all into a monistic unity. Indeed, poetry itself is in Yeats's mind an imaginative alchemy, the transmutation of life into art, a fusing of the spiritual with the material.