Thunder of feet, tumult of images : the command of 'Vision' in W.B. Yeats's modern poetry

Abstract

During a two-week stay at the 39th International W.B. Yeats Summer School in 1998 I became interested in an aspect of Yeats's poetry which is generally ignored by critics, even in the most comprehensive studies. What interested me were certain passages in the poetry which appear excessively opaque and obscure - passages which are often situated in some of Yeats' s most well-known poetry and which are most frequent in the work that Yeats wrote at the time that Modernism was at its peak in England. A result of this is that these passages, when they are mentioned by critics, are often referred to as examples of how Yeats' s poetry can be ':fragmentary' and Modern like other Modernist poets. Finding this an utterly inadequate 'explanation', and sensing that the critics were simply covering up for the fact that they, like me before I embarked on this study, did not have any idea what these passages mean, or what their significance is, I decided that I would make it the aim of my dissertation to convincingly explain these fascinating but enigmatic passages. I argue in my essay that these passages are instances of 'vision', which I define as 'a moment of violent transcendence in which not only the subject of the poem but usually also the poem itself - its style, diction, and metre - is radically transmuted'. I argue, drawing extensively on Yeats' s own prose writing, that this 'visionary poetry' is a central concern in Yeats's beliefs about art and philosophy. In Chapter One I trace the emergence of Yeats' s visionary writing in his early poetry where it is still in its embryonic form. In Chapter Two I try to show how Yeats experiments with and develops his visionary style, even in 'non-visionary poems'. In Chapter Three I discuss some poems which contain examples of Yeats's fully-developed visionary method and I try to explain why such poetry seems so supremely Modernistic. In my Conclusion I examine Yeats the poet and his visionary technique in a wider context, decide if there is a distinct border between the Romantic tradition and Modernism, and if there is, what side of it Yeats is situated and how this is affected by 'vision'.