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The Idea Incarnate: Mask and Image (1915–1917)

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The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats
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Abstract

Mask and image are centrally important components of Yeats’s creative arsenal. This chapter looks at Wilde’s creative presence within Yeats’s evolving theory of mask and image.

Yeats’s theories on mask and image are explored through close textual reading of his later manuscripts and drafts of The Player Queen (1915–1917). In these later drafts, Yeats creatively revises Wilde’s concepts and constructs his own radical theories of mask: mask as instigator of civilization and mask as the agency through which Unity of Being is achieved.

Wilde’s contribution to Yeats’s developing theory of mask and image can also be seen in examining his essay, Per Amica Silentia Lunae, and its relation to Wilde’s De Profundis. This is a crucial creative phase in the evolution of the ultimate meaning that Yeats ascribes to mask and image in his completed philosophical system in A Vision (1925 and 1937).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Throughout 1915 Yeats, then, was deeply involved in his memories of the Nineties” and was writing the section of his recollections that includes his relationship with Wilde and reflects Yeats’s evolving theories on mask. James Longenbach, Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). “More Memories”, which would be included in Autobiographies (1955) was published in The London Mercury (May to August 1922) and The Dial (May to October 1922). His collection, The Wild Swans at Coole , was published in 1917 and 1919.

  2. 2.

    N.L.I. Ms. 8776(1). W.B. Yeats, “A Note on Calvary”. See also Chap. 2, section “Image and Influence”. F.A.C. Wilson suggests that Yeats cast Wilde as Judas in Calvary and claims that such a creative act is “characteristic of Yeats’s method”. Yeats’s Iconography (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1960), pp. 176, 177.

  3. 3.

    Tacitus, Annals 16. 18–19 in Petronius, Satyrica ed. R. Bracht Branham and Daniel Kinney (California: University of California Press, 1996), p. ix–x.

    There are only three extant references to Petronius Arbiter from antiquity: Tacitus, Pliny, and Plutarch. For Plutarch see: Moralia vol. 1, “How to tell a flatterer from a friend”, trans. Frank C. Babbit (Massachusetts: The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1927).

  4. 4.

    W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III, ed. William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, p. 223.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., p. 129.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., p. 124.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., p. 125.

  8. 8.

    Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume III, ed. Joseph Bristow, p. 278.

  9. 9.

    W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III, ed. William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, p. 129.

    In 1905 Yeats was involved in a controversial exchange of views in the pages of The United Irishman with Arthur Griffith on the propriety and origins of Synge’s play, In the Shadow of the Glen. During the debate some comments were made about Petronius’s character that indicate possible associations with Wilde’s “sorry” reputation. Griffith suggested Synge’s play was based on “a story invented by the wits of decadent Greece, and introduced, with amendments, into Latin literature by the most infamous of Roman writers, Petronius Arbiter, the pander of Nero” and calls Synge’s play “a foul echo from degenerate Greece”. Yeats, showing his familiarity with the author, replied: “You have wasted my time. There is no such story in Petronius.”

    The Abbey Theatre: The Years of Synge, 1905–1909, eds. Robert Hogan and James Kilroy (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1978), p. 10–13.

  10. 10.

    Boroughs, Rod. “Oscar Wilde’s Translation of Petronius: the story of a literary hoax” in English Literature in Transition 1880–1920, Vol. 38:1, 1995 (Dept. English, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, 1995), pp. 9–49. The translation was actually the work of Alfred R. Allison and claims of Wilde being the translator were eventually retracted by the publisher (1909). See: Brian Arkins, “The Roman Novel in Irish Writers”, Irish University Review, Vol. 32. No. 2 (2002), pp. 215–224. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25504905.

  11. 11.

    N.L.I. Folder 6. Complete manuscript, marked “A” in Yeats’s hand. Loose sheets, p. 36B. Microfilm: Player Queen vi. Bradford: Draft 21, p. 336.

  12. 12.

    Lady Gregory , Lady Gregory’s Journals 1916–1930, ed. Lennox Robinson (London: Putnam and Co. Ltd., 1946), p. 330.

  13. 13.

    W.B. Yeats, “A Note to The Player Queen” in The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W.B. Yeats, p. 761. There is some controversy as to why Yeats wrote The Player Queen as a comedy. Curtis Bradford suggests it may have been the influence of Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats: The Writing of The Player Queen.

  14. 14.

    See Yeats in endnote 41, Chap. 3.

  15. 15.

    W.B. Yeats, The Letters of W.B. Yeats, p. 524.

  16. 16.

    W.B. Yeats, “A Note to The Player Queen” in The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W.B. Yeats, ed. Russell K. Alspach, assisted by Catharine C. Alspach, p. 761.

  17. 17.

    W.B. Yeats, Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 10.

  18. 18.

    Oscar Wilde, ed. Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 127 and “De Profundis”, p. 186 (1905, 1908).

  19. 19.

    As shall be seen in the section “The Player Queen (1915–1917)”, Yeats’s reasons for this occurrence although comedic are also central to his philosophical needs.

  20. 20.

    W.B. Yeats, The Letters of W.B. Yeats, p. 625.

  21. 21.

    N.L.I. Folder 10. “2nd Carbon” written on cover; loose sheets. Microfilm: entitled Player Queen ix “a late version of complete play”. Bradford: Draft 29.

    This is a substantially complete version of the later drafts of The Player Queen, Spring 1917. Yeats made two further drafts of the play and published it in 1919 and 1934 with some emendations; the difference between these later versions and this typescript are slight, alterations being mainly of a stylistic character. This substantially complete typescript is the main text from the 1915 to 1917 mss./tss. under discussion in this chapter; it is made up of the ideas from the previous drafts of this period together with new changes. As in the finished play it comprises two scenes: the first scene is almost exactly the same as the published 1922 play, while Yeats would do further work on scene two, it contains practically all the elements that appear in the finished play. Besides being a substantially complete text, more importantly for this study, Yeats finished this draft before his involvement with automatic writing and the communicators of A Vision. It is, therefore, entirely free of the influence of that period and an apposite text in which to see Oscar Wilde’s influence on Yeats’s philosophical thought.

  22. 22.

    Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume IV, ed. Josephine M. Guy, p. 90.

  23. 23.

    Indeed this deliberate construction by Yeats in The Player Queen of Wilde’s concept of life as a fabrication of Art powerfully translates in his later poetry into the mythic proportions of Byzantium. In “The Decay of Lying ” Wilde describes Byzantium as a place where “the visible things of life are transmuted into artistic conventions, and the things that life has not are invented and fashioned for her delight.” “The Decay of Lying ” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume IV, ed. Josephine M. Guy, p. 86. These lines of Wilde’s on Byzantium perfectly describe how Yeats renders that city in his later poetry, “the artifice of eternity”. The Poems (Second Edition). The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats Vol. I, ed. Richard J. Finneran, p. 193.

  24. 24.

    Bradford: Draft 18, p. 276.

  25. 25.

    “A religious dispensation lasts for some 2,000 years and is either primary or antithetical. It in turn gives rise to a corresponding civilization, which starts (its Phase 1) at the dispensation’s mid-point (Phase 15) and also lasts for some 2,000 years. At the mid-point of this civilization, its Phase 15, the religious dispensation of the opposite Tincture arises (starting at its Phase 1) and so on in syncopated succession. Specifically, the primary Christian religion arose at the height of the antithetical classical civilization, and the primary culture of Christendom arose around 1000 CE. This culture reaches its high point around 2000 CE when there will be the origin of the next antithetical religion, which Yeats looks forward to in poems such as ‘The Second Coming ’ and ‘The Gyres’”. Neil Mann, “‘Everywhere that Antinomy of the One and the Many’: The Foundations of A Vision” in “A Vision”: Explications and Contexts, p. 15.

  26. 26.

    W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul & Margaret Mills Harper, p. 186.

  27. 27.

    W.B. Yeats, The Player Queen in The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume II, ed. David R. Clark & Rosalind E. Clark, p. 364.

  28. 28.

    W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 197.

  29. 29.

    W.B. Yeats, The Player Queen in The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume II, ed. David R. Clark & Rosalind E. Clark, p. 368.

    Yeats produced The Player Queen in 1919 at the Abbey Theatre and published it in 1922 and again in 1934. The changes he makes in the published versions are slight; the play remains essentially the same as the text under discussion, which was completed in spring 1917; the finished play merely emphasizes what has already been written in the earlier draft. The changes that Yeats made to his play after spring 1917 are stylistic, a matter of sharpening profile and pointing to consequences, rather than altering content. His meaning, his philosophic ideas, remains unchanged. Yeats makes some adjustments to the language in the finished play, which brings his intended meaning into sharper focus. He does this most noticeably when speaking of his hopes for cultural renewal and the role of the unicorn. When speaking of this phenomenon Septimus’s voice is more emphatic and bold: “Gather about me, for I announce the end of the Christian Era, the coming of a New Dispensation, that of the New Adam, that of the Unicorn but alas. He is chaste, he hesitates, he hesitates.”

  30. 30.

    N.L.I. Folder 6. Loose sheets; partial ms. of Act 11, Scene 2, which begins on p. 7, p. 31.

    Microfilm: Player Queen vi. Bradford: Draft 19, p. 286.

  31. 31.

    For more on the unicorn and its associations for Yeats see, Ann Saddlemyer, “Portrait of George Yeats”, Yeats Annual No. 18 at: http://openbookpublishers.com/htmlreader/YA/chap07.html

  32. 32.

    W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul & Margaret Mills Harper, p. 178.

  33. 33.

    Oscar Wilde, ed. Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 115 and “De Profundis”, p. 178 (1905, 1908).

  34. 34.

    Indeed, in his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde puts forward a similar theory, depicting Lord Henry encouraging Dorian to express all the roles he is capable of and so become the embodiment of an idea—the living image of New Hedonism:

    “Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing … A new Hedonism – that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol.” Lord Henry exhorts Dorian to conceive of himself, assume his mask and become the physical image of New Hedonism—“an idea is of no use,” Wilde proposes, “till it becomes incarnate and is made an image” (See note 33).

  35. 35.

    N.L.I. Folder 6. Ms. Act 11, sc. 2, p. 8. Bradford: Draft19, p. 279.

  36. 36.

    N.L.I. Folder 10. Ts., p. 31. Bradford: Draft 29, p. 387.

  37. 37.

    N.L.I. Folder 10. Ts., p. 28. Bradford: Draft 29, p. 385.

  38. 38.

    W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul & Margaret Mills Harper, p. 191.

  39. 39.

    N.L.I. Folder 10. Ts., p. 33. Bradford: Draft 29, p. 388.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., p. 270.

  41. 41.

    Neil Mann, “The Thirteenth Cone”, W.B. Yeats’s A Vision: Explications and Contexts, ed. Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson and Claire Nally, p. 182.

  42. 42.

    W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Volume II: The Plays, ed. David R. Clark & Rosalind E. Clark, p. 508.

  43. 43.

    N.L.I. Folder 10. Ts., p. 28. Bradford: Draft 29, p. 384. (“Lido” is typed in error for “Leda”.)

  44. 44.

    W.B. Yeats, “Ego Dominus Tuus” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell pp. 1–3.

  45. 45.

    Neill Mann, “‘Everywhere: That Antinomy of the One and the Many’: The Foundations of A Vision”, W.B. Yeats’s A Vision: Explications and Contexts, ed. Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson and Claire Nally, p. 17.

  46. 46.

    Daimon: A complex concept, which evolved with time, and which Yeats was probably never entirely sure about. The Daimon is the supernatural opposite of the human being, but part of a single continuous consciousness with the human, and can even be viewed as the same elements in a different dimension. To a certain extent it controls human destiny, but needs its human counterpart to complete its knowledge of the whole.” Neil Mann, The Terminology of A Vision: Brief Definitions, http://yeatsvision.com/Terminology.html

  47. 47.

    N.L.I. Folder 10. Ts., p. 20. Bradford: Draft 29, p. 378.

  48. 48.

    N.L.I. Folder 9. Ms., Act 1, sc. 2, folio 2, unnumbered. Bradford: Draft 6, p. 45.

  49. 49.

    N.L.I. Folder 10. Ts., p., 37. Bradford: Draft 29, p. 391.

  50. 50.

    N.L.I. Folder 10. Ts., p., 37. Bradford: Draft 29, p. 391.

  51. 51.

    N.L.I. Folder 10. Ts., p., 18. Bradford: Draft 29, p. 376.

  52. 52.

    N.L.I. Folder10. Ts., p., 24. Bradford: Draft 29, p. 381 also Draft 16, p. 249.

  53. 53.

    W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul & Margaret Mills Harper, p. 66.

  54. 54.

    Rory Ryan writes of Yeats’s use of Mask in A Vision: “Perhaps the most important function of the Mask is to create a sense of unity or coherence of self. Yeats informs us that ‘all unity is from the Mask...” (AVB 82) …The Mask “always unifies” the self (answer 7) by unifying the Faculties. Moreover, Thomas proposes that “anti adopts mask & simultaneously works against it” (answer 8), indicating that the antithetical Will may oppose the Mask while being unable to discard it. Thus, in the complex relationship of simultaneous attraction and repulsion, the self achieves coherence or a defining structure. The “Mask links ego & self” (answer 11). The Mask thus operates on the Will (the “ego”) so that the Will “links” with the “self.” “Self” here may refer not to the composite of the four Faculties in any Phase, but to an ideal or higher unity, “a form created by passion to unite us to ourselves, the self so sought is that Unity of Being ...” (AVB 82).

    Rory Ryan, “The Is and the Ought, The Knower and the Known: An Analysis of the Four Faculties in Yeats’s System” in W.B. Yeats’s A Vision: Explications and Contexts, ed. Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson and Claire V. Nally, p. 30.

  55. 55.

    He told his father that he looked on Per Amica Silentia Lunae as “a kind of prose backing to his poetry”. The Letters of W.B. Yeats, p. 625.

  56. 56.

    W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Original 1925 Version. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIII, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper (New York: Scribner, 2013), p. 104.

  57. 57.

    W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III. ed. William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, p. 215. See also, W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul & Margaret Mills Harper, p. 10.

  58. 58.

    W.B. Yeats, “Ego Dominus Tuus” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 3.

  59. 59.

    Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, pp. 283–287, 308.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., p. 286.

  61. 61.

    Oscar Wilde, “The Truth of Masks” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Vol. IV, ed. Josephine M. Guy, p. 228.

  62. 62.

    Oscar Wilde, The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde, Volume III: The Picture of Dorian Gray, The 1890 and 1891 Texts, ed. Joseph Bristow, p. 281 (1891); p. 111 (1890).

  63. 63.

    W.B. Yeats, “Ego Dominus Tuus”, p. 321.

  64. 64.

    W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul & Margaret Mills Harper, p. 112.

  65. 65.

    Oscar Wilde, ed., Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 108 and “De Profundis”, p. 172 (1905, 1908).

  66. 66.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Hominis” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, pp. 11; 10.

  67. 67.

    W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III, ed. William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, p. 125.

  68. 68.

    Oscar Wilde, ed., Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 95 and “De Profundis”, p. 63 (1905, 1908).

  69. 69.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Hominis” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 11.

  70. 70.

    Ibid., p. 2.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., p. 10; Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, p. 286.

  72. 72.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Mundi” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 18.

  73. 73.

    Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, p. 48. Oscar Wilde, ed., Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 102 and “De Profundis”, p. 168 (1905, 1908).

  74. 74.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Hominis” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 10. Yeats’s Journal, 1909 rpt., W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III, ed. William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, p. 372.

  75. 75.

    Oscar Wilde, ed., Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 105 and “De Profundis”, p. 170 (1905, 1908). Wilde’s acceptance of the inevitability of human tragedy finds echoes in Yeats’s poem, “The Gyres”. See Warwick Gould, “Lips and Ships, Peers and Tears: Lacrimae Rerum and Tragic Joy” in The Living Stream: Yeats Annual No. 18, ed. Warwick Gould. London: Open Book Publishers, 2013.

  76. 76.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Hominis” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 15.

  77. 77.

    Ibid., p. 12.

  78. 78.

    Oscar Wilde, ed., Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 100 and “De Profundis”, p. 166 (1905, 1908).

  79. 79.

    Oscar Wilde, ed., Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 109 and “De Profundis”, p. 173 (1905, 1908).

  80. 80.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Hominis” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 7.

  81. 81.

    Of course, Yeats would have been familiar with other debates on art, imitation and the mirror image, including the Romantic poets, and Mathew Arnold and Walter Pater, and indeed Shakespeare—but the focus in the present argument is Wilde’s incisive contribution to Yeats’s creative imagination.

  82. 82.

    Otto Bohlmann, Yeats and Nietzsche, p. 116. See: Friedrich Nietzsche, chapter 5, “We Scholars” in Beyond Good and Evil. Transcription: John Mamoun, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team for Project Gutenberg; html mark-up by Brian Baggins. Translation: (from the German) Helen Zimmern. (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/nietzsche/1886/beyond-good-evil/)

  83. 83.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Hominis” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 10.

  84. 84.

    Ibid.

  85. 85.

    W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III, ed. William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, p. 179. See also Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume IV, ed. Josephine M. Guy, p. 94.

  86. 86.

    Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume 1V: Criticism: Historical Criticism, Intentions, The Soul of Man, ed. Josephine M. Guy, p. 265.

  87. 87.

    Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume IV, ed. Josephine M. Guy, p. 147.

  88. 88.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Hominis” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 14.

  89. 89.

    W.B. Yeats, “The Cutting of an Agate” in Early Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Volume IV, ed. Richard Finneran & George Bornstein p. 186.

  90. 90.

    W.B. Yeats, “The Gyres”. The Poems (Second Edition). The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. I, ed. Richard J. Finneran, p. 293.

  91. 91.

    R. Jahan Ramazani, “Yeats: Tragic Joy and the Sublime”. Source: PMLA, Vol. 104, No. 2 (Mar., 1989), p. 163. Published by: Modern Language Association. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/462502

  92. 92.

    Oscar Wilde, ed. Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 126 and “De Profundis”, p. 186.

  93. 93.

    Ibid., pp. 109; p. 173.

  94. 94.

    Ibid., p. 113; p. 176.

  95. 95.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Hominis” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 9.

  96. 96.

    Colin McDowell quotes Neil Mann in “Shifting Sands” in W. B. Yeats’s A Vision: Explications and Contexts, ed. Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson and Claire Nally, p. 206.

  97. 97.

    W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. III, ed. William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, p. 216.

  98. 98.

    Neil Mann defines the Initiatory and Critical Moments that belong to Yeats’s system in A Vision

    “[The Moments of Crisis are a]n important element of the Automatic Script, which received brief treatment in AVA (172–73) and none in AVB, linked particularly with sexual love. They are associated with the Daimon, the least predictable element of the System, and are symbolised by the lightning flash.” Neil Mann explains these moments in relation to A Vision: “Initiatory Moment represents a shift in the nature of the Mask and Body of Fate, the “sensuous image,” effectively in our aims, values and goals, which set in motion a series of events which reach a climax at the Critical Moment. The Critical(206) Moment represents a moment of the greatest freedom within an individual life, where the intellect is able to analyse the aims and actions initiated, probably with the help of the Daimonic mind, and the individual is able to act with as much free will as he or she is capable of. The Critical Moment is not always reached, and even if it is, this process may be repeated without the individual reaching the third stage of Beatific Vision, where the individual moves into a form of greater wholeness, and possibly Unity of Being.” “Critical Moments”, Glossary, W.B. Yeats’s A Vision: Explications and Contexts, ed. Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson and Claire Nally, p. 351.

  99. 99.

    W.B. Yeats, “Anima Mundi” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 25.

  100. 100.

    Ibid., pp. 29, 28.

  101. 101.

    Ibid., p. 30.

  102. 102.

    Ibid., p. 25.

  103. 103.

    “The Critic as Artist” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume IV, ed. Josephine M. Guy, p. 195.

  104. 104.

    W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV. Eds., Catherine E. Paul & Margaret Mills Harper, p. 143.

References

Manuscripts

  • W.B. Yeats, “A Note on Calvary.” N.L.I. Ms. 8776(1).

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Yeats, W.B. “W.B. Yeats Papers: The Player Queen, – 11 folders and some notebooks.” N.L.I. Ms. 8764. Micro-film 7492: “i–xi.”

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Articles

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Doody, N. (2018). The Idea Incarnate: Mask and Image (1915–1917). In: The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89548-2_5

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