Essays In Explanation: W.B. Yeats's Definitions of Art and Culture

Abstract

A COAT I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; Any study of William Butler Yeats is complicated. The complications arise, primarily, from the personal contrived elusiveness of the man, himself. When Yeats speaks of his song as a coat covered with embroideries he speaks with accuracy. The embroidery is elaborately stitched and while the style and the cut of the garment is always attractive, it is often confounding. Yeats developed a theory of personal expression which involved the use of poses and masks. It is this theory which has made many of the critics hesitate to take literally all that he says. Beyond this, the "old mythologies" which Yeats pursued often included strange traditions of occult practice which arrest one's credulity. Still, there is a great deal which Yeats has written which can be taken literally. These prose writings are a valuable source in understanding the man and his definitions of art and culture. The poetic techniques and methods of Ireland's national poet have been closely examined. Much has been written regarding Yeats's poetry. The essays, however, the most direct record of Yeats's theories, have received a rather meager measure of attention. The purpose of this study is to examine the work of Yeats the Essayist. The embroideries and the mythologies are in the essays, to be sure, but there they are not merely sung, rather, they are examined and explained. In the essays the mask is removed and the true face of Yeats's critical bias is revealed. Ernest A. Boyd in Ireland's Literary Renaissance comments that “If 'style is the man', then, the essays, Ideas of Good and Evil is a perfect portrait of the author”. Boyd continues, "Ideas of Good and Evil is, in the main, a defence of Yeats's own ideas, and an exposition of the theories underlying the literature which he has helped by precept and example to create". The scope of this paper, then, is the close examination of the more important essays in Ideas of Good and Evil. Some of the essays from The Cutting of an Agate and Per Amica Silentia Lunae will be considered also. It will be necessary and helpful to comment on important influences of family and circumstance if we are to have a complete context, but this will be done briefly and only in relation to those influences which have contributed directly to Yeats's critical concepts.