Myself That I Remake
Spiritual Renewal in the Life and Work of William Butler
Yeats
introduction
What made me live like these that seem
Self-born, born anew?
—
Yeats, “Stream and Sun at Glendalough”
It is impossible for us to examine the life and work of
William Butler Yeats without wondering what animated the
continual procession of new passions, new masks, and new
manners of expression. No sooner had he taken one idea or
style to its extreme, than he would reappear in a completely
different character with a completely different point of
view. He is by turns the dreaming symbolist, the tough
nationalist, the ardent lover, the ranting scourge, the
introvert, the showman. Yet all are distinctly Yeats, and a
single thread does run through the many-coloured cloth of
his work.
Yeats’s passion for renewal was a
deep-seated conviction that change itself is the substance
of eternity, and he was driven to enact change in all he did
and all he wrote. By constantly re-animating internal
conflicts he tapped the well-spring of life, and became, as
T. S. Eliot wrote, “a poet who in his work remained in the
best sense always young, who even in one sense became young
as he aged.” Yeats never stopped prodding himself with the
desire to get on to the next thing, the desire to know “what
then?”
[on to section
1]
© Michael Fleming
Oxford, England
March 1984
a brief note on the text
This essay was written initially as an academic exercise,
and of course every quotation was duly footnoted. I have
left out the “scholarly apparatus” from this web version for
several reasons. First, it would be a cumbersome intrusion
to the casual reader. Second, the hypertext documentation
would be a nightmarish bore for me to encode. Finally, I’m
putting this on the web solely for interested scholars and
lovers of Yeats’s poetry, and most definitely not as
a “research service” for students writing about Yeats (as a
college teacher I know all about that stuff). By omitting
the scholarly apparatus I’m making the essay unfit to be
copied (i.e., plagiarized). Anyone wishing to know the
source of any quotation contained in this essay can contact
me via e-mail.
I would like to thank Cathy de Heer for
sharing space on her Flying Dutchgirl website, and
especially Dorland Mountain Arts Colony of Temecula,
California, for providing me the opportunity for some
spiritual renewal of my own.
© Michael Fleming
Temecula, California
November 1998
|