Miscellaneous Studies in English Literature [1 ed.] 9781527556775, 9781527553613

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Miscellaneous Studies in English Literature

Miscellaneous Studies in English Literature By

Faisal Al-Doori

Miscellaneous Studies in English Literature By Faisal Al-Doori This book first published 2020 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2020 by Faisal Al-Doori All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-5361-2 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-5361-3

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii Introduction .............................................................................................. viii Abbreviations ............................................................................................. ix Part I: Poetry Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2 Memory, Nature and Mortality in William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 17 The Island of Statues: Magic and Alchemy in Yeats’s Poetic Drama Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 25 Automatic Writing and the Experience of the Yeatses Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 33 Spiritual Symbolism in W. B. Yeats’s “The Phases of the Moon” Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 43 The Mystical Element in Yeats’s Characterisation of Owen Aherne and Michael Robartes: The Cosmopolitan Longing for Unity in Diversity Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 52 Arabic and Islamic Influences on W.B. Yeats’s A Vision Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 60 Body-Soul Interaction in W. B. Yeats’s Poetry: A Spiritual Way to Salvation Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 78 Anti-modernism as Revealed in the Characters in Thomas Hardy’s Poem “The Moth-Signal” and His Novel The Return of the Native

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Contents

Chapter Nine.............................................................................................. 87 The Question of Existence in T. S. Eliot’s Poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 101 The Impact of Puritanism on Cultural Circles in England (1649-1660) Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 111 The Image of Cancer in The Wait Poetry Anthology Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 123 Political and Aesthetic Implications in Georgie Bird’s Poem “Throne” Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 127 The Whip of Time: A Reading of Linda Mereness’ “A Frost Moment” Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 129 Nature and Politics in Linda Rhinehart’s Poem “September Song” Part II: Prose Chapter One ............................................................................................. 132 Daniel Defoe and the Picaresque Novel: A Critical Study of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders Chapter Two ............................................................................................ 136 The Classical Spirit in Henry Fielding’s Art Chapter Three .......................................................................................... 142 Symbolism in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native Notes........................................................................................................ 162 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 175

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank all of the participants who helped me to create this book, by providing the opportunities for me to deliver or publish my papers and giving me the permission to republish my articles in one book, including the following organisations: Brill Academic Publishers, Sophia Centre Press, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Aberystwyth University, Tikrit University, American Research Foundation (ARF), AlUstath Journal, Tikrit University Journal for Humanities, and Journal of Al-Frahedis Arts. Thanks to the people related to the above-mentioned organisations: Luke Thurston, Robert Fisher, Nicholas Campion, Sadia Zulfiqar, Yahya Yaghi, Hamod Alrahawi, Othman Fawzi, Huda Abbas Kanber, and Muhannad M. Al-Bare’. Many thanks to The Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MOHESR) for granting me the scholarship to proceed with my study and to attend conferences in many parts of the world. Thanks to my family who gave me the time and support to complete this book and others. Last but not least, thanks to Cambridge Scholars Publishing for their assistance in making this book possible.

INTRODUCTION

This book is a collection of selected papers which have been delivered at numerous international conferences over the last fifteen years. The papers are classified into two main categories, namely, poetry and prose. However, drama is placed with poetry wherever it is needed for comparison or consultation. The poetry papers are not concerned with one certain era, but they are selected as relevant to Pre-Romantic, Romantic, modern, and contemporary eras. The papers regarding prose are about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels. During the course of my academic career, since 2006, I have attended twenty conferences in many countries, namely, Iraq, Jordan, the UK (Wales, England, and Scotland), Ireland, Austria, and Portugal. Some papers are excluded from this book for such reasons: the feedback on the paper was not encouraging, the paper has not yet been completed, or the paper was not written but was presented as a PowerPoint. I have attended four conferences without delivering papers and six papers have been added: one of them relates to a conference paper and was extended later, two others are to be delivered at two conferences in Iraq and Turkey this year, and the other three papers were written during the last few years without them being delivered at conferences or published, except one in a journal. The rest of the fourteen papers form the major part of this book. Three additional articles complete the book. The Author

ABBREVIATIONS

AV A AV B CP FY L&S OII RN TA

W. B. Yeats, A Vision (1925) W. B. Yeats, A Vision (1937) The Collected Poems by William Butler Yeats, 1889-1939 Edward Larrissy, The First Yeats: Poems by W.B. Yeats, 1889 -99 Vern B. Lentz & Douglas D. Short, “Hardy’s Aesthetics of Disjunction and the Literary Antecedents of ‘The Moth-Signal’” William Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey

PART I: POETRY

CHAPTER ONE MEMORY, NATURE AND MORTALITY IN WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’S TINTERN ABBEY

Abstract Human civilisation is so complex and varied that it needs a type of poetry which is capable of representing it. Metaphysical poetry with its complexity, heterogeneity, and difficult imagery is suitable for meeting this need. In the words of Samuel Johnson, who attacked this kind of poetry, metaphysical imagery is formed when “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.” The flat imagery of the Romantics is an escape from the complexity and concreteness of the imagery of metaphysical poetry. The sentimentality of Romantic poetry, the simplicity of its language, and its direct discourse emerge from its deeply held doctrine of refusing any artificiality either in life or in style. Though Wordsworth’s imagery is simple, it holds ambiguous and complicated meanings because of his interest in philosophy and mysticism. His poem Tintern Abbey reveals his vernacular style; however, it tackles profound themes of existence and human relationships. The sense of the progression of age dominates the poem and is depicted through the relationship between memory and nature. This paper tries to reveal the images of nature which are pivotal to Wordsworth’s memory. The interlacing of the images of nature and memory is a characteristic element of this poem. Wordsworth tries to make a comparison between mortals and immortals, considering the elements of nature as immortals to which the mortals appeal. The River Wye is one of these immortals which is personified as the place where the poet’s soul resides. The river contains and absorbs the poet’s experiences during his childhood. It becomes a kind of self-defence against the current progressing of age.*

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Memory, Nature, and Mortality in William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey The poem is a philosophical and autobiographical epic. Although Wordsworth wrote this poem in 1798, he informs us that it had been five years since he had last visited the Abbey. The Romantic era witnessed a kind of religious appeal to nature where people felt a divine presence. Wordsworth’s poem describes how the place “Tintern Abbey” yields peace, rest and spiritual comfort. Consequently, he considers it as a healer treating the tortures of his life. The poet shared his experiences and happiness during the Romantic era with his sister Dorothy. People began to see and feel a divine presence within nature and the role of the Romantic poet arose from this idea. Following this “ideal,” Wordsworth’s poem describes how the Abbey is a healer; it makes him feel better, peaceful and it teaches him about life. Additionally, he wants to share “his place” with others, which is why he is so happy to show “his abbey” to his sister Dorothy. He is ecstatic to be able to share his experiences with her. The modern critics, T. S. Eliot, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, F. R. Leavis, Cleanth Brooks, T. E. Hulme and I. A. Richards, have attacked Romanticism for different reasons, such as excessive emotions, the lack of wit, and the direct discourse.1 They think that Romantic poetry is incapable of achieving a height of experience because of its simple devices. Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey seems to be one of the exceptions to this theory. The imagery of the poem is uncomplicated. However, although most of the lines are written as direct statements, the discourse is highly splendid and sometimes ambiguous due to the depth of the subject matter. The first section provides the full imagery of nature. The natural literal objects are water, mountain springs, cliffs, the sky, a sycamore tree, woods, copses, hedgerows, trees and a cave. Some vagrants and the hermit are the complementary elements of this natural scene. They are interwoven to describe the background of the scene which is pivotal in its relationship to the speaker. In the first section, the speaker is uncertain as to whether, as he has grown old, he sees the same images of nature with the same feelings, “Do I behold…,” “with some uncertain notice, as might seem.” This uncertainty reflects the change in his age, even though the period between his first visit and the second is not that long. His memory is not working

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spontaneously and the images of nature do not permeate his mind as they did in the past (five years earlier). He feels that he sees the landscape with a different view because of the changing state of his age: Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! And again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a sweet inland murmur. Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. (TA ll. 1-8)

The words “wild” and “wood” recur in this section to emphasise the wildness of the scene, even though the active imagination of the speaker reconciles this wildness with the quietness of the sky. The images of the “vagrant dwellers” and the “hermit” deepen the impression of the wildness and seclusion of the scene as they contribute to the wildness of nature and generate the impression of loneliness. Romanticism is a reaction against the industrial world and it finds a sanctuary in nature, emphasising the idea that it ceases to live in the recognised world but rather dies and returns to the original elements of life. The primitive code of nature represented by the hermit and preferred by the romantics seems to absorb these elements. The image of the “hermit” is typically used to reflect the retreat of the romantics from life into nature: ….. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem,

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Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone. (TA ll. 14-22)

The speaker feels familiarity and unity with this scene in harmony with the human beings mentioned who are not intruders but an integral part of the scene. The image of the “unripe fruits” stands for his youth which does not disturb “the wild green landscape”2 as the memory of his youth does not disturb his maturity: The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves Mid groves and copses. (TA ll. 9-14)

This image foreshadows the images of loss and gain in the fourth section: That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy rapture. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts Have followed, for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompense. (TA ll. 83-88)

The “blessed mood,” in the second section, constitutes one of the gifts which recompense the speaker for the loss of his youthful raptures. The second section is strongly related to the images of memory integrated with the images of nature in the first section. Feeling the beauty of nature,

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the speaker asserts that these beauteous forms are still living in his memory despite his long absence from his place: These beauteous forms Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, And passing even into my purer mind With tranquil restoration. (TA ll. 23-30)

These beauteous images of nature were feeding his memory especially when he was “in the lonely rooms, and mid the din of towns and cities,” and in “hours of weariness.” These images of nature, which provide the speaker with “the blessed mood,” help him to bear “the weary weight of all this unintelligible world”: …… Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened. A ll. 35-41)

His feelings of unremembered pleasure have an effect on his moral and emotional state:

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…. Feelings too Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps, As may have had no trivial influence On that best portion of a good man’s life; His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love. (TA ll. 30-35)

As the speaker turns “from an objective symbolical description of external nature” in the first section, “to an analysis of his inner self” in the second section, “nature appears as the main causal factor in his moral evolution.”3 The affections, produced with the help of the blessed mood, lead the body “to the highest kind of naturalistic contemplation.”4 .. that serene and blessed mood Which the affections gently lead us on, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. (TA ll. 41-49)

There is no departure of the soul from the body, “we are laid asleep in body,” and this process leads to the creation of a living soul. The image of the “living soul” is formed by the influence of the affections, which modify the effect of the body “while with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.” Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling do not believe that this section is “a mystical reverie, but an aesthetic state of contemplation.”5 Others,

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like Albert S. Gerard, believe that the poet “first analyses the influence which the memory of the Wye landscape has exerted upon his mind; he thus reaches the idea of a glorious mystical insight, the truth of which, however, remains doubtful in his own eyes.”6 The cosmic unity or the union between man and nature is exemplified by the image that the poet sees “into the life of things” where “man is included in his vision and the life of things is seen to reside in all-pervading presence, which is described in grandiose terms with an animistic or pantheistic slant.” 7 As in William Lisle Bowles’s sonnet “To the River Itchin” (1789) and Samuel Coleridge’s “To the River Otter” (1796), Wordsworth addresses the River Wye to seek consolation and to restore recollections of his previous boyish period when he enjoyed being in this place. Also, as in Wordsworth’s ode “Intimations of Immortality” where the soul turns back to the “immortal sea,” his spirit turns to the River Wye in the third section of the poem: If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft-In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee! (TA ll. 50-57)

Wordsworth sees himself cavorting in the woods by the river as the travellers in the image of the ode see “children sport upon the shore”: 8 Hence, in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

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Which brought us hither; Can in a moment travel thither And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. (OII ll. 161-167)

The image of the spirit turning towards the River Wye in section III of Tintern Abbey recalls the image in the Immortality Ode, “our souls have sight of that immortal sea,” to denote the idea of immortality. Two opinions can be concluded from this. The first is that the spirit turns to the immortal elements of nature (river, sea…etc.) to make a union with them because the spirit is immortal. The second is that the poet makes a comparison between the mortals (the human beings) and the immortals (the river, sea…etc.) as a lament to the fact that he himself is mortal. Similarly, in the ode, the opposite image is used when one of the immortal elements of nature (the clouds) is watching the mortals: The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality. (OII ll. 196-198) In section III of Tintern Abbey, the image of the River Wye, which is wandering through the wood (O Sylvan Wye: Thou wanderer through the wood) suggests that the poet is remembering the time when he himself was cavorting there. Norman Lacey interprets this section as the mystical experience of the poet who “is not certain what kind of connection there is, if any, between nature and his mystical experience, and he returns to what he knows for certain, that in the fret and fever of the world he has often turned for relief to his memory of the beautiful scene in the Wye Valley.”9 The dominant theme is the sense of the progression of age which is embodied in various images throughout the poem; in section I, the image of early youth as “unripe fruits”; in section II, the image of breath and the motion of human blood “until the breath of this corporeal frame, and even the motion of our human blood almost suspended”; in section III,

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the idea of mortality and immortality; in section IV, the idea of approaching death as “the light of the setting suns”; and in section V, the decay of spirits, “should I the more suffer my genial spirits to decay.” The theme of ageing is translated by images of early youth or boyhood progressing to those of old age. The fourth section is highly focused on this theme. The function of memory is key to the effects of this theme on the poet, while the natural imagery works as a catalyst in the formulation of the theme. Section IV starts with the poet’s fear of fading memories: And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again. (TA ll. 58-61)

These lines recall the questions in the Immortality Ode: “Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?” (OII ll. 56-57). The poet feels that, after five years, his recognitions and sensations have become gradually “dim and faint.” He feels that there is a definite change which has occurred in the interval between the two visits to the place: “… And so I dare to hope / Though changed, no doubt, from what I was…” (TA ll. 65-66). The poet compares his present state with the previous stages of his life without forgetting the future. He feels that there is a detachment between himself, as a mature man, and nature; he did not feel this detachment in the previous stages of his life. This comparison alarms him. He is so alarmed by the passage of time that he consoles himself: “That in this moment there is life and food / For future years…” (TA ll. 64-65). The poet bids farewell to the “coarser pleasures,” “aching joys,” and “dizzy raptures” of his boyhood. He describes them as “glad animal movements” to denote the sensuality of this stage. These images, especially the paradox of “aching joys,” represent the deep indulgence in pleasure, which is the major characteristic of this period. The boy’s sensations—as the child’s—are alert to the variety of influences nature gives him, compared with the mature man who feels that his thought is “half-extinguished.” His perplexity emerges from his anxiety that he will

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lose his “recognitions.” Again, he consoles himself that there is a recompense for this loss: …. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity. (TA ll. 88-91)

The recompense occurs through the transition from phase to phase—from thoughtless youth to maturity. The acquisition of the pleasure of wisdom, nevertheless, offers the hearing of the “still, sad music of humanity.” Though his statement is plain and devoid of any image, it reflects the deep meaning of his attitude towards nature. In early youth, the instinct drives the union with nature; in maturity, the mind comprehends the relationships with other human beings and with nature. The thoughtless youth is rewarded with high sensitivity towards nature but this is reversed at the stage of maturity; the low sensitivity towards nature is compensated for by thoughtful maturity. Though the speaker cannot maintain this intimate relationship with nature, he finds a substitute through “hearing oftentimes / the still, sad music of humanity.” This substitution is not a consolation but an elegy for the passing of time and the gradual nearing of the mortal end. The mind and thoughts do not lead to “reason” and they are not in contradiction with the “heart,” but the poet depicts them as “elevated thoughts” to distinguish them from the strict meaning of “reason”: …And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind. (TA ll. 93-99)

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H. J. C. Grierson describes this state as “a conscious transcendence of reason in Wordsworth.”10 The “elevated thoughts” and “the light of setting suns” recall the concept of Transcendentalism which is very much related to mystical experience. The image of the “setting suns” and the word “sad” in “sad perplexity” and “sad music of humanity” suggest the poet’s consciousness of mortality. The poet thinks that we participate in creating nature through our senses, especially through sight and hearing:11 …… Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half-create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. (TA ll. 102-111)

If the word “mysticism” is avoided, reflecting the poet’s preference, the images of the “purest thoughts” and the “elevated thoughts” in this section may be related to “natural piety,” as the poet calls it, in another poem entitled “My heart leaps up.”12 Bloom interprets this by relating it to “a laziness of our imaginations that tempts us to call this vision mystical, for the mystical is finally incommunicable and Wordsworth desires to be a man talking to men about matters of common experience.”13 Bloom also interprets “half-create” as the selective feature of our senses regarding the elements of nature and he denies the “total absorption” of nature into the mature man.14 At the beginning of section V, the word “decay” suggests this absorption but it may happen in the later phase of the poet’s age:

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Nor perchance, If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: (TA ll. 111-113)

The poet’s fear of mortality is reflected in these lines in a way “that he might become completely cut off from nature, that he might no longer be taught by nature and the language of the sense.”15 Nature teaches the poet human love and this love prevents his “genial spirits” from decay; and so, he turns back to his sister as a substitute for dealing with nature directly: …and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My TB pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. (TA ll. 116-119)

The poet takes refuge in his sister’s voice and eyes. He addresses his sister Dorothy indirectly “to turn back to his own self” and she is “presented as a sort of duplication of her brother, and the close correspondence of their characters and interests and sensibilities may do much to account for the feeling that existed between them.” 16 His sister represents his former state of pre-maturity. The poet works on two levels: the first is “the language of sense” which is closely related to his phase of pre-maturity; the second is the language of faith which is “full of blessing” and closely related to maturity: …and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; ‘tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform

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Part I Chapter One The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. (TA ll. 121-134)

The change from the first level to the second one is made through memory, which plays the healing and consoling role in the poet’s ageing: … and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me. (TA ll. 137-145)

Nature is identified as a woman who “never did betray the heart that loved her.”17 The marriage between the poet and nature or the organic relationship between them is elevated to a spiritual or religious level, “displaced into a naturalistic mode”:18

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… Nor, perchance-If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence—wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came Unwearied in that service: rather say With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. (TA ll. 146-155)

The gleam of life, which is seen in the wild eyes of the poet’s sister and is related to the period of pre-maturity, is the real and delightful light. This special image of light is lost now in this period of maturity and the poet is sadly perplexed by this loss. The concluding section is dedicated to the poet’s sister which reflects the autobiographical theme of the poem. The last lines of the poem conclude in direct discourse, and Bloom’s view is that “the closing lines, with their immense music, are not complete”:19 Nor wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! (TA ll. 155-159)

Bloom concludes that Tintern Abbey is “a personal myth of memory as salvation.”20 It can also be added that the poet is always searching for consolation in specific ways.

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Conclusion Some critics attacked Romantic poetry for its simplicity, lack of complex imagery, and its direct statements. They thought that it did not meet the needs of our complex lives. Although the imagery of Wordsworth is not complex, his poem, Tintern Abbey is different because of its elevated style, the depth of its subject matter, and some ambiguous statements. The guiding images, which are derived from the dialectical relationship between memory and nature, are paralleled by the dominant theme of the progression of age and fear of mortality. The poet feels the need to compare his present state with his past according to his relationship with nature, and in doing so, thinks about his future. Sometimes, the implicit theme of immortality floats over the surface of the poem through a union with nature, but the theme of mortality is deeply established and overwhelms the whole poem. The natural images are precisely interwoven to reflect these themes. Nature, for Wordsworth, is playing a double role in healing and consolation. Memory is working as a device to perform these functions. Though spirituality is denied by the poet himself, it pervades some sections of the poem. It reflects one side of the poet’s personality which tends to idealism; the other side inclines to realism because he is dealing with tangible elements of nature. There is an authenticity to the autobiographical quality of the poem throughout and especially in the last section which addresses the poet’s sister. As a critique, the poet’s direct statements, such as: “sad music of humanity,” “language of sense,” and “blessed mood” diminish the strength of the poetic imagery of the poem. Nevertheless, its imagery perfectly interprets the poet’s intention.

CHAPTER TWO THE ISLAND OF STATUES: MAGIC AND ALCHEMY IN YEATS’S POETIC DRAMA

Abstract Pastoral poetry was one of the strongest elements that contributed to the foundations of Romantic poetry. Both shared a love of nature and distance from city life, and both supported the political satire of the urban style of life and civilisation. Both were relevant to the early Yeatsian mood reflecting his reactions to emotional, cultural, aesthetical, mystical and political problems. He created an Arcadian setting for some of his early poems: “The Song of the Happy Shepherd,” “The Sad Shepherd” and also his poetic drama, The Island of Statues. This paper sheds new light on the use of magic and alchemy in Yeats’s The Island of Statues, and explores other examples that contribute to the dramatic fabric of poetic drama, for example, The Arabian Nights and Greek mythology.* Keywords: Magic, alchemy, Rosicrucianism, mysticism, the art of sculpture, red rose. “The Tale of the Young Man and the Fishes” in The Arabian Nights1 is one of the essential sources for Yeats’s poetic drama, The Island of Statues. In the tale and the poem, two lovers are fighting to gain the favour of a girl; one remains her lover, but the other becomes her husband. The girl in the tale is a witch, while the girl in the poem, disguised as a man, is loved by a witch. The transformation of these humans into stone by magic is a detail found in both the poem and the tale. In the poem, humans are completely transformed into statues or stones, whereas in the tale, humans become half human and half stone, like a statue, because the lower part of the body is calcified into stone. The island is enchanted in the poem, while the four isles, the lake and the whole city are enchanted in the tale. The enchanted coloured fishes in the tale, which are swimming in the enchanted lake, are substituted by “Flowers of manifold colour”2 in the

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poem. The superiority of love over magic, however, is the common theme in the poem and also in the tale. The lake is also part of the setting in the poem but it is not enchanted. Both girls are dressed as men, or have some part of a man’s attire, such as the sword in the case of the girl in the tale, and in one of the episodes of the poem. Principally, the statue, as a type of sculptural art, becomes a fixation for human beings at a certain moment in time. It is similar to the myth of Tir Na nOg in Yeats’s “The Wanderings of Oisin” where people are fixed in a youthful age. Magic and art offer this opportunity for immortality; however, Oisin’s return from the land of the immortals and Almintor’s transformation from being a statue to being mortal again undermines this opportunity. The enchanted flower of joy seems to be eternal compared to the withered flowers held by the hands of the statues. Nevertheless, the Enchantress connects her life to that flower: And in her eyes a lightless stare; For, if severed from the root The enchanted flower were; From my wizard island lair, And the happy winged day, I, as music that grows mute On a girl’s forgotten lute, Pass awayʊ (FY 94, III, ll. 62-69)

The root of such magic extends to ancient Ireland and old civilisations. The poet uses the voice of the Enchantress to express his fears that modern civilisation may sever that flower. The symbol of the flower of joy might have been taken from Martin Luther’s emblem, and “the emblem of Luther itself consisted of a white rose, the insignia of joy and peace, surrounded by a golden ring symbolising eternal life.”3 The red colour of the flower might have been borrowed from the four red roses in the hat of Christian Rosenkreutz in the story of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz by Johann Valentin Andreae,4 which can be considered yet another source of inspiration for The Island of

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Statues. In turn, this story can be considered a “model for Goethe’s Faust.”5 In his Autobiographies, Yeats mentions that the “Red Rose” stands for “Intellectual Beauty.”6 In Rosicrucianism, the colour red is extended to include the cross as well: Christian Rosenkreutz is not only a knight of the Golden Fleece and of the Golden Stone; he is also a Red Cross knight. Allusions to the Garter are behind the composite allusions to chivalrous feasts and ceremonies of initiation in Andreae’s work; the Red Cross of the Order of Garter, the Red Cross of St George of England have been absorbed into the German world, to reappear as “Christian Rosenkreutz,” with his red roses and his Red Cross ensign.7

Christian Rosenkreutz is the story’s narrator. He attends the wedding of the King and the Queen in a castle. Six Royal Persons, and a Moorish character who has executed them, are decapitated and put on seven ships that sail to an island. They suffer alchemical dealings in an althanor (furnace) which is placed in a castle tower on that island.8 The result is the arrival of the King and the Queen who then return to the castle and reward their guests with the Order of the Golden Stone.9 In Yeats’s The Island of Statues, the death of the queen, the Enchantress, causes the arrival of a queen (Naschina) and a king (Almintor). The decapitated persons who return to life after their deaths in the Chymical Wedding can be identified with those persons of stone who return to life after solving the magic spell cast by the enchanted flower of joy. There are seven characters in the story, which is nearly the same number as in the poem— five sleepers, two shepherds, Naschina and the Enchantress. Originally, the number of characters who suffered death in the poem was seven, followed by the death of the Enchantress. The Order of the Golden Stone granted by the Queen (not the King) to the guests in the story can be compared to the enchanted flower of joy, employed by Naschina, the new Queen, to revive those made into stone by passing the flower between

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their lips. The image of the “Golden Stone” in The Order of the Golden Stone is suggestive of the entire works of Yeats. The superiority of the female, as represented by Naschina, over men, as represented by the shepherds, suggests the Yeatsian approach where Maud Gonne practises her authority over her suitors in order to make them submit. The final victory of Naschina by solving the spell is not simply to overcome the Enchantress of the Island but rather to confirm female superiority. The inferiority of the masculine element, as opposed to the feminine element in The Island of Statues, emanates from the influence of the Troubadour tradition in Yeats’s early efforts. Furthermore, the solving of the magic spell by a female expresses Yeats’s belief in the feminine capacity to control the world or at least to herald the danger behind that capacity. Naschina’s behaviour is dangerous—encouraging a fight between the two shepherds—but although she is going to save her lover, Almintor, who has been turned into stone, she is also happy that other men are fighting to gain her love. Here then, she is not completely faithful to her supposed lover, Almintor. Naschina’s behaviour recalls the girl’s behaviour in the tale of The Arabian Nights, who is playing a game of love with her husband and her lover. This situation might also have been influenced by the image of the woman depicted in The Arabian Nights, and it also recalls Helen of Troy, who caused the Trojan War: The Sleeper. Ah! While I slumbered, How have the years in Troia flown away? Are still the Achaians’ tented chiefs at bay? Where rise the walls majestical above, There dwells a little fair-haired maid I love. (FY 101, III, ll. 291-95)

The second sleeper makes reference to Dido being unfaithful to the memory of her husband and also mentions the dangerous love that causes tragedies: The Sleeper. With hungry heart Doth still the wanderer rove? With all his ships

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I saw him from sad Dido’s shores depart, Enamoured of the waves’ impetuous lips. (FY 100, III, ll. 262-65)

If Aeneas, the Greek, is considered as being from the West, and Dido, the African, is considered as coming from the East, the story can be interpreted as saying that the East needs the protection and love of the West according to Virgil’s point of view. This colonial consideration is not obvious in The Island of Statues, but it is in the original text of the Aeneid. The reference to the legendary King Arthur by the third sleeper deepens the sense of history expressed in the poem and also hints at the political dilemma at the end when the sleepers choose their king: The Third Sleeper. A rover I who come from where men’s ears Love storm and stained with mist the new moon’s flare. Doth still the man whom each stern rover fearsʊ The austere Arthur ņ rule from Uther’s chair? (FY 101, III, ll. 271-74)

The reference to King Uther and his son, King Arthur, indicates the significance of magic or alchemy in the legend. King Uther Pendragon was transformed by the magic power of Merlin into the shape of Gorlois Duke of Cornwall, who had been killed in order to seduce his widow, Ygerna.10 It was said that that night produced the legendary King Arthur.11 Many transformations occur in the poem, namely, men into stones or statues, stones or statues into men, and the transformation of the Enchantress into a frog after her death. The new moon indicates the birth of the new queen, Naschina, the shepherdess who is blessed by the god Pan: The Sleeper. As here I came I saw god Pan. He played An oaten pipe unto a listening faun, Whose insolent eyes unused to tears would weep.

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Doth he still dwell within the woody shade, And rule the shadows of the eve and dawn? (FY 101, III, ll. 280-84)

The power of art imposed by the god Pan suppresses the power of lust that is represented by the god Faun. However, the power of love still proves to be strongest at the end of the poem. Through love, the supreme magic, Naschina convinces the Enchantress to break the spell, an act that suggests that only through love can the riddles of life be solved. Female skilfulness, as represented by the Enchantress’s casting of the spell and Naschina’s ability to solve it, leaves nothing for the foolish men who are fighting in vain to attain the love of these superior creatures. Another interpretation of the victory of Naschina is given by Harold Orel: Naschina, the Arcadian shepherdess, finally overthrew the Enchantress of the Island of Statues in the major event of the play. She did so by displaying St. Joseph’s image on her necklace to the goblin Queen, who thereupon vanished. Christ, in other words, had won still another victory over the powers of the pagan world.12

The motif of the Christian-pagan struggle recurs clearly in Yeats’s “The Wanderings of Oisin.” The pagan elements in The Island of Statues, which point to the pre-Christian era, have similarities with the Chymical Wedding, and there is a sense of conflation between these elements and the Christian references. In the poem, the god Pan, Aeneas, Dido, Troy and Sibyl are conflated with St. Joseph, whereas in the story, Cupid, Venus, Fortune, the Golden Fleece, the Golden Stone, Hermes, the House of the Sun and the Tower of Olympus are conflated with the Virgin, the Divine Trinity, and St. John. The legend of the Golden Fleece shows the effect of magic when making gold; however, the witch here demonstrates the malignant side of her personality by killing her young brother to distract her father and

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successfully elope with her lover, Jason. A contradiction emerges between this image of the Golden Fleece and the first and fourth provisions of the Order of the Golden Stone,13 which were conferred by the King on Christian Rosenkreutz who was also endowed with the Order of the Golden Fleece. In her quest, Naschina saves not only her lover’s life, but the others’ lives as well. The shift from individual to public matters means that the role of women is not confined to private issues, but that they can also efficiently rule on public affairs. The end of this verse of the drama transcends even the philosophy of feminism, which appeals for equality in power between the sexes. It asserts the earlier political preferences of Yeats by making the queen choose the king, not the reverse. The people who elected Naschina as the queen of the island acknowledge her superiority over men; consequently, the choosing of the king by the queen becomes a complementary action or a type of decoration. As an allegory, Naschina can represent “Mother Ireland,” who chooses her king by free will; the king then sacrifices himself for the sake of that mother. That king is immortalised by being transformed into a statue, the sacred stone in the Celtic religion. The flower of joy, which the questers are seeking, acquires a Rosicrucian shadow, which is the symbol of the rose and represents Ireland in Yeats’s poetry.14 This act of choice on behalf of Naschina, reverses the position of Almintor as a chooser, so that by the end of the poem, he is chosen. This positive action appears to be negative in the end, yet raises the prestige of women as the hunter turns into the hunted. Had we searched for the gender of the statues, we would never have found the female ones. Disguised as a masculine hunter, Naschina never tries to submit to the deadly test to get the flower of joy, which means that this task is confined to real men only. Consequently, that flower resembles a female symbol which men must fight to attain. The failure of men to gain that flower poses a broad question about how attainable women are, and in turn, foretells how unattainable Maud Gonne would be for Yeats. This early prediction—because Yeats met Gonne for the first time after writing this poem—proved to be true as Gonne would remain unattainable to Yeats for the rest of his life. The identification of Yeats, as a suitor of Gonne, with Almintor in The Island of Statues, as a suitor of Naschina, is verified at the end of the poem and in Yeats’s biography, as Almintor becomes a husband, but Yeats remains a permanent statue. Almintor lives in real life, and Yeats lives in art as

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Gonne wished for him to be like the poet in Shelley’s Alastor. Before Gonne, Laura Armstrong was also unattainable to Yeats because she was already engaged, and the fact that she was from the upper class was a further problem for Yeats, who was poor at the time. The difference between their classes was true for both Maud Gonne and Yeats. In conclusion, magic and alchemy constitute the major part of Yeats’s poetic drama, The Island of Statues, and indeed demonstrate his early principal concerns. His esoteric system is based on these elements which he later uses to form his panoramic view of the world. This poetic drama is full of precursors and subtle hints to the main topics that Yeats will later indulge in, particularly, the theme of immortality, the interpretation of history and politics, and the relationship between the sexes. The magical rose in this poem is the prototype of the mystical rose that plays a major role in Yeats’s spiritual symbolism in both his prose and poetic writings. Yeats’s eternal love for Maud Gonne is represented here by asserting the superiority of the lady in the Troubadour tradition. The struggle, or even the reconciliation, between the pagan and Christian cultures is introduced here, indicating an implicit bias towards the former. Art, as a sublime work and indeed a quest for Yeats, is embodied in the sculpture of the statues. They symbolise the supreme transformation and eternal alteration that occurs within the mortal-immortal equation.

CHAPTER THREE AUTOMATIC WRITING AND THE EXPERIENCE OF THE YEATSES

Abstract Automatic writing, explored and practised by W. B. Yeats and his wife Georgie Hyde-Lees (known as George), became a strong element of Yeats’s spiritual system and produced symbols that Yeats eventually used to compose poetry and his prose book, A Vision. This paper explores the nature of the automatic writing script discovered by his fictional character, Michael Robartes, and the source of its creativity. It also deals with how Yeats applied automatic writing symbols to develop the structure and theme of certain poems, particularly “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” and “The Phases of the Moon.” It also examines how the script became the basis of Yeats’s system by explaining his theory of the Four Faculties and allowing a better understanding of the ongoing movement in world history. Lastly, it sheds light on the Arabic element present in Yeats’s spiritual foundation and the extent to which that element contributed to the development of his entire spiritual system.*

The Nature of Automatic Writing In his book, The Making of Yeats’s “A Vision,” George Mills Harper quotes Yeats’s statement about the source of his system and the automatic writing script: System said to develop from a script showed me in 1913&14. An image in that script used. (This refers to a script of Mrs Lyttelton, and a scrap of paper by Horton concerning a chariot with black & white horses.)1

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W. T. Horton’s scrap of paper advises Yeats to abandon his psychic experiments and focus on creative art using the mythical symbols of Plato’s Phaedrus, with the black horse designating the former and the white horse the latter.2 The link between Horton’s advice and Edith Lyttelton’s script, as Yeats indicates, is that they are talking about the same theme of good and evil that would form a significant part of his system.3 The allegory is exemplified by the chariot standing for the soul, the black horse for evil, and the white horse for good. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates explains the nature of the soul figuratively and distinguishes between the “charioteers of gods” and the “human charioteer,” with the first driving only noble horses while the second drives horses of both noble and ignoble breeds.4 The Automatic Script of 5 November 1917 repudiates Horton’s advice, as the Control, the spirit who guides the behaviour of the medium during automatic writing, says: Yes – one white one black both winged both necessary to you One you have the other found – the one you have by seeking it you find by seeking it in the one you have.5

The Control’s statement concurs with Yeats’s belief in duality and allows for the interchangeability of opposites, while Horton’s focuses on one side only. Lewis Spence defines automatic writing, or “psychography,” as writing which is conducted by the spirits and without a willing human contribution. Nevertheless, Spence ascribes this phenomenon to a subconscious activity according to public consensus.6 The definition excludes the conscious will from the mechanism of writing and this procedure is consistent with what Yeats suggested about George’s writing. Yeats stated that “after some vague sentences it was as though her hand was grasped by another hand,”7 as if a supernatural power moved her hand to write. Mediumship can be compared with prophecy in the sense that both function as intermediary states between heaven or supernatural forces and Earth or human beings. In his Phaedrus, Plato divides theia mania, divine madness, into four forms: prophetic, initiatory or cathartic, poetic, and erotic.8 He relates these forms to their respective gods: Apollo, Dionysius, the Muses, and Aphrodite/Eros.9 The prophet or the poet seems to be out of his mind and a

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divine power controls him. He is no more than a mouthpiece to utter the voice of God. By contrast, the poet who uses his skills to compose poetry is not divinely inspired like Homer who was expelled from the Republic because of this characteristic and his erroneous description of godly attributes.10 The first and third forms of divine madness allocate prophets and poets to those ranks who receive the divine gift of prophecy. However, the method of writing that Yeats used casts suspicion on the “automatic” process of writing. He asked a question about it and the communicators replied: a procedure that eliminates the element of spontaneity. Spence casts doubts on the automatism of writing or speaking which is performed under the control of the spirits of the dead.11 He compares the mediumistic trance with “the old idea of demoniac possession, to which spontaneous trance was referred.”12 The Automatic Script of George Yeats also confirms the intention of writing in the words of the Control, Thomas of Dorlowicz: The subconsciousness of a living person and your own got entangled in the two spirit thoughts—the first communicator got half from the spirit source half from you that other. ………. You need at the time to [?brake] the will in [?our] self but the intercommunication was not wholly accidental you prompted one in your own thought.13

So, the procedure of automatic writing needs cooperation between the communicator and the medium or the person who crossquestions her. Another theory of the nature of the poet’s talent ascribes it to divine empowerment, with the poet seen as possessed or inspired by an alien spirit.14 Early Greek literature, as Penelope Murray states, did not separate divine empowerment from the poet’s skills.15 Early Arabic literature also ascribed poetic talent to spirits called Jin, or as transcribed by the Orientalists and Yeats himself, Djinn.

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“The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” and “The Phases of the Moon” The girl in Yeats’s poem “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” is obsessed and inspired by the Djinn and that makes her sleep-talk in the poem: And saw her sitting upright on the bed; Or was it she that spoke or some great Djinn? I say that a Djinn spoke. … (CP, 460-6, ll. 143-5)

Kusta’s bride in the poem functions as a vessel to perform the action of the Djinn or spirits during her sleeping state. Kusta, the speaker of the poem, or Yeats himself, describes his bride’s state, regarding her as a prophetess or a great master: She seemed the learned man and I the child; Truths without father came, truths that no book Of all the uncounted books that I have read, Nor thought out of her mind or mine begot, Self-born, high-born, and solitary truths, (CP, 46, ll. 146-150)

Yeats tends to favour prophetic theory, whereby the medium transmits knowledge or truth induced by the spirits or God. The medium does not know what he says. According to this poem, that knowledge is the wisdom begotten in the Arabian Desert: Unnoticed and unfelt I wrapped her in a hooded cloak, and she, Half running, dropped at the first ridge of the desert And there marked out those emblems on the sand That day by day I study and marvel at,

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With her white finger. (CP, 46, ll. 163-8)

In A Vision, Yeats mentioned the geometry drawn on the sand by the Arab dancers of the Judwali tribe, whose footprint symbols were interpreted by Kusta Ben Luka himself. Kusta is described as an old Arab who “belonged to a tribe of Arabs who called themselves Judwalis or Diagrammatists because their children are taught dances which leave upon the sand traces full of symbolical meaning.”16 Yeats used these symbols for his theory of history, the gyres in particular: All, all those gyres and cubes and midnight things Are but a new expression of her body Drunk with the bitter sweetness of her youth. (CP, 462, ll. 194-6)

Yeats mixes “gyres and cubes,” as scientific symbols relating to geometry, with the ambiguous “midnight things” relating to mystery and the occult practised by Kusta’s bride. The gyre or the spiral and the twenty-eight phases of the moon are borrowed from Arabic mysticism or Sufism and astrology. Michael Robartes, Yeats’s fictitious character, narrates as follows: An old Arab walked unannounced into my room. He said that he had been sent, stood where the Speculum lay open at the wheel marked with the phases of the moon, described it as the doctrine of his tribe, drew two whorls working one against the other, the narrow end of one in the broad end of the other, showed that my single wheel and his two whorls had the same meaning.17

Yeats, through the voice of Robartes, interprets history using “two whorls,” cones or gyres that move against each other in conformity with the cyclical movement of the Great Wheel. Robartes adds: “Life is no

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series of emanations from divine reason such as the Cabbalists imagine, but an irrational bitterness, no orderly descent from level to level, no waterfall but a whirlpool, a gyre.”18 Yeats doesn’t believe in the rectilinear movement of history as Cabbala, the Jewish mystical school, argues but he prefers gyration. In the Automatic Script written on 24 October 1917, the Control Thomas issues an instruction that the tree represents Christ and the mask is Judas.19 He says that “the tree in a sense is symbol of whole circle” [sic.]. Harper ascribes the tree to the Cabbalistic Tree of Life as Yeats had been influenced by Jewish mysticism.20 According to Yeats’s theory of history, the historical figures who marked the movement of history are Christ, Judas, Buddha, the Sphinx, and the Irish Avatar—the new Messiah. In 1897, Yeats’s mystic friend, George Russell (AE), wrote to him about his vision of this avatar near Donegal or Sligo, describing him as a middle-aged man with a grey golden beard and hair, and a broad forehead.21 This avatar was one of the failed prophecies of Madame Blavatsky which affected Russell but not Yeats.22 Both indulged in reviving Celtic traditions and searching for a new history for Ireland. On 23 February 1918, during a sitting of automatic writing, Yeats received a message from the spirit of Anne Hyde, Duchess of Ormonde (who died in 1688) requesting that Yeats and his wife incarnate her son.23 Yeats was prepared and liked the idea of the Irish Avatar and he was ready to accept it, especially as the requesting spirit of Anne Hyde was a relation of his family. The idea of mediumship led Yeats to believe in his prophetic role with George to have this new Messiah as their son. Also, his sense of history—Irish history as related to the history of the world—underpinned this belief. However, he was sceptical as to why the avatar had to come before the end of the Christian cycle which was 2000 years.24 The expected baby disappointed both the “Instructors” and the Yeatses because it was female; nevertheless, to remedy their failure, they called it Anne after its mythical ancestor, Anne Hyde. Yeats’s poem “The Phases of the Moon” is the starting point of Book 1 of A Vision which is subtitled, “What the Caliph partly learned.” Undoubtedly, the intended Caliph is Harun Al-Raschid whose name is mentioned in the title of the other poem. This Caliph was mythologised in The Arabian Nights and the fictitious Caliph was blended with the historical one. Certainly, Yeats was influenced by his reading of Powys Mathers’ translation of The Arabian Nights, as he mentions in the preface to his book A Vision (1925).25 Stallworthy analyses the poem “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” and sees the poem as an allegory of Yeats’s life, with Kusta Ben Luka and his bride representing Yeats and his wife.26

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Kusta Ben Luka is a real character whose name is mentioned by Yeats in the title of his book, A Vision: an Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka (1925). He was a translator and a philosopher in the court of Harun Al-Raschid. Yeats uses Kusta Ben Luka as a narrator or a mask to hide his authorial reference. This technique is recurrent in Yeats’s works. In A Vision, as in many poems, Yeats invents many fictitious characters and uses them as masks to dramatise and objectivise his writing.

The Four Faculties and Principles Although Yeats was uncomfortable with science, he adopted a geometrical symbolism in his beliefs and systems. He was influenced by Arabic astrology and astronomy through his reading of alchemy and the achievements of civilisation in Arabic Spain. The original title of his poem “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” was introduced by “Desert Geometry,” and the “gyres and cubes” in the poem reflect the significant element of geometry in the construction of Yeats’s system. The number four (or its derivatives 2, 6, 8, 12, etc.) is essential in this system as it forms the four sides of the pyramid, the four lines of the six squares of the cube, the four directions of the Zodiac and the four elements of nature. The Four Royal Persons of Harun Al-Raschid draw the geometry of the Great Wheel by dancing on the sand. The Four Lunar Faculties: Body of Fate, Creative Mind, Mask, and Will, which are subjective or antithetical, are positioned on the wheel of the phases of the moon in contrast with the Four Solar Principles: Celestial Body, Spirit, Passionate Body and Husk, which are objective or primary. The Faculties and Principles are arranged in pairs suggesting Yeats’s belief in duality. The Principles are reflected and reverse their corresponding Faculties. The position of the Will, which is the most important faculty, defines the location of a person or a soul on the wheel and consequently whether that person is within the antithetical or primary halves.27 Consequently, that position determines which cycle of history the person belongs to according to Yeats’s classification of personality. Mediumship is interpreted in terms of the Four Faculties in the Automatic Script and states that the strong Creative Mind is better for mediumship but the weak Creative Mind is better for facts.28 This means that the Creative Mind should be idle in order to receive the facts that come from a supernatural source. The Four Principles are associated with and followed

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by the Four Perfections: Unity of Being, Self-sacrifice, Self-knowledge, Sanctity, and the Four Types of Wisdoms which are: the Wisdoms of Desire, Intellect, Heart, and Knowledge. All these quaternaries interpret human behaviour and personality according to the classifications Yeats uses in his system.

Conclusion Yeats’s friend, Horton, differentiates between psychic experiments, which relate to magic in some way, and creative art, which relates to poetry. He uses Plato’s Phaedrus myth of the divine and human horses to convince Yeats to focus on the divine side only. However, Yeats believes that both sides are essential for his creativity and his system. Automatic writing is not absolutely automatic but it is a collaboration between the spirits or the supernatural forces and the skills of mediums or humans. Yeats’s book, A Vision, is a dramatised version of the “facts” drawn from the automatic writing sittings of Yeats and his wife, as the script is discovered by the fictitious character, Michael Robartes. This character and the other historical one, Kusta Ben Luka, contribute an Arabic influence in both Yeats’s poems “The Phases of the Moon” and “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid.” The symbols in these two poems: gyres, cubes, the Great Wheel and the twenty-eight phases of the moon are applied by Yeats to formulate his system and his theory of history. The Four Faculties and Principles are also used to underpin the major ideas of Yeats’s phantasmagoria.

CHAPTER FOUR SPIRITUAL SYMBOLISM IN W. B. YEATS’S “THE PHASES OF THE MOON”

Abstract William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was both a cosmopolitan and an Irish poet. He absorbed most of the known cultures and religions of the world into his poetry because these constituted the basis of his imagery and symbolism. He was particularly interested in having the mystical appeal of these religions broaden his poetic and philosophic views. His interest in symbolism led him to create his own special system to interpret human personality and the movement of history through symbols. His poem, “The Phases of the Moon” reveals the basic elements of this system. This paper focuses on Yeats’s symbolism in this poem and how these symbols contribute to the entire Yeatsian philosophy regarding spirituality, mystical wisdom, perfection and beauty. It discusses his classification of personality based on the phases of the moon, the effect of astrology, and the rendition of the major character in the poem, Michael Robartes. The discussion consults Yeats’s book, A Vision, to explain the ambiguities in the poem and to provide a broader background.*

The Symbolism of W. B. Yeats’s In the dedication of his book, The Symbolist Movement in Literature, Arthur Symons asked Yeats whether he was a representative of the Symbolist movement in the UK. Symons confirmed his response by referring to the “transcendental” art and “mysticism” which are “essential in the doctrine of Symbolism.”1 Yeats’s work demonstrates that his symbolism is profoundly related to these two terms. Symons describes the French Symbolist Movement as an attempt to “spiritualise literature” and rebel against the more common views of “exteriority,” “rhetoric” and a “materialistic tradition.”2 Yeats did not adhere to any particular culture or

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religion. He went wherever he could in order to find a possible potential route to universal truth. He remained largely in agreement with Blake’s maxim that “all religions are one.”3 In his book, A Vision, Yeats promoted a highly complicated system of symbolism. His poem, “The Phases of the Moon” communicates the core meaning of that book.

Symbolism in “The Phases of the Moon” The essence of Yeats’s book, A Vision, is found in this poem. The poem is not merely a story; it expresses the structure and deep meaning that formed Yeats’s philosophy and his personal system regarding the circular movement of history. The importance of this poem also emerges in its links to the other poems of Yeats that relate to the moon and his major fictional character, Michael Robartes. The poem is structured as a dialogue between Robartes and another imaginary character, Owen Aherne. Through this dialogue with a reference to the poet in the poem, who is actually Yeats himself, Yeats reveals his thoughts directly or symbolically. These two characters are seen visiting a poet who is seeking mystical wisdom in his lonely tower by reading a book or a manuscript: The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved, An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil; And now he seeks in book or manuscript What he shall never find.4

As mentioned in A Vision, the poet has received the mystical book from Robartes, who admits that the poet will not find what he is looking for, simply because “mysterious wisdom [is] won by toil.”5 Unlike Robartes, who experienced practical wisdom from too much travelling, especially in the East, the poet has confined himself to a tower with his books to read. Robartes asserts the need for a reaction between theory and practice to discover a full vision of life and the afterlife. Aherne also knows this truth, as is clear in his suggestion to Robartes: Why should not you Who know it all ring at his door, and speak Just truth enough to show that his whole life Will scarcely find for him a broken crust

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Of all those truths that are your daily bread; And when you have spoken take the roads again?6

The comparison between the poet and Robartes reveals that the poet, through his isolation, cannot reach the truth, whereas Robartes, by taking “the roads again,” can easily find it. Robartes, as Yeats states, “has but lately returned from Mesopotamia, where he has partly found and partly thought out much philosophy.”7 Mesopotamia is not only known for its study of philosophy but also for its astrology, another area that Yeats is highly interested in, using it to build his system that depends on the related movements of the moon and the sun. The twenty-eight phases of the moon, which Yeats borrowed from the Arabs, were reshaped into the twelve gyres of his own system.8 He then turned them into ten divisions representing the ten Sephiroth of the Cabbalistic Tree of Life.9

Fig. 1: The antithetical and primary gyres diagram.10

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Yeats’s philosophy is based on the unity of opposites as a reflection of the Unity of Being. The opposite movement of the sun and the moon is identified on his wheel and depicts his primary idea regarding the behaviour of man who “seeks his opposite or the opposite of his condition.”11 Yeats’s concept of perfection is exemplified by regarding man as a microcosm and the precise movement and arrangement of the universe as a macrocosm. Unlike the traditional wheel of the Zodiac, which is based on a division of the ecliptic, the sun’s apparent path through the sky, Yeats’s wheel includes both the lunar and solar signs as the Arabic Zodiac does. He also refers to the Arabic influence on the design of his wheel as a kind of magic, as follows: Even when I wrote the first edition of this book I thought the geometrical symbolism so difficult, I understood it so little, that I put it off to a later section; and as I had at that time, for a reason I have explained, to use a romantic setting, I described the Great Wheel as danced on the desert sands by mysterious dancers who left the traces of their feet to puzzle the Caliph of Baghdad and his learned men.12

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Fig. 2: Arabic Zodiac diagram.

Yeats’s imaginary character, Michael Robartes, lives with the Arabs for some years and learns their philosophy, magic and astrology: “Sing me the changes of the moon once more; / True song, though speech: mine author sung it me.”13 In his Autobiographies, Yeats points out the difference between the song and the speech: “I shall, however, remember all my life that evening when Lionel Johnson read or spoke aloud... They were not speech but perfect song.”14

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Fig. 3: The Great Wheel of the phases of the moon diagram.15

The song relates to poetry and the speech to prose, but here the song also embodies the spiritual truth, while the speech explores the Other. Through the voice of Robartes, Yeats explains his philosophy of the movement of life and death, the movement of history and civilisations, and the identification of personalities according to the phases of the moon: Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon, The full and the moon’s dark and all the crescents, Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in: For there’s no human life at the full or the dark.16

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Neither the first phase, which is primary or objective, nor the fifteenth phase, which is antithetical or subjective, are human because of their absolute objectivity and subjectivity. These two phases are interchangeable as Yeats clarifies that “the old antithetical becomes the new primary” and the reverse is true due to the cyclical motion of the Great Wheel.17 Through these two phases, the poet links the mortal with the immortal and the physical with the spiritual. The first phase points out the beginning of life and the shaping of human life by the hands of Nature or the supreme divine power. The dough, which “cook Nature” deals with, is the body in its formation or the soul in its unity with the body.18 So, the realistic beginning of life starts in the second phase: From the first crescent to the half, the dream But summons to adventure and the man Is always happy like a bird or a beast; But while the moon is rounding towards the full He follows whatever whim’s most difficult Among whims not impossible, and though scarred.19

Happiness in this stage “from the first crescent to the half” is ascribed to the enjoyment found in discovering the world; however, the poet does refer to the sensuous life of a bird or a beast to designate the major characteristic of this stage. The beauty of the body does prevail: As with the cat-o’-nine-tails of the mind, His body moulded from within his body Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then Athene takes Achilles by the hair.20

Juno, the Greek Moon-Goddess, sent Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, to calm Achilles’s anger.21 The cycle of history in this poem begins with the Trojan War and the beauty of Helen of Troy, which was the cause of that war. The twelfth phase is characterised by heroism, as it relates to its symbols—Hector from ancient history and Nietzsche’s modern theory of the superman:

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Part I Chapter Four Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born, Because the hero’s crescent is the twelfth. And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must, Before the full moon, helpless as a worm.22

Consecutive birth and death, or rebirth, recalls the idea of reincarnation, as Yeats refers to that concept in each phase. The image of “helpless as a worm” might refer to either the baby or the very old man. However, the progressive soul in these phases also suffers a war with the body: The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war In its own being, and when that war’s begun There is no muscle in the arm; and after, Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon, The soul begins to tremble into stillness, To die into the labyrinth of itself!23

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Fig. 4: “The first phase, which is primary or objective”. Solar and lunar signs of the Zodiac diagram.24

The poet may be referring to the effect of the fourteenth phase of the moon on the psychology of animate beings, but the same is also true for the fifteenth, or rather this same phenomenon is ascribed to the full moon. Human physical power is at its climax, so sexual love is significant in this period, as it may cause the death of the soul. The poet describes the struggle that occurs in the phases that lie between the twelfth and eighteenth as a search for unity or the Unity of Being.25 There is a search for a balance between the antithetical and primary elements of life, except during the fifteenth phase, which is absolutely antithetical.26 This phase is defined as “complete beauty,” where the soul and the body are united or they dissolve into each other to be invisible and out of our world:27

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Part I Chapter Four All thought becomes an image and the soul Becomes a body: that body and that soul Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle, Too lonely for the traffic of the world: Body and soul cast out and cast away Beyond the visible world.28

The beauty in phase fifteen is divine; however, as the poet explains in A Vision, the greatest human beauty is attained in phases fourteen and sixteen.29 The antinomy of beauty versus ugliness or deformity moves on through the second half of the wheel, and the poet gives to “cook Nature” the tasks of kneading and producing a new generation in the first phase of the moon when the cycle starts once again. However, when “cook Nature” divides the dough and allocates it to every individual’s fortune of physical beauty, “cook Nature” doesn’t forget that his task can be balanced by the beauty of the mind. The poet explains this equation in prose to those who are fated to be deformed: “here also are several very ugly persons, their bodies torn and twisted by the violence of the new primary, but where the body has this ugliness, great beauty of mind is possible.”30 According to Yeats’s philosophy, which can be perceived from reading his poetry in general, beauty of mind is mostly a spiritual quality. To conclude, Yeats’s “The Phases of the Moon” is a highly symbolic poem, which introduces this poet’s thoughts and philosophy on life, history, and personality. Influenced by the French symbolists, Yeats formulated his ideas in prose to initiate his own type of symbolism. His mystical experience and his interest in many religions provided him with rich symbols and deeper concepts which then affected his thoughtful and poetic discourse as a writer. The importance of this poem is that it is considered a key to understanding most of his other prose and poetic writings. In this poem, Yeats applies the Arabic mansions of the moon to build his theory of the cycle of life, history, civilisation and human character. He uses these symbols in a way that is different from their concrete realities. Yeats’s concern is with poetry and absolute thought, not solid facts. This poem can easily be considered as the culmination of his poetic career and also the answer to his long philosophic inquiry.

CHAPTER FIVE THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN YEATS’S CHARACTERISATION OF OWEN AHERNE AND MICHAEL ROBARTES: THE COSMOPOLITAN LONGING FOR UNITY IN DIVERSITY

Abstract Yeats’s early interest in mysticism, Irish legends and folklore, Eastern religions and mythologies, and Celtic heritage dug a deep fissure in his consciousness that effectively split his character into two contradictions—the Western and the Eastern, or the orthodox and the heterodox. The former was the current Christian faith, which still struggles to find its identity in Yeats’s deep personality, and the latter was Yeats’s Celtic inherited culture, particularly Druidism, which branched out to absorb Eastern religions and mystical realms. The struggle between these two elements of Yeats’s psyche found its way into his creativity and imagination to help him invent two fictitious and yet symbolic characters, namely, Owen Aherne representing the orthodox, and Michael Robartes representing the heterodox. This paper raises several related questions: To what extent did Yeats promote the struggle between Aherne and Robartes to reveal his own crisis of belonging? To what extent did Yeats control these two sides of his character to fulfil his personal, creative and political goals? Do these two characters satisfy Yeats’s philosophical, religious, and mystical quest and thus substantiate his views? How indeed does the creative struggle between Aherne and Robartes also define Yeats’s own spiritual reality and ambitions?*

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Yeats’s Masks Yeats’s interest in psychical research and spiritualism led him to create his theories of the mask, the antiself, or the opposite.1 His first antiself or “opposite” was Leo Africanus, the Moorish geographer and traveller who lived after the fall of Arabic Spain and appeared to Yeats in séance practices. In a dialogue between Aherne and Robartes, the latter, or Yeats, confers creative power on the “opposite” and implies that the “opposite” is a driving agent or the rationale behind creativity. The “other self” or the “opposite” is the “mask” which we are always looking for. Robartes or Yeats, describes this “mask,” which is “the Arab definition,” as “something” we “put on and [have] worn: a form created by [the] passion to unite us to ourselves.”2 This “mask” is also attributed, in some way, to the Celtic or Indian doctrine of rebirth when Robartes states that “all genius is the attempt to harmonise an opposition created by [a] misfortune [of] excess in some past life.”3 Yeats’s reading of The Arabian Nights provided him with a historical and mythologised character, Harun Al-Raschid. This character is depicted in Yeats’s poem, “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” as seen in The Arabian Nights. Yeats added the character of Kusta Ben Luka, who was the Caliph’s translator and philosopher, in order to deliver an allegory for his own life, to take the mask of Kusta for himself and take Kusta’s fairy bride for his wife, George. Fascinated by the style of The Arabian Nights, Yeats tries in this poem to tell a story that is similar both in technique and themes because “the use of multiple narrative frameworks and the development of narration through monologue and colloquy are characteristic of stories found in The Arabian Nights.”4 Yeats uses Kusta Ben Luka as a narrator or a mask to hide his authorial reference; however, the identification and connection between the narrator and the author can easily be discovered. This technique is recurrent in Yeats’s works. In A Vision, as in many of his poems, Yeats invents many fictitious characters and uses them as masks to dramatise and objectivise his writing. In the introduction, written by Owen Aherne, who is a fictitious character and another mask of the poet, Yeats says through the voice of Aherne: “Mr Yeats had given the name of Michael Robartes and that of Owen Aherne to fictitious characters, and made those characters live through events that were a travesty of real events.”5 Robartes seems very close to the Eastern side of Yeats’s personality and to his Arabic interests in particular.

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The Problem of Identity The long dialogue between Aherne and Robartes reflects Yeats’s significant thoughts, theories and the struggle in his inner self between what he had learned during his upbringing and what he was ambitious to become through his choices and phantasies. Aherne’s Western orthodoxy and Robartes’ Eastern heterodoxy explain or negotiate Yeats’s question of belonging and identity. In his essay, “‘I Say that a Djinn Spoke’: Arabian influences in Yeats,” Nicholas Meihuizen interprets Yeats’s adoption of Leo Africanus as his “alter ego” in terms of nationalism and colonialism: Yeats summons his own Arab alter ego, Leo Africanus, a Spanish-Moor, a man, in other words, with divided national loyalties, an outsider in two worlds (like the Anglo-Irish), who mastered the discourses of empire, to the extent where he became papal geographer of Africa. He thus gave European voice to the Otherness of which he was part, paralleling, in some measure, Yeats’s acute consciousness of the disparity between his Irish motherland and his mother tongue.6

This split in identity for both Leo and Yeats is not necessarily negative in its effect, but rather a driving force for the collaboration between antinomies, and the exemplification of the dialectic phenomenon that governs the development of history. Bushrui was assured that this collaboration between European and Arabian cultures and religions was represented in the character of Leo Africanus who “had bridged the gap between two irreconcilable cultures and religions.”7 Similarly, through the conflict between Aherne and Robartes, Yeats is torn or attracted by two poles of identity—the Western and the Eastern—which also run parallel with the polarity of the Anglo-Irish identity.

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In his book, Blake and Yeats: The Contrary Vision, Hazard Adams attributes the equilibrium of the triangular relationship of Yeats, Aherne and Robartes to the balance of personality Yeats wanted for himself, and to the exemplification of the heroic image in his poetry: If Yeats himself often leaned toward Robartes, it was Aherne who made control possible. There is some truth to the idea that Yeats in the company of Robartes is Aherne and in the company of Aherne is Robartes, the Conflict never dropped for fear of losing the balance.8

Actually, the balance between what Aherne believes in and Robartes’ ideas is what Yeats needs for his work and his personality. For instance, in his “The Supernatural Songs,” Yeats criticises Christianity for the lack of femininity in the Trinity, and that femininity and “the natural emotions” are available in the East: Now believes that the symbols of Christianity must be the central expression of his ideas, but the Christian mysteries must inhabit every land equally, and above all they must be reconciled to the natural emotions. He is going to the East, to Arabia and Persia, to find wisdom among the common people, as he had found it in Ireland, and perhaps discover from them this doctrine of reconciliation between religion and that bodily law from which all the arts sprung.9

The hero in Yeats’s novel, The Speckled Bird, is like Robartes in his temptation by the East and this temptation reflects Yeats’s concern as well. Therefore, what is available in the East completes or integrates with what is found in the West. Moreover, with his Sindbad-like travels, Robartes satisfies Yeats’s Romantic interests. Yeats did not only invent the characters of Aherne and Robartes, but also imaginative titles of books

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in order to “puzzle the reader and to amuse Yeats himself” as Bjersby argues.10 Bjersby believes that Yeats complicated his stories and references for the sake of entertainment and the enjoyment of the Romantic atmosphere created by these events: The whole thing appears to have become more or less like an entertaining game to Yeats, and he appears to have enjoyed making it all as complicated as possible. Moreover, he could not abstain from giving the Oriental element a rather Romantic twist. In his eyes, the Arabs seem to have been a type of people he could well use for his Romantic purposes.11

Bjersby identifies Robartes with C. M. Doughty because of their travels in the deserts of Arabia and their knowledge of medicine.12 Bushrui adds other similarities between these two characters: We are told that Robartes, like Doughty, had gone to Damascus first that he might learn Arabic before his intended pilgrimage to Mecca, and that, again like Doughty, Robartes sets out on the pilgrims’ trail to Mecca disguised as an Arab and spends two years among the Bedouins of the desert. Moreover, like Doughty, Robartes is a Christian and represents the European tradition.13

However, through Aherne, Robartes dramatised the dialogue and mentions twenty years of living in the desert, not just two years as Bushrui states.14 Yeats refers to Doughty through Robartes in the dramatised conversation when the latter mentions some desert beasts and recommends

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consulting Doughty. Doughty’s book, Arabia Deserta, is often the recommended reference.15 Yeats invented this character to meet his interest in the East and Arabia, and the Islamic East in particular. He believed in John Rhys’s theory “that the religion of the Celts was similar to that of the other Indo-European races and that the home of the Celts might have been in Asia.”16 Although Yeats is interested in the whole of Eastern culture, he specifies certain areas in the East that haunt his imagination: That most philosophical of archaeologists Josef Strzygowski haunts my imagination. To him the East, as certainly to my instructors, is not India or China, but the East that has affected European civilization, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Egypt.17

Bushrui considers the East, which fascinated Yeats, to be a “Semitic East” or “Arabia.”18 Assumed to be Yeats’s vision, Bushrui paralleled “pre-Islamic pagan Arabia and pre-Christian pagan Ireland,” and Yeats “found Arabia, like Peasant Ireland, a strangely isolated country, living its own contracted life and remaining almost untouched by the influence of alien materialistic civilisations.”19 It is true for Yeats’s concepts of the “desert” in Arabia and the primitive life there as well, but Yeats was also aware of ancient Arab civilisations and their contribution to geometry, astronomy and astrology. Some of Yeats’s Arabian figures and thoughts do not belong to that primitive era, but rather to the Islamic Ages, such as that of the Caliph Harun Al-Raschid, the Islamic doctrine of Chance and Choice, and the whirling dance of the Dervishes. So, Yeats feels that a part of his identity relates to the East and the other part is based in the West.

Yeats’s Spiritual System and These Two Characters Yeats’s esoteric system is based on many eclectic elements gathered from different cultures, religions, and mythologies. The mystical background overlaps these cultural elements and enriches his poetic imagination as well. The orthodox Aherne constitutes the fundamental Christian identity in this esoteric system while the heterodox Robartes resembles the mythological and mystical elements of other cultures and religions of the world. Yeats depicted Robartes as a leader of a mystical order called Rosa Alchemica. This mystical order relates to Rosicrucianism

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which is a mystical order that was founded after the death of the German “mystic-magician,” Christian Rosenkreutz.20 According to Magus Incognito, the Rosicrucian occult was rooted in Eastern cultures, particularly those in India, Persia, Chaldea, Medea, China, Assyria, Greece, and the Jewish mysticism of the Cabbala and Zohar.21 The Egyptian God, Thoth is also identified or assimilated with the Greek messenger of the gods, Hermes to produce Hermes Trismegistus “Thrice-greatest,” the Egyptian priest thought of as the originator of Hermeticism, and the archetype for Rosicrucianism.22 One of the important products of Rosicrucianism was the founding of the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn in 1888, in which Yeats was enrolled early on. Yeats composed many poems reflecting the doctrine of Rosicrucianism and its mystical affinities. Through Robartes, Yeats interprets history and the movement of civilisations by a method that combines myth with science. Yeats’s theory of history is a blend of mythical elements with symbols taken from different cultures, including Arabic history and astrology, Greek mythology, Hinduism, and Christianity. Robartes talks about the three eggs from which the routes of history are defined. Castor and Clytemnestra were hatched from the first egg of Leda after intercourse with her husband, Tyndareus, and the second produced Helen and Pollux after intercourse with Zeus who then took the form of a swan. Obviously, these two eggs produced the Greek tragedy of the Trojan War. For the third egg, Robartes “wondered what would break the third shell.”23 Robartes recounts the history of the third egg: I bought this egg from an old man in a green turban in Arabia, or Persia, or India. He told me its history, partly handed down by word of mouth, partly as he had discovered it in ancient manuscripts. It was for a time in the treasury of Harun Al-Raschid and had come there from Byzantium, as ransom for a prince of the imperial house. […] Those of you who are learned in the classics will have recognised the lost egg of Leda, its miraculous life still unquenched. I return to the desert in a few days with Owen Aherne and this lady

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Part I Chapter Five chosen by divine wisdom for its guardian and bearer. When I have found the appointed place, Owen Aherne and I will dig a shallow hole where she must lay it and leave it to be hatched by the sun’s heat.24

Literally, the “appointed place” is the desert of Arabia, and symbolically, the place might be near Bethlehem, like the place where the apocalyptic beast is “slouching” in Yeats’s prophetic poem, “The Second Coming.” In the above quotation, Robartes or Yeats tells us how civilisations are born from each other. The “green turban” symbolises Islam, particularly the Sufi Dervishes or Sheikhs. It seems that the egg of civilisation is passed or inherited from one cycle of history to another. The ancient civilisations in Arabia which comprised the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, passed it to Persia and India, then to Greece and the Roman Empire exemplified by Byzantium, and finally to the Islamic civilisation with its highest and most powerful exemplar, Harun Al-Raschid. The symbolic burying of the egg in the desert under the heat of the sun to be hatched for the next civilisation suggests that this next civilisation will be in Arabia. Robartes deliberately ignored Western or modern civilisation because Yeats didn’t believe in its positive role in history. Yeats’s interest in astrology reflects his strong indulgence in cosmic divination, his longing to reveal the secrets of human existence, and his desire to learn how to interpret history. His theory of history muddles mythical and historical elements, thus absorbing the ancient civilisations of Arabia, Persia, and India, beginning the mythical starting point of Leda and her simultaneous intercourses with her husband and Zeus, the God-bird. These intercourses brought about the Greek tragedy of Troy. Yeats’s theory is selective and reflects his own interests, especially when he chooses Byzantium to represent the Roman civilisation, the Abbasid’s reign from Islamic history as symbolised by its Caliph Harun Al-Raschid, and the coming age as exemplified by the Arabian Desert or Bethlehem where Christ was born. He imagines history as starting in Arabia and ending in the same place, like the movement in a circle. In a chapter of Yeats’s book, A Vision (1925) entitled “Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends: An Extract from a Record Made by his Pupils,” the narrator is John who is the brother of Owen Aherne. John Aherne comments on the struggle between his brother, Owen, and

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Robartes: “My brother is very bitter about the pagan gods, but is so, according to Robartes, to prove himself an orthodox man.”25 Actually, Yeats’s acceptance of these pagan gods lurks behind this comment and Robartes exemplifies this affinity in Yeats’s personality. However, Aherne’s orthodoxy reflects the other side of Yeats’s deep psyche which was affected by social norms and common beliefs.

Conclusion Yeats’s adoption of Leo Africanus, the Moorish character, as his opposite or antiself, is reflected in the struggle between his two fictitious characters, Michael Robartes and Owen Aherne. Leo’s belonging to his Arabic and Islamic culture when he was living in Arabic Spain was obscured by living in a Christian environment during his capture. Yeats’s identity is also obscured, as he vacillates between his motherland, Ireland, and his mother tongue, English. These identities struggle and find their creative way through the invention of Yeats’s two characters, Aherne and Robartes, as the former represents Christian Orthodoxy or Yeats’s Western side, and the latter, heterodox digression or Yeats’s Eastern side. Yeats is careful to have a balance between these two characters or sides in his personality to the extent that the struggle between them reflects a positive understanding and collaboration rather than mere animosity. Other characters are complementary to these original two characters in adding and deepening more specific ideas related to his national concerns and spiritual quest. For instance, Leo Africanus can be considered a modified version of Michael Robartes, and both Leo and Robartes have some affinities with the real person of Doughty. However, all of them reflect some aspects of Yeats himself.

CHAPTER SIX ARABIC AND ISLAMIC INFLUENCES ON W.B. YEATS’S A VISION .

Abstract W. B. Yeats was a great humanistic and modernistic poet and dramatist. He was interested in all the major known religions and cultures such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, magic, mysticism, occult, and theosophy. Yeats’s indulgence in mysticism led him to Eastern sources, especially Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islamic Sufism. In A Vision, he mentions his important theory about the cyclic movement of history. He refers to it in his poem “Sailing to Byzantium” as a “perne in a gyre” and this movement is greatly related to the Islamic Sufi dance of the Dervishes. There are several references to Arabic and Islamic cultures and characters in his book A Vision, such as the twenty-eight phases of the moon; Kusta Ben Luka, the minister in Harun Al-Raschid’s court and the poem which was related to this Caliph, “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid”; and Leo Africanus, the “wild Budoin” who was a Moorish character and revealed himself to Yeats during an occult séance as the spirit of an adventurer and geographer. Yeats wrote 44 pages of manuscript on this legendary character. Yeats was also influenced by the Sufi poets in Arabic Spain and he refers to them in this book. The aim of this paper is to reveal these references and characters and connect them to the whole structure of Yeats’s art and philosophy.* Keywords: Yeats’s A Vision, Harun Al-Raschid, Kusta Ben Luka, Judwali, Mudliji. A Vision (1925) contains prose and poetry which interact to produce a living impression of what is in the mind and imagination of the poet. Two of the six poems in the book are strongly related to the Arabic and Islamic cultures. They are: “The Wheel and the Phases of the Moon” and “Desert Geometry or the Gift of Harun Al-Raschid”; the others are

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“Leda,” “The Fool by the Roadside,” “Mr Dave’s Verse” and “All Souls’ Night.” Yeats comments on the Great Wheel in the first poem, “the diagram of the Great Wheel shows a series of numbers and symbols which represent the Lunar phases, and all possible human types can be classified under one or other of these twenty-eight phases,” and “their number is that of the Arabic Mansions of the Moon” (AV A,17). Yeats borrowed the framework of his wheel from the Arabic Mansions (Manazil in Arabic) of the Moon. Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), the German mystic who influenced Yeats, employed the term “wheel of life.” Boehme had been influenced by Paracelsus (1493-1541) “who in turn derived much of his terminology and conceptual framework from earlier, mainly Arabic, writers” (35). Boehme used the terminology of alchemy spiritually, influenced by the Arabic philosopher and physician, Rhazes (Abu Fakher Al-Razi in Arabic spelling) who “included some solids in his category of spirits, including sulphur and mercury” (35). In A Vision, Yeats used the chemical term “tincture” as Boehme had used it before. He said: “I had suggested the word tincture, a common word in Boehme, and my instructors took the word antithetical from Per Amica Silentia Lunae” (AV B, 122). The antithetical tincture is opposed by the primary tincture in Yeats’s system or dialectic form. In terms of history, “the primary is ‘an age of necessity, truth, goodness, mechanism, science, democracy, abstraction, [and] peace’, while the antithetical is ‘an age of freedom, fiction, evil, kindred, art, aristocracy, particularity, [and] war’” (52). Yeats tends to side with the antithetical tincture, as it expresses his creative personality. Using these tinctures, Yeats interprets the movement of history through the gyring of the two whorls or cones, representing the primary and the antithetical. In “Sailing to Byzantium,” the movement of the gyre represents the movement of history: O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Two images are derived from Arabic and Islamic cultures. The first image relates to “the gold mosaic” tradition which has been inherited by Byzantium from “earlier cultures [which] came to figure later in the adornment of Islamic architecture” (Brandabur, 2016, 327). The earlier cultures of Mesopotamia, as Leonard Woolley discovered in his excavations

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in “Ur of the Chaldees,” had developed “gold and mosaic craftsmanship” (327). The second image is the “perne in a gyre” which is a whirling movement like the dancing of the Islamic Dervishes. These two images celebrate the symbol of gold as an example of spiritual perfection needed to contrast with the mortality of the body. The term “tincture” may be related to the term “element” in the Greek Four Elements to describe the psychology of humans but it might be related to Boehme’s influence which harbours a different explanation of perfection from traditional Christianity. Yeats eliminates two complete phases from his description of personality; he states that “Phase 1 and Phase 15 are not human incarnations because human life is impossible without strife between the tinctures” (129). Yeats’s conception of good and evil is that evil is essential in some way for a human to activate his creativity through his theory of the Daimon, the antithetical and the primary man. Man acquires the Unity of Being because he “possesses not the Vision of Good only but that of Evil,” in contrast with the primary man, who does not “receive revelation by conflict, he is living either in dark or in light” (AV A, 28-28). Like the primary man, the Christian Trinity is a one-sided character that supposedly—like all divinities—relates to light. Yeats could not imagine divinity without its opposite, the devil, so he adopted a mystical name for himself in the Order of the Hermetic Society, the Golden Dawn: “Demon est Deus Inversus” (i.e., Devil is God reversed). He praised Dante as a great poet for having Unity of Being, while he criticised Shelley for the lack of the “Vision of Evil” and that “he could not conceive of the world as a continual conflict” (78). Yeats adopted the doctrine of the Unity of Being, which was basically developed by the Arabian mystic, Ibn Arabi, in his system. Boehme’s concept is that perfection is not static “but dynamic ever-increasing perfection, always becoming, not being, but still in perfectly harmonious balance” (Waterfield 1989, 27). This idea is found in Islamic religion—God who shaped the soul or the self “inspired it to lewdness and God fearing” (Koran, 19:7). Boehme, like Yeats, was influenced by Rosicrucianism which “represented an old-age secret tradition linking the West with the East, sometimes called the Hermetic Tradition” (Waterfield, 18). The poem “The Phases of the Moon” is the starting point in Book 1 of A Vision, which is subtitled “What the Caliph partly learned.” Undoubtedly the intended Caliph is Harun Al-Raschid (Al-Rasheed in Arabic spelling) whose name is the title of the second poem. This Caliph

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represents the climax of the Arabic and Islamic development during Abbasid’s reign, and this reign was the climax of the Arabic and Islamic golden age. This Caliph is mythologised in The Arabian Nights, and at this point, the difficulty of a historical approach is raised. The fictitious Caliph is blended with the historical one. Certainly, Yeats was influenced by his reading of The Arabian Nights—Powys Mathers’ translation as mentioned in the preface to his book A Vision (1925)—and he even knew the Arabic language from Sir Edward Denison Ross as Jon Stallworthy said (1963, 60). Stallworthy didn’t mention the extent of Yeats’s knowledge of Arabic; however, he analysed the poem “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid,” considering the poem as an allegory of Yeats’s life. Kusta Ben Luka and his bride stand for Yeats and his wife, and the Caliph is “a somewhat unsatisfactory representation of divinity” (86). It is a problematic issue to cope with a historical document or a literary text like A Vision, which was written almost a century ago. The objectivity of the historian could be found in Stallworthy’s study of Yeats’s “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” when he dealt with the setback of The Baramicides (Al-Baramika in Arabic spelling). In his poem, Yeats didn’t mention the reasons behind this setback, but he suggested that there were two reasons: the first one was secret, and the second was that Jaffar was a traitor. The Western translators of The Arabian Nights dealt with these stories as part of an authentic historical document reflecting the real life of the Arabs at that time, whereas it was a combination of the natural and the supernatural (Haddawy 1992, xxv). The Caliph, Harun Al-Raschid, was portrayed as an Emperor who was steeped in pleasures, promiscuity and pornography. It is a subjective point of view of the unknown authors of the book, mainly Persians, who hated this Caliph for the setback of AlBaramika. In his play Hassan, James Elroy Flecker misinterpreted the character of Harun Al-Raschid which angered Yeats (Bushrui 1965, 239). Flecker might have been influenced by the depiction of this character as he appeared in The Arabian Nights. Post-modernist signs are found in Yeats’s A Vision, which is not a historical or literary text. Neither is it a scientific or mythic text, but an amalgamation of all of them including the rational and the irrational. The subtlety of the style of the book obliges us to use different approaches to interpret its meaning. Yeats uses the voice of Owen Aherne, a fictitious character and one of his masks, in the introduction to say: “Mr Yeats had given the name of Michael Robartes and that of Owen Aherne to fictitious characters, and made those characters live through events that were a travesty of real events” (AV A, xvi).

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Oswald Spengler’s historical theory of the cyclic movement of history can be compared with Yeats’s theory. The Great Wheel seems to be the great symbol of this movement; however, Yeats’s theory is a blend of mythic elements with symbols quoted from Arabic astrology. Subjectivity and objectivity are related to history; the time of the Christ is ascribed to objectivity; Renaissance is ascribed to subjectivity; and our time is also ascribed to objectivity (Ellmann 1948, 232). Yeats’s theory of history should be studied in relation to many influences including his readings of history and mythology. Three historical characters should be studied as well: Leo Africanus, Kusta Ben Luka and Ara Ben Shamesh. Leo Africanus is: Italian Giovanni Leone, original Arabic al-ণasan ibn Muতammad al-WazzƗn al-ZayyƗtƯ or al-FƗsƯ (b. c. 1485, Granada, Kingdom of Granada [Spain]—d. c. 1554, Tunis [now in Tunisia]), traveller whose writings remained for some 400 years one of Europe’s principal sources of information about Islam. (Britannica 1998)

He was captured on his way to his homeland after visiting many places in Africa. He was persuaded to convert to Christianity and he wrote his important book, A Geographical Historie of Africa (Britannica 1998). So, this character is well known in history; however, Yeats used him as one of his instructors in addition to the fictitious characters of Aherne and Robartes (Flannery 1977, 128). Yeats used to blend the real and fictitious characters to invent a dramatic situation which embodied his thoughts. He even changed or mythologised real or historical characters and gave them new roles according to his imaginative characterisation. Yeats conjured Leo’s spirit through his medium and talked to him or corresponded with him. Another ambiguous character is Ara Ben Shamesh. George Mills Harper described him as “a mystical Arab adept” who taught the members of the Golden Dawn (195). His name might have been modified or mispronounced; the real name might be Arab Ben Shams (Al-Doori 1999, 113). Kusta Ben Luka was a real character whose name was mentioned by Yeats in the title of his book, A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded

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upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka (1925). He was a translator and a philosopher in the court of Harun Al-Raschid. Yeats employed him as the narrator of his poem, “Harun Al-Raschid.” One of the problematic issues in A Vision and the poem “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” is whether the Arabic tribe Yeats called the Judwali actually existed. Most critics consider it to be a fictitious name except for S. B. Bushrui who related it to Sabians “who live in Iraq today, follow the most ancient monotheistic religion known in the world; their religion is said to date back to the year 7000 BC” (Bushrui, 297). He based his deduction on a text in A Vision, which describes its characteristics: There are several tribes of this strange sect, who are known among the Arabs for the violent contrasts of character amongst them, for their licentiousness and their sanctity. Fanatical in matters of doctrine, they seem tolerant of human frailty beyond any believing people I have met. (AV A, xviii-xix)

Some of these characteristics do not coincide with those of the tribe, namely the licentiousness and the tolerance of human frailty. The name of the tribe, Judwali, is so different from the Sabians, the tribe suggested by Bushrui. He also relies on Yeats’s reference “to the remote Syrian origin of their doctrines and his repeated references to their teachings and their ancient origin, [which] strengthen the idea that he must have had a particular tribe in mind, although he does not use their real name” (Bushrui, 297). He ignores other characteristics of the tribe, Judwali, such as their ability to read the symbols of the footprints left by humans in the sand. This feature is mentioned in “The Gift of Harun AlRaschid”: I wrapped her in a hooded cloak, and she, Half running, dropped at the first ridge of the desert And there marked out those emblems on the sand

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Using the voice of Aherne, who ascribed it to Robartes, Yeats narrates a story of “The Dance of the Four Royal Persons” (9). This story is also talking about the symbols left by the dancers on the sands which have special meanings. This tribe is known for physiognomy, and the most well-known Arabic tribe of this art or science is Beno Mudlij or Mudliji and this name is very close to Judwali. It might have been modified or mispronounced by Yeats or his instructor, Professor Edwards Denison Ross, who knew Arabic but perhaps was not skilful for he was a Persian specialist; however, other features of the tribe which Yeats presented might not coincide with those of Mudliji. One can suggest that Yeats’s style is a combination of reality and imagination. Charles Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888) greatly influenced Yeats, especially the description of elves which are known in Arabic as Jin or Djinn as Yeats transcribed the word (Longenbach 1987, 146). Yeats mentioned these creatures in his poem “Harun Al-Raschid”: “Or was it she that spoke or some great Djinn? / I say that a Djinn spoke” (Yeats 1925, 125). Ben Luka’s bride seems to be like a medium through which the supernatural forces speak, as Yeats tried to verify by his psychical research when he was a member of many Hermetic societies, The Golden Dawn, in particular.

Conclusion Arabic and Islamic influences are more obvious in Yeats’s A Vision than any other of his texts. This book refers to many Arabic and Islamic characters: Kusta Ben Luka, Harun Al-Raschid, Leo Africanus, Ara Ben Shamesh, and it contains many other allusions as well. Yeats used a blend of reality and imagination and we can find it difficult to distinguish these elements throughout the book. His poem “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” has been the subject of many interpretations; one of them depicted Harun Al-Raschid as a character portrayed in The Arabian Nights and literary texts, the other described him as the one mentioned in historical books. The poet was concerned with the second one. Yeats developed his historical theory according to the Arabic division of the phases of the Moon. He injected it with mythological elements to be closer to the poetic approach than the authentic studies of history. Most of the critics consider the Judwali tribe as a fictitious name; nevertheless, there is

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one who attributed it to a real name. Bushrui suggests the Sabian sect which is rooted in ancient history. His reference is suspect because of the difference in the names. I suggest that it refers to the Mudliji tribe because of the references to tracing footprints and the close similarity of the names. x

Delivered at the conference “Islam and the West: A Love Story?” held by Glasgow University/UK, 24/11/2012.

CHAPTER SEVEN BODY-SOUL INTERACTION IN W. B. YEATS’S POETRY: A SPIRITUAL WAY TO SALVATION

Abstract In his early poetry, Yeats adapted the Indian philosophy on the renunciation of bodily desires but he also endeavoured to cope with the normal activities of life, so as not to follow monasticism as a lifestyle. He was influenced by certain Indian sages but he never entirely surrendered his poetry to their thinking. However, neither could he rid himself completely of their thinking, as some of it did infiltrate certain of his poems. As a solution, he sought out a second Indian mystical philosophy that did deal with both body and soul. It was called Tantrism. A body-soul duality then did inhabit Yeats’s poetry and indeed constituted the major part of his esoteric system. His belief in the doctrine of the Unity of Being reflects this duality and, further still, it opened the door for him to develop his own specific ideas in that dual context. This paper explores the body-soul duality found in certain of Yeats’s poems, particularly, his Indian poems, “Adam’s Curse,” “Vacillation,” “The Phases of the Moon,” “Blood and the Moon,” “Oil and Blood,” and the Byzantine poems, “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” and “Among School Children.” The discussion also sheds light on how Yeats dealt personally with body-soul interaction and devised his own reaction to spiritual life, human behaviour and human destiny. Yeats’s quest for salvation is also discussed in this paper, as much of it had a bearing on his spiritual system and his personal philosophy about the body-soul relationship.* Keywords: W. B. Yeats, Mysticism, Unity of Being, Tantrism, Body-soul duality, Tower, Mystical Marriage, Sweetness, Salvation.

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In his essay, “Interaction of the Soul and Body,” Emanuel Swedenborg presents three hypotheses for the relationship between body and soul and the interactions between them. The first hypothesis, called “Physical Influx,” presumes that matter or body affects the spirit or the soul; however, the second hypothesis, called “Spiritual Influx” presumes the reverse. The third hypothesis is called “Pre-established Harmony.” It reconciles the two previous hypotheses and presumes there are simultaneous and harmonious operations for both the body and the soul.1 The second hypothesis seems to have been derived from Plato where he uses Socrates’ views to argue that the soul is invisible and imperceptible and shares with the divine its characteristic of leading the body of any mortal.2 In Phaedrus, Plato explains the nature of the soul by distinguishing between the soul of the noble breed and that of the ignoble breed on the one hand, and the major difference between mortals and immortals on the other hand. The noble soul is identified with a white horse and consigned to it are all the perceived virtues of white, and the ignoble soul is identified with a black, wild horse and all its associated vices. Mortals are composed of both body and soul, while immortals have a soul only, with the exception of God who bears both an immortal body and a soul.3 In this context, Plato refers to both the mortal body of the creatures and the immortal body of God, and thus indicates the different materials that form the essential elements of God and His creatures. However, the Greeks believed that the soul is not purely a spirit but rather a composition made of both matter and spirit. Consequently, the soul and the body are not hugely different in their content but they are different in the degree of their properties.4 Heraclitus thought that the soul was also “bodily,” and its matter as fine as air or fire, while Philolaus believed that the soul is an “attunement” of the body.5 Here the interaction between soul and body reaches a climax to the extent that it becomes difficult to differentiate between the two parts. Plato’s forms, and to some extent the Neoplatonic Logos, are that “by which all things had been made, and looked upon the world of matter and body as a devilish impediment to the virtue and liberation of the imprisoned soul.”6 In this respect, the soul and body are different in their nature, and yet Aristotle considered “the soul as the ‘substantial form’ of the body.”7 As Lee Oser says, Aristotle’s concept of the soul was situated close to the middle of the distance between the materialistic idea of the soul “as a subtle arrangement of material parts, such as we find in modern reductivist science, and the idea of the soul as a ghostly substance, such as we find in Plato and Descartes.”8 In this context, Aristotle’s idea of a body-soul

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connection was that they are inseparable. Yeats, as a poet and not a thinker, takes positively to Aristotle’s consideration at the end of his poem, “Among School Children”: Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

(CP* 219, ll. 57-64) The form and the content of the dance or the actual dancing are inseparable, much like the composition of body and soul, matter and spirit. However, Lee Oser also finds an aesthetic interpretation for the body-soul duality in certain of Yeats’s poems, including “Among School Children”: In some of Yeats’s greatest poems, including “The Second Coming,” “Among School Children” and “Leda and the Swan,” the body is an image, an aesthetic body expressing a transcendent vision. It follows that the aesthetic body’s governing agent or soul is a vision, which has its source outside the body.9

Although this vision comes from outside the body, the sacred body here is very close to the soul in its spirituality to the extent that it is impossible to differentiate between them. The “midnight oil,” which is the syrup of wisdom that flows out of the sacred bodies of the saints, is the

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immortal essence that results from the interaction between the body and the soul of those saints. The saints are deep-rooted like a chestnut tree whose trunk or “body” is indeed inseparable from its syrup, fruits or essence. Further, the symbolic deep-rooted chestnut tree may refer to the Celtic tradition that was ignored by the modern schools when Yeats visited them. The longevity of this tree is essential to the context of the poem, as it speaks of the brevity of the life of the mortal human body when compared to the longevity of trees. William Blake’s idea of a negation that controls the relationship between body and soul has its roots in Plato’s dichotomy of body and soul. In “Among School Children,” Yeats abolishes this dichotomy, and negation turns to integration: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” In the poem, the “midnight oil” recalls the “midnight voice” and “midnight things” found in “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” when Kusta Ben Luka, the Caliph’s translator and philosopher, says that “his new wisdom was from his young wife’s body, not from beyond”:10 All, all those gyres and cubes and midnight things Are but a new expression of her body Drunk with the bitter sweetness of her youth. (CP 462, ll. 203-5)

Michael Robartes, Yeats’s fictional character, falls in love with a dancer and he describes her body in terms of the supernatural: I went to Rome and there fell violently in love with a ballet-dancer who had not an idea in her head. All might have been well had I been content to take what came; had I understood that her coldness and cruelty became in the transfiguration of the body an inhuman majesty; that I adored in body what I hated in will;11

Although Robartes adored the dancer’s body, he also felt her “coldness and cruelty,” and that image suggests a lack of life and human touch, for he describes the dancer’s body as “an inhuman majesty.” This

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image recalls the “Ledaen body,” which relates to the supernatural and to violence. Therefore, Yeats is biased against the human body even though he sees it as full of life and vitality. However, if the image “inhuman majesty” is interpreted as merely “bestial,” then the context becomes different and the dancer’s body is glorified for its temporal occurrence and its transient beauty. Yeats’s configuration of dancing in other poems, particularly in “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes” tends to be spiritual: O little did they care who danced between, And little she by whom her dance was seen So she had outdanced thought. Body perfection brought, (CP 170, ll. 37-40)

“Body perfection” is fulfilled through unity with the soul via the spiritual energy of dancing. The spiritual dancing in “Byzantium” is also a vehicle that Yeats uses to achieve this unity between body and soul, which then leads to enlightenment or salvation. Yeats’s early interest in Hinduism led him to comprehend the route to the Divine Self, and that religion also led him to better understand how to join “spirit and matter” or body and soul.12 The idea of the Divine Self coincides with the gnostic divine spark of the body. However, there is also a doctrine in Hinduism called Samsara, which refers to the renunciation of bodily desires in favour of the soul. This doctrine infiltrates Yeats’s early Indian poems. Nevertheless, while he never believed in the doctrine, he did see it as an alternative to the Unity of Being and Tantrism. For the latter, the interaction between body and soul functions or is transcended by sexual intercourse to reach unity with God, while for the Unity of Being, this interaction can take various routes, including sexual intercourse. The concept of the divine body in Tantrism is the equivalent of the “perfectly proportioned human body”13 in Yeats’s concept of the Unity of Being. Yeats ascribed his statement on the perfection of the body to Dante but it was actually Yeats’s concept, as George Bornstein argued.14 Yeats might have been influenced by a certain kind of yoga wherein “the hatha yogis held the body in much higher regard than the classical yogis, and even believed in the possibility of transforming the physical body into a ‘divine’ body—the Siddha.”15

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The phase called “complete beauty” in Yeats’s wheel of time is the fifteenth phase and it is not human. The divine beauty of this phase is represented by the unity of the body and soul to the extent that both become invisible as mentioned in Yeats’s poem, “The Phases of the Moon”: Robartes. All thought becomes an image and the soul Becomes a body: that body and that soul Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle, Too lonely for the traffic of the world: Body and soul cast out and cast away Beyond the visible world. (CP 162-63, ll. 60-65)

This divine beauty is the ideal model for another kind of beauty and perhaps it can be compared or related gnostically at least to the beauty available in the phases that are close to the fifteenth, in which the Unity of Being is likely to occur. The beauty of Leda and Helen is divine and Yeats compared it to the beauty of his beloved Maud Gonne. However, this comparison no longer occurs in Yeats’s late poetry due to Gonne’s advancing age and the marriage of each of them to a different partner. The desperate images in “Adam’s Curse,” such as: “one summer’s end,” “the last embers of daylight die” and “weary-hearted as that hollow moon” suggest the death of the desire to love that Yeats strives to sustain, although in vain. Actually, “the high way of love,” or the courtly love or mystical marriage, proves useless in the Yeats-Gonne relationship, as it lacks the process of finding and having a Unity of Being. Body is not considered in this relationship; however, the labour of Time does undertake the task of subverting one side of the “body-soul” equation. The beauty of women and that of poetry symbolise the two sides of this equation. We can even use other terms to define this equation through a mortal-immortal balance. However, the poet seems unhappy to have the immortal at the expense of the mortal because the Unity of Being is not fulfilled. Yeats is not in agreement with the mere balance of his antinomies but he does always prefer one of them and he thinks it achieves the Unity of Being, for as Brian John states, Yeats “with his antinomies of primary and antithetical, intellect and passion, talks of a harmony of self,

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Unity of Being, which is arrived at not by truly reconciling the antinomies, but by a preponderance of one of them—passion.”16 For Yeats, passion is indeed a significant element in creating the antithetical “Mask” that is responsible for uniting us with “ourselves” as he asserts in his book, A Vision, on “The Great Wheel.”17 The role of passion, as in the instance of “heroic ecstatic passion” that transcends the body’s limits and its materialistic state, even exceeds the natural boundaries that Yeats believes in.18 Adam, the primal man created by God, is the archetype of beauty as he was created with “a perfectly proportioned human body,” as Dante noted.19 In “Adam’s Curse,” Maud Gonne starts to see her body as withered and Yeats awakens just to remind her of this change that shocked him when he saw the reality of the human body as epitomised by his beloved’s body. Dante, who is included in the phase (17) of the Unity of Being by Yeats, fixed the time of his beloved’s ideal beauty as eternal, while Yeats in this poem, in contrast to his early poems, sees the changing body as it is in reality. Yeats is always fascinated by the idea of the changeless body as represented by the bodies of Christian Rosenkreutz (the founder of the mystical sect, Rosicrucianism), St. Teresa and St. Catherine of Genoa. Yeats’s personal terror emerges from his observation of his own progress of ageing in that body-soul duality is based on the mortal body and the immortal soul. His interest in the “undecayed body” after death, however, tends to eliminate the mortal physical element of the body. If the soul is identified with gold or precious stones, then body or self is referred to by cheap metals, as it suffers decay and disintegration: Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Planted on the star-lit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow, Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory of changeless metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood. “Byzantium” (CP 252, ll. 17-24)

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Yeats’s interest in alchemy made him imagine that even passion could be “changeless” like magical precious stones: Forgael. [. . .] I shall ¿nd a woman. One of the Ever-living, as I think — One of the Laughing People — and she and I Shall light upon a place in the world’s core, Where passion grows to be a changeless thing, Like charmed apples made of chrysoprase, Or chrysoberyl, or beryl, or chrysolite; “The Shadowy Waters” (CP 430, ll. 247-253)

The changeless golden birds in the Byzantine poems, the changeless sword of Sato and the changeless works of art stand against the subversive power of time. However, the elements of these symbols are materialistic. Gold can be excluded, as it is an essential matter in the alchemy identified with the spirit, but iron or any other material, which constitutes the structure of a work of art, is not precious. This idea means that the body, with its transient elements, cannot resist change for a long time, but it is still alive, while the immortals are actually dead. However, the gnostic view of body-soul duality can also be traced in some of Yeats’s writings. The gnostic view of the human being is based on the duality of its physical and spiritual components, and the latter relates to the divine essence or “divine spark.”20 Richard Ellmann narrates a dialogue between a poet and an actress in Yeats’s unpublished work, “The Poet and the Actress.”21 The actress refuses to wear the mask given to her by the poet who resembles Leo Africanus, the Moorish character who Yeats considers as his antiself. The poet thus tells her: That the great drama in which she should act expresses, Not the external battles with which Ibsen and Shaw are concerned, but the internal battle in the soul, where “one of the antagonists does not wear a shape known to the World or speak a mortal tongue.” 22

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The antagonist here is the one who speaks an immortal tongue, in other words, that side of the human being that holds the divine spark in Gnosticism. Nevertheless, Yeats’s concept of the body is different from the gnostic view. Gnostics consider the body as a prison for the soul, while Yeats glorifies the body in some of his poems, namely, “Vacillation” and “A Dialogue of Self and Soul,” as long as the body achieves Unity of Being with the soul, and he can even make the body superior. In these two poems, the speaker feels that he is blessed as a result of the interaction between body and soul. In contrast to this conclusion, the speaker in the Byzantine poems is disgusted by the body’s desires in line with the gnostic view of the body. These two contradicting views of the body reflect Yeats’s philosophical vacillation between body and soul according to his current mood, case or situation. In “Vacillation,” the flame symbolises the soul as in Mithraism, and it stands against the body or works as a destructive power in the first two stanzas: I Between extremities Man runs his course; A brand, or Àaming breath. Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night; The body calls it death, The heart remorse. But if these be right What is joy? II A tree there is that from its topmost bough Is half all glittering Àame and half all green Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;

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And half is half and yet is all the scene; And half and half consume what they renew, And he that Attis’ image hangs between That staring fury and the blind lush leaf May know not what he knows, but knows not grief. (CP 253-54, ll. 1-17)

The half and half balance of aridity-greenery duality in the Welsh Mabinogion tree, which is identified with the Cabbalistic Tree of Life, seems quite mathematically precise. However, although Attis (the god of fertility) stands between “that staring fury” and “the blind lush leaf,” Attis castrated himself and, consequently, he became biased towards aridity. Hazard Adams interprets “The heart remorse” in the first stanza according to the mithridatic remorse, which involves a dreaming process and return after death.23 It is more appropriate to interpret this phrase within the context of the Attis myth, as used by Yeats. The myth says that the youth, Attis, was about to marry but the Great Mother of Gods, Agdistis, who had fallen in love with him, struck him furiously and that strike caused him to be castrated and die. Agdistis’s remorse convinced Zeus to keep the body of the youthful Attis.24 This context of the myth illuminates Attis’s position as standing between “that staring fury” and “the blind lush leaf” in the sixteenth line of the poem. The “undecayed” body of Attis resonates with its references to Von Hugel and the miracle of the “undecayed” body of St. Teresa in the third line of the eighth stanza of the poem: Must we part, Von Hugel, though much alike, for we Accept the miracles of the saints and honour sanctity? The body of Saint Teresa lies undecayed in tomb, Bathed in miraculous oil, sweet odours from it come, Healing from its lettered slab. Those self-same hands perchance Eternalised the body of a modern saint that once Had scooped out pharaoh’s mummy. I — though

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heart might ¿nd relief Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief What seems most welcome in the tomb — play a predestined part. Homer is my example and his unchristened heart. The lion and the honeycomb, what has Scripture said? So get you gone, Von Hugel, though with blessings on your head. “Vacillation” (CP 257, ll. 78-90)

Yeats’s belief in the unity of culture obliged him to accept the ancient miracles of the pharaohs and Attis or Zeus as being equal to the miracles of the modern saints, such as St. Teresa. Moreover, he preferred Homer and “his unchristened heart” to the Catholic mystic, Von Hugel, who argues, “the Christian vision as the artist’s,” as Unterecker says.25 However, he was predestined to be Christian as a result of chance or fate, “Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief.” In Yeats’s esoteric system, the Body of Fate Faculty is positioned against the Will and the Will is the Faculty which determines the location of a person or the soul on the Wheel of Time in the subjective or objective half.26 However, in this poem, Yeats is inclined more towards the objectivity of history or the Body of Fate Faculty when describing both the state of the undecayed body of St. Teresa and his own being as a Christian. Nevertheless, he still activates his own will and choice to join the pagan side. In general, according to Yeats, the reaction between choice and chance determines the destiny of man. Yeats’s choice not to be aligned with the Christian side emerges basically as a reaction against the renunciation of the body, as found in Hinduism and Zen Buddhism. He also believes that Christianity contributed to the decline of his own Celtic culture. The sweetness and holiness of the undecayed body of St. Teresa is symbolic of Samson’s riddle in the Scriptures so as to show that there is

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no difference between Christian sanctity and non-Christian or pagan rituality. Teresa’s body “scooped out” the sweetness and immortality of the “pharaoh’s mummy,” as Samson scooped out the honey cultivated in the body of a lion. In this poem, the lion symbolises a pagan strength and out of this strength comes sweetness. In a letter to Mrs Shakespear on 30 June 1932, Yeats asserts his preference for strength as opposed to the “weakness” of the saint when he is talking about Oisin, as a swordsman, and St. Patrick in his long poem, “The Wanderings of Oisin”: “The swordsman throughout repudiates the saint, but not without vacillation.”27 Here, Oisin, the Celtic hero, although defeated, remains steadfast in his belief and does not submit to Christianity. In this sense, Yeats’s concept of the perfect man, or as he calls him, “the finished man,” is not the saint but he is closer to Ibin Arabi’s “the insan-il-kamil.” In the following text, Yeats compares the “finished” and “unfinished” man: My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The un¿nished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness; The ¿nished man among his enemies? — How in the name of Heaven can he escape That de¿ling and dis¿gured shape The mirror of malicious eyes Casts upon his eyes until at last He thinks that shape must be his shape? And what’s the good of an escape If honour ¿nd him in the wintry blast? “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” (CP 239, ll. 37-50)

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According to Ibn Arabi, man is created by God with a resemblance to His shape and “for Ibn Arabi, the essential dignity of humankind resides in the fact that God, out of His love to be known, created man in His image.”28 In his pursuit to be “the finished man,” “the unfinished man” struggles or escapes his “de¿ling and dis¿gured shape” but finally, he should accept his reality. The man of dignity and honour is usually accomplished at the “wintry blast” of age when he is near his end, so there is no use him escaping because his body has already corrupted or withered. Consequently, the “finished man” in a godly form no longer exists; otherwise, the “finished man,” as Yeats becomes in his own old age, is meant to be an example of the self-made man of celebrity: I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul. “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” (CP 239, ll. 59-66)

The last line of the above text may refer in a hostile manner to Maud Gonne, who actually was proud, but she was still the “kindred of his soul.” He suffered too much, as she rejected him proudly even though he became a celebrated public man. The irony here is that Yeats preferred Nietzsche’s “eternal return” to living life again with all its atrocities: I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness Àows into the breast

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We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest. “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” (CP 239, ll. 59-66)

The last stanza of this poem speaks of the sweetness of a body. However, sweetness emerges not from strength, as in the previous texts, but rather from weakness. The body is free from remorse, which is related to the soul; consequently, the body is separated from the soul, and in this case, the body is blessed by nature and vice versa. Otherwise, the cast-off remorse cannot be perceived without the interaction between body and soul. The gnostic view of the body as a prison is not presented here as it is in Andrew Marvell’s “A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body”: SOUL O who shall, from this dungeon, raise A soul enslav’d so many ways? (PF*, ll. 1-3)

Both Marvell’s and Yeats’s poems start with the soul but the title of the former starts with the soul, while the latter starts with the self. This means that the self is Yeats’s priority, which is clear at the end of the poem. However, Yeats’s poem seeks the achievement of the Unity of Being, as he hints in these lines: “That quarter where all thought is done” (CP 238, l, 7) and “Such fullness in that quarter overÀows/ And falls into the basin of the mind” (CP 238, ll. 33-34). The poet is referring to the quarter of the wheel of time in his esoteric system where the Unity of Being is likely to be attained between the twelfth and eighteenth phases.29 The precise or specific phases are the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth, while Yeats located himself in the middle of these phases. The fullness of thought (integration) or the harmony between the physical and the spiritual elements in existence is the major question that defines the Unity of Being. The spiritual element in this poem is the tower, which is introduced as an emblematical image of the soul. According to Yeats’s spiritual system, ascending and winding stairs represent the gyration of the soul towards God to fulfil the unity of the soul. Unterecker interprets the

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first speech of the Soul in this poem as a summons to achieve Nirvana and the last stanza of the poem is understood to be saying that the Self or the body is to have insight.30 The physical element in the poem is Sato’s sword, introduced by the Self as an emblem of strength or power. This sword is consecrated, and that association suggests the sword’s concern with Celtic culture: My Self. The consecrated blade upon my knees Is Sato’s ancient blade, still as it was, Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass Unspotted by the centuries “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” (CP 237-38, ll. 9-12)

The line “The consecrated blade upon my knees” echoes Yeats’s early poem, “He Remembers Forgotten Beauty” (1896): I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew. But Àame on Àame, and deep on deep, Throne over throne where in half sleep, Their swords upon their iron knees, Brood her high lonely mysteries. (CP 57, ll. 19-24)

In Celtic culture, the sword represents mystical knowledge, while the stone represents power, as it is the centre of the Celtic religion, particularly in Druidism. The stone, as a symbol, is available in the speech of the Soul, which talks about “fullness” in the quarter of the Unity of Being: “my tongue’s a stone.” Although the speaker talks about the soul when she “ascends to heaven” or the afterlife, the symbol of the stone as a Celtic element lurks behind. However, Sato’s sword is Japanese and not Celtic but it can still be understood in the light of Yeats’s interest in Zen Buddhism and his idea of the Unity of Culture. The doctrine of eternal reincarnation is stated here as the “crime of death and birth” and both the Buddhists and the Celts believe in this doctrine. The sword in this poem can even be understood in the Rosicrucian context, the mystical marriage between the sword and the rose: “That

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Àowering, silken, old embroidery, torn /From some court-lady’s dress and round” (CP 238, ll. 13-14). The sword is wrapped in the flowering dress of the lady, and this dress represents that rose. If the dress is considered as a “symbol of the body” as Unterecker suggests,31 then the sword can be taken to be a symbol of the soul or mystical knowledge as perceived by the Celts. In this context, ascending to heaven through the winding stairs of the tower is seen as an interaction between the spiritual and the physical. However, the tower in “Blood and the Moon” (1929) is “Half dead at the top,” and the metaphor of “half dead” reflects a body-soul dichotomy if the body is regarded as secular and the soul is considered as existing in the afterlife. In the second stanza of the poem, Yeats summons the towers of the ancient civilisations, namely, Alexandria and Babylon, and Shelley’s tower. If Yeats’s tower is compared to these towers, nothing can be concluded other than the alignment of traditions versus modernity. Yeats, however, believes that these ancient civilisations achieved a Unity of Being by inventing writing: At Phase 4 or 5 or perhaps a little later may have emerged the Sacred Legend of the sun’s annual journey, symbol of all history and of individual life, foundation of all the earliest civilisations; and at the phases where Unity of Being became possible began perhaps those civilisations, Egypt or Sumer, which had made a progressive, conscious, intellectual life possible by the discovery of writing.32

In his poem, “Blood and the Moon,” Yeats’s admiration of certain writers, namely, Goldsmith, Swift, Berkley and Burke, is revealed. Goldsmith is described by his sweetness: “Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his mind,” and this description suggests “the richness of the unembittered mind, the mind free of intellectual hatred.”33 This “intellectual hatred” and violence are represented by “Blood” versus the purity of the “Moon.” This symbolism can also be understood by a bodysoul duality if the Body is represented by “Blood,” and the soul by the

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“Moon.” In another poem, “Oil and Blood,” Yeats compares the “Bodies of holy men and women,” which exude sacred oil, to the “bodies of the vampires full of blood,” to show the striking difference between sacred and damned bodies. However, Yeats in “Blood and the Moon” and many other poems presents purification by fire or flame as the way to salvation. Here “intellectual fire” is the solution: “Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual ¿re.” This fire, as in the Byzantine poems, is symbolic because it is “intellectual” and that suggests not the purge of the body, but rather the purging of the mind or even the soul. To conclude, Plato’s dichotomy between body and soul that considered the body as earthly and the soul as divine is no longer acceptable for most writers, including Yeats. Instead, Aristotle’s concepts that the soul is the form of the body and that the body-soul relationship is inseparable appeal more to Yeats because he dealt with body and soul as a unity. This unity is exemplified in his poem, “Among School Children” when the dancer unites with her dance. However, in terms of immortality, Yeats is obliged to differentiate between the bodies of the saints, such as Rosenkreutz, Teresa, Catherine of Genoa and those of regular persons, where the former are immortal and the latter are mortal. The sacred body is not confined to Christian saints; it also includes characters from other faiths or cults, namely, the Greek Leda in Yeats’s poem, “Leda and the Swan” who is pagan and Kusta’s bride in “The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid” who is presumably Muslim. The elements of wisdom and the supernatural are the shared characteristics of these characters or their related cults. According to Yeats, “Body perfection” is achieved through a spiritual dancing that leads to a state of enlightenment or salvation. The doctrine of the Unity of Being, which Yeats believed in, relates body and soul to a kind of transcendental unity that is produced out of the interaction of this duality. In Yeats’s esoteric system, the “fifteenth” phase, which represents “complete beauty,” is divine. In this phase, body and soul are united and they become invisible. Passion, or love in terms of the Unity of Being, takes on the major role in this process to transcend the body’s limits to reach ecstasy. However, Yeats’s esoteric system comes to fruition in his middle age and his point of view changes later, regarding body-soul duality at least, when Yeats and his beloved Maud Gonne grow older. By this time of old age, body-soul duality is no longer happening because it suggests integrating the mortal body and the immortal soul. Yeats’s interest in the changeless body arises from his fear of the progressive loss of his body’s energy. The withered body of his beloved

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was one of the elements that caused his love to wane and it was exemplified in his poem, “Adam’s Curse.” Yeats’s concept of the body is different from Hindu and Gnostic views in that he did not consider the body as evil or as a prison for the soul as in Gnosticism, nor did he consider the renunciation of bodily desire as in Hinduism, but he consecrated the body and believed that blessedness comes from the interaction between body and soul as in “Vacillation” and “A Dialogue of Self and Soul.” However, he sometimes submitted to Hinduism and Gnosticism and their concepts, particularly in the Byzantine poems. Yeats’s vacillation between these two contrasting points of view as regards body-soul interaction reflects the influence of these trends in religions and philosophies during his own poetic experience and the struggle that he had to maintain his own point of view. According to Yeats, there are two ways to attain salvation. The first is achieved by the “intellectual fire” which is symbolic of a purge of the soul or mind but not the body as in “Blood and the Moon,” and the second which is fulfilled by spiritual dancing through “body perfection” as seen in “Byzantium” and other poems.

CHAPTER EIGHT ANTI-MODERNISM AS REVEALED IN THE CHARACTERS IN THOMAS HARDY’S POEM “THE MOTH-SIGNAL” AND HIS NOVEL THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Abstract Thomas Hardy reflected the characteristics of three eras in his poetry—the Romantic, the Victorian and the Modern. However, his art did not fully belong to just these three eras. “The Moth-Signal,” which was published in 1914 during the Modern Age, was influenced by Hardy’s major theme for The Return of the Native, the novel he published in 1878 during the Victorian Age. This paper thus examines the influence of antimodernism as manifested in Hardy’s novel, The Return of the Native, on his later poem, “The Moth-Signal” to demonstrate how his conception of the ghost depicted in the poem reflects anti-modernism. This discussion sheds new light on the characterisations in both works, despite their different genres, and discusses it in the context of the struggle between modernists and anti-modernists. These characters are generally alike, but also different, due to their quite different contexts. Clym Yeobright, a husband in the novel, is presented in nearly the same way in the poem. However, Damon Wildeve, the lover of Eustacia Vye, reflects the desire for modernity. Still, when replaced by the ghost of the Ancient Briton in the poem, that character then symbolises the Celtic culture.* Keywords: Anti-modernism, Thomas Hardy, “The Moth-Signal,” The Return of the Native, Ancient Briton ghost, modernity, Celtic culture.

Thomas Hardy and the Growth of Modernism In her book, Modernist myth studies in H. D., D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, Nanette Norris stated that:

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In the high realism of the Victorian period, literary modernists exhibited great fascination with irrational forces, unreason and primitivism. They reacted to the breakdown of certainty by seeking “some sense of the self in relation to the past and to the individual’s inner being.”1

In this sense, modernism seems to work as a contrast to modernity which: as opposed to the literary movement of modernism, is a cultural movement which is seen as stretching over two to three hundred years. It is generally “understood as the condition in which society must legitimate itself by its own self-generated principles, without appeal to external verities, deities, authorities, or traditions.”2

It is difficult to define modernism due to the many ambiguous concepts attached to this term, and it is even more difficult to define the term “anti-modernism.” The major trends of modernism showed the detachment of text from tradition but most significant modern writers were not against tradition, rather they simply exemplified tradition in their works by using different modern techniques, such as the use of multiple voices in poetry, the new techniques of narration in fiction other than the omniscient voice and other experimental devices. In this case, it can be seen that the writers who practised detachment from tradition were modernists and others who could not detach their texts from tradition were anti-modernists. Anti-modernist writers were somehow against modernity. In this context, modernists can also be aligned with modernity. However, this classification is not entirely valid because the anti-modernists did choose to use modern techniques to express their anti-modern themes. In this paper, this classification is applied to differentiate between the modernists and the anti-modernists. While living in the Victorian Age, Hardy had inherited characteristics of the Romantic Age and later sat on the brink of Modernism. His work contained some of the precursors of the new approach to

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literature while maintaining most of the characteristics of the previous era. He experimented with changes in form but not as radically as Eliot and Pound did, for instance.3 In her book, Theorists of Modernist Poetry, Rebecca Beasley depicts T. S. Eliot, T. E. Hulme, and Ezra Pound as the major representatives of modernism. Their political attitudes “were antiSemitic, anti-democratic and fascist respectively.”4 The content of their work seems to be anti-modernist although its form is still highly modern. The disappointment of these writers in the ability of science to answer their major questions about the natural world brought them back to accepting the occult, mysticism, mythology and the like.5 Adding another prominent figure, W. B. Yeats, who was also accused of fascism, did not change the political situation. These writers used the tools of modernity even though they did not believe in the ideology of modernism. As Beasley argues, “in terms of content, city and modernity replaced nature and universal values.”6 The major theme of Hardy’s novel, The Return of the Native is “city and modernity,” inasmuch as the heath is a contrast to the city. The city is not found in the novel but only in the imagination of the characters. All the events occurred on the heath. As Gillian Steinberg argues, Hardy was still vigorously attached to tradition, but “by simultaneously employing and redefining traditional poetic forms and models, Hardy did carry out the modernist campaign to re-appropriate tradition, define it, and ‘make it new.’”7 He even “revives Anglo-Saxon words and word order in order to underscore his commitment to his poetic heritage.”8 Like Yeats, Hardy was interested in Celtic culture; however, he was not a potential competitor in this field because he could not integrate Celtic culture into his work as appropriately as Yeats did. The Celtic culture in his novel, The Return of the Native, for instance, is represented by the folklore of the local people of Egdon Heath and their “pagan” celebrations around the Celtic bonfires and Rainbarrows. The Rainbarrows and the “bonfires on the Celtic monument and their dancing on that monument indicate that they are no longer cultivated modern men, but rather descendants of ancient Celts.”9 Hardy’s bias towards Egdon Heath and its local people shows his anti-modernist trend, at least in terms of content. The heath was near Hardy’s birthplace in Dorset and the Rainbarrows were only a half-mile south-east of there.10 Hardy’s romantic sense led him to sympathise with the folkloric activities of the heath and made him resist any effort to make changes as regards modernity. Hardy’s bias caused him to be less enthusiastic in terms of changing the literary form. In his novel, Hardy uses his characters as symbols to reflect his personal ideas about modernism. The reader can see

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Hardy’s objectivity in drawing his characters and expressing their opinions about the heath and the modern city, Paris. The characters who love this city and tend towards modernity are Eustacia, Wildeve, and Mrs Yeobright; other characters, who love the heath and make it a relevant place for living, are Clym, Diggory Venn and Thomasin. However, Hardy is biased towards his favourite character, Clym, and makes him his ideal.11 Walter Allen states that Clym is “a man conscious all the time of what Hardy himself called ‘the ache of modernism.’”12 Hardy hates city life and describes it as “effeminate.” Hardy considers Clym to be a modern man and his qualities thus represent the qualifications of manhood in the future as the writer imagines they will be.13 The displacement of characters is pivotal in Hardy’s technique of characterisation in that he refers to some characters by their special characteristics but he is actually referring to others. In the novel, Hardy described Eustacia as rebellious, like a Promethean figure, while the real Promethean figure was Clym. The novel reflects Hardy’s fondness for the Wessex countryside and its ritual festivities. The bonfire and the Rainbarrows are examples of these festivities. Symbolically, the bonfire resembles the Promethean fire which can be seen as Eustacia and Wildeve’s rebelliousness. It may also refer to the relationship between knowledge and modernism, as Clym represents a Promethean figure with his plan for the education of the local people. Clym’s actual semi-blindness symbolically suggests that he is unable to understand the changing world or its reality. It also suggests his inability to deal with the characters around him. Clym’s experience in Paris makes him unhappy with the false version of modernism he witnessed there and he suffers because of it. The heathfolk’s dissatisfaction with this trend of modernism contributes to Clym’s attitude.14 Clym’s understanding does not belong to modernism but rather to a primitive age or to ancient civilisation including Celtic culture.

“The Moth-Signal” and the Novel In their paper, “Hardy’s Aesthetics of Disjunction and the Literary Antecedents of ‘The Moth-Signal,’” Vern B. Lentz & Douglas D. Short found the source of the poem (stanzas 1-8 in particular) in Book IV, Chapter 4 of the novel. The ninth stanza has no source in the novel.15 The ninth and final stanza threatens the consistency or the unity of the poem, as R. P. Blackmur believes.16 Actually, Hardy’s earlier modernistic efforts might be the reason why some of his critics considered his style somewhat

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awkward. The ninth stanza reveals this awkwardness but it marks out his special way of accessing new forms and techniques. The characterisation in both the poem and the novel also reflects this trend of modernism, subtly with it or against it through his alignment with these characters.17 Clym Yeobright, the husband in both the poem and the novel; Diggory Venn, the omnipresent character; and Thomasin, the character who is submissive to the heath and nature, all resemble the anti-modernist trend by demonstrating their vigorous attachment to their local people and their culture, as represented by the heath, a strong power against change. On the contrary, Clym’s mother, Mrs Yeobright, his wife, Eustacia and her lover, Wildeve stand with the trend of change towards modernism and their persistent attempts to escape from the heath which symbolise tradition or the anti-modernist style.18 “The Moth-Signal” suggests this idea of anti-modernism through references to the novel’s characters and their displacement as well. The husband in the poem is reading a book about history, which represents his attachment to the past and tradition, while his wife tries to meet her lover, the ghost or the Ancient Briton, who comes from ancient times as well. The boundaries of the characters in the poem are not defined as in the novel. In the novel, the wife, Eustacia, tries to meet her lover, Wildeve, who wants to escape the heath to go to Paris, the city of modernism. If the Ancient Briton is interpreted as resembling the Diggory Venn character, as J. O. Baily argues,19 the same trend of tradition or anti-modernism is symbolised by Diggory, which is compatible with the description of the events in the novel. However, there is no love relationship between them. However, Baily’s identification of the ghost with Diggory is valid in the context of symbolism. The mystery of Diggory, as he hovers over the heath like an angel with his benevolent actions and his adherence to the countryside and tradition, suggests that the image of the Ancient Briton in the poem is represented as a ghost. Hardy’s ghosts, in general, are prescient and know more than the living speakers,20 consequently, they hold the truth. In this context, the truth is with the Ancient Briton’s culture in the poem and with the bonfires in the novel which are the “lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies” as Simon Gatrell argues.21 So, Diggory is not only “a representative of a bygone era—a product of Hardy’s nostalgia for an older, simpler, agrarian way of life that was being swept away by the advance of the industrial revolution”22 as John Hagan argues, but also a representative of the Celtic culture. In the poem, the husband is reading historical books and this

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allusion suggests the culture of the Celts, as the context for both the poem and the novel. Clym Yeobright, the husband, is semi-blind or he suffers from weak sight as a result of his persistent studying of ancient culture and that feature identifies him with the blind oracle who foresees the future. In the poem, the husband can be likened to the lover as they both hold fast to the same cultural heritage, but he is in contrast to the lover in the novel as they differ in their opinion towards modernism; the former is an anti-modernist, and the latter is longing for modernism. The symbolic reading of the poem assures the duality of present versus past or modern versus old or anti-modern. In the second stanza, the moth is burnt and changed into a cinder: “O, I see a poor moth burning In the candle flame,” said she, “Its wings and legs are turning To a cinder rapidly.” (The Moth-Signal, L&S 3, ll. 5-8)

The pessimistic image of the burning moth is echoed by the answer of the husband: “now the days decline”: “Moths fly in from the heather,” He said, “now the days decline.” “I know,” said she. “The weather, I hope, will at last be fine.” (The Moth-Signal, L&S 3, ll. 9-12)

The grey image of the cinder and the weather suggest that the present is not bright, in fact, it is waning like the moon: “I think,” she added lightly, “I’ll look out at the door. The ring the moon wears nightly

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In Celtic culture, just as in the cultural context of the poem, the moon is central to the theme of magic. So, we see that the present culture has disappeared, while the past is waxing: She rose, and, little heeding, Her life-mate then went on With his mute and museful reading In the annals of ages gone.

Outside the house a figure Came from the tumulus near, And speedily waxed bigger, And clasped and called her Dear. (The Moth-Signal, L&S 3, ll. 17-24)

The past is “her Dear” represented by the Ancient Briton. Symbolically, marriage is interpreted as a joining of the present or past times with the times of the speaker. The following two stanzas suggest that the marriage between the speaker, who is the wife, and her husband, is broken: “I saw the pale-winged token You sent through the crack,” sighed she. “That moth is burnt and broken With which you lured out me.”

“And were I as the moth is It might be better far

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For one whose marriage troth is Shattered as potsherds are!” (The Moth-Signal, L&S 3-4, ll. 25-32)

The burning moth and the potsherds are images of the broken marriage between the speaker and the present time or modernity. The speaker here is not Eustacia, the wife in the novel, but rather any of those characters who are struggling against modernity, namely, Clym, Thomasin, and Diggory Venn. The most probable character as a speaker is Clym, the husband, because he is displayed in the fifth stanza reading historic books or “the annals of ages gone”: She rose, and, little heeding, Her life-mate then went on With his mute and museful reading In the annals of ages gone. (The Moth-Signal, L&S 3, ll. 17-20)

In the last stanza, the symbol of past time is revealed, the ghost of the Ancient Briton: Then grinned the Ancient Briton From the tumulus treed with pine: “So, hearts are thwartly smitten In these days as in mine!”23 (The Moth-Signal, L&S 3, ll. 33-36)

The setting of the last stanza refers to the tumulus, which is the ancient cemetery, and the pine trees, which are revered like the oak trees in Celtic culture. The disappointed ghost comments conclusively on the significance of emotion comparing it to present and past times. He says that this element is ignored in both times, which means the dominance of other elements which are suggested to be economic, political, and social. The speaker is also disappointed and it seems that he/she is dominated by fate. In this case, the dominating power is modernity or modernism, against which the speaker and the Ancient Briton struggle in vain.

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Conclusion The most prominent figures of modernism were Eliot, Hulme, Yeats and Pound. They seem to conform to the style of modernism while disagreeing with it in their content, which in this context is anti-modernist. Although Hardy came before them and represented a precursor for modernism, his work had the same characteristics as the works of these writers. However, the form of his works was rather conservative. The Celtic culture was less represented in his works than in Yeats’s. Hardy’s fondness for the Celtic culture was demonstrated in his novel, The Return of the Native (1878) through his interest in the festivities of the heathfolk. His poem, “The Moth-Signal” (1914) repeated the central theme of the novel, namely, modernism versus anti-modernism. Hardy’s technique of characterisation helps the displacement of some of his characters in order to serve his themes when comparing the poem and the novel. Wildeve, the lover who tends towards modernity in the novel, is replaced in the poem by the ghost of the Ancient Briton, who represents the Celtic culture in order to show a contrast between these two characters. The characters in the poem are desperately struggling against the dominance of modernism. However, the ghost in the poem, like in many other of Hardy’s poems, is depicted as revealing the truth, and in this case, the truth is the dominance of the trend of modernism which focuses on elements other than emotion. Hardy’s bias towards the speaker of the poem and the central character of the novel, Clym, reflects his alignment with anti-modernism.

CHAPTER NINE THE QUESTION OF EXISTENCE IN T. S. ELIOT’S POEM “THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK” AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET

Abstract Two questions are posed by Prufrock in Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song” and by Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. Indeed, both tackle the problem of existence. Prufrock’s “overwhelming question” is neither uttered nor answered, while Hamlet’s question, “to be or not to be, that is the question” is quietly understood by the audience from the beginning. However, neither question can be fully comprehended unless their contexts are studied within the whole of the art in which they are found and the stanzas or dialogues to which they relate. This paper explores these contexts and finds the answers to these two questions, as these answers will explain the major themes of these works. This paper supposes that both questions are raised about the mystery of existence and actually unite in Prufrock’s “overwhelming question” as Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” includes these same two questions. Indeed, Eliot quotes Hamlet’s question in his poem to enhance the similarity of the situation of both of these characters—Prufrock and Hamlet. Keywords: Existential anxiety, alienation, overwhelming question, historical sense, scepticism, modernism. The poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was published in Eliot’s first collection of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917. The image of war is obvious in some symbols and the setting of the poem. The poet focuses “on urban social alienation and the landscape of the city rather than on nature and the pastoral.”1 Prufrock is suffering from intellectual and spiritual alienation that separates him from reality. The

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features of modern life, as seen by Manju Jain who analysed this poem, are spiritual distress, helplessness and despair.2 Jain epitomises Prufrock’s dilemma in saying that his “love song is the confession of the despair of a romantic aesthete unable to make an existential choice.”3 His “existential choice” moulds his overwhelming question which he couldn’t utter. William Irwin matched Prufrock’s overwhelming question with Roquentin’s existential question in Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel, Nausea: Obviously, it is an issue of great existential import concerning the meaning of life. Though Prufrock does not verbalize it, the question must be essentially Roquentin’s question to himself: “Can you justify your existence then? Just a little?” 4

The quest for meaning is what Prufrock is searching for and that is not fulfilled because of a lack of communication or misunderstanding: If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” (ll. 96-98)

The “overwhelming question” can be read on two levels: the first relates to love or to a marriage proposal and the second, though it belongs to the first, is more universal and deeper in its philosophical approach. The poem seems as if it is constituted of a series of questions and contained by the overwhelming question. Apparently, the overwhelming question is intended to confront women about either love or marriage. However, it is not enough to comprehend the overwhelming question as a marriage proposal though it is related to it. The word “overwhelming” is echoed later by the word “universe” in another question: “Do I dare to disturb the universe?” The universality of this question makes it so big that Prufrock hesitates to introduce it. Love, or a marriage proposal, is concerned with the question or the case of existence, particularly if it is related to death. Consequently, the question of the meaning of existence, relating to the procedure of life and death, is the issue.

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The epigraph of the poem, which is quoted from Dante’s Inferno (hell in Italian), reveals the crimes committed by Da Montefeltro through the war. The setting of hell, as identified with war, suggests the setting on earth which the speaker is going to face: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question. (ll. 8-10)

Prufrock’s tour through these labyrinth-like streets leads to “an overwhelming question” which resembles the central theme of the poem. There is an abrupt transition from these cheap streets and the lower side of the city to the high-class situation where women are talking about Michelangelo, the great Renaissance painter: “In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo.” Prufrock’s engagement with the Renaissance age represented by Michelangelo’s recurrent scene in the poem reflects Prufrock’s disappointment with the trivial Modern Age compared with the glory of the past. Michelangelo, the great painter of prophets on the walls of the churches, is depicted in the prophetic atmosphere created by some religious symbols, namely, John the Baptist, Christ and Lazarus. The first hint of the “overwhelming question” is given in the comparison between the wretched present of the city and the glorious past of the Renaissance age. However, this comparison forms only a little part of the “overwhelming question” since Prufrock’s predicament is too complicated to focus on this point alone, but the image inferred by this comparison suggests that Prufrock or the speaker is anti-modernist. The silent listener is either the reader or the implied listener if we deal with the technique of the poem as a dramatic monologue. So, the speaker supposes that his companion may ask him to elucidate the nature of the overwhelming question and the answer is: “Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’” (l, 9). The speaker cannot tell his listener what that big question is because he dares not utter it and needs to show the details to his companion in order to comprehend that question. Literally, he doesn’t dare to launch his big question because of his physical unfitness, but that is not a big question which disturbs the universe. Metaphorically, it shows the tininess of man compared with existence. His physical unfitness is an

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additional reason to make man incapable of launching his big question. Absurd theatre is full of distorted men who expose the disability of man in the face of existence. The perfect man, physically and spiritually, is hypothetical, and only this man may have the ability to launch that overwhelming question. The following image of the fog underpins the previous image of comparison between the present and past state of the city since the fog reminds us of the industrial city depicted by writers such as Dickens. In his article, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot draws the relationship between the present and the past in terms of tradition, historical sense and poetic talent. It is not to imitate the successful experiences found in the past ages, which are called “Tradition,” but this tradition must be gained by the hard labour of sifting through and reproducing it creatively. Thus, the past is rehabilitated by the present, and the present is controlled by the past.5 The poet should have a “historical sense” which: involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.6

The poet should digest the whole tradition of literature in the world, as well as that of his own country, and present it in his work. The perpendicular and horizontal dimensions of history should be perceived. It is very much like synchronic and diachronic dimensions in linguistics: This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal, and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional.

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And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.7

Historical sense, scepticism, and modernism are associated in one context to elucidate Eliot’s ideology or at least his major themes as depicted in his poetry. Eliot’s scepticism has been defined as follows by Jeffrey M. Perl: From his study of Indian philosophy, Eliot had learned that skepticism implies not simply the incredibility of all beliefs, but also their equivalent conventional validity. No proposition is beyond impossibility. Eliotic skepticism is a “metabelief”: not a belief in and of itself, but a belief about the nature of belief.8

James Longenbach elaborates the concept of scepticism in Eliot: James Longenbach sees its richest manifestation in Eliot’s The Waste Land, a poem that epitomizes his historical sense: “Eliot had little faith in the individual’s ability to achieve [a] transcendent vision of ‘the whole truth’ on his own. Most people are restricted to [a] narrow[er] vision […] and their understanding of history is consequently limited, their ability to interpret restricted to their knowledge of their own consciousness.”9

The phrase “the whole truth” in the Longenbach quotation above is expressive of the overwhelming question which could not be introduced by Prufrock because “the whole truth” or the overwhelming question cannot be attained by an individual. However, parts of the question are dispersed throughout the poem.

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Part I Chapter Nine There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; (ll. 26-29)

Prufrock uses the term “time” frequently in many lines which evoke other references. Firstly, he refers to the carpe diem theme in Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress” through the following line: “And indeed there will be time” which suggests his procrastination and delay in asking his big question. Then, later in the poem, the speaker says: “To have squeezed the universe into a ball/To roll it towards some overwhelming question” (ll. 92-93). The intertextuality between these two lines and Marvell’s four lines is obvious: Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: (ll. 41-44)

In Marvell’s lines, there is a ball of pleasure and sweetness to be thrown against the iron gates of life, while in Eliot’s lines, the entire universe is to be squeezed into a ball and thrown against the overwhelming question. Marvell’s poem shows the triviality and shortness of life so that lovers should enjoy every minute and this theme is used in Eliot’s poem to show that the joys of life are trivial and absurd. The overwhelming question is invoked here to ask about the worth of these temporal joys against the presence of death which is represented in the following lines by Lazarus and the eternal Footman. Even the image of the refrain, “the women come and go” suggests death and the transience of life. Moreover, the image of the crab, represented by the ragged claws, suggests cancer, the mortal disease. The ambiguity of that big question is equalled here with the ambiguity of death and its symbols. Prufrock is

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mocked by the Footman, not for his personality, but for being human and for his frailty. Actually, the function of time is a big question that causes great existential anxiety. Secondly, the speaker associates “time” with the “yellow smoke” and that refers to the image of the present industrial city compared with the city of the past. Thirdly, modern man is accused of preparing faces of hypocrisy or masks to meet each other. Modernity is a style of life that needs more subtlety to confront its complexity. Fourthly, to “murder and create,” sounds like death and rebirth. In the Bible’s Ecclesiastes: To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; (3.1-4)

In the Bible, there is [a] time “to be born, and [a] time to die” and, if Prufrock is identified with Hamlet, the reference to “murder” is reasonable, but not to “create” unless the phrase is interpreted according to the religious context of death and rebirth. However, the word “murder” coincides with the following reference to the murder of John the Baptist: to “lift and drop a question on your plate” (l. 30). This association holds a “question” which is presumably a big question. It is truly a big or “overwhelming question” since it deals with death, as the reference to the execution of John the Baptist implies. But in this reference, the question is executed rather than the prophet, and that explains why the question has not been uttered. In another place in the poem, the case is clearer: But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]

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The question here is about justice, faith and death. Like any pious man, Prufrock fasted and prayed, but why did he weep? Surely because of the injustice inflicted by the tyrant Herod, who had executed the prophet, John the Baptist to indulge his stepdaughter, Salome, and presented the head of the prophet to her on a platter as she requested. Prufrock is so affected by this event to the extent that he imagined his head on the platter instead. Eliot’s historical sense, as mentioned earlier in this paper, is embodied in Prufrock’s character. This is another image of savage death which enhances other images of death in the poem, as mentioned above. A prophet might be the hypothetical perfect man, but Prufrock is not a prophet (l. 81). I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. (ll. 82-84)

What is that greatness of the speaker? Literally, there is no hint in the poem suggesting greatness except that it may refer to the speaker’s youth, as he is now nearly middle-aged, or an old man who seeks the love of a young girl and this conclusion moves us to the metaphorical level. Harry Eiss interprets the suggestions of descending in the poem as the decline of the European civilisation, as he compares the old age of the speaker with the old continent of Europe. Eiss takes into consideration the dying music in these lines: “I know the voices dying with a dying fall / Beneath the music from a farther room” (ll. 52-53). The quotation of a “dying fall” is from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: “That strain again, it had a dying fall” (I. i, 4). Eiss uses the metaphor of the dying voices and generalises its deduced meaning:10 It can refer to the entire world of human voices, especially to all of Europe’s voices, that cutting

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edge of culture and civilization, now dying, now proving hollow, that ocean of knowledge and beliefs and the voices of religion and science and philosophy and art and on and on and on that drowns out life.11

Surely, Eiss had had in his mind other works of Eliot including “The Hollow Men” and “The Waste Land” when he wrote about “The Love Song.” Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night contained vulgar scenes which were condemned by Malvolio, the Puritan character. Malvolio is depicted as ridiculous by Shakespeare, like Prufrock is by Eliot who describes his own religious affinities as “a Catholic cast of mind, a Calvinist heritage, and a Puritanical temperament.”12 Other references to descending in the poem other than the “dying fall” are: “Time to turn back and descend the stair” (l, 39) and the last line of the poem which refers to drowning: “Till human voices wake us, and we drown.” These suggestions of decline are underpinned by the images of sleeping and the sick patient at the beginning of the poem which also symbolise death. Modern civilisation fails to sustain life due to its lack of faith, communication, social intimacy and love. Another image is shown to condemn the torture of man or other creatures and to expound man’s unfitness to launch that big question: And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? (ll. 55-61)

The image of a man, or any creature, pinned on the wall suggests the crucifixion of Christ and this image can epitomise all tortures which

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are inflicted by man on his brother or other creatures. Consequently, how can the speaker presume to launch his big question with the presence of these atrocities in life? In other words, these atrocities make man unfit for this big task, or these atrocities of life resemble part of that overwhelming question. Other details of the big question include other functions of life in ascending order starting with the trivial ones that occur before having toast and tea in the morning, passing through the actual work of the day and ending with great actions of murder and creation. The regular functions of the day, as referred to in the poem, include meeting people with masks in a city polluted by yellow smoke, making decisions or having indecisions, having visions or making revisions. However, Prufrock is unable to do these things, or at least he is hesitant to take action. Actually, Prufrock has made a decision, which is to remain aloof from making a decision. The primal man made a decision to eat the forbidden fruit, but the speaker dared not: Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. (ll. 120-122)

The speaker’s proposal of marriage or love is concentrated in the lines above; however, he cannot launch his proposal due to his lack of motive. Prufrock’s existential anxiety prevents him from making a decision to launch or generate life. He is not a hero like Ulysses with mermaids singing to him. The Modern Age lacks heroism in contrast with the ancient ages, nevertheless, the concept of heroism, as in the case of Hamlet, is different. Eliot’s or Prufrock’s historical sense is biased to the Romantic Age and before. Eliot can be described as a “RomanticModernist”13 for his rejection of most demonstrations of modernity. Prufrock’s character is similar and different in some ways to Hamlet’s character. The hesitation to take action is similar in both characters, even though the reasons behind that hesitation are different. For Prufrock, the reasons are his feeling of the futility of modern life or his

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existential anxiety, his scepticism or the age’s loss of faith, his historical sense is too enlarged, his over-education and his impracticality: No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. (ll. 109 -117)

For Hamlet, the reason is his enlarged sense of conscience or his religious commitment: “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all” (III.i.28), and “There is a divinity that shapes our ends” (V.ii.10). Both of them feel the corruption of his age—for Prufrock, the corruption of the Modern Age and for Hamlet, the corruption of the state and existence.14 Paul A. Cantor argues that other critics have interpreted Hamlet’s character “as somehow rooted in his individual soul,” while his opinion is “that the conflicts within Hamlet mirror a more fundamental tension in the Renaissance culture in which he lives.”15 Cantor elaborates his idea about the Renaissance and he says that “it was a rebirth of classical antiquity within a Christian culture, and that made a complete return to the way of life of pagan Greece and Rome impossible.”16 Cantor shows Hamlet’s contradictions as a reflection of the conflict between these two cultures: the classical and Christianity, and the concept of heroism in particular: what is distinctive about Hamlet is precisely that his mind is open to all the competing models of heroism available in the Renaissance. He can admire martial virtue and is haunted by

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However, Hamlet’s soliloquy does not precisely reflect Christian ideas, but it shows his suspicions about the truth of death and the afterlife. He hesitates to commit suicide because he is uncertain of, or he has not enough faith to believe or disbelieve in, the idea of an afterlife. His reflections on Yorick’s skull, the clown, represent an example of his existential anxiety (V.i.75-110). Unlike Prufrock, Hamlet makes a decision to take revenge when he finally ascertains that his uncle is the criminal. However, the question of existence is still unsolved. Prufrock compares himself with the prophet and Prince Hamlet but he denies similarity with either. He identifies himself firstly with the attendant lord, Polonius, and secondly with the Fool. He is right in this identification, in particular with the second one. The similarity between Prufrock and Polonius is that both are: ….. an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculousņ Almost, at times, the Fool. (ll. 115-119)

But Polonius lacks something found in the Fool, the hidden wisdom. In his study, “The Fool in Shakespeare: A Study in Alienation,” Roger Ellis defines the Shakespearean Fool and his alienation:

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In him, society’s anxieties about itself find an outlet; yet the laughter which he arouses is at the same time a profound criticism of the forces which have made him what he is. The counterpart in his exaggerated non-involvement of the society of which he is a part, he is yet in his profound self-awareness and in his pity for those who suffer, its one hope of salvation.18

The Fool, like Prufrock, takes the role of the chorus in classical drama to comment comically on the events that occur in front of him. Prufrock is careful not to be involved in the real events; rather he seems as if he lives on the margins of life. Another reference to Polonius in Hamlet is the dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius, where Hamlet says: Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward. (II. ii.198-206)

Hamlet mocks Polonius for his old age, one of Prufrock’s concerns in Eliot’s poem. In addition, the backward movement of the crab, which is like Polonius’ movement according to Hamlet, is symbolic of the movement of Prufrock towards the past. Prufrock is like Polonius in this context; however, their minds are different: “I should have been a pair of

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ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” (ll. 71-72). So, the decision which has been taken by Prufrock to “scuttle” into the sea and drown is a decisive act to reject the present or modern and drown in the past. To conclude, Prufrock suffers from existential anxiety which causes his spiritual alienation due to the wide gap between the miserable present and the glorious past. His “overwhelming question,” which cannot be uttered, is interpreted on two levels: love or a marriage proposal and the question of existence or the “whole truth.” The “overwhelming question” proves to be a series of questions in the poem regarding the effect of modernism, the value of love or marriage in the face of death, the triviality of man and his lack of ability to solve his existential problems, and the unfitness of man to launch the “overwhelming question” unless he were a perfect man which is theoretically impossible. Time is a significant element which causes existential anxiety. Modern civilisation is inappropriate to help man transcend his reality due to its lack of faith, communication, social intimacy and love. Prufrock’s “overwhelming question” is similar to Hamlet’s question “to be or not to be, that is the question,” as both are asking for the meaning of existence. However, they are different in their approaches and reasons. Prufrock’s hesitation to take action emerges from his feeling of the hollowness of modern life or his existential anxiety, his sceptical perspective or the faithless age, the exaggeration of his historical sense, his over-education, and his inapplicability; while for Hamlet, it arises from his sense of conscience or his religious engagement. Prufrock identifies himself with Polonius and the Fool in Hamlet. He seems closer to the Shakespearean Fool, as he is playing the role of the chorus in classical drama to explain what is happening in front of him.

CHAPTER TEN THE IMPACT OF PURITANISM ON CULTURAL CIRCLES IN ENGLAND (1649-1660)

Abstract Puritanism was a radical Protestant religious movement that originated in England in the late sixteenth century with the goal of religious reform in order to rid the English Church of the remains of Catholicism. The spread of its ideas and the rise of its influence led to the outbreak of civil war in England and it took control of the reins of government for almost ten years (1649-1660). This movement was characterised by strict religious intolerance and established ethical rules of conduct, which was especially clear after the Puritans, led by General Oliver Cromwell, took control of England, closed the theatres and entertainment places, and the country became dark and sombre. At first, the conflict appeared to be republican-royal or Protestant-Catholic, but soon turned into a conflict between those supporting the monarchy and those in favour of the new authority that supported extremist religious thinking, in other words, those who rebelled against the authority of the clergymen or the Anglican Church. This paper seeks to explain the causes of religious extremism in England during the origin, emergence and spread of the Puritan movement and its impact on the cultural circles at a time when its ideas were supported by a number of English poets such as John Milton, Thomas Gray, and Philip Sidney, and opposed by others, namely, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson. Keywords: Puritanism, Religious Extremism, Anglican Church, English Literature, John Milton, William Shakespeare.

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1. The History of Puritanism Puritanism generally refers to moral, religious and spiritual ideas and practices as well as physical purification. It is characterised by strictness, asceticism, hardness, perfection, virtue, holiness, tyranny and inclusiveness. Max Weber emphasises this sense of stiffness in most religions starting with Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism and Christianity, and ending with Islam. Even the pre-Christian community of the Pharisees can be counted within this puritanical trend.1 Puritanism, in particular, is the Protestant Puritanism movement that flourished in England in the sixteenth century and culminated in the seventeenth century when it took power in England for ten years and some of those involved emigrated to America and founded what is known as New England. The Religious Reform Movement began with the ideas of John Wycliffe (1320-1384), a pastor and professor at the University of Oxford, before John Huss and Martin Luther. His ideas included the call for the separation of the English Church from the Roman Church, the abolition of the intermediary between the individual and his Lord, the confiscation of church property, and the belief in predestination, which was embraced by the Puritans and reformers, Huldrych Zwingli, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.2 In the sixth volume of his book, The Story of Civilization, devoted to the study of the Religious Reform Movement, Will Durant stated: All the major elements of the Reformation were in Wyclif: the revolt against the worldliness of the clergy, and the call for a sterner morality; the return from the Church to the Bible, from Aquinas to Augustine, from free will to predestination, from salvation by works to election by divine grace; the rejection of indulgences, auricular confession, and transubstantiation; the deposition of the priest as an intermediary between God and man; the protest against the alienation of national wealth to Rome; the invitation to the state to

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end its subordination to the papacy; the attack (preparing for Henry VIII) on the temporal possessions of the clergy.3

In spite of the Church’s control of both houses of Parliament, the Lollard sect, which owed allegiance to Wyclif’s concepts of Puritanism, was able to present a statement to Parliament in 1395 explaining its principles: They opposed clerical celibacy, transubstantiation, image worship, pilgrimages, prayers for the dead, the wealth and endowment of the Church, the employment of ecclesiastics in state offices, the necessity of confession to priests, the ceremonies of exorcism, and the worship of the saints.4

In other statements, they emphasised the supremacy of the Bible over the teachings and decrees of the Church. They rejected war as antiChristian and called for simplicity in food and clothing. Thus, Puritanism took shape in England by embodying and embracing these principles.5 The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines Puritanism as “a religious reform movement in the late 16th and 17th centuries that sought to ‘purify’ the Church of England of remnants of the Roman Catholic ‘popery’ that the Puritans claimed had been retained after the religious settlement reached early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.”6 The separation of the English Church from the Roman Catholic Church began in 1534 during the reign of King Henry VIII, and the rise of Protestantism accelerated during the reign of King Edward VI (1547-1553). But Roman Catholicism regained influence in England during the reign of Queen Mary (1553-1558). Many Protestants were exiled outside the country where they found refuge in the Calvinist Church in Geneva.7 This period and subsequent ones were marked by religious persecution among rival sects depending on who ascended the throne in terms of persecuting those who opposed them. A series of sectarian retaliations in the history of Europe has been the result of long-standing sectarian persecution between Catholics and Protestants. In his book, The Story of Civilization, Durant notes that:

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Part I Chapter Ten all the inhumanity that was to be visited by Catholics upon the Protestants of France in 1680-90 was visited by Protestants upon the Catholics of Ireland in 1650-60. Catholicism became an inseparable part of Irish patriotism because the Church and the people were fused in a community of suffering. Those bitter years remained in Irish memory as an undying heritage of hate.8

The spread of Calvinism in England had a major impact on the popularity of the Puritan movement. Two important books in promoting the influence of this movement, the Geneva Bible and John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, also contributed to the promotion of religious reform. The accession of Queen Elizabeth I to power in 1558 was an indicator for Protestants to begin religious reform, but the reforms of the Queen were not as ambitious as their quest for the overall reform of the Church. Thus, the Puritans went to other circles outside the church and they found supporters for their cause in Parliament and in universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.9 After the rise of King James I, who believed in Calvinism and who succeeded Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, the Puritans did not have the opportunity to obtain certain positions and they were suppressed during the reign of King Charles I (1625-1649).10 However, Puritanism spread until it had the opportunity to attack the monarchy which had failed to complete the reform of the church. Then civil war broke out between the supporters of Parliament and the supporters of King Charles I (1640-1649) and the Puritans supported Parliament against the monarchy.11 The Puritans were known during the seventeenth century for their embodiment of the distilled essence of the moral and religious seriousness which characterised their way of life. They sought to reform the church to make their lifestyle a pattern for the entire nation. Their efforts to change the lifestyle of the nation led to a civil war in England and the establishment of colonies in the United States which adopted the Puritan style as a way in life.

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In France, Cornelius Jansen adopted an extreme style similar to that of the Puritans with his anti-Jesuit call, a sect that supported the possession of property in France under its moderate Catholic direction. The persecution of the Huguenots on the authority of King Louis XIV was followed by the outbreak of sectarian wars between the Catholics and the Protestants until they encompassed the lowlands and Europe as a whole.

2. The Impact of Puritanism on the Cultural Scene in England Literature and art were not favoured by the Puritans because they believed that these two spheres opened the door to the earthly pleasures that they tried to limit in favour of an interest in the Bible and its teachings. However, there were those who were interested in the literature of the Puritans such as John Bunyan in his book Pilgrim’s Progress and John Milton in his book Paradise Lost. Both are examples of the many literary works that presented figures of the reformed Christian faith in the seventeenth century. A Puritan can be defined, in this sense, as a person with a sincere faith who is willing to reform the Church and the ethics of individuals.12 John Milton was not an ultra-Puritan but he was a moderate figure who loved music and advocated and defended Puritanism. The Puritans, on the other hand, ignored his transgressions from the Puritanical style in order to gain the support of a brilliant intellectual. His book Eikonoklastes (i.e. the image breaker) was useless in refuting John Gauden’s book A Royal Portrait in which he supported the royal vision of power.13 At the height of Puritanism in England in 1642, the theatres were closed because of the war and did not open again until 1656 because the Puritans were not in favour.14 Hence, the playwrights cursed the Puritans insomuch as they cynically and excessively attacked their way of life and their ideas. The playwrights did not recognise the essence of the puritanical reform, especially since the court was sponsoring them and their teams, so they defended the view of the Royal Power.15 William Shakespeare, whose family was Catholic, attacked the Puritan style of religiosity of life in his play, Twelfth Night, which at the beginning of the seventeenth century foretold the rise of Puritanism to power and that was exactly what happened fifty years later. Shakespeare foreshadowed this event through his Puritan character “Malvolio” when he

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promised to avenge his humility after discovering the game played by the rulers who showed him as a person aspiring to reach the ruling class illegally. Maria, his colleague, described him frankly as “a kind of Puritan,” then she identified him with the devil: “the devil a Puritan that he is” (II. iii. 142-44). However, in his article, “Shakespeare and Puritanism,” James Westfall Thompson explains the contrast between the two cultures in the context of that time—Puritanism versus Renaissance: The refined and half Italian culture of Olivia is contrasted with the narrow and bigoted ideals of Malvolio, who is a Puritan. For the Puritans looked upon the culture of the Italian Renaissance then flowing into England like a flood as half pagan and half Catholic, and frivolous dalliance to boot.16

In his play, Measure for Measure, Shakespeare depicts the Puritan character of Angelo sarcastically, showing the hypocrisy of this character, as he is morally strict in appearance but inherently corrupt. He prevented sexual relations outside the legal framework when he took power in Vienna, but he offered to have sex with prisoners in exchange for their release. Thompson comments on the theme of this play and its relationship with Puritanism: “The collapse of the virtuous Angelo is the direct theme of Measure for Measure. But the indirect and implied theme is the injustice, the futility, the uncharitableness, the hypocrisy, of Puritanism.”17 As in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s expectations in Measure for Measure indicated that the Puritans would take over the government in England for a temporary period but they could not rule properly. The Duke handed over his power to the Puritan character, Angelo, and disguised himself as a monk to watch how these extremists ruled the people and conducted their affairs. Shakespeare sided with the monarchy in this play because the Duke showed that he achieved justice in his town after the Puritans had corrupted it.

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In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, there are only implicit hints criticising Puritanism such as in this dialogue between Dogberry and Leonato: Leon.: I thank thee for thy care and honest pains. Dogb.: Your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverend youth; and I praise God for you. Leon.: There’s for thy pains. Dogb.: God save the foundation! (V. i, 10-15).

Thompson infers that the word “foundation” meant the “Puritan State,” as it was the ambition of those extremists to build the state according to their Calvinistic beliefs.18 The major theme of the play is virginity and honour which constitutes a significant part of Puritanical thinking. Some writers, such as Christopher Marlowe, have hinted at the Puritans by using the word “precision,” which means a person who deals with problems or texts literally, for example in Wagner’s speech in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: I will set my countenance like a precisian and begin to speak thus... And so the Lord bless you, preserve you, and keep you, my dear brethren, my dear brethren. (I. ii. 24-26)

This is an accusation against the Puritans that they adhere to the texts of the Bible literally and do not take the spirit of these texts into consideration. This accusation is right as they reject the ecclesiastical interpretations of the texts of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, and adhere to their own interpretations that fit their ideology. Perhaps the secret of their focus on the Old Testament is that this book contains a regulatory basis for life in line with their religious perspective. In his poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” Thomas Gray referred to three Puritan figures: Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Revolution against the monarchy; John Hampden, a politician who refused to pay tax to King Charles I; and the poet John Milton. He referred to them

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in a way that glorified their memory and attacked the aristocratic and royal classes. This positive characterisation of the Puritan symbols indicates a sympathetic attitude of the poet Gray to the Puritan movement and its ideas, especially in the political sphere, because it calls for a social and political system that is very close to the socialist system, the atmosphere suggested by this poem. The poet, Philip Sidney was influenced by Puritan thought in his poem “Leave me, O Love” where the speaker renounces physical love and satirises it because the destiny of the body is dust and destruction, while the soul’s destiny is heaven and eternity. This notion is in harmony with the Puritans’ ideas in that they regard women as a source of evil as their goal is to seduce men. But these Puritanical ideas do not resonate with the rest of the poet’s work. In his play, Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson presents Busy, a Puritan character, as a lustful and hypocritical person. In addition to these abhorrent features of the Puritans depicted by the writer, other features describe the nature of their worship and rituals as they deviate from the norm. The Puritans have been openly attacked by at least sixty plays and even more by suggestion.19 In general, the playwrights found in the exaggerated behaviour of Puritanism material for irony and mockery for not being consistent with the system of values and norms in English society at the time. They accused the Puritans of moral hypocrisy, extremism in worship, lechery, gluttony, and other features. Whether these features were accurate or not, they reflect the hatred caused by the Puritans in the minds of their opponents among intellectuals, and the depth of change that the Puritans wanted to bring about in the structure of English society.

3. Conclusion The Religious Reform Movement in England and Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a Protestant movement opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, which called for the rejection of idolatry, the reduction of the clergy’s acquisition of public property, the abolition of mediation between the individual and his Lord, the austerity of life, the interpretation of the Bible by the clergymen as unreliable, the adoption of the philosophy of predestination rather than the free will of the Catholic Church and the establishment of a moral system based on strict religious grounds. This movement gained widespread popularity in England and

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some European countries because it opposed monarchical power, the church that supported this power and the feudal authority that consolidated it. Therefore, a conflict was ignited between two fronts in which social strata were drawn into a war that was apparently religious but essentially economic. The Catholic Church had adopted an arbitrary method of curbing its opponents, accusing them of heresy, while the Protestant Church had adopted the same method of abuse of its Catholic opponents. Puritanism emerged from the womb of Protestantism and called for strict adherence to religious principles. The religious persecution practised by Catholics against the Puritans was reflected in the practices of the Puritans when they took power in England against the Catholics, creating a series of almost endless wars and reprisals. Literature and art were not favoured by the Puritans unless the literary work served their religious principles. Writers and poets such as John Bunyan, John Milton, and others were influenced by their principles. But the reaction against the Puritan faith was much greater than the trend in favour of it because this movement was hostile to everything that was worldly or entertaining or to any practice that did not show religion in a positive light. Thus, many writers such as Shakespeare, Marlowe and Ben Jonson started to attack and ridicule its principles. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare depicted Malvolio, the Puritan character, ironically as a person who aspired to change his social reality in a crooked way. In Measure for Measure, Shakespeare also showed the Puritan character, Angelo, as a hypocritical opportunist who could not govern well when he had the chance. Shakespeare’s predictions in both plays confirmed that the Puritans would take power and avenge their enemies, but fail to govern and lose power soon after. That was what happened in England fifty years after the two plays had been written. Marlowe criticised the literal way in which the Puritans interpreted the Bible, while Ben Jonson, in his play Bartholomew Fair showed Busy, the Puritan character, as a morally hypocritical figure, just as Shakespeare did with the aforementioned character of Angelo. The writers and poets who supported Puritanism and its ideas, which called for religious and social reform, were not numerous and included John Bunyan in his book Pilgrim’s Progress, John Milton in Paradise Lost and Thomas Gray in his poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” where the poet glorified some Puritan personalities including Oliver Cromwell and John Milton and called for a system in which classes would vanish and thus challenge English society which was built on solid

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class foundations. The poet, Philip Sidney, did the same in his poem, “Leave me, O love,” in which the speaker favoured spiritual love and devalued physical love in line with the Puritans’ beliefs.

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE IMAGE OF CANCER IN THE WAIT POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Abstract During the years 2012-2017, many volumes of poetry and anthologies were published; however, I briefly introduce here just two of those volumes: Rosie Garland’s Everything Must Go (2012) and Helen Dunmore’s Inside the Wave (2017), and one book of criticism, Cancer and Poetry, by Iain Twiddy (2015) which discusses some of the significant theoretical problems related to cancer and its expression in the genre of poetry. Twiddy’s book examines more than ten volumes of poetry and certain other miscellaneous poems as well those that were published before 2012. My focus here is on The Wait Poetry Anthology, which was edited by George Sandifer-Smith (2014). I have selected certain poems which I feel are representative of and indeed pivot around certain specific themes, or are a good technical instance of those themes, in order to study them in the same context. I also explore the major themes of the poems in the anthology, their symbolism, certain technical issues, and how these particular poets used cancer as a metaphor in their poetry.* Keywords: cancer, poetry, literary criticism, metaphor, symbolism.

Introduction In her review of the book, Cancer and Poetry, written by Iain Twiddy, (Twiddy 2015), Sue Spencer objected to poetry written about cancer being dealt with like any other literary text and suggested that it should not be open to literary criticism. She found that this book was designed for elitists or for those with highly intellectual interests. She compared the book to Julia Darling’s The Poetry Cure (Darling 2005), and

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found the latter to be more plausible and indeed more relevant to the subject of cancer (Spencer 2016). In the introduction, Twiddy’s book reviews the history of cancer, its methods of treatment and its appropriateness as a topic for poetry, which he indicates started to occur around 1880. The first indirect poem about cancer was Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum est” (1917). The first explicit poem about cancer was written twenty years later by W. H. Auden and entitled “Miss Gee” (Twiddy 2015, 2, 12). Twiddy’s book also discusses the theoretical problems related to the ethics, aesthetics, and sentimentalism of this disease and other sensitive and controversial aspects of dealing with cancer in poetry. In her book, Illness As Metaphor (1978), Susan Sontag considers tuberculosis and cancer as being at the same level of danger and social suspicion and a difficult topic choice for poetry. However, Sontag thought that TB aestheticises death, while cancer cannot ever be aestheticised (20). Twiddy takes on Sontag’s arguments by borrowing the opinions of other writers who emphasised the relevance of cancer in order to create the metaphors necessary for poetry (Twiddy, 8-9). However, the ethical problems relating to the exposition of cancer patients when dealing with poetry, the use of military terms in the context of their treatment, and other issues, still remain unsettled. The major themes of the poems included in the book, Cancer and Poetry, are elegy, consolation, inspiration, and immortalisation. Poets write about how to survive cancer, how to receive a final diagnosis, how to represent cancer in their own poems, and how they are able to address the disease (3). Rosie Garland, a poet and performer, contracted throat cancer, and her collected poems, Everything Must Go (2012), reflect her view of the disease and indeed deepen her perspective towards both life and death. However, in her poetry, she transcends the miseries of the disease and takes on the voice of humanity. Her poem, “A Donor’s Card,” is a typical example of her devotional focus:

A Donor’s Card “There’s nothing here that I’ll be needing. I don’t do souvenirs. No grave-goods, no grave. No-one will do their back in digging me a hole; nor have the job

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of unpeeling rotten carnations from my marker. Stretch me out in a place of arc-lights. Open me up. Reveal my inner workings, the plot twist no-one was expecting. Let the harvesting commence. May my heart thump love in the warm nest of another’s ribs, my liver filter someone else’s happy anniversary, my lungs give voice to laughter and whistling out of tune at bus stops. Lay me to rest under the bright faces, the white coats of angels” (Garland 2012).

The title of the poem, “A Donor’s Card,” symbolises the devotional act of the speaker who is supposedly dead. No-one has helped her with her adversity; instead, she devotes herself to others. The last line of the poem refers to ascending to heaven: “Lay me to rest under the bright faces, the white coats of angels.” The spiritual ending confirms the ethical content of the poem to transcend the agony of her disease. Helen Dunmore, the poet and novelist, also experienced the agony of cancer and depicted it in her volume of poetry entitled Inside the Wave (2017), published a few months before her death. To be inside the wave means to be imprisoned in a grave without either “words or song”: “It was on the inside Of the wave he chose To meditate endlessly Without words or song,” (Sean O’Brien 2017, para 3)

She speaks of the poems in the volume and of the Underworld as a terrain of death: They are about the places and moments where the human world meets the underworld, and that extraordinary territory which we can only penetrate when life begins to give way to death. This is the

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Dunmore mythologised her upcoming death in her poem “The Underworld.” The poet imagined herself living like others facing death who once believed in ancient religions and mythologies. This was indeed a quite different kind of living in the realm of the Underworld which she too thought she was going to enter: I used to think it was a narrow road From here to the underworld But it’s as broad as the sun. I say to you: I have more acquaintance Among the dead than the living And I am not pretending. It’s pure fact, like this sandwich Which hasn’t quite tempted anyone. (Brien 2017, para 2)

She consoles herself that she will find her acquaintances among “the dead” in this other world and she believes in this place that does not attract many anymore. The main focus of Dunmore’s volume, entitled Inside the Wave, is on the symbols and characters that are derived from classical literature and mythology, including the Greek epic, Odyssey, which is often identified with modern sea imagery and symbolism. The heroic pattern of the characters found in the myths of the Underworld and their classical epics often inspired cancer patients to feel they were immortal and could thus defeat the disease. In epics, the hero believes he is divinely predestined and thus guided towards his fate (Drake, 257). In this case, the struggle is between the hero who represents good and the disease that represents evil. The culmination of that struggle leads the hero to the realm of the Underworld where death is found (Drake, 257).

The Wait Poetry Anthology In his foreword to the book, The Wait Poetry Anthology (SandiferSmith 2014), George Sandifer-Smith, the editor, discusses some problematic issues of the reception of poetry. He says that the poetry audience nowadays

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tends to be elitist due to its lack of popularity. Actually, there are many significant reasons behind this lack of popularity including the rise of the popularity of fiction rather than poetry, the dominance of visual screenings or movies, the effect of complicated modernistic poetry texts and so on. The book is devoted to the benefit of cancer research centres, and some poems directly deal with the topic of cancer and death. Other poems tackle other themes including different approaches to death. The anthology includes 100 poems by poets from different countries. Most are from the UK and the others are dispersed across the USA, Australia, and some European, African and Asian countries. The poems that deal directly with the theme of death start with Shian Cain’s “Fy Nghariad”: I cannot imagine you dying, like a wilted flower, Though I know that the beauty I see in you will not last forever, We have the present, not the past; The click of the camera, preserved in a photograph. Rest this necklace on your chest, so I can hear the Beating of your heart. I am yours and you are mine, entwined on the silver thread, Because if you are Venus then I am Flora. (Sandifer-Smith 2014, 18)

The speaker in this poem wishes for the beauty of the beloved to be fixed in a photographic shot and to be immortal as opposed to the mortal or “wilted flower.” This wish is underpinned by the image of the two goddesses—Venus of beauty and Flora of flowers. The note written under the title of Mary Jacob’s poem, “Crabbing” explains the theme of the poem: Scattering my father’s ashes on the River Wye. “Ashes” is the main symbol of the poem which suggests the birth and rebirth cycle, as the ashes of the father are scattered on the River Wye and transferred to the blood of the siblings:

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Part I Chapter Eleven We know you are here, Swimming in our blood, singing your song Fragments in our ears (19)

“Ashes” also recalls the immortal bird, the Phoenix. The poet uses “crab” as a symbol to suggest “cancer,” the astrological marine symbol, and consequently the cancer disease which killed her father. The poem tells the story of a family going to the river to go crabbing and it metaphorically means hunting cancer, the disease. However, the task of crabbing proves to be useful, as these creatures help human health as well. Although Laura Cushing’s poem, “On Dying in Spring” directly tackles the theme of cancer and death, the poem has a symbolic level and a certain deepness. Cancer is not described as a horrific monster but rather it is identified with flowers blossoming. The title of the poem enhances this identification as the death occurs in the spring. Using a flower as a metaphor for cancer is but mere consolation for the patient, as the scene is depicted from afar and does not address the suffering of the patient more intimately. Cancer is blossoming through the sick body and the flowers eventually rise from the dead body through the grave: Flowers flower and buds bud the trees. It is spring and he is dying of cancer. Inside his belly, tumours grow like blossoms. He frosts like winter—hair white, skin pale; His frame down to bare bones, a skeleton. In the garden bed, the daffodils rise (44)

In “The Girl on the Beach,” Adrian Rodda describes his daughter who was ill with cancer and passed away as the “Child of Nature” and identified her with the Phoenix. The speaker of the poem, “Songs to Gods,” who was saved from cancer, thanks the “Gods” for letting her “climb trees, dance in the universal wind.” In “Dawn Vixen,” the poet draws a picture of ravens feasting on a dead body. Further, the poet depicts other ferocious creatures as if he is basically protesting against predation, and cancer itself is a typical example of that.

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The image of curtains is used widely by the poets of this anthology, as the curtains used in hospitals resemble the barrier between life and death when the curtains veil the life which is going on outside the patient’s room. Also, it suggests the curtains of the theatre when they fall at the end of a drama to symbolise the end of life itself. It seems that Janet Litchfield wrote her last poem “Litchfield last looney poem” shortly before her death, and the poem was submitted by someone else: I know that ive got cancer You cant dress that up or down And ive watched Holby City When they pull the curtains round (91)

Sickness can be noted even in the grammar and the punctuation of the poem. The poet or the patient knows that she is going to die soon, and she refers to her past life measured by “happy time and laughter” as life, for T. S. Eliot is measured by coffee spoons. In her poem, “I have met you,” Sophie Howard takes the metaphor of the “green curtains” ironically as the green colour symbolises life rather than death. The threads of the curtains are similar to those by which the wounds of the patient are stitched and the poet imagines the fall of the curtains as soon as she touches them. Suicide, as a solution to end the disease, is hinted at in the poem “Absinthe,” and this idea is dispersed throughout some texts of the anthology. In the same way, the theme of “goodbye” is recurrent in some poems such as “Where is the good in goodbye,” “Euston Station,” “the promenade,” and “3 a.m.” to indicate not only the temporary departure of lovers but also to refer to the passing away of dying lovers and sweethearts. Cancer is symbolised by the rose because of its particularly unique shape. Claudia Gold, in her poem, “Deer on Highway 9,” uses cats as an intriguing metaphor for cancer due to the shape of a tumour and its spreading or movement. Although cats are familiar animals, they were sent by witches as tools to help perform the witches’ purposes during the Middle Ages (Claire 2013, para 2). The patient is depicted as sleeping with cats:

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Part I Chapter Eleven I lie in my bed with cats— one cuddling between my legs, another by my head. One kneads my back, I am afraid he’ll tear velvet, it may be worth it, but his nails hurt, so I turn to my side (101)

Daniel Walden’s “Krakatoa, 1883” can be taken as an allegory for cancer. The actual event was an eruption of a volcano on an Indonesian island which destroyed the life on that island. The volcano and its dirt are a relevant metaphor for cancer, as cancer can erupt like a volcano; however, the four seas that surround the island and the volcano, are more powerful due to their ability to absorb and contain the damage. The speaker of the poem is water, which represents life, and surrounds that island with its “soft bed of dirt” which represents cancer or death: Our island is smaller; instead of taking more away, I will bring more to you. And we will be an island again, your soft bed of dirt growing softly outwards. I am four seas that girth you (113)

The theme of ageing is tackled by Vish Amarasinghe’s “Granddad’s Eightieth.” Cancer is supposed to be prevalent in one’s eighties, and it is the age of the “zenith” or, in other words, the end of life. However, the speaker is optimistic and the granddad is strong enough to happily have a lobster in a restaurant. The lobster, as a metaphor for cancer, is fed upon and not the reverse: He’s reading his cards; a hand takes them away as he finishes, while another one replaces them. I don’t know much about turning eighty, but people keep loading significance on to the passing of each decade, as if to say:

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‘That’s it; this is the zenith!’ (149)

In another poem, “Throne,” the theme of ageing is exemplified through the comparison of the image of a queen when she is young and old: My eyes now a dull shade of blue, my perfect pout puckered, bones protrude through my paper skin. Once I filled the whole room, now I barely leave a shadow (37)

War, as a cause of death, is dealt with by many poems here— Victoria David’s “War’s Song” and Morgan Roberts’ “In Memoriam,” in particular. In contrast with the former, the latter removes the “memorial” from its patriotic connotations and talks of death verbally: A blank gravestone from the shop front Sisters blank sheets and an empty bed, Where la petite mort spent a last breath. Though, it sounded like more of a grunt (153)

These two poems reflect the two opposite opinions usually found in war poetry. The apocalyptic theme in “Krakatoa, 1883” recurs in Sarah Sommerville’s “Too Scared to Wake.” The girl is standing on the top of a mountain, and “Her hands are damaged, dripping blood, / Her eyes red from the salty flood.” When the narrator of the poem wakes, the girl’s legs give way and she falls “and then no more than her soul shall live.” The images of “blood” and “flood” indicate the apocalyptic end of the whole life of the world as a human falls from the top of the mountains, but only to undertake another life again, and this might be happier. The apocalyptic view is exemplified in Roz Crowther’s “Martian Sleep” by the dust, which turns everything brown, storms and Noah’s Ark. The speaker is supposed to be the last person on earth: I know not the time of my death But I know it will come soon;

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Heather Andrews is sarcastic about life in her poem “Dog Years”: In every light, there is a shadow Graphite, charcoaled molecules They gain form to separate us To choreograph a tease A reminder of the heart that hangs low at the gallows (159)

In Rachel Shannon’s “Why I Love Physiology,” the speaker is enrolled in the department of physiology in order to study “ageing” and the “ingenuity” of a dead body, but the last advice of the speaker is to study a live body: But hands up if you’ve heard that you come to university just to ‘find yourself’? wouldn’t it be fun to put that on the shelf and instead study, well, yourself? (179)

The question here is extended to be more than the physiological or biological process; it is the study of the “self” as well. Actually, the deep reason for this study is to puzzle at the mystery of the life-death cycle. The cycle of generations: the grandfather-son-grandson and a similar pattern for a female, is reflected in some poems of the anthology, and ponders on how life continues with the characteristics of each generation. Kathryn Hill’s “Tobacco grandfather” is distinguished by the celebration of the absent grandfather, who was killed at Dunkirk, but the smell of his tobacco still existed, announcing his remarkable presence. Although the patriotic tone eases in this poem, the reader feels that it is not exaggerated as in the propaganda texts of war poetry: The earth under your boots turns from rich brown of the allotment to the sands of Africa to the grit of Dunkirk. Rich browns of leather, wood

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and dried, golden leaves. Curl up let the wind carry you. (185)

The editor’s poem, “The Wait,” from which the title of the anthology is taken, depicts how the relatives of the patient spend painful moments waiting for the results of medical surgery, or how the patient is in torture waiting for doctors to perform these operations. Moreover, waiting is a procedure of preparation for death. In this poem, time is measured differently: The wait crept on, past the incisions and removals, bandages and pills, phone calls. The wait counted off its time leisurely, in fragile fingernails and red skin. (194)

Unlike the poems that are mentioned in the introduction, namely, “The Underworld” and “The Donor’s Card,” the poems of The Wait Poetry Anthology rarely focus on themes related to religions and mythology. These poets are more realistic, and instead, they search for aesthetic themes within the catastrophic realm of disease. To conclude, therefore, this paper addresses certain significant books related to the theme of cancer and how that difficult topic was dealt with in poetry and expressed during the period 2012-2017. Two volumes of poetry were introduced and one book on literary criticism. The poets found in these volumes frequently do take into consideration religious and mythological themes and their symbols. The paper centres on The Wait Poetry Anthology (2014). The speakers in these poems are sometimes the patient, a relative, a friend or a lover. The poets in this anthology tackle cancer realistically and find their aesthetic themes and symbols within that focus so as to explain the adversity produced by that horrific disease. Their themes, symbolism, and the imagery found in this particular anthology focus on cancer, death, suicide, the hospital experience, hospital symbolism, ageing, a war, and the process of saying goodbye. Cancer is identified with a rose, a cat, and an island to familiarise this monster and lessen its present and constant danger, as sometimes doctors are successful in defeating it. The cover of the book even offers a picture where cancer or a tumour is configured as a rose to try and beautify this terrible topic and bring it closer to the uniquely pleasant environment that is poetry.

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Delivered at the conference “Literature and Language as a Platform for Civilisations Interaction” held by The College of Arts, Mutah University, Jordan, May 8-9, 2018.

CHAPTER TWELVE POLITICAL AND AESTHETIC IMPLICATIONS IN GEORGIE BIRD’S POEM “THRONE”*

The “throne” is a symbol of power, and in this poem, it is a symbol of both power and beauty. Both power and beauty, especially of a woman, shine at one time and fade at another. Time constitutes the third unseen element in this piece of art: My throne sits abandoned, once a gilded masterpiece now faded and scratched. Paint peels off onto the floor, a carpet of golden flakes.

The comparison between the glory of the past and the frustrations of the present permeates the five stanzas of the poem. The poem is structured autobiographically and ironically in order to foreshadow the future life of the poet. Each stanza contains five lines so the whole number of lines in the poem is twenty-five which equals the twenty-five years of the poet’s age as mentioned in the few lines of biography under the text of the poem. The speaker of the poem or the poet now ponders her glamorous beauty and imagines or draws her fears of how she will be after four or five decades. The first stanza above depicts this tragedy through a description of the “gilded throne” as it loses its “golden flakes” on the floor. The comparison between the thrones of power and beauty is implied by the image of “a carpet of golden flakes” on which the queen used to walk when she was in power. In the second stanza, the poet reveals the conspiracy against the queen: The queen who deserted at the sight of the enemy,

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Part I Chapter Twelve my kingdom lost in cowardice, trusted by those who believed I was more than a pretty face.

The subtle narration in this stanza cleverly serves the autobiographical parallelism in the poem. The first two lines are narrated according to the third person, and the following three lines are narrated in the first person. The “kingdom” was lost by the action of “cowardice.” The “enemy” is ambiguous and terrible to the extent that the queen deserted “at the sight of the enemy.” It was an act of surrender and no real battle occurred. The ambiguity of that enemy suggests the powerful “Time” or “Death” as an unseen and omnipresent character. This suggestion is enhanced by the assertion of the queen or the poet that she was “trusted by those who believed / I was more than a pretty face.” This hint consoles the “queen” for the loss of her physical beauty so far. The conspiracy of cowardice is related to the part played by people who are ambiguous and who surrendered at the first sight of the enemy but it can also be attributed to the enemy “himself” as well. Time or Death are always tainted with cowardice by poets at least for the unseen nature of their character. However, the feature of “cowardice” can also be attributed to the people who leave the queen after she has lost her “throne” or “beauty.” The poet foreshadows, perhaps, her beloved when he leaves her after she has lost her beauty. This is an impossible presumption because both he and she are going to lose their glamourous beauty through the action of time. Nevertheless, the blame is still on “Time.” The poem could end here and the other three stanzas could be seen as mere superfluous description, but the structure of the poem would be undermined and the autobiographical implication would not be fulfilled. Nevertheless, there are some ideas which may deepen the sense of tragedy in the poem: My calloused feet disturb the silence, treading the path where I once was adored. Now there is only the cold slap of my feet against the stone.

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In the first stanza, there is a carpet on the floor, and in the third stanza, there is no carpet but stone. The reader may feel the coldness of death through “the cold slap” of the “feet against the stone.” The earth, as symbolised by “the stone,” is ready to receive the old body of the queen. The “silence” of the room is like the silence of the grave, and the stone plays the role of the tombstone. The scene of death is completely drawn in this stanza. However, there are some other details to be added: The mirror slants off the wall, a large crack splits the glass distorting my face. It’s hard to believe that it once declared me to be a work of art.

The aesthetic element in this stanza heightens the tragedy, and the queen, who is the narrator, is united with the poet. The slanted and broken mirror exacerbates the tenseness of the scene as it adds more distortion to the old and wrinkled face of the queen. The comparison between the beautiful face or the “work of art” in the past and the present distorted face suggests the significant idea of immortality. The human face is mortal but the “work of art” or the statue is immortal. The irony in this stanza reveals that even the “work of art” is mortal and decayed. This stanza recalls Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” in which the statue of the king is broken and abandoned in the desert. Artists and poets are no longer immortal in their “work of art.” The fifth stanza points to the end of the tragedy: My eyes now a dull shade of blue, my perfect pout puckered, bones protrude through my paper skin. Once I filled the whole room, now I barely leave a shadow.

The sense of the absurd permeates the whole poem, and this stanza in particular. The gesture of the lips, which is depicted by this line: “my perfect pout puckered,” as it mocks the whole situation including the distorted face, tends to mock life as well as death.

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The poem was published in The Wait Poetry Anthology, edited by George Sandifer-Smith (UK: Camrose media, 2014), 36.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE WHIP OF TIME: A READING OF LINDA MERENESS’ “A FROST MOMENT”

A Frost Moment A meadow opens to reveal A writer’s refuge of split log and brick Left untouched, Since last warm mind and body Moved within its walls Creating thoughts.

No sound but quiet now fills the air, Time sanctifies this private place, Which rests alone without a trace Of the soul that sang within its gates. Lush and forgotten to all but one— A whippoorwill crying to its mate.

This poem, “A Frost Moment” reminds us of Thoreau’s Walden and Robert Frost’s natural symbolism. Actually, the cottage, which the speaker is talking about, is Frost’s place of solitude to write his poetry every summer and autumn. In this sense, the title of the poem hints at the poet’s name, Frost, as well as the natural phenomenon of freezing. However, the title suggests that this phenomenon can also be a symbol of

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death. Death, here, is not necessarily the death of the physical body but it includes the death of a creative voice. This idea is enhanced by the cry of the whippoorwill, which suggests death or offers clear “omens of death or misfortune”1 according to Native American belief. The name of the bird is also suggestive of this belief as it refers to the Whip of Poor Will which underpins the context of the second stanza in which this bird cries to its mate, maybe in vain, to match the callings of life—the creative voice that is intensely human. The contrast between the first stanza that represents life, and the second stanza that suggests death, is obvious; however, the writer’s death is problematic here. Unlike Shakespeare, the poet doesn’t believe in the immortality of the writer through his writing. Time is mentioned in the second stanza to reference death, not life, and it is the whip of a strong will that too often destroys the poor will of the human. Consequently, man is defeated by the whip of time. The form of the poem is precisely designed to reflect its content, namely, two stanzas with six lines each and the sum of twelve. The number twelve is sanctified but here, “Time sanctifies this private place,” the lonely and yet inspirational place of the writer so fully engulfed in nature. The symmetric structure of the poem reflects the regular dualities of life/death, day/night, summer/winter. The equation of time is reversed here, as the poem does not refer to the sanctity of time; on the contrary, nature is sanctified by time. In fact, the very place in nature, which is a cottage full of unique creativity, is sanctified. The place can be removed to bring in the concept of the process of creativity itself. However, this sanctity does not lead to the immortality of the writer or of his/her text but rather it leads one to listen to the cry of the whippoorwill in vain. That means the writer and his creativity, like our own, are defeated by either time or death or both in the end, but still leave a remnant for the next creative artist. 1.

“Native American Whippoorwill Mythology”. 1998-2015. http://www.native-languages.org/legends-whippoorwill.htm

CHAPTER FOURTEEN NATURE AND POLITICS IN LINDA RHINEHART’S POEM “SEPTEMBER SONG”

September Song Precariously the grey rock hangs over the edge of the sullen sea, carven in the howling winds of aeons past, when the water was angrier and the land younger; now only brown moss grows in the crevices I grow weary of this sea, of the smell of rotting fish and sleet against my skin; Secretly I yearn for the red rock of desert sand, with bright skies and the air singing with the notes of a dangerous promise

The speaker compares the situations of the sea and the desert in the context of time according to the title, September Song. At this time of the year, the sea is going to be at its worst and the desert at its best.

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However, both places are unstable or dangerous. The form of the poem helps this comparison as it is divided into two symmetrical stanzas; one is for the sea and the other is for the desert. The sea is not glorious but the desert is. However, the sea or “the water was angrier and the land younger” in the past and that symbolises the romantic view of the past compared with the gloomy view of the sea in the present time: “now only brown moss grows in the crevices.” So, the speaker is “secretly” longing for “the red rock of desert sand,” which is compared with the grey rock found on the seashore. The colour of the two rocks is suggestive and aids comparison. The grey colour of the rock found in the sea coincides with a September atmosphere, as it represents autumn, while the red colour of the rock in the desert symbolises the fact that many ideas start with the colour of the sun and gold and continue with the colour of blood and fire. However, it can be deduced that the juxtaposition of these two colours reflects the contradiction between old and young. Also, the speaker is longing to live in the desert to enjoy the “bright skies” and to hear its lovely song even though it has a dangerous note. Nature is both lovely and dangerous. The beasts in the sea and the desert threaten to end the life of other creatures. The beast in the desert near Bethlehem, as Yeats imagined in his poem, “The Second Coming,” threatened to end history. To conclude, the speaker prefers the desert to the sea because it is more primitive and sustains the most beautiful elements of nature. The title of the poem may suggest the political situation of the September 11th event, as the poem was published in September 2017. This political consideration seems reasonable because the symbolism of the poem reflects this thinking in line with the political view of the poet. The speaker cannot tolerate the old sea and its miseries, but rather glorifies the environment of the desert. The sea versus the desert may suggest the West versus the East. The speaker takes the side of the East even though it holds danger, and also because the speaker is young, as is the desert. The speaker was with the West when the West was young but now the West is old. Implicitly, the speaker warns the West that victory will be on the side of the young or the East in the end. However, regardless of the conspiracy theory and the condemnation of terrorism, the poem is deeply suggestive of the whole situation of the struggle between the West and the East.

PART II: PROSE

CHAPTER ONE DANIEL DEFOE AND THE PICARESQUE NOVEL: A CRITICAL STUDY OF ROBINSON CRUSOE AND MOLL FLANDERS

Abstract Daniel Defoe wrote two picaresque novels: Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. This paper tries to give a glimpse of the nature of the picaresque novel and to show the difference between these two novels and their relationship to the English political and social system.*

I. Introduction Daniel Defoe was a great novelist and was also a founder of literary periodicals. He made literature and journalism his profession. He gained “the position he occupies in virtually every history of prose fiction as the progenitor if not the actual founder of the English novel.”1 He was the son of a dissenter, so he was educated in a dissenting college in Stoke Newington. He worked in politics as an agent for the government and a double agent for both the Whigs and the Tories.2 He wrote a lot of pamphlets, treatises and booklets on various subjects, but regarded himself as an originator of the novel.3 His earliest work is The Review (1704-13), which is considered as important in the history of journalism and literary periodicals. He wrote The Apparition of Mrs Veal (1706) as a work of imagination which depended on the results of his research. When he was sixty, he published his masterpiece Robinson Crusoe (1719), then he was encouraged to publish many volumes of this novel and others such as Captain Singleton (1720); Moll Flanders (1722); Colonel Jack (1722); A Journal of the Plague Year (1722); and Roxana (1724). His thoughts on the novel are illustrated in A Journal of the Plague Year.4

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II. The Picaresque Novel The stem of picaresque is a Spanish word, picaro. This form of writing is “the life story of a good-natured rogue, a clever and amusing adventurer of low social class who makes his way by tricks and roguery rather than by honourable industry.”5 He starts with low-paid jobs such as being a servant. He provokes pity, moving easily from one job to another, and sometimes he commits crimes. The plot of a picaresque novel is loose, told by the rogue himself, about his adventures on the road. The earliest known novel is the Spanish La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes (c. 1554), which was the most popular one and gave the genre its well-known name. The first English novel of this type is The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton (1594), by Thomas Nash. A later example is Confessions of Felix Krull, by Thomas Mann.6

III. Robinson Crusoe The full name of this novel is The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, and is thought to be based on the reallife character of Alexander Selkirk. He was on a sailing expedition to the South Pacific Ocean when the ship stopped at the Juan Fernandez islands to restock. Selkirk argued with Stradling, the captain of the vessel, and was left marooned on the island, where he remained for four and a half years, from 1704 to 1709, until his rescue. Then a ship picked him up to return to England. Guy N. Pocock gave two reasons for the importance of this novel, which he considered as a literary miracle: “1. The power of its truth, and the enormous trivial details, which make life vivid. 2. Its effect on generations that the book is considered a perfect representation of individuality.”7 This individuality caused Ian Watt, in his book The Rise of the Novel, to write a chapter entitled: “Robinson Crusoe, Individualism and the Novel,” in order to interpret the political system of English society and how it is reflected in this novel.8 Watt considers Robinson Crusoe a representative of the trend that gave rise to the economic individualism depicted through the theories of Rousseau and Locke about the social contract and liberalism. This economic individualism is the reason why Crusoe pays no attention to his family.9

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Crusoe is not a mere vagabond of a picaresque novel but he feels that he does not relate emotionally to his country or to his family; he is interested in the people with whom he can do business, regardless of their nationality. So, one can say that Crusoe resembles a symbol of British colonialism after the geographical discoveries, especially those in the Third World. The credibility of this idea arises from the notion of a primitive island that needs to be explored and developed in order to attain English civilisation. The primitive cannibals may represent those savage populations of the Third World from a European point of view. This idea is emphasised by the relationship between Crusoe (the master) and Friday (the servant). Crusoe named Friday and taught him many things. This political allegory may contradict Defoe’s moral lessons which he introduced in other works such as Family Instructor.10

IV. Moll Flanders Many critics think that Moll Flanders is different from the typical picaresque novel. In his introduction to the novel and his analysis of the preface written by the author himself, G. A. Aitken said that there is “a superficial resemblance to the old picaresque novels of the school of Head’s English Rogue.”11 Also, Ian Watt, who differs in his treatment of this type of novel and the reasons for this phenomenon, said that the picaro didn’t feel any penitence for his wrong deeds as Moll Flanders did, and the “difference between Moll Flanders and the picaresque novel is also the result of a specific social change closely related to the rise of individualism.”12 Ian Watt said that Defoe had depicted his picaresque characters as victims of circumstances,13 but this is not true, at least according to Defoe’s preface to his novel where he said that “the heroine pretends to be pertinent and humble.”14 In his preface, Defoe did not get to the point of what made his heroine commit her crimes. He only condemned those deeds consistent with his beliefs that the social system as a whole is responsible for these crimes.15 The social system is deemed to be capitalism, which pushes individuals to commit crimes in order to keep themselves from starvation, as Aitkin said.16

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V. Conclusion Daniel Defoe was considered to be the founder of the English novel. Moreover, he was one of the greatest novelists of the eighteenth century. He did not keep to the typical characteristics of the picaresque novel, especially in Moll Flanders where the heroine reacted to the changes in English society as a result of economic individualism. Defoe did not elaborate on his theory regarding these changes. However, his novel reflects the reality of what was happening. Some of his characters are necessarily victims of the English social system, but in line with his theory, he treats them as criminals. Robinson Crusoe reflects the growing English colonialism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this way, it differs from the typical picaresque novel and could be considered as a political allegory of European colonialism.

CHAPTER TWO THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT IN HENRY FIELDING’S ART

Abstract Henry Fielding (1707-1754), Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), and Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) were three eminent novelists who contributed to the rise of the English novel. Fielding had his own theory of the novel, but he could not overthrow the classical heritage which had greatly influenced him. This paper explores the classical influence on his works. It is divided into the following: the first section is about Fielding’s life and works, and the second states the definitions and the major characteristics of classicism in Fielding’s writing and describes how his art carries on the classical spirit.*

I. His Life and Works Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist. He was born at Sharpham Park, Somerset. He was educated at Eton College and later he studied law at Leiden University. He practised law as a barrister, a justice of the peace and he also worked in political journalism. Fielding lived in the first half of the eighteenth century (1707-54), so he was a contemporary of neo-classical writers. He also witnessed some literary events that characterised this century, especially the decreased significance of drama and the emergence of the novel. He studied law and, in 1740, was called to the bar; his experience of law and his career in justice were reflected in his literary works, and they were another element that helped to maintain his social values. His education at Eton gave him a basic background in the Greek and Latin classics. It is said that, when he left Eton at the age of eighteen, he knew Horace’s works by heart. His collection, Miscellanies, was greatly influenced by Horatian epistles, and it included essays, satires, translations and farces. He was so overwhelmed by the classic vision that he attended performances of Cicero’s and Plato’s works during his illness in Portugal.1

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In his early adult life, he was attracted to the theatre as a playwright and manager. Between 1729 and 1737, he wrote 25 different dramas “largely in the farce and satire, including the most successful of all his dramas, Tom Thumb.”2 The ending of his career as a dramatist was caused by writing two dramas: Pasquin (1736), and The Historical Register for 1736 (1737), in which he attacked Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister, who consequently imposed a strict censorship on theatre. In 1741, he wrote Shamela, a novel which parodied Richardson’s Pamela. Richardson intended to make Pamela a symbol of chastity but Fielding made Shamela manoeuvre to tempt her would-be seducer to fall into the trap of marriage. In 1742, he wrote his novel Joseph Andrews, which was also considered to be a parody of Richardson’s Pamela.3 Joseph Andrews deals with Pamela’s brother, Joseph. This satire follows “the model of the famous Tory satirists of the previous generation” (Jonathan Swift and John Gay, in particular). In this novel, he designed his character, Parson Adams, following the prototype of Don Quixote. Influenced by the Odyssey and Don Quixote, he also created what is called the “comic prose epic” which is embodied in this novel. In 1743, he published three volumes of Miscellanies, which included his long mock-epic treatment of heroism, Jonathan Wild. In this novel, he mercilessly satirised the Whig party leader, Robert Walpole, by comparing him to Jonathan Wild, the leader of a gang of thieves.4 In 1749, he wrote his masterpiece, the great picaresque novel Tom Jones, in which he used humour, satire and well-designed characters to reflect different moral behaviours. In 1751, he wrote his last novel Amelia, which deals with the problems of married life and is a study of justice and the system of law in England. However, the structure of the novel does not compare with that of Tom Jones.5 Before his death in Portugal, Fielding wrote Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, which was published posthumously. He also wrote about sociological and legal affairs such as An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, 1751, and A Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor, 1753. He was widely interested in writings on “the corruption of the legal system and of public and private morals and the actuality or imminence of poverty.”6 Fielding was the innovator of a new style which prepared the way for many outstanding English novelists later on.

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II. Classicism and Neo-classicism The word classic is derived from the Latin word classus, which means class. The adjective classic or classical refers to the highest class in society. In the plural, classics means “the study of ancient Greek and Latin literature and history.”7 T. S. Eliot refers to the word classic as it may mean “the standard author” or the indication of his greatness, permanence and importance in his own field. But he followed that by revealing his attitude towards the word, affirming that it means “maturity.”8 Usually, the term classicism refers to the administration and imitation of Greek and Roman heritage in literature, art, and architecture, but “because the principles of classicism were derived from the rules and practices of the ancients, the term came to mean the adherence to specific academic canons.”9 As a term, classicism is a general literary style and point of view. The term originated “with the application of the word classical to the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, but soon extended its meaning to include any similar literary style or criticism.”10 Lilian L. Furst refers to classicism as a state of balanced perfection.11 Classicists dealt with the external world or society more than the internal world of man. Patrick Murray says about the Classical and Romantic distinction that it is “between two metaphors of mind which express two opposing views of the imagination. The first [classical] sees the mind as a reflector of external objects.”12 Classicism’s interest in the external world reflects its major feature, which is a focus on society rather than the individual. In other words, classists emphasise the social role of the individual who should conform to established social norms. This notion leads to formality in a certain sense, or to a predesigned style of conduct, and to the acceptance of conventions such as the unities in theatre and the use of heroic couplets by neo-classical poets. Intellectualism is another feature of classicism, in the sense that the craftsman must control and know every part of his work, so it is not void of emotions but emotion is well-controlled by the classicist.13 It is known that classicism was first found in Greece and Rome and not England. Neo-classicism also originated in France and was then transmitted to England. L. R. Furst says that the Romantic Movement arose partly as a reaction to the neo-classicism of the seventeenth century and the real internal spirit of classicism was lost during this time. So, there is a real difference between the original and the imitation. Grierson’s

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interpretation of the word classic, which he refers to as a balance, does not conform with the inclination of neo-classicists to reason, and their bigoted, inconstant endeavours to imitate apparent classical forms.14 Neo-classicism arose around the end of the eighteenth century and lasted up to the 1830s. It was related to the Age of Enlightenment or, as it was also called, The Age of Reason or The Augustan Age, as in the Roman Emperor Augustus (26 BC-14 AD). The term was first used in England as a standard term in the 1930s and it signified the achievements of the writers, John Dryden (1631-1700), Alexander Pope (1688-1744) and Samuel Johnson (1709-84). But the meaning of the term was extended to encompass the writings of three sub-periods, “The Age of Restoration (1660-1700),” “The Augustan Age (1700-1745),” and “The Age of Johnson (1745-1785).”15 The neo-classical school believes in imitation and this implies a regard for tradition and a great respect for classical works; the most prominent examples are Pope’s imitation of Horace and Dr Johnson’s imitation of Juvenal. This belief in imitation leads to faith in ancestors and their great role in the design of life, leaving a narrow field for the future. This school believes in reason which is meant to control passions and this leads to good judgement, discipline, propriety and organisation. Neoclassicism believes in “following nature” and it is not “an appeal to the wild pantheistic scenery that so enthused later Romantic writers, but an appeal to a Nature that reflects the divine mind of its omnipotent and omniscient creator.”16 It was also characterised by a grand or elevated style, imitating particularly the epic style. Influenced by this tradition, Fielding wrote his “comic epic poem in prose.”17

III. The Influence of Classicism on Fielding Fielding maintained most of the classical features in his works. One of them was a classical focus in line with established social norms when he wrote Shamela and Joseph Andrews, as parodies to Richardson’s Pamela “in which the author, intending to idealise chastity, had succeeded in emphasising the material rewards which accrue for the stubbornly chaste woman.”18 Fielding revealed the actual motive of Pamela—to marry her seducer. This idea reflects the point of view of those who are against the character of Pamela and concurs with the attitude of the upper class in English society. This attitude is in conformity with the upper class in English society which reveals Fielding’s classical thinking. But in Tom Jones, “both Tom and Sophia are revolting against the established belief

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of the eighteenth-century society.”19 Elizabeth Drew has a different point of view about Fielding’s masterpiece, Tom Jones, in which “the individual finds fulfilment and harmony within the accepted social pattern.”20 Walter Allen reconciles these two points of view. He says that in the eighteenth century, “though Fielding had protested against it in Tom Jones, a double standard of morality had been generally taken for granted; there was one law for the man, another for the woman, and in each case, the law seemed to be the translation into morals of biological fact.”21 It can be concluded that Fielding’s efforts drive the individual to conform, though that individual always tends to liberate himself from social constraints and norms. According to his classical cultural background, and influenced by both the Odyssey and Don Quixote, Fielding developed, in Joseph Andrews, the “comic prose epic.”22 Drew considers Don Quixote to be Fielding’s model to present a “prose epic” through which he deals with society in a vision of ironic and satiric comedy. His novel reflects his ideas about human behaviour and literary theories.23 Fielding found in the new literary genre of the novel a means of departure from classical drama and narrative poetry which focus on the idea of human fate. Instead, his attention was on literary works which tackle everyday events.24 Fielding tries to put his novel into the mould of a classical doctrine, which could not be enhanced “either by existing literary parallel or theoretical precedent.”25 Joseph Andrews failed to qualify as an epic text because it had only five elements out of the six which Aristotle regarded as epic.26 Those five were “fable, action, characters, sentiments, and diction.”27 Epic sentiments were lacking in this text, as epic characters were not found in Tom Jones—no heroic persons or sublime thoughts appeared in these texts, respectively. He used epic diction but in a burlesque form. The neo-classical theory of epic action had two elements: verisimilitude and the marvellous. Fielding apologised to Homer that his religion influenced his writing. He similarly apologised to Homer and Virgil for the supernatural quality of his work.28 Fielding’s innovation in the novel can be seen through what was dominant at that time because both romantic heroism and farcical burlesque were not acceptable. A. M. Humphreys understands what Fielding was trying to achieve in the comic novel, and the fact that the novel’s purpose is different from that of comic drama, which tackles defects and hypocrisies, but puts the reader in good humour—the main purpose of comedy. Fielding’s area of writing is not prose tales as such,

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but prose tales so intelligently organised that everything contributes to a pattern and the whole of life is intellectually resolved and clarified.29 The view that Fielding used the Homerian style along with the epic model which he so admired is not justified because he wrote Joseph Andrews as a parody and not as a new genre.30 The neo-classical rule of decorum was violated by Fielding in his comic prose epic.31 Walter Allen compares Fielding’s Joseph Andrews with Swift’s The Battle of the Books and Pope’s The Rape of the Lock as a parody of the similes found in the classical epic and as a rehearsal for the mockheroic. In his “Preface” to Joseph Andrews, Fielding differentiated between what he called “comic epic” and the classical term “comedy.” The former’s action is wide in its perspective with numerous characters who come from the lower ranks of society. In addition, they differ in sentiments and diction as the former is ridiculous and the latter is sublime. Fielding thought that the great master of English comedy was Ben Jonson, but Fielding’s art is related in spirit to Shakespeare’s, according to Allen’s point of view.32 In Tom Jones, he contradicted the classical design of the hero by the creation of a “hero” new to the genre of the novel—the “natural” hero, a character who has, indeed, more than his fair share of the frailties, failings and vices which a human often inherits, but who is, in the end, redeemed by his natural and unfailing goodness of heart.33

IV. Conclusion Fielding was highly influenced by Greek and Latin heritage, as a result of his aristocratic origins and education. He was distinct from Richardson who wanted to stand with the lower class of English society. Fielding used the mock-heroic epic in prose, using his wide knowledge of classical heritage to invent a new style in the novel. Although he contradicted his classical mind in some of his works such as Tom Jones, he persisted in maintaining his classical beliefs. The classical spirit is strongly apparent in his writings whether they are poems, plays or novels.

CHAPTER THREE SYMBOLISM IN THOMAS HARDY’S THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Abstract Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) lived through critical events of two centuries—in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. In this period, modernism was initiated, developed and reached its peak. Though Hardy is considered a modernist poet and writer due to his style, technique, narration and literary approach, he seems to be subtly anti-modernist in his sixth novel The Return of the Native due to his alignment with those of his characters who hold a symbolically antimodernist point of view. Hardy’s bias against modernism is obvious through his statement, “the ache of modernism,” which reveals his consciousness of the shortcomings of modernism. This novel leaves plenty of room for symbolic interpretation through the writer’s metaphorical language and his great intellectual background. His narration is full of symbols derived from historical, mythological and religious allusions. The most important symbols are: Egdon Heath, the Rainbarrow, the Bonfire, Wind and Storm, The Moon, Eyesight, Gambling and Paris. Hardy’s characters tend to be symbolic rather than realistic, especially Clym Yeobright, Eustacia Vye and Diggory Venn. This paper reveals the major symbols of the novel and studies them in the light of the basic theme of modernism and Hardy’s slant on that knowledge which leads to utopia.* The Return of the Native is typically representative of Hardy’s style “as critics have pointed out for some time, Hardy’s most instinctive mode as a writer is figurative, not analytic; his most habitual method is symbolism, not argument.”1 The poetic language enhances the symbolism in the novel and critics can derive many of the writer’s thoughts and attitudes, although they also

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reveal a certain problematic ambiguity. This ambiguity led W. B. Yeats to describe the attitudes most often revealed in Hardy’s poetry as “some vague utopia.”2 In this novel, his symbols can be examined through two themes—modernism and utopia:

I. The Heath The setting plays a big role in the novel because of its effect on the characters themselves. The place is the heath which is very close to where the writer was born in Dorset.3 The time is the second half of the nineteenth century when the precursors of modernism were starting to be seen. The first chapter of the novel describes the heath in a way which transforms it into a principal character and man-like figure:4 It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man’s nature - neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. (RN I: i, 33)

The characters in the novel can be divided according to their love for or hatred of the heath and their destinies are defined based on this relationship. Diggory Venn, Thomasin and Clym are so deeply rooted in the heath that they are content with their life in this place. The latter’s return from a city of modernism to live in his native place bears the symbolic meaning of the title of the novel. Eustacia Vye, Damon Wildeve and Mrs Yeobright are, on the contrary, characterised by their hatred of the heath. The latter’s disapproval of her son’s decision to stay, as well as her feelings of supremacy towards the locals, are reflected in her hostility towards the heath. The first chapter of the novel is dedicated to the description of the heath because “the heath proves physically and psychologically important throughout the novel.”5 The heath is always cloaked in darkness throughout the writer’s description:

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The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread. (RN I: i, 31)

The frightful appearance of the heath enhances those characters’ points of view towards it. The primitive nature of the heath seems to be severely hostile to civilisation and modernism: The untameable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was it always had been. Civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation. In its venerable one coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. A person on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or less an anomalous look. We seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive. (RN I: i, 33)

The unchangeable features of the heath reinforce its ability to resist any attempt to change its nature: “The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained” (RN I: i, 33). The heath may be considered as a symbol of fate, in the sense that it controls the destinies of its inhabitants;6 this tragic feature proves to be true at the end of the novel and this is foreshadowed in the first chapter: “It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities”

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(RN I: i, 33). The symbolic end of the first chapter refers to the beam of hope which may emerge from the gloomy nature of the heath by the reference to the white colour of the road: On the evening under consideration it would have been noticed that, though the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever. (RN I: i, 34)

II. The Bonfire and Rainbarrow Traditionally, a bonfire is used for commemorations, especially religious and pagan events. The word “bonfire” seems to mean a beautiful or nice fire according to the stem of the word which comes from the French language. It suggests that the evil side of the function of fire is eliminated. The writer puts the bonfire-makers in a high radiant position in contrast with the darkness of the heath: “It seemed as if the bonfire-makers were standing in some radiant upper story of the world, detached from and independent of the dark stretches below” (RN I: i, 40). The imagery of light and darkness symbolically serves the themes of knowledge and ignorance throughout the novel, especially in the first eight chapters. Fire serves to give light and warmth to the ignorant natives who were surrounding the bonfire and cheerfully dancing. Eustacia and Wildeve meet by the bonfire, thus providing a contradictory image to the locals’ meeting by the fire. This is suggestive of the knowledge-ignorance equation. Rainbarrow is the highest place on the heath, the centre of the locals’ festivities and the place of the lovers’ meetings. Eustacia is first seen at its top when the novel starts which reflects her superiority over the heath and the other characters. Through his poetic language, the writer depicts fire as “the instinctive and resistant act of man” with an allusion to the legend of Prometheus to denote the rebelliousness of some of his characters against nature. This is embodied by the heath:

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The rebellious characters are Eustacia, Wildeve and Clym, though there are differences in the manner of their rebellion. For Eustacia, the writer alludes to her rebelliousness in the chapter, “Queen of Night” and describes it as “smouldering” to show her silent or suppressed rebelliousness: Her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her. A true Tartarean dignity sat upon her brow, and not factitiously or with marks of constraint, for it had grown in her with years. (RN I: vii, 82-83)

The allusion to Tartarus here is to help the reader envisage Eustacia as an inhabitant of Tartarus.7 The recurrent allusions to Tartarus, where the Titans were cast, identify the heath with hell, at least for Eustacia, according to F. B. Pinion who states that “the fires, for example, that light up the heath are emblematic of the Promethean rebelliousness of Eustacia against her fate; for her, Egdon Heath is Hades.”8

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The writer uses “the decaying embers” to allude to the decaying emotion between Eustacia and Wildeve which is in need of being stirred up. Eustacia blew up the red coal when she was waiting for Wildeve which symbolises that Eustacia intends to increase her emotion towards him. She is used to referring to him as a bonfire, as a sign of her blazing emotions. On the other hand, the writer uses the same symbol (embers) directly to indicate that “The revived embers of an old passion glowed clearly in Wildeve now” (RN I: vi, 80). The writer uses these symbols—embers and fire—to keep pace with the fluctuating emotions between Eustacia and Wildeve, as can be seen in this answer from Eustacia to Wildeve when she denies her first coming to see him at the Rainbarrow: “‘O no,’ she said, intractably moving to the other side of the decayed fire” (RN I: vi, 80). When this meeting ends in indecision, and to indicate that their relationship is still suspended, the writer uses the symbols of fire too: She scattered the half-burnt brands, went indoors immediately, and up to her bedroom without a light. Amid the rustles which denoted her to be undressing in the darkness other heavy breaths frequently came; and the same kind of shudder occasionally moved through her when, ten minutes later, she lay on her bed asleep. (RN I: vi, 81)

On the fifth of November, all the bonfires were slowly extinguished, except for the one in Eustacia’s home because its vegetation is different from the heath’s. This means that the nature of this family is incompatible with the nature of the heath and its inhabitants. Also, it indicates that the disturbing emotions of Eustacia are still burning. The writer describes her soul as “flame-like” to refer to her romantic nature and anxious character: Assuming that the souls of men and women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of

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Part II Chapter Three Eustacia’s soul to be flame-like. The sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression. (RN I: vi, 82)

Her flame-like soul leads her to rebel in a strange direction against all traditional thoughts—such that she prefers men of war to the wise, to take the side of the Philistines not that of the Jews, and to admire Pilate the tyrant who handed Jesus over to the Jews to be crucified according to Christianity: Her high gods were William the Conqueror, Strafford, and Napoleon Buonaparte, as they had appeared in the Lady’s History used at the establishment in which she was educated. Had she been a mother she would have christened her boys such names as Saul or Sisera in preference to Jacob or David, neither of whom she admired. At school she had used to side with the Philistines in several battles, and had wondered if Pontius Pilate were as handsome as he was frank and fair. (RN I: vii, 85)

She is no longer a Promethean figure except for her rebelliousness. There is no knowledge here to be stolen from the gods. The fire here is a symbol for abstract love in which Eustacia believes as stated by the writer: “And she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover” (RN I: vii, 84). Her rebelliousness is extended even against Wildeve because she is always conscious of her superiority: “At moments her pride rebelled against her passion for him, and she even had longed to be free” (RN I: vii, 86). But though she tends

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towards modernism, she really only believes in its appearances like her partner Wildeve: The person who is victimized most by fate is Eustacia Vye. She is the character who tries so hard to leave the tiresome Egdon Heath, but is never able to. She tries very hard to set herself up with the right guy who will help her leave the place which she despises the most. Eustacia craved the glamour and intensity of a fast life that is not found on Egdon Heath.9

The real Promethean figure is Clym who returns from the city of modernism to his native place as if he has stolen the fire of knowledge from Paris, the city representing a sort of goddess of knowledge, in order to give it to the inhabitants of the heath and he is punished by his tragic destiny. The allusion to Diggory Venn as a reddleman who is likened to the “Mephistophelian visitants” in the novel, suggests the legend of Faust and his bond with the devil. The red colour of the reddleman and the fiery cloak of Mephistopheles coincide with the flame-like soul of Eustacia. This is further reinforced through the red ribbon on the neck of Eustacia worn on the night of her elopement, which is used by Susan Nunsuch to deter Eustacia’s spell against her son. Many similarities connect Faust with Eustacia—witchcraft, romance, power, appearances and adventure. She has the same tragic characteristics as Faust who looks for power beyond the limitations of the human being and faces a tragic punishment for this illegitimate ambition.

III. Clym’s Semi-Blindness In general, this refers to intellectual blindness, but in relation to the theme of modernism, it may be interpreted in three ways: A. The writer is in favour of modernism if this blindness is interpreted as a symbol of ignorance when Clym returns from the city of modernism—

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Paris—to the heath. Pinion interpreted “Clym’s partial blindness” in relation to his “premature idealism which convinces him that he can bring light to a people still walking in darkness.”10 B. The writer is against modernism if this blindness is interpreted as intellectual blindness. The characters are depicted in moulds which are appropriate to the writer’s predetermined attitude. It can be concluded that “any character who comes from the ‘civilisation’ of cities or who longs for it proves to be someone of little worth—think of Eustacia and Wildeve.”11 Clym could understand neither the other characters nor reality, and this misunderstanding envelops other characters as well: Clym’s eventual near-blindness reflects a kind of deeper internal blindness that afflicts all the main characters in the novel: they do not recognize the truth about each other. Eustacia and Clym misunderstand each other’s motives and true ambitions; Venn remains a mystery; Wildeve deceives Thomasin, Eustacia and Clym. The characters remain obscure for the reader, too.12

Also, there is a reference to the fact that knowledge may be misleading, in the sense that our civilisation, especially Western, is proceeding in the wrong way. The writer’s attitude towards this kind of modernism is reflected through his character, Clym: Clym is the first of Hardy’s idealists, the first of what have been called his “prig heroes,” a man conscious all the time of what Hardy himself called “the ache of modernism.” In a sense, he represents Hardy’s own values.13

Hardy’s philosophy of life is embodied in his character, Clym, who dislikes city life and describes it as “effeminate”:14

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He conceives his great characters from the same height; in the case of Clym by making him a representative of what he considered modern man—and the man of [the] future—in his most qualities; in the case of Eustacia by [a] richly romantic view of her [sic.].15

The criterion of modernity is different for Hardy. He considers Clym, who returns from Paris to the heath and rejects city values, as a modern man, and on the contrary, Eustacia who hates the heath and longs to live in Paris, he considers “not his modern woman: she is [a] woman as he most characteristically sees her.”16 Clym’s career as a furze-cutter, which is connected to the land of the heath and is generally considered as an uncivilised job, especially by Eustacia, does not change Hardy’s opinion. Pinion relates Clym’s abandonment of his career as a diamond merchant to similar events in Hardy’s life. He states that “Clym’s sacrifice of a city career, and his mother’s disappointment, owed something, no doubt, to Hardy’s abandonment of architecture.”17 The symbolic meaning of Clym’s career as a diamond merchant is traditionally related to the use of diamond for ornamental purposes. It suggests the life of “going with appearances” that Clym detests. The comparison between the suggested and practised careers of Clym— teacher, diamond merchant and furze-cutter—leads to the conclusion that their symbolic meaning is related to the theme of modernism. The diamond trade is considered as a false demonstration of modernism; furzecutting is deeply rooted in nature and the original or primitive world; and education, according to the real and genuine trend of modernism, is the hope for the future. Clym is seeking a sort of knowledge which “brings wisdom rather than affluence.”18 His transformation into an itinerant preacher at the end of the novel is the apex of Hardy’s moral concept of life as described in the following quote: Thus, one view which has received a good deal of currency is that Venn is to be seen chiefly as a representative of a bygone era—a product of Hardy’s nostalgia for an older, simpler, agrarian

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Part II Chapter Three way of life that was being swept away by the advance of the industrial revolution.19

C. The third interpretation may be assumed to be the reconciliation of the two previous contradicting points of view. It means that the writer is in favour of certain kinds of knowledge that will save human beings and he is against other kinds of knowledge which may destroy humanity and lead it to its tragic destiny.

IV. Death The death of Eustacia and Wildeve may infer that the heath hates these two characters and it kills everyone who resembles an enemy: Death by drowning is an imaginatively appropriate end for Wildeve and Eustacia. It also suggests the hostile nature of the heath which revenges itself for the hatred shown it by these two. It seems that the characters cannot escape Egdon: you either come to terms with it or it destroys you.20

Eustacia is so obsessed by the passage of time, she borrows “her grandfather’s telescope and her grandmother’s hourglass—the latter because of a peculiar pleasure she derived from watching a material representation of time’s gradual glide away” (RN I: vii, 86). She uses modern instruments against an ignorant background. The hourglass shows the significance of time for Eustacia who lives in a modern city but not for the heathfolk or for other characters for whom time is frozen, except for Wildeve. She directs the telescope to him in a sign which suggests their mutual perspective and destiny. Many allusions in the novel identify Eustacia with a goddess, a queen and a witch. The chapter “Queen of Night” is full of these allusions chiefly directed at the idea of fate foreshadowing Eustacia’s tragic end. The reference to the emblems of the three Fates “the distaff, the spindle and the shears” indicates the influence of women on the fate of men:

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Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, she had handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. (RN I: vii, 81)

Also, the allusions to the Sphinx, Heloise and Cleopatra reflect the controlling power of fate against the will of the suggested characters of these allusions. The conflict between will and fate is the pivotal problem for Eustacia. The major difference between Eustacia and Thomasin is condensed by this statement in the text: To have lost the godlike conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temper which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, though disappointed, forswears compromise. (RN I: vii, 85-86)

Eustacia with her “godlike conceit” wants to do what she wants, in contrast with Thomasin who wants to do what she can. Eustacia’s tragedy emerges from the truth that she is not convinced by her lot, as her partner in tragedy, Wildeve, is. The symbolic meaning of their death is the death of their direction or attitude. Their attitude goes against the writer’s idea of anti-modernism; the false promises of modernism are embodied by the behaviours and ambitions of Eustacia and Wildeve. Eustacia prophesied the death of Wildeve like the Witch of Endor who called up the figure of the dead Samuel to prophesy the death of King Saul: I merely lit that fire because I was dull, and thought I would get a little excitement by calling you up and triumphing over you as the Witch of Endor

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Part II Chapter Three called up Samuel. I determined you should come; and you have come! I have shown my power. (RN I: vii, 80)

She prophesied her death as well when she referred to the heath: “Tis my cross, my shame and will be my death!” (RN I: ix, 97). It is not a coincidence that Diggory Venn saves the life of Clym but not the lives of Eustacia and Wildeve. Diggory Venn is heavily associated with Clym’s attitude to life. Venn, Thomasin and Clym are still living in accordance with heath life, in contrast to Eustacia, Wildeve and Mrs Yeobright who are not reconciled with heath life, and so face their tragic deaths. For her part, Mrs Yeobright contributes to the hatred of the heath, but her hatred is not announced publicly as with Eustacia and Wildeve. She endures life on the heath, but she refuses the idea that her son should endure it too. She dreams that Clym will return to the city of light, Paris. The heath, symbolised by the adder, takes revenge and kills her. Mrs Yeobright represents one of those in favour of modernism. The heath represents ignorance, leading to a struggle between them which ends in victory for the heath.

V. The Moon “No moon, no man” is a superstitious saying in which the heathfolk believe. It symbolises the relationship between the moon and man’s birth in terms of defining his personality. The perfect man might be born when the moon is full. Christian Cantle, an inept person and the first gambler in the gambling scene, who unfortunately proves to be a winner at first, was born on a moonless night. Clym’s final state as an “itinerant preacher” suggests the similarity between Christian and Clym in terms of their state of mind. The scene of the eclipsed moon, in which Eustacia agrees to marry Clym, symbolises the disapproval of fortune as regards this marriage. The failure of their marriage proves that this conclusion is correct. The writer’s hints about Eustacia as a tragic heroine are related to the moon: “Eustacia once more lifted her deep stormy eyes to the moonlight, and, sighing that tragic sigh of hers which was so much like a shudder, entered the shadow of the roof” (RN II: vi, 148). When Eustacia points to the eclipsed moon referring to time slipping away, Clym concludes: “you are too mournful” (RN III: iv, 193). The eclipsed moon

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may signal that Eustacia “confides to her lover the deep (and perceptive) fear that their love will not last.”21 She is always afraid of the “unknown”: No. Only I dread to think of anything beyond the present. What is, we know. We are together now, and it is unknown how long we shall be so; the unknown always fills my mind with terrible possibilities, even when I may reasonably expect it to be cheerful. (RN III: iv, 193)

She expects a better job for Clym when she interprets the shining of the eclipsed moon on his face “as if it were cut out in gold”: “...Clym, the eclipsed moonlight shines upon your face with a strange foreign colour, and shows its shape as if it were cut out in gold. That means that you should be doing better things than this” (RN III: iv, 193). On the night of the elopement, the absence of the moon is a sign of the occurrence of a catastrophe: “The moon and stars were closed up by cloud and rain to the degree of extinction” (RN V: vii, 320). The writer uses the metaphor of the eclipsed moon to denote the character’s tragic death; the eclipse of the moon means the eclipse of Eustacia herself: “They stood silently looking upon Eustacia, who, as she lay there still in death, eclipsed all her living phases” (RN V: ix, 339). The rise of the moon at the very end of the novel denotes the celebration of the love reclaimed between Thomasin and Diggory Venn: “O no; it is not necessary, Mrs Wildeve, thank you. The moon will rise in a few minutes” (RN VI: i, 349).

VI. Gambling Gambling is associated with chance, accident, coincidence, adventure and fate. These factors “determine the outcome of human effort.”22 Most of the characters in the novel seem to be gamblers. The writer presents “Wildeve taking rash steps almost frivolously, like someone gambling with life.”23 At first, he has gambled away “his chance of a career as an engineer and trying to make something of his life as a modest innkeeper with no prospect.”24 He gambles his life with Thomasin and their daughter to escape the heath with Eustacia to live in an unknown place. The money he has inherited encourages him to do that as if he is

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playing a real game of chance. As with Wildeve, Eustacia gambles her lot in life on the heath with Clym to go on adventures with Wildeve to live in a modern city—something essentially found in her imagination. Clym gambles with his easy and comfortable life as a diamond merchant in Paris to endure a cruel life on the heath working as a furze-cutter. In reference to Oedipus in the tragedy, he lost his mother and wife but gained wisdom through suffering. The destinies of the characters are driven by the power of fate. One’s destiny depends on “the fall of the dice, and the dice are loaded against him.”25 In the gambling scene, Wildeve proves to be a loser in life, while Diggory Venn, the winner, proves his successful role at the end of the novel. From the beginning, Venn gambles on Thomasin and gains her at the end. He is the only winner and seems to be the exception to the surrounding losses. Thomasin wrongly gambles on Wildeve but gains the correct and suitable lot in her life, Diggory Venn.

VII. Wind, Storm, and Rain In the first chapter of the novel, the writer describes Egdon Heath’s relationship with the wind and the storm: “Then Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend” (RN I: i, 32). At the end of the novel, the heath uses his lover, the storm, and his friend, the wind, to strike his enemies, Eustacia and Wildeve. The work is done with the aid of the whirlpool in which the two tragic heroes are drowned. The devilish tinge of the wind is portrayed clearly in the scene of the locals dancing around the bonfire: The chief noises were women’s shrill cries, men’s laughter, Susan’s stays and pattens, Olly Dowden’s “heu-heu-heu!” and the strumming of the wind upon the furze-bushes, which formed a kind of tune to the demoniac measure they trod.

(RN I: iii, 52) When Christian heard of Clym’s coming home at Christmas, he told Mrs. Yeobright:

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“Mind you don’t get lost. Egdon Heath is a bad place to get lost in, and the winds do huffle queerer tonight than ever I heard ’em afore. Them that know Egdon best have been pixy-led here at times.” (RN I: iii, 54)

The queer wind is accompanied by the fairy mood haunting the heath. Clym’s coming is the cause of the death of Eustacia and his mother as can be seen in Clym’s interpretation: “She is the second woman I have killed this year. I was a great cause of my mother’s death, and I am the chief cause of hers” (RN IV: ix, 340). Clym is lost on the heath as the Shakespearean King Lear was lost in the wilderness. The two heroes are mourned by the queer wind and heavy storm. Whenever Eustacia proceeds towards Rainbarrow, the wind blows in severe gusts. Pinion thinks that “even more artistic is the acoustic introduction to Eustacia, as her ‘lengthened sighing’ merges with the sounds of the wind in the heath.”26 As the writer himself said: “The wind, indeed, seemed made for the scene, as the scene seemed made for the hour. Part of its tone was quite special; what was heard there could be heard nowhere else” (RN I: vi, 71). The wind expresses Eustacia’s emotional disturbances and her internal conflicts. When she was waiting for Wildeve at Rainbarrow: Her back was towards the wind, which blew from the northwest; but whether she had avoided that aspect because of the chilly gusts which played about her exceptional position, or because her interest lay in the southeast, did not at first appear. (RN I: vi, 70)

The role of the weather in the novel is directed in such a way that it and “the heath’s seasonal changes accord with mood and situation in passages of poetic overtones, from the large scale to the small, from the most vividly colourful to the funereal.”27 The parallelism between the setting and the inner feelings of the characters is designed in great harmony, particularly for Eustacia: “such harmony of the outer scene with the thought and feelings of the beholder are paralleled in ‘the chaos of the

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world without’ and the chaos of Eustacia’s mind when she stood for the last time on Rainbarrow.”28 The last tragic scene at the end of the novel is the most powerful one in which this harmony is presented. Eustacia is still thinking of her elopement with Wildeve, which is to happen at midnight: The scene without grew darker; mud-coloured clouds bellied downwards from the sky like vast hammocks slung across it, and with the increase of night a stormy wind arose; but as yet there was no rain. (RN V: vii, 317)

The storm is just beginning which reflects the start of the action as Eustacia is thinking of elopement. But the rain is still holding off and Eustacia is still in the house. When her grandfather finds out that she has left and there is no response to his question, the wind digs at the corners of the house and the rain starts with a few drops: But no response was made to this statement save an imaginary one from the wind, which seemed to gnaw at the corners of the house, and the stroke of a few drops of rain upon the window. (RN V: vii, 319)

The struggle starts as soon as Eustacia leaves the house and there is no chance of retreat: When she got into the outer air she found that it had begun to rain, and as she stood pausing at the door it increased, threatening to come on heavily. But having committed herself to this line of action, there was no retreating for bad weather. Even the receipt of Clym’s letter would not have stopped her

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now. The gloom of the night was funereal; all nature seemed clothed in crape. The spiky points of the fir trees behind the house rose into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey. Nothing below the horizon was visible save a light which was still burning in the cottage of Susan Nunsuch. (RN V: vii, 320)

The cruel elements of nature are gathering to form the funereal scene; the rain is “threatening to come on heavily,” “the gloom of the night was funereal,” “all nature seemed clothed in crape,” even the light was still burning. The weather rebels against Eustacia as if it disagrees with her decision; meanwhile, she is rebellious against her lot in life: How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me!... I do not deserve my lot!” she cried in a frenzy of bitter revolt. “O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to Heaven at all!” (RN V: vii, 321)

The wind is doing the same thing at the corners of Clym’s house, symbolising the evil will to undermine the foundations of their mutual house: To Clym’s regret, it began to rain and blow hard as the evening advanced. The wind rasped and scraped at the corners of the house, and filliped the eavesdroppings

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like peas against the panes. (RN V: viii, 324)

Also, the rain continues to fall heavily and Clym is awakened: His sleep, however, was not very sound, by reason of the expectancy he had given way to, and he was easily awakened by a knocking which began at the door about an hour after. Clym arose and looked out of the window. Rain was still falling heavily, the whole expanse of heath before him emitting a subdued hiss under the downpour. It was too dark to see anything at all. (RN V: viii, 324-325)

Darkness here is related to Clym’s weak eyesight, as well as the reference that there is no hope or solution to the problem. Implicitly, the writer identifies the heath with a monster and the drops of rain with scorpions: Yet in spite of all this Thomasin was not sorry that she had started. To her there were not, as to Eustacia, demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. The drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground. (RN V: viii, 329)

Actually, the malicious nature of the rain and the monstrous structure of the heath drive against Eustacia and Wildeve, but not against Thomasin: “Here Wildeve waited, slightly sheltered from the driving rain

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by a high bank that had been cast up at this place” (RN V: ix, 333). When Clym and Wildeve were beside the weir: “a dull sound became audible above the storm and wind. Its origin was unmistakable—it was the fall of a body into the stream in the adjoining mead, apparently at a point near the weir” (RN V: ix, 333-334). The wind did not treat him as an enemy and it “might not blow him off.”

VIII. Conclusion In his novel The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy makes his characters and even the setting, especially the heath, carry the central theme of modernism. He seems to be objective when he shows his characters’ attitudes towards the heath and modern cities, especially Paris. Eustacia, Wildeve and Mrs Yeobright hate the heath and love Paris, in contrast with Clym, Diggory Venn and Thomasin who love the heath and prefer it as a suitable place to live. However, Hardy sympathises with the character of Clym and considers him as his ideal. Hardy’s love of the countryside of Wessex and his longing for rural rituals and festivities are embodied throughout the novel. The bonfire and Rainbarrow resemble the centre of these festivities and symbolise the Promethean fire which is strongly related to the rebelliousness of Eustacia and Wildeve. Also, it refers to the problematic issue of knowledge and modernism in relation to Clym, as a Promethean figure, and his education. Clym’s semi-blindness symbolises his misconception of the real world and the real identities of the characters around him. His suffering emerges from his thoughts about the atypical ways of modernism as related to his experience in Paris, the disapproval of the heathfolk, and the way some characters treat him which proves that “the rural world was not ripe for him” as the writer states. The setting is designed to symbolise the internal conflicts and feelings of his characters. The moon and gambling are mostly related to the symbolism of fate. The weather (wind, storm, and rain) accompanies the tragedy of the main characters and reflects their suffering. The rich symbolism in the novel promotes it as one of the most technically eminent literary works ever written.

NOTES

Part I: Poetry Chapter One: Memory, Nature and Mortality in William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey * 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Published in a book issued by The Fourth Scientific and Educational Symposium which was held by The College of Education for Women, Tikrit University 17-18/3/2008. See Richard H. Fogle “Romantic Bards and Metaphysical Reviewers” in Robert F. Gleckner & Gerald E. Enescoe, eds., Romanticism: Point of View (London: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 149-164. This line is found in the other version of the poem: Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits, Among the woods and copses lose themselves, Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb The wild green landscape. Albert S. Gerard “Exploring Tintern Abbey” in Raymond Cowell, ed., Critics on Wordsworth Readings in Literary Criticism Series 8 (New Delhi: Universal Book Stall, 1996), 60. Harold Bloom, The Visionary Company (London: Cornell University Press, 1961), 134. Harold Bloom & Lionel Trilling, Romantic Poetry and Prose (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), notes 147. Gerard, “Exploring Tintern Abbey,” 63. Gerard, “Exploring Tintern Abbey,” 63. See the comment on these lines by W. K. Wimsatt in “The Structure of Romantic Nature Imagery” in M. H. Abrams, ed., English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 34-35. Norman Lacey, “Wordsworth’s View of Nature” (Cambridge,1984), 3 in Cowell, Critics on Wordsworth Readings, 62. H. J. C. Grierson, “Classical and Romantic: A Point of View” in Glencker & Enescoe, Romanticism, 54. Stephen Prickett “Romantic Literature” in Stephen Prickett, ed., The Romantics (London: Methuen 1981), 213. See Prickett, “Romantic Literature,” 212-213. See also Prickett, “The Religious Context” in Prickett Romanticism, 136. Bloom, The Visionary Company, 136. Bloom, The Visionary Company, 137.

Miscellaneous Studies in English Literature 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

163

Gerard, “Exploring Tintern Abbey,” 65. Gerard, “Exploring Tintern Abbey,” 66. Bloom, The Visionary Company, 138. Bloom, The Visionary Company, 139. Bloom, The Visionary Company, 139. Bloom, The Visionary Company, 140.

Chapter Two: The Island of Statues: Magic and Alchemy in Yeats’s Poetic Drama x 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

Delivered at a conference in Baghdad / Ibn Rushed (Averroes) College of Education / Baghdad University (9-10/5/2016) and published in a special issue of Al-Ustath Journal in 1916. J. C. Mardrus, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, trans. by Powys Mathers (London: Routledge, 1989), 84, http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103495802. Edward Larrissy (FY), The First Yeats: Poems by W. B. Yeats 1889-1899 (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2010), 92. Christian Rebisse, Rosicrucian History and Mysteries (UK: The Rosicrucian Collection, 2007), 124. See The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, by Johann Valentin Andreae. -first day.htm. Rebisse, Rosicrucian History and Mysteries,125. W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1973), 253. Francis Amelia Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Google book), 93. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 127. Althanor (έϮϨΘϟ΍) is an Arabic word meaning furnace, and in this context, it is used for an alchemical process. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment,127. Arthurian Biographies Ambrosius Aurelianus-2.htm Copyright ©2001 Britannia.com, LLC. Arthurian Biographies. Harold Orel, The Development of William Butler Yeats: 1885-1900, Humanistic Studies. No. 39 (USA: University of Kansas, 1968), 7. The first and the fourth provisions of the Order of the Golden Stone are: 1. You my lords the Knights shall swear that you shall at no time ascribe your order to any devil or spirit, but only to God your Creator, and his handmaid Nature. 4. That you desire not to employ this honour to worldly pride and high authority. The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, by Johann Valentin Andreae-seventh day.htm. For the symbol of the rose in Yeats’s poetry, see A. N. Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: The Macmillan Press, 1968, 1984), 21-24.

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Chapter Three: Automatic Writing and the Experience of the Yeatses x

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Delivered at the conference of the Inter-Disciplinary.Net “Storytelling: Exploring the Art and Science of Narrative” held in Salzburg 2012. Published within an eBook with the same title as the conference, edited by Sara Shafer 2013. George Mills Harper, The Making of Yeats’s “A Vision”; A Study of the Automatic Script, part I (London: The Macmillan Press, 1987), 10. George Mills Harper ed. Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, The Automatic Script: 5 Nov. 1917-18 June 1918 (London: The Macmillan Press, 1992), 7. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, 7. Harold North Fowler, Plato with an English Translation, part I (London: William Heinemann,1914), 471-3. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, 56-57. An Encyclopaedia of Occultism, 2003, s.v. “Automatic writing and speaking,” “Psychography”. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, 10. Fowler, Plato with an English Translation, part 1, 533. Fowler, Plato with an English Translation, part 1, 533. Josef Pieper, Love and Inspiration: A Study in Plato’s Phaedrus Translated by: Richard and Clara Winston (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), 63. Encyclopaedia of Occultism, s.v. “Automatic writing and speaking.” Encyclopaedia of Occultism, s.v. “Trance personalities.” Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, 62. L. Maurizio, “Anthropology and spirit possession: a reconsideration of the Pythia’s role at Delphi,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 115, (1995): 74, in Kathryn A. Morgan “Inspiration, Recollection, and Mimesis in Plato’s Phaedrus” in Andrea Nightingale and David Sedley, eds. Ancient Models of Mind: Studies in Human and Divine Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 49. Penelope Murray “Inspiration and mimesis in Plato,” in The Language of the Cave, ed., A. Barker and M. Warner. Apeiron 25, no. 4 (1993): 33-34, in Morgan “Inspiration, Recollection, and Mimesis in Plato’s Phaedrus,” 49. W. B. Yeats, A Vision (1925) (London: The Macmillan Press, 1974), 41. Yeats, A Vision (1925), 41. Yeats, A Vision (1925), 40. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, 26. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, 26. Peter Kuch, Yeats and A.E.: The antagonism that unites dear friends (Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1986), 119. Kuch, Yeats and A.E., 125-126. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, 17-18, 362. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, 22. Harper, George Mills and Walter Kelly Hood, eds. A Critical Edition of Yeats’s A Vision (1925) (London: The Macmillan Press, 1978), xiii.

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26. Jon Stallworthy, Between the Lines: Yeats’s Poetry in the Making (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 86. 27. http://www.yeatsvision.com/Human.html 28. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 1, 449.

Chapter Four: Spiritual Symbolism in W. B. Yeats’s “The Phases of the Moon” x

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Delivered at Heavenly Discourses Conference, University of Bristol, 14-16 October 2011, and it was published in the book Heavenly Discourses, edited by Nicolas Campions, Wales: Sophia Press Centre, 2016. http://heavenlydiscourses.org/participants/index.htm Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (London: Constable & Company, Ltd., 1911), v-vii. Symons, The Symbolist Movement, 8-9. F. A. C. C. Wilson, W. B. Yeats and Tradition (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958), 16. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach, eds., The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957), part II, 17-20. George Mills Harper and Walter Kelly Hood, eds., A Critical Edition of Yeats’s “A Vision” (1925) (London: The Macmillan Press, 1978), xix. Allt and Alspach, Variorum, II, 21-25. A. Norman Jeffares, A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1984), 173. Harper and Hood, A Critical Edition, 12. Z'ev Ben Shimon Halevi, Tree of Life: Introduction to the Kabbalah: Introduction to the Kaballah, (London: Rider, 1991), 77. Anonymous, “The Tinctures,” http://www.yeatsvision.com/Tinctures.html. W. B. Yeats, A Vision (1925) (London: The Macmillan Press, 1974), 12. Yeats, A Vision, 80-81. Allt and Alspach, Variorum, II, 29-30. W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1973), 301. Anonymous, “The Phases of the Moon,” http://www.yeatsvision.com/Phases.html. Allt and Alspach, Variorum, II, 31-35. Harper and Hood, A Critical Edition, 88. Yeats, A Vision (1925), 183. Allt and Alspach, Variorum, II, 36-41. Allt and Alspach, Variorum, II, 42-45. Harper and Hood, A Critical Edition, 60. Allt and Alspach, Variorum, II, 46-49. Allt and Alspach, Variorum, II, 50-55. Anonymous, “The Principles,” http://www.yeatsvision.com/Principles.html. Harper and Hood, A Critical Edition, 60.

166 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Notes Harper and Hood, A Critical Edition, 69. Yeats, A Vision (1925), 131. Allt and Alspach, Variorum, II, 58-63. Yeats, A Vision (1925), 140. Sarah E. Simons, ed., The Iliad of Homer, trans. William Cullen Bryant (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 10.

Chapter Five: The Mystical Element in Yeats’s Characterisation of Owen Aherne and Michael Robartes: The Cosmopolitan Longing for Unity in Diversity *

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Delivered at the 5th Global Conference of the Inter-Disciplinary.Net “STORYTELLING” (Saturday 10th May-Tuesday 13th May 2014) held in Lisbon, Portugal. Published within an eBook entitled “Storying Humanity: Narratives of Culture and Society,” edited by Richard Wirth, Dario Serrati and Katarzyna Macedulska (Oxford, United Kingdom: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2015), story5ebooWM-RED. Pdf. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/ Birgit Bjersby, The Interpretation of the Cuchulain Legend in the Works of W. B. Yeats, Upsala Irish Studies (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1950), 144. George Mills Harper, ed. Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 4 (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 14-15. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 4, 15. Susan Bazargan, “W. B. Yeats: Autobiography and Colonialism” in Richard J. Finneran, ed. Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies, part XIII, 1995, 13, 211. W. B. Yeats, A Critical Edition of Yeats’s A Vision (1925), xvi. Nicholas Meihuizen, “I Say That a Djinn Spoke: Arabian Influences in Yeats,” English Studies in Africa, 45, no. 1 (2003): 31-16, 4. Mhtml://M:/w.byeats/literature online – criticism & reference full text.mht. S. B. Bushrui, “Yeats’s Arabic Interests” in A. Norman Jeffares and K. G. W. Cross, eds., In Excited Reverie (London: Macmillan, 1965), 285. Hazard Adams, Blake and Yeats: The Contrary Vision (New York: Cornell University, 1955), 170. Yeats, The Speckled Bird, The Bell, I (March 1941), 23 ff, in Adams, Blake and Yeats, 171. Bjersby, The Interpretation of the Cuchulain Legend, 129. Bjersby, The Interpretation of the Cuchulain Legend, 129. Bjersby, The Interpretation of the Cuchulain Legend, 127. n1; Bushrui, “Yeats’s Arabic Interests,” 294. Bushrui, “Yeats’s Arabic Interests,” 295. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 4, 126. Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 4, 123; Harper, Yeats’s Vision Papers, part 4, n 18, 135. Bushrui, “Yeats’s Arabic Interests,” 285.

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17. 18. 19. 20.

Yeats, A Vision (1925) (London: The Macmillan Press, 1974), 257. Bushrui, “Yeats’s Arabic Interests,” 287. Bushrui, “Yeats’s Arabic Interests,” 287. Christopher McIntosh, The Rosicrucians: The History and Mythology of an Occult Order Forwarded by Collin Wilson (Northamptonshire: Crucible, 1987), 9; Christian Rebisse, Rosicrucian History and Mysteries (UK: The Rosicrucian Collection, 2007), 19; George Mills Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn (London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press, 1974), 11. 21. Magus Incognito, The Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucians (Chicago: Advanced Thought Publishing, 1918), 17. 22. Rebisse, Rosicrucian History and Mysteries, 22. 23. Yeats, A Vision (1925), 11. 24. Yeats, Stories of Michael Robartes19-20 in Melhuizen, “I Say That a Djinn Spoke,” 7 of 8; Yeats, A Vision (1925) (London: The Macmillan Press, 1974), 11. 25. Yeats, A Vision (1925), 55.

Chapter Seven: Body-Soul Interaction in W. B. Yeats’s Poetry: A Spiritual Way to Salvation * 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Published by Journal of Al-Frahedis Arts, College of Arts, Tikrit University no. 29 (2017): 84-100. Emanuel Swedenborg, “Interaction of the Soul and Body,” trans. by John Whitehead at sacred-texts.com http://www.sacred-texts.com/swd/isb/isb01.htm “Ancient Theories of Soul,” Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, First published Thu Oct 23, 2003; substantive revision Wed Apr 22, 2009. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/ Plato, PHAEDRUS, trans. by Benjamin Jowett, The Internet Classics, classics.mit.edu “Ancient Theories of Soul.” “Ancient Theories of Soul.” Will Durant, The Age of Faith: A History of Medieval Civilization-Christian, Islamic, and Judaic-From Constantine to Dante: AD 325-1300, part 4. Electronically Enhanced Text (c), 1994, World Library. 24. Durant, The Age of Faith. 1224. Lee Oser, The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 5. Oser, The Ethics of Modernism. 35-6. Hazard Adams, The Book of Yeats’s Poems (Tallahassee, USA: The Florida State University Press, 1990), 177. W. B. Yeats, A Vision (1925) (London: The Macmillan Press, 1974), 37. Adams, The Book of Yeats’s Poems, 40. Yeats, A Vision, 291.

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14. David A. Ross, Critical Companion to William Butler Yeats: A Literary Reference to His Life (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 572. 15. Doug Keller, The Heart of the Yogi, 2007, 116. http://www.doyoga.com/book_updates/hatha_yoga_and_the_meaning_of_tantr a.pdf. 16. Brian John, Supreme Fictions: Studies in the Work of William Blake, Thomas Carlyle, W. B. Yeats, and D. H. Lawrence (Montreal and London: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1974), 162-3. 17. Yeats, A Vision, 82. 18. Oser, The Ethics of Modernism, 39. 19. Oser, The Ethics of Modernism, 163. 20. “The Gnostic Archive,” gnosis.org. 21. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 203. 22. Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks. 203. 23. Adams, The Book of Yeats’s Poems, 198, 200. 24. “Attis: Phrygian Deity” Encyclopaedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com 25. John Unterecker, A Reader’s Guide to William Butler Yeats (London: Thames and Hudson, 1959), 223. 26. “The Human Being,” in http://www.yeatsvision.com/Human.html 27. Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Mask, 276. 28. Peter Coates, Ibn ‘Arabi and Modern Thought: The History of Taking Metaphysics Seriously (Oxford: Anqa Publishers, 2002), 14. 29. W. B. Yeats, A Critical Edition of Yeats’s A Vision (1925), ed. by George Mills Harper and Walter Kelly Hood (London: The Macmillan Press, 1978), 60. 30. Unterecker, A Reader’s Guide, 204-5. 31. Unterecker, A Reader’s Guide, 205. 32. Yeats, A Vision, 205. 33. David A. Ross, Critical Companion, 57. • CP: The Collected Poems by William Butler Yeats, 1889-1939.

• PF: http://www.poetryfoundation.org

Chapter Eight: Anti-modernism Found in Thomas Hardy’s Poem “The Moth-Signal” and his Novel The Return of the Native. x 1

Delivered at the conference “The First International Conference for Sciences and Arts” held by The American Research Foundation (ARF) in Erbil, Iraq (34 /5/2017). Nanette Norris, Modernist myth studies in H. D., D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf (Fergus, Ontario, Canada: Dreamridge Publishing, 2010) 1; Ricardo J. Quinones, Mapping literary modernism (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1985), 11.

Miscellaneous Studies in English Literature 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

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John McGowan. Postmodernism and its critics (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991), 3, in Norris, Modernist myth studies, 2. Gillian Steinberg, Thomas Hardy: The poems (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 180-181. Rebecca Beasley, Theorists of modernist poetry. Routledge critical thinkers (London and New York. UK: Routledge, 2007), 2. Beasley, Theorists of modernist poetry, 12. Beasley, Theorists of modernist poetry, 115-116. Steinberg, Thomas Hardy: The poems, 186. Mary Ann Gillies, Thomas Hardy Modernist Poet, 549. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/5882764/Thomas_Hardy_Modernist_Poet Kitawaki Tokuko, “Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native” Journal of Kyoto Seika University, 23. 103-114. Retrieved from http://www.kyoto-seika.ac.jp/researchlab/wp/wp-content/uploads/kiyo/pdfdata/no23/kitawaki.pdf F. B. Pinion, A Hardy Companion (London: The Macmillan Press, 1968), 1, 452. Faisal Abdul Wahhab Hayder, “Symbolism in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native” Tikrit University Journal for Humanities 16, no. 1 (2009): 1-25, 23-24. Retrieved from http://www.iasj.net/iasj?func=fulltext&aId=23285 Walter Allen, The English Novel (England: Penguin Books, 1954), 247. Ismail Salami, Thirty great novels (Tehran: Mehrandish Books, 1999), 424; Allen, The English Novel, 248, in Hayder, "Symbolism in Hardy," 10. Hayder, "Symbolism in Hardy," 24. Vern B. Lentz & Douglas D. Short, “Hardy’s Aesthetics of Disjunction and the Literary Antecedents of ‘The Moth-Signal.’” South Atlantic Bulletin 41 no. 2 (1976): 3-7, 5. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3198793 Lentz & Short, "Hardy’s Aesthetics," 4. Hayder, "Symbolism in Hardy," 1. Hayder, "Symbolism in Hardy," 3. Lentz & Short, "Hardy’s Aesthetics," 5. Steinberg, Thomas Hardy: The poems, 45. Simon Gatrell, Thomas Hardy and the Proper Study of Mankind (London. UK: Macmillan, 1993), 45, in Tokuko, “Egdon Heath,” 5. John Hagan, “A Note on the Significance of Diggory Venn.” SymbolismDiggory Venn – Windows Picture and Fax. Viewer.Com. University of California Press. 16, no. 2 (1961): 147-155. DOI: 10.2307/2932476. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2932476. The poem is quoted from the version found in Lentz & Short (L&S) “Hardy’s Aesthetics of Disjunction and the Literary Antecedents of ‘The Moth-Signal.’” 3-4.

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Chapter Nine: The Question of Existence in T. S. Eliot’s Poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet 1. Interesting Literature, “A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’” in June 21/2017 https://interestingliterature.com/2017/06/21/a-short-analysis-of-t-s-eliots-thelove-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock/ 2. Manju Jain, A Critical Reading of the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 28. 3. Jain, A Critical Reading, 28-29. 4. William Irwin, “Prufrock’s Question and Roquentin’s Answer,” Philosophy and Literature 33, no. 1 (2009): 184-192, 177. 5. T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” https://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html, para, 3. 6. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” para, 3. 7. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” para 3. 8. Jeffrey M. Perl, Skepticism and Modern Enmity: Before and After Eliot. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989), 92, in Jeffry Aaron Weingarten, Lyric Historiography in Canadian Modernist Poetry, 1962-1981, a thesis submitted to McGill University in 2013, 80-81. 9. James Longenbach, Modernist Poetics of History: Pound, Eliot, and the Sense of the Past (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987), 217, in Weingarten, Lyric Historiography, 81. 10. Harry Eiss, The Joker (UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 84. 11. Eiss, The Joker, 99. 12. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932), 209. 13. Weingarten, Lyric Historiography, 67. 14. Edward Hubler in Harry Eiss, The Joker, 95. 15. Paul A. Cantor, Shakespeare: Hamlet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 2004), x. 16. Cantor, Shakespeare: Hamlet, 2. 17. Cantor, Shakespeare: Hamlet, 11-12. 18. Roger Ellis, “The Fool in Shakespeare: A Study in Alienation,” Wiley Online Library, September 1968 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8705.1968.tb01984.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-8705.1968.tb01984.x

Chapter Ten: The Impact of Puritanism on the Cultural Circles in England (1649-1660) 1. Milan Zafirovski, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Authoritarianism: Puritanism, Democracy, and Society (USA: Springer, 2007), 1. 2. Dewey D. Wallace Jr, “Predestination” in Francis J. Bremer & Tom Webster, eds. Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia (California: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 492.

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3. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, The Reformation, part 6. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 37. 4. Durant, The Story of Civilization, part 6, 116. 5. Durant, The Story of Civilization, part 6, 116. 6. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019, s. v. “Puritanism.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Puritanism 7. En. Br. s. v. “Puritanism.” 8. Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, The Age of Louis xiv, vol.8 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), p. 187. 9. En. Br. s. v. “Puritanism.” 10. En. Br. s. v. “Puritanism.” 11. En. Br. s. v. “Puritanism.” 12. Bryan Crockett, “Puritans in Literature” in Bremer & Webster, eds. Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America, 513. 13. Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, The Age of Louis xiv, part 8 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), 184. 14. Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, part 8, 195. 15. Crockett, “Puritans in Literature” in Bremer & Webster, eds. Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America, 514. 16. James Westfall Thompson, “Shakespeare and Puritanism,” Jstor, The North American Review 212, no. 777 (1920): 228-237. 17. Thompson, “Shakespeare and Puritanism,” 230. 18. Thompson, “Shakespeare and Puritanism,” 230. 19. Crockett, “Puritans in Literature” in Bremer & Webster, eds. Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America, 514.

Part II: Prose Chapter One: Daniel Defoe and the picaresque novel: a critical study of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders x Published in Tikrit University Journal for Humanities 12, no. 7 (2005): 1-8. 1. G. Tillotson, P. Jr Fussel, M. Waingrow, and B. Rogerson, eds., EighteenthCentury English Literature (USA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), 233. 2. Ifor Evans, A Short History of English Literature (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976), 218. 3. Guy N. Pocock, ed., Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (London: Aldine Press, 1966), x. 4. Evans, Short History of English Literature, 219; Calvin S. Brown, ed., The Reader’s Companion to World Literature, 2nd ed. (New York: The New American Library, 1973), 400. 5. Brown, Reader’s Companion to World Literature, 400. 6. Brown, Reader’s Companion to World Literature, 400; Pocock, Robinson Crusoe, vii. 7. Pocock, Robinson Crusoe, vii, x-xi.

172 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Notes Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957), 70. Watt, Rise of the Novel, 70, 73. Watt, Rise of the Novel, 73, 74. 76. G. A. Aitken, Introduction, Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (London: Aldine Press, 1963), ix. Watt, Rise of the Novel, 108. Watt, Rise of the Novel, 108. See Defoe’s preface to his novel Moll Flanders, 1. See Watt in his book The Rise of the Novel, especially his article “Defoe as Novelist: Moll Flanders,” 104-151. Aitken, Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, ix.

Chapter Two: The Classical Spirit in Henry Fielding’s Art x 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

Published in Tikrit University Journal for Humanities 13, no. 6 (2006): 101117. Geoffrey Tillotson et al., ed., Eighteenth-century English Literature (Washington, D. C: Harcourt Brace J, 1969), 726-28. Margret Drabble & Jenny Stringer, eds., The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 198. Calvin S. Brown, ed., The Reader’s Companion to World Literature (New York: The New American Library, 1973), 193; John Burgess Wilson, English Literature (London: Longmans, 1958), 180, 194. Brainy Encyclopaedia, s.v. “Henry Fielding.” Htm; A. R. Humphreys “Fielding and Smollett” in From Dryden to Johnson in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, ed., by Boris Ford, part 4 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Book, 1957), 313; Brown, Reader’s Companion, 194; Drabble & Stringer, Concise Oxford Companion, 199; Microsoft ® Encarta ® Online Encyclopaedia 2005, s.v. “Henry Fielding.” http:// Encarta msn. Brown, Reader’s Companion, 194; Microsoft ® Encarta ® Online Encyclopaedia, 2005, s.v. “Henry Fielding.” Humphreys, “Fielding and Smollett,” 321. The Oxford Modern English Dictionary, 1992, s.v. “classics.” T. S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets (New York: Octagon Books, 1975), 52, 54. The Colombia Electronic Encyclopaedia, 2005, s.v. “classicism.” Brown, Reader’s Companion, 116. Lillian R. Furst, et al., Romanticism in Perspective, 2nd ed., (London: Macmillan, 1979), 7. Patrick Murray, Literary Criticism, (London: Longman, 1978), 101. Brown, Reader’s Companion, 117. Furst, Romanticism in Perspective, 8. NEOCLASICISMO.htm; Literary Encyclopaedia Neo-classicism, Neoclassicism.htm. https://www.litencyc.com/php/sheadwords.php?newsearch=yes&phrase=neocl assicism&search_type=headwords&searchBtn= Literary Encyclopaedia Neo-classicism, Neoclassicism.htm.

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17. Brown, Reader’s Companion, 194. 18. Brown, Reader’s Companion, 117, 194. 19. Najdat Kadhim Moosa, “Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding: Their Aesthetic Differences with Regard to their Major Novels” in Tikrit University Journal for Humanities, vii, no 3 (2000): 291. 20. Elizabeth Drew, The Novel (New York: Dell Publishing, 1963), 62. 21. Walter Allen, The English Novel (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Book, 1954), 143. 22. Brown, Reader’s Companion, 194. 23. Drew, The Novel, 62-63. 24. Brown, Reader’s Companion, 195. 25. Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (London: Chatto and Windus, 1963), 250. 26. Ifor Evans, A Short History of English Literature (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976), 225. 27. Watt, Rise of the Novel, 249. 28. Watt, Rise of the Novel, 284-86, 288. 29. Humphreys, “Fielding and Smollett,” 318-19. 30. Watt, Rise of the Novel, 289. 31. Ronald Paulson, Henry Fielding (London: Ronald Paulson and Thomas Lockwood, 1969), 2. 32. Allen, English Novel, 55-56. 33. Coles Editorial Board, ed., Fielding: Tom Jones Notes (Toronto: Coles Publishing Company, 1981), 5.

Chapter Three: Symbolism in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native Delivered at the Fifth Scientific Symposium, which was held by The College of Arts, University of Mosul, Iraq 23-24/4/2008, and published in Tikrit University Journal for Humanities 16, no. 1 (2005): 1-25. 1. William R. Siebenschuh, “Hardy and the Imagery of Place” Journal Article Excerpt; Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, part 39, 1999, www.Questia.com. 2. F. B. Pinion, A Hardy Companion (London: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1968), 1. 3. Calvin S. Brown et al., The Reader’s Companion to World Literature, 2nd ed. (New York: The New American Library, Inc.), 452. 4. “The Return of the Native summary,” Barnes & Noble, 2009. 5. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/returnofnative/section10.rhtml 6. “Symbolism in Return of The Native,” Rad Essays.com.htm 7. J.C.S. Temblett-Wood, Introduction, The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan), 1975, note no 83 by Derwent May, 370. 8. Pinion, Hardy Companion, 32. 9. “Symbolism in Return of The Native,” Rad Essays.com.htm 10. Pinion, Hardy Companion, 34. x

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Notes

11. Temblett-Wood, Introduction, The Return of the Native, 11. 12. “The Return of the Native summary,” http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/returnofnative/section10.rhtml 13. Walter Allen, The English Novel (England: Penguin Books, 1954), 247. 14. Ismail Salami, Thirty Great Novels (Tehran: Mehrandish Books, 1999), 424. 15. Allen, English Novel, 248. 16. Allen, English Novel, 247. 17. Pinion, Hardy Companion, 31. 18. Allen, English Novel, 249. 19. John Hagan, “A Note on the Significance of Diggory Venn” SymbolismDiggory Venn – Windows Picture and Fax Viewer.Com. 20. Temblett-Wood, Introduction, The Return of the Native, 23. 21. Salami, Thirty Great Novels, 422. 22. Brown, Reader’s Companion, 232. 23. Salami, Thirty Great Novels, 423. 24. Temblett-Wood, Introduction, The Return of the Native, 17. 25. Brown, Reader’s Companion, 232. 26. Pinion, Hardy Companion, 33. 27. Pinion, Hardy Companion, 33. 28. Pinion, Hardy Companion, 33. -

The quoted texts of the novel are according to The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan), 1975. The title of the novel is abbreviated as (RN).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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