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1.3 Significance of the Thesis
In Mr. Jochum’s all-around book only 12 entries of aesthetics are found, and none of them may discuss the beauty of Yeats’ symbols or symbolism. So Yeats is a favorite topic among the students, but Yeats’ symbolic poetry needs more and deeper studies from the symbolic perspective.
This paper will study first of all Yeats’ exercise and innovation of symbolism in poetry, its major statements and sources, and then the focus will be Yeats’ poetic symbols and their aesthetic qualities and values. Yeats’ own symbolist critical principles will be used as the theoretical foundation of the book and some of his poems will be investigated to explain why his symbolic poetry has been enchanting to so many readers all over the world for so long.
Second, there are investigations about the theoretical resources of Yeats’ poetic creating. Relatively, they are Victorianism, the British Pre-Raphaelites and Aestheticism. Yeats’ symbolist theory has special characteristics, and for over a hundred years he has been the most notable symbolist critic in the English world. Yeats constantly gained inspirations from literary tradition, Irish folklore and mythology, British Pre-Raphaelites and Aesthetes, and Symons’s translations of French Symbolists. Apart from these five major sources, there are possibly some minor sources that are like “hidden tides that follow a moon no eye can see”. It is justified that Yeats’ symbolist theory resulted from many sources that coexisted and interacted on one another. His symbolism was not an isolated literary phenomenon, but an offshoot of the Symbolist movement happening in Europe. (Li Chao, 2008: 39)
The third one is about the intellectual beauty of symbols in Yeats’ poetry. Yeats was an intellectual poet. His intellectual passion and pursuit brought him an intellectual poetics, which, as a return, sharpened his eyes on intellectual symbols. Consciously and carefully he arranged his intellectual symbols in a vast design and in a great procession. The whole book of his A Vision serves as note to his later intellectual symbols. One symbol evokes another, and his readers are pleased to discover intellectual joy while they are reading and studying his poetry. “His intellectual symbols have more connotative power and evoke greater intellectual delight if his readers understand the esoteric philosophy behind the symbols. (He Lin, 2008: 22) In short, his poetry symbols are full of intellectual beauty for those who can discover.
2. The Exercise and Innovation of Image in Yeats’ Poetry
W.B. Yeats is a renowned poet who is known by his system of symbols. In his poetry, many aspects of themes have been explored including the relationship between citizen and country, heritage and culture, all of which have been manifested in various ways. In his early poetic works, he tries to find the unifying method to explain nature and its magic power hidden behind it, while in his later poems he attempts to contemplate the end of politics. The most symbolic trait of his mystical system can be found in his creative book A Vision, in which Yeats draws imagery from the mystical systems and the systems of reality in his early and later period respectively.
2.1 The Emotional Images
When you read the poems of Yeats, be aware of how the images are used and of different ways in which they are explored and developed across a series of poems, across each separate book of poems and across the collected poem as a whole.
2.1.1 Rose
When it comes to the images in Yeats’ poems, rose is an inevitable one. In addition, the image of rose has witnessed the development of Yeats’ symbolism. We can understand the traits of Yeats’ imagism and symbolism with the research on the transition of the image of rose.
Rose is always equivalent with the meaning of love in the western world. The topic of love has been immortal in literature. Love is an eternal theme in the history of mankind. Unexceptionally, Yeats prefers to use rose in his own way. In reading Yeats’ poetry albums, we could easily find that the image of rose diffuses among the poems, especially in his early literary works, from To the Rose upon the Rood of Time, The Rose of the World, The Rose of Peace, The Rose of Battle in 1893, to the Rose Tree in 1921. Rose is the major image among the above poems. What is more, one woman cannot be ignored when mentioning the image of rose in Yeats’ poems—Maud Gonne. Although Maud Gonne has not been together with Yeats, she keeps inspiring him resourcefully and endlessly.