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Building on the readings of Yeats’s esoteric poems and A Vision, I pose to rethink the dimensions of his occultism, more specifically his reflection on an encounter with the supernatural beings. The need for rearticulation of the role of relation to the other gains urgency because the supernatural beings are by nature obscure, indistinct, and indefinite. They resist too much clarification and determination that may reduce their complicated and irreducible beings to distinct concepts. The difficulty, therefore, lies in the question of how Yeats could present the beings in a manner as precise, proper, and rigorous as possible and at the same time he could respect and honor the mode in which the beings conceals themselves in the mystery, by letting them be the mystery that they are.
Applying the concept of “ecstasy” and “epiphany” to Yeats’s three poems, my paper investigates how each poem reflects and illustrates the nature and the structuality of “ecstasy” and “epiphany.”
In “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes” the girl dancing between a Sphinx and a Buddha in the fifteenth night is the anti-self of Yeats. In a moment the girl, the Sphinx, the Buddha and the poet himself had overthrown time in contemplation. They remain motionless in the contemplation of their real nature. when Robartes meets the girl, he can be a totally subjective mind, overcome the illusion of duality, and find a “revelation of realty.” They finally all integrated into one and accomplish the ultimate reality as a phaseless sphere. This poem Robartes shows how ecstasy or epiphany in an encounter with the supernatural being not only arises from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen but also escapes from the barrenness and shallowness of a too conscious arrangement.
In the second section of “Vacillation,” Yeats presents a ritual ceremony in which “Attis’ image” is hung between the two parts, uniting death with eternal life, assuring immortality. He who performs this rite “May know not what he knows but knows not grief.” Yeats in his poetry consistently and repeatedly alludes to an ancient sacrificial ritual and the imitations of ritual techniques through words and rhythms. For him, the ritual enacts an inner vision of permanent beauty and harmony and enables us to participate in the transcendental experience of a rite. Yeats often clearly sees and evokes the effects of sacrifice to ensure symbolize the transcendental vision of whole beyond ordinary experience or expression.
Yeats showed Unity of Being in “Byzantium.” He attains the Ultimate Reality completely, in which subject and object are unified in the space without the time. He achieves the ultimate reality as an eternal instant. This ultimate reality is Yeats’s Unity of Being.