earticle

영어

William Butler Yeats, as has shown in “Lapis Lazuli,” created a heroic mask, an alternate self or an anti-self, through artistic imagination. With its free spiritual and artistic gaiety, he thought he could overcome the tragic reality and accomplish salvation by making social, as well as individual change. Saying, “literature has to be a container of truth, and art has to create the values,” he wanted to elevate art and artist to a position of such eminence as only God pertains to. But even though Yeats advocated art’s religious function in his work, it should not be thought of as resembling the Christian renewal of the mind and rebirth. The great awakening through artistic gaiety that Yeats speaks of can be compared to the salvation of the so-called self-religion, such as Buddhism or Zen Buddhism, where they reach the spiritual realm of deliverance through their own efforts. However, Christian salvation can be accomplished only by the grace and providence of God. Man can never reach divine perfection and sanctity with his own efforts, none. We should see “Lapis Lazuli” as the pinnacle of his humanistic affirmation, representing his philosophy of poetry in general. We could admire his most humane aspect in that he saw death as a moment of perfection of self-image, and tried to have the sense of tragic gaiety in the midst of the ugly tragedy.