YEATS AND NIETZSCHE
YEATS AND NIETZSCHE An Exploration of Major Nietzschean Echoes in the Writings of William Butler Yeats Otto Bohlmann
Otto Bohlmann 1982 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982 978-0-333-27601-3 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1982 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-05039-0 ISBN 978-1-349-05037-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05037-6 Typeset by Computacomp (UK) Ltd Fort William, Scotland
For my mother and father
I have written to you little and badly of late I am afraid, for the truth is you have a rival in Nietzsche, that strong enchanter. I have read him so much that I have made my eyes bad again... I have not read anything with so much excitement since I got to love Morris's stories which have the same curious astringent joy... Yeats, in a letter to Lady Gregory [Letters, p. 379]
Contents List of Plates Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations ix xi XV xvii 1 ENCOUNTER AND KINSHIP 2 CONFLICT, WILL, POWER 19 Conflict 19 Will and Power 35 3 THE TRAGIC DISPOSITION 40 Apollo and Dionysus 40 Character and Personality 47 Tragic Wisdom 51 Tragic Joy 53 Where There Is Nothing and the Dionysian 59 4 REASON, AESTHETICS, ART 63 Reason and Instinct 63 Self and Soul 82 Unity of Being 89 Art and Aesthetics 91 Reason, Aesthetics and Art in the Plays 98 5 THE HERO 111 Hero and Ubermensch 111 Objectivity and Subjectivity 125 Mask, Self and Anti-Self 130 The Hero in the Plays 139 6 CYCLICAL HISTORY 156 Ewige Wiederkehr 156 1
viii Contents Yeats's 'Stylistic Arrangements' of History Cyciical History in the Poems Cyclical History in the Plays Afterword Notes Select Bibliography Index 166 177 182 190 191 198 203
List of Plates 1-2 Annotated pages from Yeats's copy of Thomas Common's Nietzsche as Critic, Philosopher, Poet and Prophet (reproduced with permission of the Special Collections Department, Northwestern University Library, Evanston, Illinois). 3 Friedrich Nietzsche (Foto Held). 4 John Quinn, New York lawyer and patron of the arts, to whom Yeats wrote in May 1903 'you have been the first to introduce me to Nietzsche'. 5 W. B. Yeats, by A. L. Coburn (John Hillelson Collection).
Preface 'I have not read anything with so much excitement', Yeats wrote of Nietzsche to Lady Gregory late in 1902, 'since I got to love Morris's stories which have the same curious astringent joy'} It was an excitement and joy that was to last Yeats right up to the completion of On the Boiler, his final political testament, published in the year of his death - with echoes of the German vibrantly audible throughout his writings of the years between. It is these echoes, so frequent and so clear, that concern the main thrust of this exploration, rather than the tangled question of 'influence'. Distinct reverberations can be sounded and documented; influence always remains clouded with speculation. Not that Nietzschean echoes in Yeats are echoes only of Friedrich Nietzsche. They are often just as likely to be echoes of William Blake. Yeats himself recognises the astonishing similarity between the two, writing of how 'Nietzsche completes Blake and has the same roots' [L, p. 379], and of how Nietzsche's 'thought flows always, though with an even more violent current, in the bed Blake's thought has worn' [/GE, p. 20 1]. And it is that more violent current which has impressed itself so forcefully on Yeats's work. Arthur Symons made an early prediction that Nietzsche, coming after Blake, would 'pass before Blake passes'. 2 But that has not proved to be the case in the twentieth century, across which Nietzsche's voice has carried more stridently than any other - announcing the death of God, articulating the Dionysian terror of Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, presaging the 'nausea' ofthe Theatre of the Absurd and other existentialist writing. It is this rampant voice that echoes through the maturing Yeats; Blake, having consumed Yeats's interest between 1889 and 1892, was superseded by a new 'enchanter' [L, p. 379], who emerges in A Vision as the type of Yeats's admired hero [cf. V, pp. 126-9]. Even with the considerable evidence of Yeats's pencilled jottings
xii Preface on Nietzsche and the presence of Nietzschean parallels throughout his work, it remains impossible (and so spurious) to determine beyond all doubt the point at which similarities cease to be coincidental and become testimony to direct influence. We should not rush to conclude that Yeats, having discovered Nietzsche, did indeed 'put on his knowledge with his power' ['Leda and the Swan', CP, p. 241]. Yeats was an incipient Nietzschean (in so far as one can use the term) long before he encountered Nietzsche. We should not forget, either, the fatuousness of post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning. This element of caution is not to deny the fascination and importance of the repeated correspondences in Yeats's and Nietzsche's thinking, nor does it diminish the fervour with which Yeats devoured Nietzsche. Certainly one could speak of Nietzsche as having influenced Nietzsche when one understands influence as including the stimulation and confirmation of ideas, and the fostering of attitude and tone. Here Nietzsche's influence was considerable and lasting - yet even here Yeats would claim that it was not Nietzsche or Blake who had most 'shaped my life', but Shelley ['Prometheus Unbound' (iv), E&/, p. 424]. Nietzsche should only occasionally, and with reservation, be hailed as the 'parent and original' of aspects in Yeats that recall him. Yeats's reputation as a poet is secure; Yeats the playwright has not been as enthusiastically adopted. But, since Yeats and Nietzsche both approach life in a distinctly theatrical and dynamic manner, it is fitting to lend the edge of emphasis in this study to the dramatic side of the poet. Hence, in Chapter 3 we chart Nietzsche's sentiments on tragedy in plays such as Where There Is Nothing, and in Chapter 4 his attitudes to reason, aesthetics and art in At the Hawk's Well, A Full Moon in March, The Herne's Egg, The Only Jealousy of Emer, The Player Queen and The Resurrection. Chapter 5 looks at Nietzschean views on the hero and superhero in At the Hawk's Well, Calvary, The Death ofcuchulain, The King's Threshold, On Baile's Strand and The Only Jealousy of Emer, and Chapter 6 points to elements of Nietzsche's ewige Wiederkehr in Yeats's view of cyclical history in The Cat and the Moon, The Death of Cuchulain, The Player Queen, Purgatory and The Resurrection. I have prefaced this concentration on the plays with two chapters that look more closely at the compass of the Yeats-Nietzsche linkage and the nature of the philosopher's appeal for Yeats, and their shared Weltanschauung of existence as a remorseless interplay of chaotic forces, of conflicting wills to power.
Preface xiii These are the regions of kinship that yield most interest, amply evidenced as they are in Yeats's private correspondence, essays, lectures and autobiographical writings, in A Vision, and, of course, in the poems and plays. Recourse to the broader body of Yeats's work while looking more closely at specific texts will, I hope, provide a good combination of what has been called the 'lemon squeezer' approach and the compilation of a shopping list. Though this policy of J.LT70EV &yav might violate Nietzsche and Yeats's enthronement of 'excess', 'measure' does remain an important attribute of the Ubermensch! [cf. WP (940) p. 495].3 The hero is probably the crucial element in the relationship between Yeats and Nietzsche, but it is based on various other points of correspondence in their philosophy and it is thus best to delay discussion of this aspect until Chapter 5, once we have dealt with the concepts germane to an understanding of the hero and Ubermensch. Provision of basic familiarising material is always essential before indepth discussion can usefully take place. Similarly, some retelling and overlapping are needed for reinforcement, even though certain points of orientation might have been made by others elsewhere before. I have generally avoided the marshy byways of conflicting criticism on Yeats wherever it has not been indispensable to venture in; recitation of comparative views so often merely makes for imbroglio digression. Nietzsche's impact on Yeats again raises the question of the differences between art and philosophy. Among the replies which approach an answer to this question is that good poetry seldom drives home a unilateral point of view, while philosophy usually does. Art which pictures only one aspect of a situation becomes sheer didactic philosophy. As D. H. Lawrence says of the novelist, when he 'puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality'. 4 By this criterion Lawrence would criticise Yeats for ultimately coming down on the side of (for example) the non-rational, but the poet is redeemed in this case by the tremendous conflict he registers in reaching his bias. Also, he is superb at lending philosophical ideas poetic form; Nietzsche is not - though he would fain have written his Birth of Tragedy as a poet: 'What I had to say then- too bad that I did not dare say it as a poet: perhaps I had the ability'[' Attempt at a Self-Criticism' (3), BT, p. 20]. Stefan George's poem 'Nietzsche', too, feels that 'it should have sung, not spoken, this new soul'. The unsuccessful imagery and poetic confusion of Thus Spake Zarathustra suggest otherwise,
xiv Preface however, and, masterful though Nietzsche's prose is widely acknowledged to be, one is inclined to share F. D. Luke's opinion when he doubts that Nietzsche's 'prose style is at its best where it approaches the nature of poetry', and that 'he is certainly at his worst when writing verse'. s In Yeats again the philosophy appears too nakedly at times - not something he would unswervingly regard as a fault, as we see in 'The Symbolism of Poetry' (i): 'Goethe has said, "a poet needs all philosophy, but he must keep it out of his work", though that is not always necessary', a sentiment Yeats repeats in a letter to Ethel Mannin as late as October 1938 [ &/, p. 154; L, p. 917]. Not that it falls within the domain of this exploration to take issue with either the soundness of Nietzsche and Yeats's philosophy or the artistic merit of their writing. It is their kinship that will always be our main point of focus. The mining of literary kinships can make for the sinking of very narrow shafts, and we have already had Yeats and Shelley, Yeats and Blake, Yeats and Castiglione. But Nietzsche's vein is so rich, its importance so central, that it dare not go untapped, and it is the intention of this investigation to reveal new depths to a relationship noted more fleetingly often enough before. And I shall always be grateful to the many people who participated in many ways in the conception, gestation and giving birth of this rewarding study: to my teachers and my loving friends and family for their buoyant interest; to Philip Birkinshaw for our talks at Gale House as Blaauwberg's Dionysian Atlantic surged below us, and for our Norfolk walks; to Mac and Val, in the warmth of whose home the final drafts were composed; and to my mother and father, to whom I dedicate the work. Cambridge, September 19 79 O.B.
Acknowledgements The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, for the extract from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Thomas Common. Encounter Ltd, for the extract from 'A Craving for Hell' by Michael Hamburger. Gordon Press Publications Ltd, for the extract from The Dawn of Day, vol. IX of The Complete Works by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by J. M. Kennedy. Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd, for the extract from Yeats and the Theatre, edited by Robert O'Driscoll and Lorna Reynolds. Nonesuch Press (The Bodley Head Ltd), for the extracts from Poetry and Prose of William Blake, edited by Geoffrey Keynes. Penguin Books Ltd, for the extracts from Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzsche, all translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Random House Inc., for the extracts from The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated with commentary by Walter Kaufmann; The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann; and The Will to Power by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. Anthony Sheil Associates Ltd, on behalf of the estate of Joseph M. Hone, for the extract fromj. B. Yeats: Letters to his Son W. B. Yeats and Others, 1869-1922, edited by Joseph Hone, published by Faber & Faber Ltd. A. P. Watt Ltd, on behalf of Michael and Anne Yeats, and Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., New York, for the extracts from the works of William Butler Yeats: Essays and Introductions, 1961 by Mrs W. B. Yeats; Collected Plays, 1934 and 1952; Explor-
xvi Acknowledgements ations, 1962 by Mrs W. B. Yeats; Autobiographies, 1916, 1935, renewed 1944, 1963 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; Where There Is Nothing, 1959 by Mrs W. B. Yeats; and The Letters of W. B. Yeats, edited by Allan Wade, 1953, 1954 by Anne Butler Yeats.
List of Abbreviations Auto Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats (New York: Macmillan, reissued 19 53), or Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1955); page references are to both, in this order. B Yeats, On the Boiler (Dublin: Cuala Press, 1939). BGE Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trs. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 197 3; repr. 197 4). BT Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trs. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967). C Yeats's copy of Nietzsche as Critic, Philosopher, Poet and Prophet: Choice Selections from His Works, compiled by Thomas Common (London: Grant Richards, 190 l ). CP Yeats, Collected Poems, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1950; repr. 1965). CPl Yeats, Collected Plays, 2nd edn (New York: Macmillan, 1953), or Collected Plays, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1952; repr. 1966); page references are to both, in this order. EH Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trs. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967). E&I Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Macmillan, 1961). Expl Yeats, Explorations (New York: Macmillan, 1962). GM Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trs. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967). GS Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trs. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974). GOA Nietzsche, Grossoktavausgabe, 2nd edn (Leipzig: Kroner, 1901-13). IGE Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil (New York: Russell and
xviii JBYL K L Myth P&C TI TSZ v VP VPl WP WTIN List of Abbreviations Russell, revised 1903, reissued 1967). J. B. Yeats: Letters to his Son W. B. Yeats and Others, 1869-1922, ed. Joseph Hone (London: Faber and Faber, 1944). Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London: Nonesuch Press, 1948). Yeats, Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954). Yeats, Mythologies (London: Macmillan, 1959; repr. 1962). Yeats, Plays and Controversies (London: Macmillan, 1927). Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trs. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968; repr. 1974). Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trs. Thomas Common (New York: Random House, Modern Library Series). Yeats, A Vision, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1937; reissued 1962). The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, ed. Peter Alit and Russell K. Alspach (New York: Macmillan, 1957). The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W. B. Yeats, ed. Russell K. Alspach assisted by Catherine C. Alspach (New York: Macmillan, 1 966). Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trs. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967). Yeats, Where There Is Nothing (New York: Macmillan, 1903).