Michael Robartes and the dancerYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
General
Michael Robartes and the dancer
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English poetry -- Irish authors
It has its origin from a straight line which represents, now
time, now emotion, now subjective life, and a plane at right
angles to this line which represents, now space, now intellect,
now objective life; while it is marked out by two gyres which
represent the conflict, as it were, of plane and line, by two
movements, which circle about a centre because a movement outward
on the plane is checked by and in turn checks a movement onward
upon the line; & the circling is always narrowing or spreading,
because one movement or other is always the stronger. In other
words, the human soul is always moving outward into the objective
world or inward into itself; & this movement is double because
the human soul would not be conscious were it not suspended
between contraries, the greater the contrast the more intense the
consciousness. The man, in whom the movement inward is stronger
than the movement outward, the man who sees all reflected within
himself, the subjective man, reaches the narrow end of a gyre at
death, for death is always, they contend, even when it seems the
result of accident, preceded by an intensification of the subjective
life; and has a moment of revelation immediately after death, a
revelation which they describe as his being carried into the presence
of all his dead kindred, a moment whose objectivity is exactly equal
to the subjectivity of death. The objective man on the other hand,
whose gyre moves outward, receives at this moment the revelation,
not of himself seen from within, for that is impossible to objective
man, but of himself as if he were somebody else. This figure is true
also of history, for the end of an age, which always receives the
revelation of the character of the next age, is represented by the
coming of one gyre to its place of greatest expansion and of the
other to that of its greatest contraction. At the present moment
the life gyre is sweeping outward, unlike that before the birth
of Christ which was narrowing, and has almost reached its greatest
expansion. The revelation which approaches will however take
its character from the contrary movement of the interior gyre.
All our scientific, democratic, fact-accumulating, heterogeneous
civilization belongs to the outward gyre and prepares not the
continuance of itself but the revelation as in a lightning flash,
though in a flash that will not strike only in one place, and will
for a time be constantly repeated, of the civilization that must
slowly take its place. This is too simple a statement, for much
detail is possible. There are certain points of stress on outer and
inner gyre, a division of each, now into ten, now into twenty-eight,
stages or phases. However in the exposition of this detail so far
as it affects the future, Robartes had little help from the Judwalis
either because they cannot grasp events outside their experience,
or because certain studies seem to them unlucky. “‘For a time the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account