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ISSN : 1226-4946(Print)
ISSN : 2288-5412(Online)
The Yeats Journal of Korea Vol.5 pp.143-159
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.14354/yjk.1995.5.143

The Developmental Process of Yeats's Ideas and Theories

Kim Tae Yoon

Abstract

Every artist tries to attempt to search for ‘self’ through hisown medium. It is the same with a writer, especially a poet.W.B.Yeats, a poet and poetic dramatist, had also tried to achieve‘Unity of Being’ through his poems and poetic dramas. But in thecase of Yeats, the development process of his ideas and theoriesis said to have played an important part in his search for self,that is, Unity of Being. The purpose of this paper is to examineand define the search for self through the development process ofhis ideas and thoeries.
Yeats's dissatisfaction with science, materialism and empiricismled him to join the Dublin Hermetic Society in 1886 in which heacquired “the doctrine of reincarnation”, “the theory ofcorrespondences,” and the idea that “all existences are arrangedcyclically” from Madame Blavatsky, the leader of the Society.
Turning against the Society's asceticism and Blavatsky'sdogmas, Yeats took part in the so-called “the Order of GoldenDawn” led by MacGregor Mathers. Yeats was initiated intoMathers' Kabbalism, European Rosicrucianism. So he came tobelieve that there exists the symbolic system in the process ofhuman soul. He also studied William Blake and was interested inBlake's ideas of “the four Zoas” and “the four-fold vision.” Hedeveloped Blake's ideas into his own theory of “Quarternity” aswell as into his idea of four Faculties (Will, Mask, Craetive Mind,and Body of Fate).
In 1925, he compiled the ideas and theories which he learnedfrom various sources into a systematic organization in A Vision,in which he described his vision chiefly in terms of the idea ofthe “Great Wheel”. Yeats's vision of cyclical progress of humansoul revealed in the idea of the “Great Wheel” is thus not onlythe ground of his understanding of human life and nationalhistory but a part of his search for self, his Unity of Being.
Keywords :

William Butler Yeats의 사상 전개 ― 자아추구의 일환으로서 ―

김태윤

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