Yeats and Theosophy

Ken Monteith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135915612
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

When H. P. Blavatsky, the controversial head of the turn of the century movement Theosophy, defined "a true Theosophist" in her book The Key to Theosophy, she could have just as easily have been describing W. B. Yeats. Blavatsky writes, "A true Theosophist must put in practice the loftiest moral ideal, must strive to realize his unity with the whole of humanity, and work ceaselessly for others." Although Yeats joined Blavatsky's group in 1887, and subsequently left to help form The Golden Dawn in 1890, Yeats's career as poet and politician were very much in line with the methods set forth by Blavatsky's doctrine. My project explores how Yeats employs this pop-culture occultism in the creation of his own national literary aesthetic. This project not only examines the influence theosophy has on the literary work Yeats produced in the late 1880's and 1890's, but also Yeats's work as literary critic and anthology editor during that time. While Yeats uses theosophy's metaphysical world view to provide an underlying structure for some of his earliest poetry and drama, he uses theosophy's methods of investigation and argument to discover a metaphysical literary tradition which incorporates all of his own literary heroes into an Irish cultural tradition. Theosophy provides a methodology for Yeats to argue that both Shelley and Blake (for example) are part of a tradition that includes himself. Basing his argument in theosophy, Yeats can argue that the Irish people are a distinct race with a culture more "sincere" and "natural" than that of England.

Chapter One

Setting “A Boy’s Turbulent Days”¹ to Rest: Mastering Passionate Youth through an Occult Pastoral

Many of the poems in Crossways, certainly those upon Indian subjects or upon shepherds and fauns, must have been written before I was twenty, for from the moment when I began work on The Wanderings of Oisin, which I did at that age, I believe, my subject-matter became Irish. Every time I have reprinted them I have considered the leaving out of most, and then remembered an old school friend who has some of them by heart, for no better reason, as I think, than that they remind him of his own youth.

—W.B. Yeats, “General Notes,” Poems (1895): Variorum 841.

It [Theosophy] was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

—W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies 91–2

Forty years after his membership in the Theosophical Society, Yeats remembers the theosophist Mohini Chatterjee, and not Madam Blavatsky, with a poem written in his honor. Such a tribute, included in The Winding Stair and Other Poems, suggests that Yeats remembered Mohini Chatterjee as the source of his theosophical interests. In his Autobiographies, Yeats writes that Chatterjee was “A handsome young man with the typical face of Christ” (113), while Blavatsky describes him as a “nutmeg Hindu with buck eyes,” a comment she intended as a compliment (as qtd in Bachchan 20). But more importantly, Chatterjee made an impression on the young Yeats in a way that Blavatsky did not. Mohini Chatterjee embodied theosophy because of his exotic, Indian, good looks, his knowledge of philosophy. Nevertheless, Blavatsky and her theosophical society had a clear influence on the poetry Yeats wrote while he was a member of the group. Forty years after Yeats left the Theosophical Society, Yeats may have found Mohini Chatterjee to be the safer theosophist on whom he could write a poem. Chatterjee was a lesser known theosophist whose reputation was not plagued by charges of fraud, as was Blavatsky’s, and whose continued history with the Theosophical Society was not plagued by scandal, as were many of Yeats’s contemporaries who continued the Theosophical Society headquartered in India.

Yeats often mentions figures from his life in his poetry in order to fix and pin down those characters who represent an aspect of his personal history he hopes to put to rest. In other words, Yeats will mention figures from his past directly by name when he feels that chapter of his life is over, or that aspect of the relationship is finished, or, to have the final word in an ongoing debate. Acutely aware of the persona he presents to his reading public, Yeats continually refashions his work so that it would present himself in the best light possible. But rather than dismissing the early poems he wrote while a member of the theosophical society as youthful indiscretions, Yeats includes these poems in a new form. Rather than assembling and presenting these short poems—which were originally published in 1889 as the other poems of The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems—Yeats reformats these Blavatsky influenced poems under the heading of “Crossways” when including these works in his 1895 Poems. In their 1895 form, these poems seek to redefine the pastoral through a theosophical revisioning. Edited as “Crossways,” the poems conform to a “logical and boundless” symbolism confirmed by Yeats’s reading of Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled. Individually, the poems recall what Yeats considered the “triviality and sentimentality” (Variorum 844) of his youth—directionless lovers wander in and out of love, talking of romance, while lost in an idealized pastoral landscape. However, as “Crossways” the poems suggest a narrative arc from Indian to Irish interests, and, provide an underlying biography of the poet’s development as an artist. Although he insists he includes these poems because they remind a friend of his own youth, Yeats reprints these poems because they suggest the kind of poet that he once was, yet, he reworks these same poems so that he can present that young occult poet in a very controlled manner. Yeats reimagines himself as a young poet who discovers an occult pastoral form while developing a unique poetic voice.

PROBLEMS WITH OCCULTISM AND PASTORAL NOSTALGIA

Both pastoral poetry and occultism invoke a form of nostalgia which seeks to redirect the reader to an ideal world removed from contemporary problems and social ills. The premise of both is that the contemporary world has forgotten the true meaning of existence, and to rediscover what was always there, the poet or practitioner must remove him/herself from the corruptions of society in order to reconnect with the true order of the universe. Pastoral poets often set their scenes in Arcadia, the mythic idyllic land of Ancient Greece, because it signified a continuous and unchanging space within western literary thought. Arcadia represented a predictable, uncontested, space through which pastoral poets could critique their contemporary world: the corruptions of the contemporary could easily be highlighted by their Arcadian antithesis.

The nostalgia we see at work in pastoral poetry is very similar to the nostalgia at work in occultism. Where the pastoral escapes to an ideal landscape to rediscover truth, occultism escapes to the image of an ideal individual (who eventually becomes every individual) who embodies truth. Pastoral and occultism are not too far apart in this sense, since, as the occultist argue through their Hermetic Axiom “as above, so below,” the occultist imagines that he can connect himself directly to the landscape. Since every part of the universe is mirrored in every other part, the individual only needs to look within himself to access the same truth found in the landscape. Both the pastoral and occultism presuppose that contemporary society is corrupt, nature somehow is unchanged, and since it is outside contemporary human influence, a call to nature is a call to an innate authority embodied in the universe. This is where the pastoral and occultism split company: In Shakespeare’s pastoral plays for example, the aristocratic characters leave contemporary society to rediscover their true selves in nature. These characters would then return to society, perhaps using their experience to inform and authorize their future decisions. The occultist removes himself from contemporary society by refocusing on the self as a mirror. Authority is all around, and not only relegated to the wilderness or an ideal landscape. The occultist seeks to become his own ideal, placing himself at the center of his universe.

MASTERING MOHINI

Before examining the occult influences of “Crossways,” I first want to examine how Yeats uses his poetry to position himself at the center of his own literary and occult universe. In the poem “Mohini Chatterjee,” Yeats masters the figure of Chatterjee by first presenting the theosophist’s advice, then refuting it by incorporating that advice into his own pronouncement by the poem’s end. Chatterjee was a charismatic foreigner whom the young Yeats may have wanted to emulate. Chatterjee’s exotic good looks drew the attention of the society’s female members; in fact, Mohini Chatterjee had to eventually leave the society because of his involvement with “various English lady members of the Society” (Bachchan 19). In remembering Chatterjee more than forty years after meeting the man, Yeats has the brahmin’s advice turn to the subjects of reincarnation and love, the same themes Yeats works through in “Crossways.” Yet for all his praise, Yeats still sets up Chatterjee so that his own philosophy takes precedence by the poem’s end. The poem itself is in two sections: the first stanza is Yeats’s recollection of Mohini Chatterjee and the advice Chatterjee gave:

I asked if I should pray

But the Bramin said,

‘Pray for nothing, say

Every night in bed,

I have been a king,

I have been a slave,

Nor is there anything,

Fool, Rascal, Knave,

That I have not been,

And yet upon my breast

A myriad heads have lain.’ (Variorum 495–6)

Instead of a simple answer regarding prayer, Yeats ironically gets a sort of prayer as a response. An affirmation of reincarnation, Chatterjee’s response conflates sexual experience with the experiences of past lives and does so in a duality of extremes—the seeker is either a King or a Slave. In short, Chatterjee responds in archetypes. More than an affirmation that he had lived previously, the advice Yeats receives also suggests that his personal experience is a universal experience. According to the poem, Yeats has been every type of person. Written in retrospect, what older man looking back upon his youth would dispute that he had been a rascal, fool, or knave? More importantly, the advice here mirrors what Blavatsky has written in regards to prayer. Prayer can be a dangerous endeavor since it is an act of will, and “magnetizes” the praying person so that he/she attracts that which is sought. Instead of praying for material gain, the individual, according to Blavatsky, needs to use prayer in order to align him/herself closer to the universe Writing in The Key to Theosophy, Blavatsky explains that “we do not [pray]. We act, instead of talking … we call it will-prayer, and it is rather an internal command than a petition” (38—9). The advice in “Mohini Chatterjee” is similar to the advice given in the “Crossways” poem “The Song of the Happy Shepherd:” look within for truth, rather than looking to a force outside, and at great distance from, yourself. In addition, the “Mohini Chatterjee” poem has Chatterjee flatter the young man who asks the question, suggesting that Yeats, as the inquirer, himself has a wisdom beyond his years. The inquirer, however, has only forgotten this wisdom as part of the reincarnation process.

While the first half of the poem illustrates a Yeats as a young man seeking guidance from a more advanced master, the second half provides Yeats’s own thoughts on the matter: the wisdom he has gained since. The reminiscence comes full circle with the return to the present:

That he might set at rest

A boy’s turbulent days

Mohini Chatterjee

Spoke these, or words like these.

I add in commentary,

“Old lovers yet may have

All that time denied—

Grave is heaped on grave

That they be satisfied—

Over the blackened earth

The old troops parade,

Birth is heaped on birth

That such cannonade

May thunder time away

Birth-hour and death-hour meet

Or, as great sages say,

Men dance on deathless feet.” (Variorum 496)

Yeats’s own commentary in the second half of the poem brings in his own esoteric philosophy. Borrowing, or building off of, the ideas of reincarnation and karma, Yeats’s system also posits a cycle of death and rebirth, yet these cycles suggest that there is much work to be done while alive, in contrast to Chatterjee’s vague idealism. If they follow Chatterjee’s teachings, the old lovers Yeats examines in the second half of the poem may decide to take no action in this life in hopes of something better in the next. Grave might be heaped on grave while the soul waits for its situation to change. Yeats’s advice here is to seize the day. Will (in Yeats’s cosmology as well as in Blavatsky’s) is the only force which can bring about change. The individual can not progress within his spiritual development if he does not enact his will. Taken in this light, “The dance on deathless feet,” offered by Yeats is much more complex than Mohini’s advice intended to put a “young man’s turbulent days at rest.” The Mohini Chatterjee Yeats remembers in the poem of the same name assumes Yeats wants to answer a question about finding love. Yeats’s amendment some forty years later casts the question posed by his younger self as a question of how to best attain self-improvement, and not how to become a better lover. Despite devoting an entire poem to Chatterjee, Yeats’s poem remembers Chatterjee as a brahmin whose assumption did not match Yeats’s own expectations for self improvement. In a poem written almost four decades after leaving the Theosophical Society, Yeats critiques Mohini Chatterjee by adding a philosophical commentary reminiscent of Blavatsky.

MASTERING YOUTH

When setting up his 1895 Poems, what sort of expectations does Yeats then place on his own early work? Editing sixteen of the poems from The Wandering of Oisin and Other Poems into in a collection titled “Crossways” allows the older more experienced poet to set an earlier interest to rest. This editing also allows Yeats to construct an earlier version of himself as poet so that his earlier career appears to predict the poet he imagines himself to be at the time of the 1895 Poetry. Yeats creates a literary biography which suggests that the younger Yeats of “Crossways” discovered a new pastoral form through an application of occult symbolism. As a result, “Crossways” operates under an epistemology which parallels Blavatsky’s ideas of the universe and how the universe operates. An idealized unchanging natural world (Arcadia) gives over to an occult landscape that is always in the present, a landscape that expands to meet the times, but that also remains governed by static and unchanging symbols. Yeats provides a self contained and contiguous landscape within “Crossways,” yet he can not resist using this pastoral as the annunciation of his own career as artist. While landscape plays a significant role in “Crossways,” Yeats’s occult pastoral allows the work to focus on a pastoral individual, a noble balladeer or poet, who arises out of the material. Although “Crossways” offers the reader a means of understanding the world through an aesthetic ideal (via an esoteric symbolism), Yeats’s literary criticism—which is written at the same time as these poems—envisions this pastoral as part of a national literary tradition. In this manner, a “boy’s turbulent days,” appear to be nostalgic days full of truth.

I want to begin this analysis with a close reading of the “Crossways” poems, examining how Yeats includes crossing symbols to advance a unifying aesthetic and means by which his “Crossways” characters can understand their world, as well as understand themselves. Next, I will examine how Yeats politicizes this new pastoral he creates (or discovers, Yeats might argue) through his own appeals to, and definition of, an Irish ballad tradition. I want to finish this chapter with a discussion of “Crossways” as both “logical and boundless” and with a discussion of how Blavatsky and Yeats’s reading of theosophy informs his editorial and creative thinking regarding this early poetry.

READING THE ROOD: “CROSSWAYS”

The poems of “Crossways” roughly divide into two sections. Of the sixteen poems in the collection, the first eight take on Indianesque or theosophical themes, while the remaining eight poems take up Irish topics. The two parts of “Crossways” appear to reflect two interests of this young Irishman living in London in the 1880’s: the exotic romanticism of Indian philosophy via the Theosophical Society and the pastoral longing for the mythic landscape of an Ireland remembered while living in London. Writing of these poems when collected in Early Poems,² Yeats comments:

When I first wrote I went here and there for my subjects as my reading led me, and preferred to all other countries Arcadia and the India of romance, but presently convinced myself, for such reasons as those in “Ireland and the Arts” that I should never go for the scenery of a poem to any country but my own…. (Variorum 841–2)

The scenery we find in “Crossways’” first eight poems is a lush and humid Indianesque landscape populated by peacocks, parrots, and couples either falling in love or falling into sorrow because their love has met its end. Although we find theosophy within these poems, the images Yeats associates with the “India of romance” often run counter to Blavatsky’s teachings. This does not mean that Blavatsky was not an influence, but rather that Yeats uses his poetry to test out the “logical and boundless” ideas he encountered in his reading, incorporating what works for him, and refuting what does not.

Before analyzing the crossings we find in the “Crossways” section of Yeats’s Poetry, I want to give a brief summary of the work. Even though the eight poems which make up the first half of “Crossways” do not all explicitly refer to India or contain Indians, they take up theosophical, or Indianesque, themes. “The Song of the Happy Shepherd” leads the collection and describes the ideal way one should live life in order to put theosophical ideas into practice. The following poem, “The Song of the Sad Shepherd,” serves as an antithesis, illustrating the futility of following the Happy Shepherd’s directions. “The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes” is a poem abou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction A "Philosophy ... Logical and Boundless": The Esoteric Life and Thought of W.B. Yeats
• Chapter One Setting "A Boy's Turbulent Days" to Rest: Mastering Passionate Youth through an Occult Pastoral
• Chapter Two Yeats's Hermetic Nationalism: From Mosada to Cathleen Ni Houlihan
• Chapter Three Rewording Madness and Testing a Philosophy: The Ellis-Yeats Works of William Blake
• Chapter Four Strategic Celticism: Folklore, Theosophy, and Identity
• Conclusion Yeats's Biography and Blavatsky: The Poet and the Pythoness
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index