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Justin Chen Implications of Mortality in Yeats’ A Dialogue of Self and Soul The casual reader of Yeats’ A Dialogue of Self and Soul would probably emerge from the experience with a feeling of confused optimism. The poem progresses, as the title would suggest, as an oppositional dialectic between the “Self” and the “Soul,” only to abruptly shift in part II to a substantial monologue by the Self that ultimately ends on the hopeful note, “We are blest by everything, / Everything we look upon is blest” (71-2). (i) The poem’s sudden turn is even more striking when one considers the exceedingly bleak tendency of the initial dialogue, which seems to be focused on death or mortality. Upon closer inspection, however, Yeats’ poem is in fact consistent, and the optimism with which it ends is simply a natural outgrowth of the redemptive decision for acceptance prescribed by the Self. The poem begins with a declaration by the Soul: “I summon to the winding ancient stair” (1). Yeats’ invocation of the “winding stair” is significant insofar as Dialogue is the third poem in The Winding Stair and Other Poems, a collection published just 5 years before Yeats’ death. The detection of an almost palpable concern with the imminence of mortality in the poem, then, is certainly plausible. And as the first stanza continues, such premonitions are justified by Yeats’ consciously morbid choice of language and imagery. The “crumbling battlement” (3), for instance, is reminiscent of decay and, by extension, the transience of human life. Further, Yeats’ description of the “breathless starlit air” (4) heightens the mood established in the first few lines, both by suggesting a stifling, lifeless environment, and by invoking a nighttime setting that immediately implies death. The imagery of this section may even be linked to Shakespeare’s Hamlet and all that tragedy’s associated verbal grapplings with the dilemma of mortality. For instance, the evening castle-top setting of Dialogue conjures up the starlit supernatural scenes involving the ghost of Hamlet’s father outside Elsinore castle. Further, the line, “That quarter where all thought is done” (7) suggests to the careful Shakespeare reader Hamlet’s crucial declaration, “A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom / And ever three parts coward” (IV, 4). (ii) Although the two lines are, superficially speaking, connected only by the words “thought” and “quarter,” the analogy between Hamlet and Dialogue is in fact instructive and worth pursuing, as will be discussed later. Along with its connotations of Shakespeare, the phrase “that quarter where all thought is done” is also independently suggestive of death, because it seems to refer to a state of permanent unconsciousness. In general, then, the first stanza of the poem is clearly focused on the concept of death. From this conclusion, one could then understand the “winding ancient stair” with its “steep ascent” (2) to represent the journey of life, an arduous uphill climb which ultimately leads to the crumbling battlements of our own mortality. The Soul instructs the reader, “Set all your mind… Upon the star that marks the hidden pole” (2, 5), perhaps again suggesting that every human life shares a common destination, which can only be death. The stanza ends, “Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?” (8), a cryptic rhetorical question that lends the poem a decidedly nihilistic and ominous cast. It is at this point that the Self enters the dialogue for the first time, apparently causing a dramatic shift in the discourse from the subject of death to the more mundane contemplation of a particular ancient Japanese sword. Yet the second stanza can still be related to the first by the weapon’s very destructive or violent agency, an aspect of the sword that Yeats seems careful to avoid. Indeed, most of the second stanza is devoted merely to describing the appearance of the sword and its accompanying scabbard, not its usage. As the Self states, the “ancient blade” is “still as it was, / Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass / Unspotted by the centuries” (10-12). Yeats’ description implies that the sword is significant as an emblem of human endurance, perhaps in direct contrast to the earlier discussion by the Soul of man’s mortality. Yet the second half of the stanza concerns itself with the “flowering, silken, old embroidery” (13)—a material that Yeats describes as “tattered” and “faded,” and that therefore seems to represent the vulnerability or frailty of human constructions, perhaps in direct opposition to the sword. From Yeats’ descriptions, one can almost envision the torn fragment of a once-beautiful kimono, the colors of which have long since fallen prey to the ages, that envelops the scabbard in a decorative sheath. At the same time, however, the Self emphasizes the silken embroidery’s ability to “protect” and “adorn” despite its worn appearance. This stanza, then, seems to offer a degree of hope in response to the bleakness of the poem’s introduction. The Soul, however, counters this optimism by querying, “Why should the imagination of a man / Long past his prime remember things that are / Emblematical of love and war?” (17-19). This statement is clearly a jab at the Self’s contemplation of the sword, which represents war, and the scabbard’s decorative covering, which can perhaps be imagined to represent love—it is described as having been “torn / From some court-lady’s dress” (14) and as being used to “protect” (16). Up through this point in the dialogue, the Soul has seemed bereft of positive, normative assertions about life; and has presented instead only critical insights, but now it finally offers this counsel: “Think of ancestral night that can, / If but imagination scorn the earth / And intellect its wandering… Deliver from the crime of death and birth” (20-2, 4). The Soul’s claim, then, is that man’s destiny is rooted not in the living, but rather the dead. Indeed, if our imagination is to “scorn the earth” in all its transience, there is no other recourse but to turn our minds instead to the transcendence of death. Further, the final reference to the “crime” of “death and birth” may be an attack on the natural life cycle, which the Soul seems to view as some sort of transgression. The notion that life is a sort of “crime” which comes unbidden and perhaps unappreciated echoes, interestingly enough, a similar sentiment by Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, who refers to the circumstances behind his own creation as “strange point and new!” (V.855), (iii) and essentially complains that he did not ask to be created in the first place. Yet this line of reasoning is clearly a fruitless one. Just as Satan’s lament does not go very far in extricating him from his damned situation in Paradise Lost, the Soul’s frustrations with the corporeal world are unhelpful because they fail to provide any sort of solution to the “problem” of life, except a return to the “ancestral night” of death. Fortunately for the mortal reader of Yeats’ poem, the Self again proffers a more life-affirming alternative to the Soul’s nihilistic impulses. The fourth stanza is largely a systematic refutation of the Soul’s argument in that it consciously invokes the imagery of life. For instance, the Self describes the flowers, which are a popular Romantic symbol of life, that decorate the embroidery, and it mentions the “heart’s purple” (27), thereby referencing the most important life-sustaining organ in the human body. The Self is even more explicit when it states, “All these I set / For emblems of the day against the tower / Emblematical of the night” (27-9). This almost programmatical declaration seems to be an unequivocal challenge to the Soul. The Self rejects the nihilism and death represented by the tower, choosing instead to focus on the enduring aspects of life such as the Japanese sword and its tattered silken covering. Most interesting perhaps is the stanza’s concluding statement by the Self, which “claim[s] as by a soldier’s right / A charter to commit the crime once more” (30-1). The Self adapts the terminology of the Soul by using the word “crime,” yet it seems to question the ultimate “lawlessness” of that crime by choosing to commit it “once more.” If the crime is the perpetuation of the life cycle, as outlined above, perhaps the Self’s invocation of the “soldier’s right” is meant to suggest that these issues all tie into some sort of larger, perhaps even cosmic, struggle. That is, although the Soul (and Satan) have a point when they say that life is a sort of unwanted gift, the Self asserts that in a larger context, such a “crime” against the unborn is acceptable, and perhaps even necessary. The dialogue has been escalating up until this point with increasingly direct confrontations between the Soul and the Self. But it is the Soul’s final stanza that rounds out the poem’s crescendo and marks a sudden turning point. The Soul seems devoted once again to bemoaning the status of earthly life, suggesting that it is only when man has been “stricken deaf and dumb and blind,” and the intellect “no longer knows / Is from the Ought, or Knower from the Known” (34, 35-6, Yeats’ emphases)—that is, in death—that he can finally “ascends to Heaven” (38) and be forgiven. Yet the crucial moment for the close reader comes in the bleak closing lines of the Soul’s last speech: “Only the dead can be forgiven; / But when I think of that my tongue’s a stone” (39-40). This statement essentially summarizes the fundamental problem with the line of thought adopted by the Soul—namely, that such reasoning is ultimately futile and destructive, for once one becomes fixated on the ultimate transcendence of death, life ceases to have meaning, and the tongue becomes a stone precisely because there is nothing more to say about the matter. And indeed, following this stanza, the Soul is silent for the rest of the poem. The transition to Part II, then, marks a fundamental shift in the poem’s attitude about life. Whereas the Soul was unable to bear the imperfections of the flesh, the Self discusses coming to terms with an admittedly imperfect mortality for the remainder of the poem. The first stanza of Part II begins, “A living man is blind and drinks his drop. / What matter if the ditches are impure?” (41-2), a sentiment that clearly reflects an acceptance of the flaws in life. As long as the blind man can drink his water and live, the Self asserts, it does not matter particularly that the water is dirty. Similarly, perhaps, as long as humans can continue to thrive amidst imperfection, it matters little that all striving is ultimately headed for the “crumbling battlement” of night and death. The tone of the final four stanzas is overwhelmingly redemptive. The Self (ostensibly Yeats by this point) proclaims, “What matter if I live it all once more?” (43), and proceeds to describe the various embarrassments and “ignominies” of growing up and being transformed into an “unfinished man and his pain / Brought face to face with his own clumsiness” (47-8). Yet despite these setbacks, Yeats maintains, “I am content to live it all again” (57). Indeed, he describes the “finished man” as “among his enemies” (49), suggesting that perhaps perfection is not in fact desirable. He adds, “How in the name of Heaven can [the unfinished man] escape / That defiling and disfigured shape… And what’s the good of an escape / If honour find him in the wintry blast?” (50-1, 55-6). Thus, Yeats again emphasizes the futility of attempting to extricate oneself from the admitted imperfection of mortality, and even questions the value of such an effort. Interestingly, the “wintry blast” can be associated with death (for example, James Thomson’s poem Summer: “The wintry blast of death / Kills not the buds of virtue”), suggesting that the only way for one to escape the flaws of mortality is to sacrifice life itself. Yeats continues, “I am content to live it all again… if it be life to pitch / Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch, / A blind man battering blind men;” (57-60). The emphasis on blindness is interesting, for it suggests a basic perceptual defect in humanity. Yet just as man does not possess the ability to choose to exist, and therefore should not lament his own existence, perhaps Yeats’ assertion in this passage is that man’s basic condition requires a translation of values that does not regard such a perceptual defect as overly detrimental or important. This sentiment is reminiscent of Yeats’ Lapis Lazuli, in which the definition of the word “gay” undergoes a transformation during the course of the poem which requires a shift in the reader’s perception. It is also interesting to note in passing that Yeats discusses “that most fecund ditch of all, / The folly that man does / Or must suffer, if he woos / A proud woman not kindred of his soul” (61-4). This lament is likely a reference to Yeats’ unsuccessful wooing of Maud Gonne, a failure which plagued him for much of his lifetime. Even despite this setback, though, Yeats maintains his optimistic stance, beginning the next stanza again, “I am content to follow to its source / Every event in action or in thought” (65). It is indeed this final stanza that lends the poem its redemptive cast. The Self states, “Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! / When such as I cast out remorse / So great a sweetness flows into the breast / We must laugh and we must sing” (67-70). Again, this statement suggests that the “solution” to the problem of mortality is a readjustment or translation of values. Rather than regretting the human condition, a pursuit that is ultimately futile, Yeats seems to counsel acceptance, forgiveness, and the casting out of remorse as viable alternatives. Indeed, the final lines of the poem have a life-affirming quality that can only be the result of the tranquillity of acceptance: “We are blest by everything, / Everything we look upon is blest” (71-2). And in this sentiment can again be seen a similarity with Hamlet, in which the title character ponders “the dread of something after death, / The undiscover'd country from whose bourn / No traveller returns, puzzles the will / And makes us rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of” (III, 1). Of course, the analogy between the two works is not perfect—Hamlet, in contrast to the Self, eventually decides that the solution to the dilemma of mortality is to take action. Yet both Hamlet and the Self in Yeats’ poem seem to agree in concluding that the only solution to their predicament is a fundamental acceptance of their own condition. Throughout the dialectical progression of Dialogue, the opposition between the transcendent Soul and the corporeal Self provides the structure necessary to explore the vast implications of mortality. Yeats’ use of symbolic imagery seems to ultimately set the Soul up on the side of death and the Self on that of life. Eventually, however, the Soul is overcome by its own nihilistic arguments and finds itself mute, leaving the Self free reign over the poem’s end. The Self’s conclusion, which seems to echo the messages of some of Yeats’ other works, is a renewed emphasis on the acceptance of the imperfections inherent in mortality through some sort of translation of values. Only through such an internal transformation can we truly say, “We are blest by everything, / Everything we look upon is blest.” And this is indeed the larger context for which the Self feels, as by a soldier’s right, justified in committing the “crime” of perpetuating the cycle of life.
i) Yeats, W.B. “A Dialogue of Self and Soul.” The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (Ed: Richard J. Finneran). Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, NY. 1996. Citations are in the form (line numbers). ii) Courtesy “The Shakespeare Homepage” at http://tech-two.mit.edu/Shakespeare/hamlet/. Citations are in the form (Act, Scene). iii) Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Edited by Alastair Fowler: 2nd edition. Addison Wesley Longman Inc., NY. 1998. Citations are in the format (Book.Lines). |