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Justin Chen Revision of Values in Yeats’ Poetry In Yeats’ “Lapis Lazuli,” the idea of gaiety is at once the most interesting and challenging concept with which the reader must grapple. This theme reappears subtly throughout the poem as a sort of unreasoned but strangely optimistic foil to the mutterings of the “hysterical women” (1) (i) at the poem’s opening. While the reader might at first be inclined to agree with these women who denigrate gaiety in the face of the very grim and pressing symbols of war invoked in the first stanza, the poem ultimately demonstrates that gaiety is not at all a means of rejecting reality, but actually represents the only way of truly accepting tragedy’s place in life. Similarly, in Yeats’ “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,” certain adjectives undergo a reevaluation during the course of the poem. While the Bishop refers to the earth as a “foul sty,” for instance, Crazy Jane seems to argue that the concept of a heavenly paradise can only exist in contrast to a foul earth, and therefore “foulness” cannot be discarded so easily. Both these poems demonstrate the need for flexibility in interpreting certain words, and they ultimately demand a surprising but rewarding revision of values on the part of the reader. “Lapis Lazuli” begins with the hysterical women’s complaints about “the palette and fiddle-bow” and “poets that are always gay” (2-3). The women argue that “if nothing drastic is done” (5), all manner of terrible military consequences will ensue. These opening lines highlight the stark contrast between the martial imagery of the impending war and the seemingly insignificant pursuits of artists. Thus, gaiety is at first portrayed as the opposite of drastic action—that is, inconsequential and a waste of time. This rejection of gaiety continues in the second stanza, when Yeats writes, “All perform their tragic play, / There struts Hamlet, there is Lear” (9-10). The tone of these lines is condescending and even spiteful—it suggests that tragedy is not unique but commonplace, since apparently everyone has a “tragic play” to perform. Furthermore, the comical image of a “strutting” Hamlet collapses the timeless and transcendent anguish of the tortured Danish prince into nothing more than the over-rehearsed lines of a cocky actor. The logical continuation of the hysterical women’s thoughts, then, is that the word of artists is just so much overblown drama (ii)—certainly nothing substantial like “Aeroplane and Zeppelin” or “King Billy bomb-balls” (6-7). Similarly, “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” begins with a contemptuous view of the word “foul”—as the Bishop says to Jane, “Live in a heavenly mansion, / Not in some foul sty” (5-6). The Bishop’s goal, of course, is to convince Jane of her mortality and the squalor of the earthly realm as compared with the heavenly afterlife. He says to her, “Those breasts are flat and fallen now / Those veins must soon be dry” (3-4) in an attempt to illustrate to her the fleeting nature of corporeal life. Like the opposition between gaiety and drastic action in “Lapis Lazuli,” the word “foul” here is presented in contrast to the more desirable notion of “heavenly.” In both poems, however, Yeats is quick to counter these initial propositions. In “Lapis Lazuli” he writes, “Yet [the actors]…if worthy their prominent part in the play, / Do not break up their lines to weep. / They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay; / Gaiety transfiguring all that dread” (12, 14-17). Yeats’ lines suggest that characters like Hamlet and Lear are actually aware of their own status as tragically doomed individuals, and that this recognition in part allows them to be gay. Furthermore, not all actors understand the importance of this awareness—after all, Yeats writes that only those who are “worthy” of their lofty roles “do not break up their lines to weep.” But the mere inevitability of doom is not all that the characters must recognize. Yeats goes on to write, “Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, / And all the drop scenes drop at once / Upon a hundred thousand stages, / It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce” (21-4). Thus, the actors must also recognize that their acting, no matter how dramatic or moving, will not change the story in the least. In the end, Hamlet and Lear will both be dead. What about this seemingly grim realization could possibly make these actors gay? Yeats suggests an answer when he writes, “All things fall and are built again / And those that build them again are gay” (36). Thus, both the characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies and the actors who portray them are fully cognizant participants in a perpetual cycle of death followed by immediate resurrection in subsequent performances—a cycle which, when properly understood, lends gaiety to both actors and characters and “transfigur[es] all that dread.” This gaiety lies not just in the awareness of inevitable tragedy, but also in the acceptance of the need for constant rebuilding. By using the term “gaiety” again in this passage, Yeats links this mature understanding to the gaiety of the artists, rejected so soundly by the hysterical women of the poem’s opening. But in this context, gaiety no longer has the frivolous connotations ascribed to it in the first stanza, when it was contrasted with the very serious problems of war. Now, it seems to betoken something much wiser and more complete—a true acceptance of tragedy with the knowledge that it is necessarily part of a larger cycle. While this view may appear passive or fatalistic, it also seems to be the most honest treatment of the facts, for if no tragedy can “grow by an inch or an ounce,” it seems unnecessary or even wasteful for the actors to resort to any sort of “drastic” action. Furthermore, the idea of rebuilding suggested by Yeats is ultimately an optimistic one, for it implies that destruction—while unavoidable—automatically begs creation, and it is in the act of recreation that man can truly find gaiety. Similarly, the Crazy Jane poem also challenges the initial opposition between the heavenly mansion and earth’s foul sty. Jane herself flies to the rescue of the word “foul,” proclaiming, “Fair and foul are near of kin, / And fair needs foul” (7-8). Jane appears to argue that nothing can be fair unless there exists something foul to which it can be compared—a sort of structuralist demand for binary oppositions. As in “Lapis Lazuli,” this shifting of views demands a reevaluation of a critical word. Jane’s assertion that “fair needs foul” prompts the reader to wonder how heaven could possibly be described except in relation to the “foul sty” of earth. And like gaiety, it seems that foulness cannot immediately be dismissed—it has some worth of its own that is simply overlooked by the Bishop. Finally, both poems end with a sort of reassertion of the main point using a different example. Yeats finally gets around to describing the actual Lapis Lazuli carving only beginning in the second-to-last stanza, which is otherwise a non sequitur from the rest of the poem. He describes the progress of the three “Chinamen” as they ascend to the top of the mountain, and concludes, “Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, / Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay” (55-6). These powerful last lines end the poem significantly with the word “gay,” and therefore reemphasize the concept of gaiety’s central importance. The imagery invoked by Yeats in these last two stanzas again requires a certain amount of unpacking. First, the invocation of Chinese men brings to mind the glories of an ancient civilization, which incidentally ties in to an earlier line in the poem: “Old civilisations put to the sword” (27). This appeal to an ancient people fits especially well with the above discussion of gaiety as a timeless acceptance of the inevitable cycles of history because during its long existence, one imagines that the Chinese civilization has weathered its share of tragedy. Furthermore, Yeats’ description of the men’s climb is extremely panoramic, emphasizing his ability as observer to take a step back and view the scene from a distance: “and I / Delight to imagine them seated there; / There, on the mountain and the sky, / On all the tragic scene they stare” (49-52). Like the characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies, these men view a doomed world, but from a distance and without the histrionics of hysterical women. Their viewpoint is accompanied by “mournful melodies” (53), yet their eyes remain gay. Yeats also skillfully incorporates the physical mars on the Lapis Lazuli carving into the imagery of the poem to enhance the sense of his own distance. He writes, “Every discolouration of the stone, / Every accidental crack or dent / Seems a water-course or avalanche” (43-5). These poetic interpretations of the engraving’s blemishes emphasize Yeats’ physical detachment, since he imagines every tiny mark on the stone to be an enormous natural formation—“a water-course or an avalanche”—within the scene itself. The broadly panoramic view of the situation laid out here suggests that like the actors who portray the Shakespearean characters in the second stanza, Yeats is part of a “play within a play”—from his vantage point, he surveys the two old Chinese men, who in turn watch over the “tragic scene” beneath them. By Yeats’ own prescription from the second stanza, if he as a poet and artist is truly “worthy [his] prominent part,” he must realize that the “tragic scene” upon which the Chinamen gaze is transfigured by gaiety, or that sense of acceptance and wholeness which understands that “all things fall and are built again.” The form of Yeats’ poem also mirrors this central theme. Variations of the word “gaiety” are scattered throughout the poem, appearing at least once in four of the five stanzas and punctuating the final line with a certain finality. While the first instance of the word is jarring, by the end, it has emerged so frequently and in so many contexts (poets, the actors, rebuilding civilizations, the Chinese men in the engraving) that it adopts a certain feeling of inevitability of its own. Perhaps the word’s repetition throughout the poem is meant to mirror the unavoidable cycle of history and renewal that a mind transfigured by gaiety must learn to recognize. Just as “Lapis Lazuli” turns to the carving at the end to provide another view of the central theme, the Crazy Jane poem also ends with a slightly altered reassertion of the fair vs. foul discussion: “For nothing can be sole or whole / That has not been rent” (17-8). This assertion again challenges the validity of a descriptor (in this case “sole or whole”) without the simultaneous existence of its contrast (“rent”). In contrast to the Bishop, who seems to argue that man should focus solely on the heavenly afterlife, Jane’s emphasis on the importance of oppositions in defining meaning suggests that the Bishop’s one-sided declarations are meaningless. Just as he does in “Lapis Lazuli,” Yeats challenges the reader to reconsider the judgments assigned to certain words by the characters at the beginning of the poem. While the Bishop and the hysterical women both seem to have logical positions, further examination ultimately proves both of their interpretations to be shallow and immature. Thus, both “Lapis Lazuli” and “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” challenge the reader to rethink particular views of certain words. In the former, gaiety is at first presented as derogatory description of the seemingly frivolous project of artists and poets, but as the poem progresses, it becomes clear that the term is better applied to a certain sense of distance and a joy for constantly rebuilding that which is doomed to fall again. In the latter, Jane challenges the bishop’s original characterization of the world as a “foul sty” and command to live in a “heavenly mansion” by arguing that descriptors such as “foul” and “heavenly” are often derivative—one cannot exist without the other. This emphasis on the need for a revision of values suggests poetry’s power to reshape language itself. Perhaps if we as readers are worthy our prominent part in understanding art, we, like the actors in “Lapis Lazuli” or like Crazy Jane, must constantly look beneath the surface and recognize the wonderful suppleness of meaning that defines poetic language.
i) Yeats, William B. The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats: Revised Second Edition (Ed.: Richard J. Finneran). Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1996. ii) Refer to Blige, Mary J. “Family Affair.” No More Drama. MCA Records. 2001 |