Yeats and Wilde: The Coinage of Souls

	In the 1800s in Ireland, at the height of the Decadent Movement, two great
poet-playwrights became household names in literary circles--William Butler Yeats and
Oscar Wilde.  Yeats and Wilde shared many of the same influences and beliefs, but they
also had many differences.  While both of them saw man as a two-faced coin, they looked
at that coin from two very different sides of life.  While Yeats was a political activist,
Wilde was the victim of moral politics.  These situations obviously colored and changed
the attitudes of the two writers, effectively differentiating between their viewpoints of  a
shared philosophy.
	The concept of duality was very much in vogue during the Victorian era.  It was a
time of double standards which resulted in sometimes violent inner struggles.  For Yeats
and Wilde duality was also reflected in the beliefs of a common influence--William
Pater--who spoke of �the dialogue of the soul with itself.�  This dialogue for Wilde
focused on his homosexuality.  The Picture of Dorian Gray reflected Wilde�s fear of
action.  Lord Henry Wotton was Wilde�s idealistic self.  He reflected Wilde�s desires, but
kept them at a purely Platonic level.  Gray, on the other hand, was the action that would
doom Wilde at the hands of the moral politics of the time.  Like the Fool card in the Tarot,
The Picture of Dorian Gray represents the wild, reckless side of us all leaping over the
cliff�s edge as the conservative and cautious side of us looks on. For Yeats, this inner
struggle was between the dreamer and the realist.  His father was a skeptic and his
obsessive love for Maude Gonne reinforced his father�s logic and realism.  Within him,
however, there was a dreamer who believed in great spiritualism, the faery folk, and the
heroism of ancient Ireland.  In 1900, with The Shadowy Waters, Yeats revealed a wish to
escape from himself.  His duality was further evidenced in the character of Fergus, who
was at the same time half-king and double king.  Yeats believed that no one could choose
abundantly between opposites.  This idea became flesh in the old man of �Sailing to
Byzantium� and spirit in �The Magi�.  Duality is also seen in the two forms of Cathleen Ni
Houlihan in his play of the same title.  She is at once the beautiful young queen and the
withered old crone;  the dream and the reality of Ireland.
	The politics of the two greatly influenced their presentation of their ideas about the
dual nature of man. Wilde, the victim of moral politics, presented this duality in victim
form--Dorian Gray.  Gray, who represented the feared actions of Wilde in The Picture of
Dorian Gray, was as much a victim of himself as were the innocents that he injured along
the way.  Yeats, on the other hand, presented his inner struggles in heroic and patriotic
forms inspired by his political activism.  Cathleen Ni Houlihan is Ireland herself.  The older
man in �Sailing to Byzantium� is also a political figure.  He is the witness of the decadence
of the Democracy of Ireland that, once achieved, became too much for those who had
fought for it to handle.  Once again, the dream bursts into reality.  Yeats very much
wanted to be the hero, while Wilde merely wanted to triumph over himself.
	Perhaps politics can also explain why Yeats continued to advance in power
seemingly to the day of his death and Wilde faded out like candle flame well before his last
breath.  Yeats remained a figure of Ireland to be sung about in churches at Sligo, and
revered by his countrymen because of his activism and preservation of patriotism. Wilde,
ever the victim, was imprisoned for sodomy and, upon release, placed himself in exile in
Paris.  �The Ballad or Reading Gaol� and De Profundis became the only important literary
works to come from his post-prison period.
	Their beliefs about art itself might sum up their attitudes best:  Yeats said that
works of art beget other works of art;  Wilde said that works of art murder other works of
art.  These beliefs could stem from their respective positions in society.  Yeats was in a
position in which his surroundings encouraged his art--he was involved heavily with the
theatre and with causes that struck a patriotic chord in his poet�s heart. Wilde�s world was
stifling--he could not show his true face to society and those few that did know him (Lord
Alfred Douglas, for example) did not encourage his work.  Although Yeats believed Wilde
to be a �man of action�, he was actually a man being acted upon, and, although Yeats
often believed himself to be a dreamer, he was, many times, the artist of reality.  Like the
boy on the dolphin, they were both playing their harps in water that was far above their
heads.