University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series (Jun 2015)
Alternative Spirituality in W.B. Yeats’s Writings
Abstract
Yeats’s works appear to be dominated by a constant pursuit of the collective sacred knowledge that must have been passed down from generations and which is often reveled in the tension between the material reality and the spiritual world. Drawing on and challenging at the same time the Christian tradition of his country, but also Neo-Platonism, Hinduism and the occult (Theosophy, The Order of the Golden Dawn, spiritualism and folklore), Yeats placed spirituality at the center of his life and writings. Visions of on Irish occult secret order, of an Anima Mundi that stores everything that has been humanly thought, the belief in reincarnation and a cyclical theory of time, symbolism and the power of evocation and invocation of language, all these aspects offered Yeats a life-long belief that he was on the edge of a revelation. In his desire to gain access to a world religion, to have a revelation of a universal pattern or of the Unitary Being and to liberate the Irish consciousness, Yeats harmonized all these religious, philosophical, supernatural, folk and literary traditions.
