Western modernist literature's tendency towards personal utopia

Author: Wu Yuejin
Author Country: China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features:
Fragment: Perhaps, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was luckier than Rilke (in terms of personal psychological experience). Although Rilke often entered the realm of Orpheus's song and "angels," that kind of insight during "transformation" was not very stable. The impermanent world would throw cold darts at him everywhere, breaking his peace and casting him into emptiness. On the other hand, Yeats was different. This great Irish poet, whose three lifelong pursuits became his solid pillars of life and spiritual home, included:
First, his deep affection for the homeland of Ireland's national cultural independence, a warm place deep in the poet's heart;
Second, his passionate love for art, which was the form and content of his life, representing the highest value pursuit;
Third, his relentless pursuit of the mysteries of the soul and the illusions of history, which served as the order governing his world in the face of the "dispersed" world (as Yeats wrote in a poem: "Everything is scattered, and the center cannot be held").
For Yeats, all three aspects were equally important, and he never doubted or hesitated. He could be said to have devoted himself wholeheartedly to them at all times. This was his fortune, the certainty he recognized in his life. But Yeats had his own problems—these three aspects often conflicted, splitting his values. Thus, finding "the unity of existence"—a higher vantage point—became his ideal.
In his essay "If I Were Twenty-Four" (1919), he discussed this unity:
When I was about twenty-three or twenty-four, one day, a sentence seemed to form in my mind without deliberate thought, as if it came to me in a half-awake state: "Hew your thoughts into unity." For many days, I couldn’t think of anything else; for many years, I used that sentence to examine everything I did. I had three interests: an interest in literature, an interest in philosophy, and a belief in national character. These seemed unrelated to each other, but gradually, my love for literature and my belief in national character came together. Then, for many years, I told myself that these two had nothing to do with my philosophy. However, as long as I remained sincere and didn’t let one limit the other, they would become the same interest. Now, I think, the three interests have become one—I would rather say that the three interests are different manifestations of the same belief.
This is Yeats’s concise summary of his life’s conflicts, contradictions, and eventual convergence toward unity, as well as the process by which he composed his personal utopia with composure yet difficulty.