The inability of Yeats’s poems to resolve comes from their paradoxical nature, what I take to be negative capability. I feel that the examining this attribute is the same as answering questions concerning Yeats’s influence. Even in noticing the mythological and classical references he makes shows the different ideals he plays with. In “Solomon and Sheba” we see Yeats play with biblical characters, and then in “Lines Written in Dejection” mythological images of centaurs and heroes appear. This could easily boil down to the question of Irish identity again, paying homage to all the ancient cultures found in Ireland; he borrows Catholics and Protestants with biblical imagery, and Celtics, Romans and Greeks for mythological ones. But in this later group of poems there is a large emphasis on how these influences not only affect his identity, but his thought process. This notion is emphasized in “The Phases of the Moon,” with the man locked in his tower seeking “in a book or manuscript/ what he shall never find” (19-20). The Pre-Raphaelites influence is also found in this poem in how the reader has found “mere images.” This seems likes Yeats mocking himself, calling out his obsession with images for their own sake like many Pre-Raphaelites. Where Yeats really seems to confuse himself is that he hopes to find “an image of mysterious wisdom won by toil” (18), and unlike the pre-Raphaelites seeks Truth from these images, like those found in biblical and mythological text.
We see this image seeker in a much more depressed state in “Lines Written in Dejection.” The narrator calls witches noble and centaurs holy, which both are rather unfitting. But in his aging he has separated from the dreamlike world, created by the moon, he has to deal with sunlight. The sunlight illuminates reality for the speaker, which contrasts the candlelight that the man locked in the tower uses “The Phases of the Moon,” for he still plays in the world of image.
One last genre-bend Yeats does not only affects his psyche, but his style. While dense and eerie, “Upon a Dying Lady” has an amusing rhythm, switching between more dramatic and lyrical poetics. Not only is this poem filled with a rhythmic back and forth, but it also moves from death to dancing, and mass to dolls. The reader is even unsure of the relation to this dying Lady; she is called an enemy but is praised for her courage. In the end having courage like warring emperors. And all this confusion is only resolved with a scene of the dying woman receiving a Christmas tree and a reminder of death. I feel that this poem as a whole embodies the expanse of Yeats’s influence, but in turn leaves me the most perplexed. Is this lady meant to be favored, blamed, maybe pitied? I also wonder, since Yeats is so fascinated with cycles and death, does he pay attention to this lady only because she is dying?
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Your responses are interesting. To answer your "modernism" question, I think it takes Yeats some time to write like a modernist. He goes back and forth between "symbolism" and "realism" in his early work, and perhaps the most (paleo-)modernist thing about him is his obsession with antinomies or oppositions. In addition, "science" in a very strange form enters his poetry as he gets older. But you are right about his inability to reconcile various influences. However, ultimately, as a modernist, his job is not to reconcile them but to show that apparently opposed influences (such as realism and symbolism) are not opposed at all. Various things you mention could be the starting point for your paper: preraphaelites, the motifs of sun and moon (specific topics are better), the wanderer figure... etc. Whatever you do, you'll need to put it in the context of Yeats's lifelong philosoophical struggle.
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