Yeats And The Soul Mate Analysis

identity;additionally, twelve means the“cosmic order and salvation” that Yeats as an artist tries to bring for his nation (232-4). Yeats’s combination seems meaningful as the fusion of five, twelve and one happens in his poem[(12*5) -1=59]. He is preoccupied with an image of a modern man who is “disillusioned due to mechanization” and lives in an age where “romances were coming to an end and people were getting brutal” (Azam 2). Disillusioned as a modern man and witnessed the “lack of harmony and strength in modern culture, Yeats [have] tried torevive the ancient spells and chant to bring unity and a spirit of integrationin moderncivilization torn by conflicts and dissensions” (ibid.).He tries to be the prophetic poet whocan make sixty out

It is similar to the poet’s life since he used to love Maud Gonne, the Soul Mate, “the princess or ‘beautiful lady’-incarnation of inspiration and spiritual fulfillment” (Guerin, et.al. 187) who refuses to marry him.Therefore, the single swan represents Yeats.And the missing swan is Maud Gonne who can be associated with thestunning image of the swan (Levine 411). By composing the poem, Yeats“finally learned to release the nine-and-fifty swans at Coole from his private obsession, freeing them and all later swans in his poetry to become universal symbols for his readers” (Levine 411).

In this poem, Yeatstries to compare two visits that he made to Coole Park, Lady Gregory’s country estate: one in 1897 and the second in 1916. Lady Augusta Gregory, Yeats’s friend and patron, for whom hefeels indebted for paving the way to regenerate Ireland’s national identity is responsible forbringingpersistent nobility to hisuncertain thoughts(Cowell 26-27). Lady Augusta Gregoryalso epitomizes the Good Mother(i.e. good aspects of the Earth Mother) which means that she’s“associated with the life principle, birth, warmth, nourishment, protection, fertility, growth, abundance”

Through confrontation with nature, examining it as a source of ideas, motifs, and myths, Yeats sheds light onhis interior state of self bewildered by torments of the past.Aware of predetermineddynamism of symbols and images, he draws them from nature, Irish folklore and mythology to illuminate his sense of the plights of a modern manexposed to the tragedy of collapsing of modern civilization due to brutalities of the First World War. Knowing of more crisis in the offing, the poet attempts to curb all the disasters, whether natural, national or global through the healing power of his imaginative art. Tormented by the atrophy of old age, however, the poet aspires to defy time through his quest for passionate desires. Thus, he makes no demur to capitalize on “nature as his anti-self” to embody “a fuller vision of reality grasped by his whole new being” (Miyake 54, 59). Surviving from an emotional crisis, this time he tries his best to absorb the élan of the world of symbolism in order to capture the powers of eternity.Through his portrayal of the swans, Yeatsattempts to lead hiscontemplations on the inevitable changes due to aging and thus offers a fullervision of