Mirrors and Lamps: Yeats’s Vision and the Logic of the Palimpsest

Abstract

This study aims to provide a novel understanding of W. B. Yeats’s systematic view of reality and human experience, generally referred to as his Vision. De Man’s deconstructive reading of Yeats has demonstrated that this vision operates according to a particular mode of logic that differs radically from the standard economy of binary oppositions. Building on de Man’s findings, and with reference to Shelley’s poem “Witch of Atlas,” this paper attempts to re-configure the primary-antithetical structure of Yeats’s Vision in terms of ‘repetition with-in difference,’ interpreting his view of personal and historical reality as a ‘graft’ of lives and destinies—layer upon layer, none erased yet all under-erasure, like a palimpsest. In this respect, the fatalistic strain within Yeats’s vision is read as a heterogeneous play of Fate and Destiny. The remainder of the paper thoroughly examines Yeats’s iconic metaphor of mirror vs. the lamp regarding the role of the poet as imitator vs. creator and the theological analogy of the poet as God. Applying the insights derived from the study, and with reference to Goethe’s idea of “repeated reflection,” the lamp-mirror divide is argued to be governed by the undecidable logic of the palimpsest.