THE DOUBLE POETIC OF W. B. YEATS

Abstract

In the double poetic of W. B. Yeats, a certain relation between poems is initiated; and this relation is not only interpreted by means of various approaches to the theories of intertextuality but rather the theory of deconstruction as well. Yeats makes it so his poems lean on one another, creating in his poetic practice a self-referentiality, owing to the fact that he uses his own poetry as a basis for further verse-creation. Reality is, in fact, art, which is why in the space between poems a narrative pointed toward diverse themes is formed. One of these themes is art and the poet’s experience of creating a work of art which the poet showcases in his own writings through indications such as repeated verses or themes that guide the reader into a multifaceted nexus of meaning and space between poems in which they create and write a new work of art in the form of an interpretation. Writing about their own experience of the poem, the poet writes about the poem itself, making the experience of writing and the poem the themes of the poem. However, by writing about their own experience of how they write, the poet achieves a complex modernist meta-quality. They do not directly talk about the poem and the laws it rests upon nor do they critique previous rules and derive ideologies behind them nor do they personally set foot in the work of art as is in postmodernism, but rather they do so by means of complex poetic images. These images enable the intricate meta-quality that refers us to the space between poems and makes another important characteristic through which Yeats gets close to modernist poetic possible – communication. The poems communicate with one another and in that exchange the question and theme of communication, which is of great importance to modernist poetic both in poetry and narrative, is raised. If it could be said that money is the main topic of realism, then time would be the main topic of the stream-of-consciousness novel, as well as, in a sense, the modernist novel in general. What distinguishes modernist poetic, besides the theme of communication as a form of discourse – a transfer of knowledge – is the creation of both the identity of the work of art itself and the very social function of the poet – a topos theme of world literature – made possible through the self-same communication. Moreover, communication does not only involve the exchange between two or more poems, in which by way of repetition is the différance of the same, in the space between two or more poems shown, but also the change and transposition of meaning from one place to another. In this way, modernist poets directly deal with the issues of the creation of art itself and the fundamental, often indistinguishable question of what artistic is and when the border between the artistic and inartistic is crossed in a work of art. Through the use of paratextual material – the title, subtitle and the comments – the reader is included in the creation of the work of art as an important link. They as the semiotic reader, in Eco’s terms, through their own literary knowledge create a work of art in which they communicate with the author, while simultaneously correcting that selfsame communication by means of their inner semantic reader whom they never forget, since the writer beguiles their readers through intertextual irony and, especially, meta-quality. The doubleness of reading marks the duality of the creation of a work that has double relations: to itself and to the reality that it – through other works – either expresses or denies but always regards again and again with its writing and its relation to it.