Yeats et la mort

Abstract

The macabre tendency which characterizes fin-de-siècle aesthetics is perceptible in Yeats 's volume The Rose. Maud Gonne is involved in "A Dream of Death". Through images inspired by Rossetti, The Shadowy Waters suggests the symbolical accomplishment of the two lovers' union beyond death. Along the years, a register of the dead appears in Yeats 's poetry (The Wild Swans at Coole), with occasionally a mythicization of the deceased, raised to the rank of a hero (Parnell), the historical event turning into a sacred ritual. Then the poet asks himself whether death is transfiguration or annihilation. "Blood and the Moon" states that the dead alone will reach wisdom ; to "make [one's] soul" is a way of facing an imminent end. On the contrary "The Man and the Echo" expresses the temptation of oblivion in annihilation ; man, like a dying animal, cries out his despair. The shadow of death, which exacerbates the desire to make the most of life, changes a human being into a tragic character. In the West, at the heart of despair, we hear the heroic cry of the tragic characters ; whereas for the East reincarnation is the solution. This "tragic joy" ("Lapis Lazuli") is a humanistic message. At the same time as he attributes the creation of death to man, the poet tries to explore "mummy truths". Death, in his epitaph, is considered with a heroic indifference, but in "The Apparitions", it is "the increasing Night / That opens her mystery and fright".