The Daimon and Anti-Self Concepts in Per Amica Silentia Lunae by William Yeats :: Per Amica Silentia Lunae William Yeats Essays

The Daimon and Anti-Self Concepts in Per Amica Silentia Lunae by William Yeats In July of 1914 Yeats began communicating during seances with a spirit which he called his "daimon," one Leo Africanus, a Renaissance geographer and traveller. At Leo's request, through the voice of the medium, Yeats began a written correspondence in which he would write questions and observations to Leo, and Leo would answer through Yeats's hand. This correspondence would prove influential in Yeats's evolving concept of the sources of artistic inspiration as emanating from the interaction between the physical and the spiritual worlds. This paper will explore the growth of the daimon concept out of Yeats's divided-self theory during his correspondence with Leo Africanus and then its explication in the 1917 Per Amica Silentia Lunae. Background From the beginning of his literary career Yeats, like many authors in this age of a dawning awareness of modern psychology and concept of the sub-conscious, had been fascinated with the concept of an divided self or anti-self or a self which is covered by a mask or "pose." In these early John Sherman stories, the the dreamy, unsophisticated John Sherman is tempted by the elegant, citified, and High Church Rev. William Howard. In the Rosa Alchemica stories of 1897, we are introduced to two characters who will remain staples of Yeats's oeuvre: the pious, conventional John Aherne who is "educated" and tempted by the mysterious Michael Robartes, with his secrets of the "Order of the Alchemical Rose." In On Baile's Strand (1904) the instinctive, active warrior Cuchulain struggles against the wiles of the crafty, domesticated ruler Conchubar. By the 1900's, Yeats is using the metaphor of the mask to portray this dichotomy in man. "The mask," Richard Ellmann says, "had come to occupy in his system during the first decade of this century the position which the rose had held in it during the 'nineties" (190). In 1907 he begins The Player Queen, in which each character seeks an antithetical self, and he introduces it with the explicit song "The Mask." Whatever exactly "the mask" is--an alter-ego, a heroic ideal, a protective shield--it is a metaphor for an internal struggle, a psychological process. The next step would be to give this process more cosmic implications by making the struggle involve an outside force, a representative from the "spirit world" who could put one in contact with the "beyond." This would happen when Yeats discovered his Daimon. The Daimon and Anti-Self Concepts in Per Amica Silentia Lunae by William Yeats :: Per Amica Silentia Lunae William Yeats Essays The Daimon and Anti-Self Concepts in Per Amica Silentia Lunae by William Yeats In July of 1914 Yeats began communicating during seances with a spirit which he called his "daimon," one Leo Africanus, a Renaissance geographer and traveller. At Leo's request, through the voice of the medium, Yeats began a written correspondence in which he would write questions and observations to Leo, and Leo would answer through Yeats's hand. This correspondence would prove influential in Yeats's evolving concept of the sources of artistic inspiration as emanating from the interaction between the physical and the spiritual worlds. This paper will explore the growth of the daimon concept out of Yeats's divided-self theory during his correspondence with Leo Africanus and then its explication in the 1917 Per Amica Silentia Lunae. Background From the beginning of his literary career Yeats, like many authors in this age of a dawning awareness of modern psychology and concept of the sub-conscious, had been fascinated with the concept of an divided self or anti-self or a self which is covered by a mask or "pose." In these early John Sherman stories, the the dreamy, unsophisticated John Sherman is tempted by the elegant, citified, and High Church Rev. William Howard. In the Rosa Alchemica stories of 1897, we are introduced to two characters who will remain staples of Yeats's oeuvre: the pious, conventional John Aherne who is "educated" and tempted by the mysterious Michael Robartes, with his secrets of the "Order of the Alchemical Rose." In On Baile's Strand (1904) the instinctive, active warrior Cuchulain struggles against the wiles of the crafty, domesticated ruler Conchubar. By the 1900's, Yeats is using the metaphor of the mask to portray this dichotomy in man. "The mask," Richard Ellmann says, "had come to occupy in his system during the first decade of this century the position which the rose had held in it during the 'nineties" (190). In 1907 he begins The Player Queen, in which each character seeks an antithetical self, and he introduces it with the explicit song "The Mask." Whatever exactly "the mask" is--an alter-ego, a heroic ideal, a protective shield--it is a metaphor for an internal struggle, a psychological process. The next step would be to give this process more cosmic implications by making the struggle involve an outside force, a representative from the "spirit world" who could put one in contact with the "beyond." This would happen when Yeats discovered his Daimon.