Isolating Creative Motivation: Yeats wake!

Yeats, Dependent.

In “Yeats Without Analogue,” Richard Ellmann explains Yeats’s poetry, process, and persona through a series of comparisons and examples, offering numerous insights into the multifaceted significance of the grand literary figure while situating his own critical project within the bigger context of Yeats scholarship. The comparisons, to a variety of artists and thinkers, provide interesting juxtapositions with insightful distinctions and emphases, but ultimately Ellmann fails to make an especially resonant argument about Yeats that doesn’t rely upon comparison or influence. That is, he often makes bold and resonant statements about Yeats’s poetry, but situates them between and against qualities these other artists (namely Michaelangelo, Blake, and Mallarme) exhibit. For example: “When we think of Yeats,” he writes, “we think of unprecedented modulation” (21) Taken alone, this observation provides a salient assessment of Yeats’s poetic import, its tantalizing mutability and captivating amplitude. However, Ellmann undercuts this statement of great weight by spending nearly equal time assessing Blake’s poetic philosophy and effect – rather than offering Blake as a jumping-off point for his Yeats discussion, Elmmann mires himself in comparative strategies that ultimately weaken his final argument. He similarly spends considerable time explaining Mallarme and his symbolist practices, noting Yeats’s fascination with such tactics and how they enriched without restricting his creative process. Of course, comparison is important, and the Mallarme/Yeats juxtaposition certainly provokes consideration. Ultimately, though, as Ellmann asserts Yeats as asserting “his independence” – the majority of his argument depends too heavily on comparisons to other greats and influences. Considering Yeats “Without Analogue” seems pretty safe – just as considering Shakespeare or Milton, Virginia Woolf or James Joyce, to be figures above comparison seems a smart bet. As is, though, this argument unfortunately insists upon degrading that distinction, failing to provide enough material on Yeats alone. These other figures, which he claims to be “on the perimeter of this consciousness,” that is, dilute his ultimate thesis, that “at its center we see only and supremely Yeats” (32).