Masking the Profound: Yeats and Nietzsche’s Masks
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published 07/08/2007
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SummaryThough it is impossible to measure the degree of influence that the work of Friedrich Nietzsche had upon William Butler Yeats, a definite change in Yeats' poetry occurred soon after the point in which the Irishman received a copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra in 1902. The “masks” that suddenly appear in his poetry that same year bear striking relations to the masks that populate Nietzsche’s books, especially Beyond Good and Evil. Beginning with “Adam’s Curse” and continuing throughout his career, Yeats employs Nietzschean masks as constructs that shield profound spirits who exist beyond the laws of man from that unworthy realm.
Table of Contents
- Among the first poems written following his immersion in Nietzsche, 'Adam's Curse' marks a drastic turn in Yeats' work
- The poet of 'Adam's Curse' belongs to the 'philosophers and friends' to whom Nietzsche orders 'take care . . . of knowledge' and 'beware of martyrdom!?
- According to Nietzsche, the kind of nobleness exemplified in Helen (Maud Gonne), is the product of profound suffering
- The other lover declines, for '‘It was the mask engaged your mind,??
- In 'A Coat,' published four years after 'The Mask,' Yeats seems to suggest he may be leaving Nietzsche's masks behind
- Keats' mask, 'his deliberate happiness,' can be diagnosed as Epicureanism, 'one of the most refined disguises' for the noble who have suffered profoundly
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