The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

The Art of Yeats's "Lapis Lazuli" Author(s): William H. O'Donnell Reviewed work(s): Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 353-367 Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25089307 . Accessed: 26/11/2011 09:46
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William

H.

O'Donnell The Art "Lapis of Yeats's Lazuli"

THE

are widely CLOSING LINES of Yeats's ad "Lapis Lazuli" and for the quiet, yet compell mired for their majestic rhythms that resides in the poem's final word, "gay." ing note of optimism The wonderfully rich rhetorical fabric of the poem leads readers to of inevitable?choice almost accept "gay" as an apt?and perhaps word, even though ordinary suggest that "sad" ismore logic might the eyes of those old Chinamen for describing who appropriate listen to mournful music while they stare at a tragic scene. While is achieved principally Yeats's triumphant artistry in this poem and sometimes idio rhetoric, his long-standing through poetical a significant of syncratic interest in the visual arts provides portion the material from which the poem is built. A fuller understanding of the poem's visual arts background, which is much less readily tomost structure readers than are the poem's accessible rhetorical can perhaps and its historical and literary references, enrich the pleasure which we gain from the poem. The obvious of the role of the starting point for an examination of course, the lapis lazuli carving itself. visual arts in this poem is, This Ch'ien Lung period stands 26.7cm. "mountain" (1739-1795) on its ornate wooden (10%") high [30.7 cm. (12") when mounted a scene much and is carved with like that which Yeats base] in the poem. On the front, three men ascend a mountain describes is a bearded leader, who path toward a little temple or house. The beardless disciple who follows sage, half turns to face a younger, are followed two men him. These at a respectful close behind distance by a single serving man who carries what may be a lute. mountain is covered with crags, waterfalls, and pine trees,

The

The author gratefully acknowledges Council of Learned Societies.

the support

of

the American

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Review

groups of needles.1 The recognizable by their stylized traditional on the back, with more pine scene continues mountain trees, a in carvings from this crane, and, as is not uncommon flying in four, seven-syllable lines. period, a court poem "Mountains" like Yeats's, although carved in jade, were usually the favorite subjects for royal artisans during the Ch'ien and especially in the eighteenth the reign dynasty century during of Ch'ien who was a great patron arts. A of the visual Lung, carved lapis lazuli mountain similar, but more skillfully (width: 33 among of Asian Art Museum Collection, cm.) is in the Avery Brundage The San Francisco.2 of a recent exhibition of Chinese catalogue "should perhaps be regarded as jade states that these mountains for poetic Their objects contemplation. rocky slopes are often with and animals from the drawn peopled symbolic figures are engraved also with poems."3 of Taoism, and many mythology two men and the servant on Yeats's are anony The "mountain" retreat is associated but their journey towards a mountain mous, on with Taoism's favor of simplicity isolation and of tranquil on the a person can concentrate where his attention mountains, Tao of the universe) without the distrac (the ultimate principle tions of ordinary life. This Taoist is reinforced ambition by the are Chinese pines and the crane, both of which symbols of immor tality or longevity. on 4 July Yeats received the lapis lazuli mountain 1935 as a seventieth from Henry de Ver? present birthday (Harry) Talbot towhom the poem is dedicated. Mr. Clifton, who was then Clifton, and twenty-seven years old, is a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford has published three volumes of poetry (in 1932, 1934, and 1942). a His home is near Blackpool, but his father also owned family in Co. Gal way near Oliver house St. John Gogarty's and Renvyle was a member of the Kildare in Dublin. His mother, Street Club 1A black and white photograph of the front of the carving is available in Jon Stallworthy, Vision and Revision in Yeats's Last Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), frontispiece and dust jacket. 2 Described and illustrated in Ren?-Yvon Lefebvre d'Argenc?, Chinese in the Avery Brundage Collection lades (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 1972), plate LXIV, and also in the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Oriental Ceramic Society, Chinese lade Throughout the Ages (London, 1975), (494) and p. 20 (color). 3 the Ages, p. 135. Chinese Jade Throughout

354

The Art of Yeafs

''Lapis Lazuli

was deeply in religion interested Violet Mary Beauclerk Clifton, a play, she wrote several travel books, a biography, and mysticism; a London which and some poetry. The lapis lazuli mountain, have been valued in 1935 at approximately dealer estimates would of Yeats's birthday the most ?200 to ?300, was certainly splendid was the Rossetti nearest competitor draw pencil-and-ink gifts?its (in a frame that misspells ing, "Cat's Cradle," which was presented friends. Yeats's the artist's name) by a group of Yeats's English in two letters for the mountain is apparent admiration immediate on 6 July to Edmund that he wrote Dulac and Dorothy 1935, were art. In the in Chinese interested both of whom Wellesley, letter to Dulac,4 Yeats described this gift, which had (unpublished) as a beautiful, come two days before from young Harry Clifton, huge piece of lapis lazuli that some Chinese sculptor had carved into the semblance of a mountain with paths, waters[?], trees, a little temple, a sage, and his pupil. Yeats added that there is an on the back but that he didn't know what it says. Dulac inscription to is a poem and he offered that the inscription correctly guessed if Yeats could send him a copy or photo translate the inscription is so faint as to be virtually graph. But the inscription illegible, and never learned because Yeats never referred to it again, he probably than that the inscription is a poem. He was perhaps anything more as happy not to know the poem's that might just subject because some limit on the freedom with which have placed his imagina tion could roam when he thought the mountain. In the about other letter written that same day, to Dorothy Wellesley, Yeats gives a closely parallel description of the mountain: "... carved by some amountain Chinese into the semblance with a temple, of sculptor to climb and an ascetic and pupil the moun about trees, paths tain."5 Both of those brief descriptions omit two items that are used in the poem: the crane, which is on the back of the carving, and the who is only a subordinate serving-man, figure and who carries a defined that probably would have puzzled Yeats. vaguely object a few months, Within Yeats had decided the object carried by the servant is "a musical instrument" the (1. 42), and Yeats made "mournful melodies" the servant's "accomplished fin played by 46 July [1935], Humanities Research Center, University of Texas.

5Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), pp. 8-9 and The Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (London: Hart-Davis, 1954), p. 837.

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an important in the poem. That musical element emphasis to so five months the poem, after he had completed on, in another another dominate brief description of the mountain, are trans letter to Dorothy Wellesley, that the sage and disciple the Chinese where formed into "musicians": blue mountain, "My In that letter he puts climb to the little guest house_"6 musicians of a sage's or immortal's moun aside the traditional interpretation so that the scene can be "gayer" and less ascetic than tain, perhaps it would be if viewed conventionally. in Yeats's descriptions is that is apparent of the mountain What to a conventional of the himself he does not confine reading as for it suits his imaginative purposes, except when iconography, with his use of the crane as a symbol of longevity. He is example to say that "doubtless / plum or cherry-branch perfectly willing to the little half-way / Those Chinamen climb house Sweetens even though all of the trees in the carving are wards" (11. 47-49), to anyone whose is instantly recognizable careful stylization pines, of Chinese who has even an elementary knowledge iconography. trees appear on one of the pair of In fact, precisely similar pine Edmund Dulac had given scrolls which hanging large Chinese in Yeats's Yeats in 1922 and which study in the 1930s. The hung freedom need not be limited by the details of the physical poet's not and it matters Chinese iconography, object or by traditional one whit to us whether his freedom with details was a result of his or of his unfamiliarity with Chinese iconog lively imagination raphy. in the visual arts are usually keenly focused Yeats's enthusiasms seem bizarrely when his opinions and personal. Sometimes might in to us, they can be explained historical changes by idiosyncratic to relish artistic fashion, but more often they reflect his propensity the pursuit of isolated details of a work of visual art instead of to the characteristics that an art historian would attention paying with fascination For example, his youthfulconsider significant. in the a large painting which Turner's "Golden hung Bough," not be explained of Ireland,7 can, I am confident, National Gallery 6 Wednesday
Poetry, p. 129.

[?30December

1936] [received 1January

1937], Letters on

7 now in the T?te On loan from the National Gallery, London; seeMartin Butlin and Gallery (371). For an excellent color reproduction (New Haven: Yale of ]. M. W. Turner Evelyn Joli, The Paintings University Press, 1977), II, plate 334.

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The Art of Y eat's

' 'Lapis Lazuli"

only by the occult appeal of the golden bough as the talisman used the underworld for entering (Aeneid, VI), but also by the virtually of minute details that can be discovered storehouse inexhaustible of this painting's and imaginative shimmering study by patient of "The surface. The and indistinct temple in the left foreground to be as close examination itself upon reveals Golden Bough" as Gustave Moreau's "Salome Dancing richly jeweled painting before Herod." Yeats, as we know from his letters, enjoyed looking at the lapis use for him was as something but its ultimate lazuli mountain, for imaginative It was an object that sparked his imagination. rather than conventional analysis, contemplation iconographical and for that we readers of poetry can be richly grateful. as an object, The of the mountain per se, for importance in the probable is reflected order in contemplation imaginative of the poem were Even the several sections which composed. is not mentioned the mountain until the final stanza, Yeats though that stanza before the other three. In the surviving apparently wrote drafts and typescript, which have been carefully studied holograph the final stanza is the only portion of the by Jon Stallworthy,8 that is smooth and relatively unrevised, which that poem suggests the earlier drafts of the final stanza have been lost, perhaps because form before Yeats final stanza had already reached fairly smooth the other three stanzas. "Lapis Lazuli" was pub began drafting in July 1936, as Yeats lished in March 1938, but had been finished in a letter of 26 July 1936 and as Mrs. Yeats told Dorothy Wellesley likelihood that Yeats told A. Norman Jeff ares in the 1940s.9 The
8 Vision 9 W. Norman and Revision, letter "Notes pp. 43-59. Letters Lazuli,' on Poetry, p. 91. A. " Modern Language

B. Yeats, Jeffares,

Notes, Yeats
nor's

on the Collected Poems of W. B. 65 (1950), 488 and^4 Commentary (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968), p. 440. Frank O'Con
colorful a year ancedote after about his had own been "contribution"

to Dorothy Wellesley, on Yeats's 'Lapis

of this poem
nearly

can be ignored because

the poem

to the composition

it occurred
finished, even

in April
though

or May

1937,
was

the poem

not published until March 1938.His ancedote refers to theAbbey's revival 19-24 April 1937, of Lady Gregory's one-act play Dewor production, with the lateMoya Devlin, a pupil of the Abbey Theatre School of gilla,
Acting, as Dervogilla. O'Connor says that

to the Abbey Theatre's board of directors on 11 October appointment 1935 he had argued with the producer Hugh Hunt that the young actress

"immediately"

after

his

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at least the "Chinese" in 1935 is section of the poem launched, supported by his having only two days after he already received the mountain, into thoughtful musing about the implica as he recorded tions of the mountain, in a well-known letter to on 6 July hard stone, 1935: "Ascetic, pupil, Dorothy Wellesley theme of the sensual east. The heroic cry in the midst eternal of But no, I am wrong, the east has its solutions and despair. always therefore knows nothing of tragedy. It iswe, not the east, that must raise the heroic cry."10 Those already con preliminary thoughts on tragedy and on the difference tain the poem's emphasis between the "Western" and "Eastern" views of life. Yeats was fond of comparing those "Western" and "Eastern" to this poem. Hegel was his prime views in ways that are important that regards intellectual pride and optimism example of aWestern as a generalized the history of successive of civilizations chronicle from nature. In Yeats's view, man's ever-increasing independence in the achievements this Western interest of entire civilizations to of an individual is parallel rather than in the plight mortal as a means the focus on an afterlife of evading Christianity's of individual mortal existence. Thus Yeats can say that problems theWest, because of that ultimate formortal life, finds its disregard solutions of the human in an afterlife or in a outside sphere, moment that of supernatural ecstasy. But the East has solutions as a part of nature and as a part of the include the inc?vidual mortal in the title role should not be allowed
with Is the sobbing. it ever, under stage?' "It was that

to break up the final tragic speech

says O'Connor,

I asked Yeats, "that evening," on to weep for an actor any circumstances, permissible " his answer into he said, and he wrote 'Never,' 'Lapis Lazuli.'

Short History of Irish Literature: A Backward Look [Frank O'Connor,^ York: Putnam's, 1967), p. 174, and, for the quoted conversation, (New "Two Friends: Yeats and A. E.," The Yale Review, 29 Frank O'Connor, third account of this ancedote, inMy Father's (1939), 84-85.] O'Connor's Son (New York: Knopf, 1969), p. 212, is less specific about the date of this
visit: "... later,

that "during that visit Yeats was in a state of Father's Son (1969) mentions delight over a Chinese carving in lapis lazuli which some friend had given
him, and he was

visiting

Yeats

on

other

business...."

The

version

in My

istic of him that when he was in a mood conversation got swept in to the poetry." Backward Look (1967) describes the lapis (p. 174). acquisition"
10 Letters of W. B. Yeats, p. 837.

writing

his

acknowledgement

in verse.

It was

character

of excitement every casual (p. 212) The account in A as "a new lazuli mountain

358

The

Art

of Y eat's

' 'Lapis

Lazuli"

to Yeats, rejects intellectual ageless heavens. The East, according as trivial and is indifferent to history. The pride and optimism to be the East is content West is assertive, proud, and organized; of the natural world and spontaneous.11 and is humble part to this poem, first suggested The usual approach by Richard the "Western" first three stanzas with the is to contrast Ellmann,12 to Dorothy final stanza, based on Yeats's early statement "Eastern" that while we in theWest must raise the Wellesley, already quoted, of despair, the East has its own solutions heroic cry in the midst to notice of tragedy. But it is also instructive and knows nothing so that they first three stanzas are arranged that the "Western" move "Western" of the hysterical from the extreme viewpoint women to the very different Greek attitude of the "half-Asiatic" stanza are blind in the opening The women Callimachus. sculptor to anything other than contemporary European political-military or even a caricature of Hegel's events and are thus an exaggeration The of civilization. "Western" focus on the advancing history are impressive heroes and heroines second stanza's Shakespearean for of a successful, "Western" method difficult, although examples In the lapsing into hysteria. facing the tragedy of existence without to shift our attention third stanza we begin away from European The procession of civilizations civilization. vividly reminds us of the transience of every civilization, of course, the partic including, are the hysterical women about which ular European civilization so concerned. And later in that third stanza, we are intro then, to the Greek Because Yeats consid duced sculptor Callimachus. 13 to be "but half-European," be ered the Greeks any Greek would an appropriate to the "Eastern" from the "Western" transition as view of Callimachus sections of the poem, but Yeats's particular an artistic between East and West being intermediary probably the selection of this little known determined and relatively unim rather than, for example, the far more famous portant sculptor 11 See "An Indian Monk" (1932) and "The Holy Mountain" (1934), Essays and Introductions (London: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 427, 466-467, and 471 and ,4 Vision (1937) (New York: Macmillan, 1956), p. 257. 12Ellmann, The Identity of W. B. Yeats, 2nd ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), pp. 185-187 [1st edition published 1954]. 13 "Certain Noble 226. Plays of Japan" (1916), Essays and Introductions, p.

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whom Yeats mentions in three poems, "Nineteen Hun Phidias, dred and Nineteen" (w. 1919), "TheStatues" (w. 1938), and "Under Ben Bulben" (w. 1938).14 even Yeats chose the obscure Callimachus for "Lapis Lazuli" in "Nineteen Hundred he had made closely and Nineteen" though similar use of "Phidias' famous ivories" as an example of the loss of works of art: Many
That

ingenious
seemed

lovely things are gone

to the multitude?

sheer miracle

There
Amid An

stood
the ornamental bronze made and stone wood?15 image the golden of olive

ancient

And gone are Phidias'

And all

famous

ivories
and bees.16

grasshoppers

14 The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, ed. Peter Allit and Russell K. Alspach 1957), pp. 428,1. 7; 430,1. (New York: Macmillan, 47; 11. 15-16; and 638, 1. 44.
15 The "ancient

tree on the Acropolis (Pausanias, I. Acropolis" 27. 2), as suggested by Jeffares [Commentary on the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, p. 274] or, perhaps more likely, the ancient olive-wood image on the Parthenon, of Athena Polias which stood in the Erechtheum the same building that housed Callimachus's lamp and chimney which are could be the sacred olive
mentioned II, 340 mistocles, in "Lapis (commentary 10.] Lazuli." on I. 26. 6); [Frazer, Pausanias's see also Pausanias, Description I. 26. of Greece, 6; Tertullian,

image

made

of

olive

wood

. . . that

stump

on

the

Apologeticus,

16; Philostratus,

Vit. Apollon.,

3. 14; and Plutarch,

The

linked to 16The "golden grasshoppers and bees," which are explicitly Phidias in the 1921 -1922 version of the poem (''And all his golden_" ),
are untraced. The reference might have sprung from something Yeats

heard from Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, whose collection of included a bronze Egyptian grasshopper ancient jewelry and ornaments (E. 9. 1937); exhibited and illustrated: [Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge All for Art: The Ricketts and Fitzwilliam Museum, 1979, Cambridge, Shannon Collection (921)]. Jeffares has noted [Commentary on the Col lected Poems of W. B. Yeats, p. 274] that Thucydides, of the History fashion of "fastening up the Athenian War, I. 6mentions Peloponnesian their hair in a knot held by a golden grasshopper as a brooch." That detail because of and Nineteen" is particularly apt in "Nineteen Hundred use of these hair ornaments as an outmoded fashion in The Aristophanes' (984, "chirrupers Knights (1331, "the golden cicala") and The Clouds in gold") [Loeb Library translations]. Yeats's choice of "bees" mounted
rather and than rhythm. cicala or grasshoppers may have been controlled by rhyme

360

The Art of Y eat's "Lapis Lazuli

None dares admit, if such a thought were his,

Incendiary or bigot could be found To burn that stump on the Acropolis, Or break in bits the famous ivories
Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.17

The

reference to his probably in the celia of which was one

to "Phidias' famous [1921/1922: carven] ivories" is statue of Athena famous chryselephantine colossal the Parthenon That statue, ("Athena Parthenos"). of the most admired works of antiquity, had ivory The drapery was covered with hands, feet, head, and decoration. none of Phidias' statues has sur sheet gold.18 Although colossal with the famous Parthenon vived, his association frieze, which in the British Museum, Yeats admired would have made Phidias as an extreme example less useless than Callimachus of a Greek artist whose beautiful works have disappeared. But, as will become from a brief explanation of the art historical and Yeatsian apparent the selection of Callimachus for "Lapis Lazuli" backgrounds, on his special role in the poem's probably depended primarily
"East-West" motif.

to Yeats's scheme of history, Greek art moved from an According elegant, stylized, and delicate Ionic or "Eastern" style to a vigorous, and athletic Doric or "Western" of naturalistic, style. By the middle the fifth century B.C., with the advent of Phidias, the Ionic style had passed from fashion, but even at the end of that same century or "Kallimachos") Callimachus pre (often spelled "Callimachos" ferred the older, Ionic "Eastern" Yeats discusses Callimachus style. in an essay of 1916 and, more in the 1925 and 1937 extensively, editions of A Vision. In 1916 Yeats wrote of him: "In half-Asiatic Greece Callimachus could still return to a stylistic management of the falling folds of drapery, after the naturalistic of Phi drapery dias." 19In A Vision he comments: 17 Variorum Poems, pp. 428 and 430, 11. 1-8 and 44-48.

18 Gisela M. A. See Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 117-118; Adolf Furtwangler, Masterpieces of Greek ScuIpture (1893; English translation, London: Heinemann, I. 24. 5; and J. G. Frazer, 1895), p. 10; Pausanias, Pausanias's of Greece (London: Macmillan, Description 1913), II, 312-318 (commentary on I. 24. 5). 19 "Certain Noble Plays of Japan," Essays and Introductions, p. 225.

361

The Massachusetts With

proved, marble

Review as Furtwangler
known one not discover

Callimachus
and chair,

pure

Ionic

revives again,
of his and may

has
a a

the upon a Persian

only example is represented,

work

to us,

Persian symbol in that bronze lamp, shaped like a palm, known to us by a description in Pausanias? but he was an archaistic workman ... amomentary dip into ebbing Asia. Each age unwinds the thread
another Phidias, age had wound, and his westward and it amuses art, one to remember fell.20 that before moving Persia

As that passage states, the sources for Yeats's view of Callimachus were Adolf Furtwangler's acclaimed Masterpieces widely of Greek and 450] translation 1895), pp. 437-442 Sculpture [(1893, English of the Erechtheum and Pausanias' second century A.D. description on the Acropolis, Athens (I. 26. 7)]. Pausa of Greece, [Description the golden and its long nias admired lamp made by Callimachus like a palm that reached to the roof. bronze chimney, tree, shaped has sur the lamp nor its chimney As Yeats's poem says, neither on the other hand, when Pausanias saw them they were vived, but, who old. Pausanias commented: five centuries "Callimachus, to the best artists in the actual the lamp, though inferior made them all in ingenuity, that he practice of his art, so far surpassed was the first to bore holes in the stone." (1.26. 7) The running drill, to carve more than is intricate drapery which the sculptor allows a chisel, had been in use for more than a century with possible before Callimachus, but he used the running drill with exceptional / Who handled mar lines about "Callimachus, dexterity.21 Yeats's that seemed to rise / When ble as if itwere bronze, / Made draperies of to that skillful working the corner" allude sea-wind swept on Furtwangler's are specifically observation based but marble, in the famous skill as a metal worker, evident that Callimachus' of his marble the delicate, influenced elaborated drapery lamp, says that Callimachus' sculp Furtwangler repeatedly sculpture. to a slightly archaic ture has "a certain graceful due charm, and combined with great elegance and a free treatment of manner, 20 Vision A (1925), pp. 182-183 (with correction of 1925 "Furtwingler"); reprinted in A Vision (1937), pp. 270-271. 21 (1933; of Early Greek Sculpture Stanley Casson, The Technique 1970), p. 207; see also Carl Blumel, Greek reprinted New York: Hacker, at Work, translated by Lydia Holland (London: Phaidon, Sculptors 1955), pp. 27-29, 37.

362

The

Art

of Y eat's

"Lapis

Lazuli"

that is clearly influenced by metal-work." Furtwangler draperies on the "exquisite great emphasis drapery, at once floating and lays
transparent. . . .22

concern of Calli The poem's destruction is with the inevitable of him but Yeats's already quoted discussion machus' handiwork, in A Vision "a marble cites one surviving chair" on example, the "a Persian is represented." That connection between which in the "West" makes the "East" and this Greek Persian sculptor as a transition of Callimachus emblem chair an appropriate "East" and "West"?which is the function he plays in A between at least partially, in the poem. The chair in A Vision Vision and, about Callimachus, comes, like Yeats's other information directly here mistakenly from Furtwangler and ultimately, although by to the studio of from Pausanias. attributed Yeats, Furtwangler a marble "It chair found in 1836 on the Acropolis: Callimachus of dainty archaism shows once more that remarkable combination folds with an ornamentation and 'swallow-tail' that of resembling the Erechtheion site of Callimachus' and chimney]."23 lamp [the in the opening mentions But this is not the same chair Pausanias of the works his description of the section immediately following are worthy of Callimachus: the ancient offerings which "Amongst of mention is a folding-chair, made by [the mythical sculptor] armor and and spoils taken from the Medes," Daedalus, including in battle against these ancient Per that the Greeks won weapons to did not realize (or he chose sians (I. 27. 1) Yeats apparently ignore) that the chair was not made by Callimachus. selection of Callimachus rather than Phidias Just as Yeats's was based on the broad and not immediately obvious probably context the historical issue of his relation to the "East-West" motif, stanza is broader of the opening than a reader might expect. events in Students of history will recognize that European political the concern of the women whom 1935 and 1936 amply merited in the poem. Yeats calls "hysterical" Indeed, World War II proved to be all too accurate. the women's alarmed forecast But these women are belittled in the poem, and Yeats may well have relished to proclaim the opportunity his lofty poetic from viewpoint,
22 Furtwangler, 23 Furtwangler, Masterpieces, Masterpieces, pp. p. 438-439. 441. For the chair see Carl Friederichs,

rev. Paul Wolters, Die Gibsabg?sse Antiker Bildwerke inHistorischer Folge Erkl?rt [catalogue of casts] (Berlin: Speemann, 1885), p. 491 (1332)).

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in 1936 Yeats was which details are trivial. For although political state of Europe disturbed by "the present (Europe is in the waning are all those things that we love waning?)," he could also Moon, I trouble about communism, fascism, say, "Besides, why should liberalism, all, though some bow first and some radicalism, when stern first but all at the same pace, all are going down stream with the artificial ends every civilization?"24 And, as if it unity which were not enough merely to have the poem belittle the women's concern about current events of 1935, the ancedote upon which this stanza is based comes not from 1935, but from almost a half century earlier and had been published by Yeats in 1908.25 It almost surely in Hyde of workmen refers to the Sunday afternoon mass meetings a march the often preceded from the East end, during Park, by the London dock strike of 13August-16 1880s and 1890s, notably 1889.26 September is The belittling them "hysterical" of the women by labelling to belittle art. The the poet's counterattack their attempts against stanzas would reader might that the following expect reasonably the high valuation of art which in the opening is implicit explain stanza. the reader encounters shifts of subject Instead radical stanzas and a series of ambiguous, between that illogical assertions in the second stanza's lead him to search for patterns. For example, the reader must their tragic play," line, "All perform opening as either of "play" between choose contradictory meanings or "frolic." The and obviously latter is immediately "drama" 24 B. Yeats letter to W. Dorothy Wellesley, [late December on Poetry, p. 128 and W. B. Yeats letter to Ethel Mannin, 1936, Letters of W. B. Yeats, p. 869. 25"Samhain 1908," Explorations (London: Macmillan,
"One woman used to repeat as often as possible that to paint

1936], Letters 30 November 1962), p. 239:

pictures or to

write poetry in this age was to fiddle while Rome was burning." This R. Whitaker, Swan and reference has been pointed out by Thomas of with History Shadow: Yeats's Dialogue (Chapel Hill: University North Carolina Press, 1964), p. 328, n. 28. 26 1July 1889 (p. 10, col. f) reports a For example, The Times, Monday, of "the Irish and Radical Sunday afternoon, June 30th, demonstration
associations" in Hyde Park. "The chairman and speakers were mostly

of known men in connexion with Hyde Park and other demonstrations the dock strike of 1889 The Times (9 different characters. ..." During September 1889, p. 4, col. c) reported that on Sunday, September 8th, "as
usual, thence there was to Hyde a procession where Park, from a mass the far East was to the Embankment held." and meeting

364

The Art of Y eat's "Lapis Lazuli

to demand but it comes wrong, increasingly equal status, at first because of the mocking diction of "struts" in the next line and then the unexpected, when we encounter "Hamlet assertions, emphatic and Lear are gay; / Gaiety all that dread." (11. 16-17) transfiguring is unexpected it is "wrong" That because repeated "gay / Gaiety" that reader comes to the poem already knowing ?any intelligent in the mid- 1930s Europe faced a dire threat of war and that the final scenes of tragedies are not "gay." The reader's puzzlement is com in the third stanza at lines 31 -32 and 33-34 where, in two pounded a pair of run-on the graceful consecutive sweep of rhythmic units, the beautiful lost handiwork lines describing of Callimachus is halted by a caesura: jarringly Made
When

draperies
sea-wind

that seemed
swept the

to rise
stands;

corner,

His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem Of a slender palm, stood but a day. That emphatic which is redoubled in the opening announcement, of the next line ("All things fall . . ."), leads to the startlingly final word of the third stanza: "And those that build them "wrong" fourth stanza similarly confounds the reader again are gay." The scene is "tragic" and appro that the mountain by announcing for "mournful" music?in obvious contradiction of the priate stanza's previous fifteen lines of tranquil description that include a clear and logical explanation of how the carved mountain succeeds in effortlessly what we Westerners to be would consider integrating defects or damage. And then, when the reader has accepted that the comes what ought mood is "tragic" and "mournful," to logically be yet another announcement shock: the confident unexpected that the Chinamen's as a logical reader ancient eyes, glittering, would because assume, tears, are not "sad," they are glazed with but, as every reader knows: Their
Their

eyes mid many wrinkles,

ancient, glittering eyes,

their eyes,
are gay.

Those famous lines are miraculous not merely for their majestic, reiterative but also because so perfectly succeed in pacing, they us accept the poem's of sounds that in making expressive logic turn allows us to accept and even to savor the final word, "gay."

365

The Massachusetts

Review

that Even readers, like Harold Bloom, who refuse to acknowledge first three the "Western" this "gay" reflects significantly upon to accept the irrational stanzas, are compelled logic that the China are "gay."27 The crux then is whether like men's this poem, eyes School Children," should be prized only for its perhaps "Among or whether but almost the entire magnificent separable ending, to its success. What accom contributes Lazuli" poem "Lapis is done with words, and repetition rather than plishes rhythms, with of ideas. The logical presentation goal of "Lapis Lazuli" an answer to the "hysterical" I think, be to articulate could, to desperate women's that art is frivolous and unsuited charges times. Yeats told Dorothy Wellesley, three weeks after he received the lapis lazuli mountain: "To me the supreme aim is an act of faith and reason to make one rejoice in the midst of tragedy. An can injure us."28 aim; yet I think it true that nothing impossible Yeats's paradoxical presen "tragic joy" is best suited to nonlogical in its powerful tation, and that is how he achieves expression the "third eye" of Eastern "Lapis Lazuli." He was fascinated with as he explained to Shri Purohit in the introduction mystics, which, in 1932, is "no physical Swami's An Indian Monk organ, but the mind's direct apprehension of the truth, above all antinomies."29 That "direct apprehension of the truth" iswhat the poem describes in the gaiety of Shakespearean in the gaiety of tragic characters, those who build beautiful and in the gaiety of the China things, men's the "hysterical women" withdraw their eyes. Even might to the gaiety of an artist if they themselves could be led to objections this compelling "Direct irrational though experience gaiety. of the truth" is then both what the poem describes apprehension the poem in its readers when the and what achieves they accept of the final word of the poem, artistic "gay." The inevitability Eastern art is enacted that characterizes imaginative participation in this poem about an Eastern art object. Yeats had said as early as even visionary, was for the imaginative, 1916 that his preference a few moments arts that "enable us to pass for into a deep of the 27 Harold 439. 28 W. B. Yeats
Poetry, p. 13 and and

Bloom,

Yeats

(New York: Oxford University

Press,

1969), p. on

letter to Dorothy
Letters to W. B.

Wellesley,
Yeats, 437. p.

26 July
838.

[1935]. Letters

29Essays

Introductions,

p.

366

The Art of Y eat's "Lapis Lazuli"

He that had hitherto been too subtle for our habitation." reference to added, on that occasion (just prior to his first published "It may be well ifwe go to school in Asia."30 "Lapis Callimachus), mood. But in is about an inexpressible and illogical Lazuli" on the rhetorical of the ending, persuasiveness "Lapis Lazuli" much the rhythms which and on which syntax lays emphasis if only for a lingering invite us to rest, allows us to experience, an accommodation?like that of Shakespearean moment, tragic mind like that of Callimachus and of all artists, and like that characters, the terrible and tragic world which of the Chinamen?to they and we inhabit. We know that history is on the side of the women of the the power of this magnifi but we are permitted stanza, by opening to ignore cent rhetorical their limited perspective and to poem to us in the poem. the gaiety of the others shown adopt

30

"Certain

Noble

Plays

of

Japan,"

Essays

and

Introductions,

p.

225.

367