The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the influence of Zen Buddhism on Yeats`s later poetry. Yeats`s poetic life can be described as a revolt against dualism. Various artists and philosophers influenced Yeasts in his overcoming dualistic conflicts: Pre-Paphaelites, Nietzche, and Heraclitus, among other. It is, however, Zen Buddhism that exerted a great deal of influence in his later poetry. Yeats especially read Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki`s Essays in Zen Buddhism, the First Series in 1927; its influence can be traced in many of his later poems: `A Dialogue of Self and Soul`, `Byzantium`, `The Gyre`, `Lapis Lazuli`, `Man and the Echo`, `Under Ben Bulben`, etc;. As expressed in Yeats`s later poems, the ideal of Zen Buddhism is accepting the world as it is, and breaking/transcending the barrier between the known and the knower, the world of Being (nirvana) and the world of becoming (samsara), and ultimately life and death. Yeats`s poetic mask revealed in his later career is that of Zen monk who approaches the reality with `No-mindness`: going beyond the dualism of all forms of life and death, good and evil, being and non-being.
(0)
(0)