윌리엄 버틀러 예이츠 시의 상상력과 노인의 이미지 : 『탑』(The Tower)을 중심으로

Imagination and the Images of W. B. Yeats’s Poems : Focused on The Tower

Yeats used diverse images systematically and consistently throughout his poems in order to accentuate his themes. Yeats’s changes of style and his maturity were probably not recognised until the publication of The Tower in 1928. The dominant images in his poems could be roughly summarized as belonging to one of eight groups of images in lights of the subject matters and moods in his poems: island, tree and bird, sun and mood, tide and blood, old man, dancer, tower, and horseman. Moreover, it might be said that there are five main themes within Yeats’s poems: the quest for an ideal world, the recognition of the actual world and prophecy of future, the limitations of human life, the Unity of Being and art, and the loneliness and pride as a poet. These themes are discussed systematically and repeatedly eight groups of images. In “Sailing to Byzantium,” “The Tower,” Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” “Leda and the Swan,” and “Among School Children,” the image of the old man suggests Yeats’s fear and anger over the limitations of human life. If he calls the harmony of body and spirit for Unity of Being, the image of the old man implies the disharmony of being. For these reasons, he ceaselessly employed the image of a swan, chestnut tree, and dancers in The Tower.