Thomas Sterns Eliot and William Butler Yeats' Poetry

Thomas Sterns Eliot and William Butler Yeats' Poetry

"The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a ‘personality' to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways."

These exact lines were quoted from Thomas Sterns Eliot's (hereafter Eliot) essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" which was first published in Egoist, December 1920. This shows the kind of approach Elliot had towards poetry, an approach which most poets lacked; an approach with historical motifs; an approach which was shared by William Butler Yeats (hereafter Yeats) for he once stated "The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write."

Yeats and Eliot are two chief modernist poet of the English Language. Both were Nobel Laureates. Both were critics of Literature and Culture expressing similar disquietude with Western civilization. Both, prompted by the Russian revolution perhaps, or the violence and horror of the First World War, pictured a Europe that was ailing, that was literally falling apart, devoid of the ontological sense of rational purpose that fuelled post-Enlightenment Europe and America(1). All these similar experience makes their poetry more valuable to compare and to contrast since their thoughts were similar yet one called himself Classicist(Eliot) who wrote objectively and the other considered himself "the last Romantic" because of his subjective writing and his interest in mysticism and the spiritual. For better understanding of these two poets it is necessary to mention some facts and backgrounds on them which influenced them to incorporate similar (to some extent) historical motif in their poetry.

WB Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin. His parents were John Butler Yeats, a portrait painter, and Susan Pollexfen. His family was upper class, Protestant and of Anglo-Irish descent. His ancestors were church rectors. His mother's famil, the Pollexfens, were known for their eccentricities manifested by an interest in astrology and magic. He was very interested in super sensual experiences and visions which came to him "from the back of his mind". Eventually, he became interested in Hinduism and the occult. During his life, he developed interests in theosophy, ancient civilizations, psychic power, spiritualism, magic, eastern religions and the supernatural which in due course led to the conception of "The Second Coming"(first published in November 1920).