V.V. (12) Foppl's planetarium & Yeats

[jbor]

In _Yeats: The Nineteenth Century Matrix_ (Alabama U., 1971), Dwight Eddins
attempts to construct a binary opposition in his discussion of Yeats' use of
the Rose as symbol by a comparison to the images in the poem 'He hears the
Cry of the Sedge':

     ... Yeats was faced with conceptual difficulties in respect to the
    sensual aspects of the symbol .... The Rose, like the "axle that keeps
    the stars in their round," and "the Banners of East and West", is a
    spiritual entity to which a familiar name has been given rather than
    a simple metaphorical vehicle from the concrete world, and it is
    this ontological complexity which underlies much of the wavering and
    vagueness of Yeats' arcane imagery. (p. 144)

The reference to the "axle that keeps the stars in their round" in Yeats'
poem resonates with Pynchon's description of Foppl's planetarium (as indeed
does the line about the time when "hands hurl in the deep/ The banners of
East and West" I think.) But what is interesting is that rather than focus
on the ostensible significance of Yeats' images in the poem Eddins needs to
invent an "ontological complexity", a complexity which *does not exist*
within the poems. He, too, then hedges his bets by asserting the "wavering
and vagueness" of Yeats' imagery, and labelling it as "arcane". Roses, axles
and banners are neither wavering, vague nor arcane. The constructed
opposition of "spiritual entity" vs. "simple metaphorical vehicle from the
concrete world" is a product of Eddins' Christian bias rather than anything
which is going on in Yeats' poetry. This is not to say that, other than this
*flaw*, Eddins is an unperceptive or poor literary critic.


            He hears the Cry of the Sedge

            I wander by the edge
            Of this desolate lake
            Where wind cries in the sedge:
            *Until the axle break
             That keeps the stars in their round
             And hands hurl in the deep
             The banners of East and West,
             And the girdle of light is unbound,
             Your breast will not lie by the breast
             Of your beloved in sleep.*

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