Aging and Death in William butler Yeats’s Last poems

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Beni-Suef University

Abstract

 Yeats was many things; theatre director, amateur philosopher, senator, amateur scholar, dramatist, essayist, even a literary critic – but above all a poet who told us more about the human condition than any other poet of his age.  The fear of loss of all these roles has been recapitulated with the progress of time. Yet, in his last two years, Yeats dwelt on recreating himself in language.  He wanted to make of himself a piece of linguistic creation by reviving every word he was to write so as not to show any sign of dwindling or deteriorating.
Could Yeats develop a new style when he felt close to the end of his life? Could he transcend his past loess; especially his controversial love with Maud Gonne? What about his consciousness of the end? Did he still have the ability to express his feelings and nearness to the death? This paper tries to investigate these questions in Yeats’s six representative poems of the whole volume; that is, the poems he wrote months before his death in January 28, 1939.  Under Ben Bulben (Sep. 1938), The Statues (June 1938), What then? The Man and The Echo (October 1938), The Black Tower (Jan. 1939).  
  

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