"Per amica silentia lunæ" is a line from the Aeneid. Yeats translates it as "Through the friendly silences of the moon." It is a most pregnant line. The moon never speaks; its very essence is change. And yet each of us considers it a constant friend, and we invariably greet it with our innermost being, each time we see it up there alone in the night sky. We have carried on this friendship since childhood. Lyric poetry deals with such verities. The following is by Witter Bynner, taken from his masterful introduction to The Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology:
. . . if we will be honest with ourselves and with our appreciation of what is lastingly important, we shall find these very same poems to be momentous details in the immense patience of beauty. They are the heart of an intimate letter. They bring the true, the beautiful, the everlasting, into simple, easy touch with the human, the homely, and the immediate.
A key phrase in this passage is worth repeating and remembering: "The immense patience of beauty." Surely it is to this that the poet must surrender if the lyric temper is to be made manifest. ________________________________________________ >>>>>y°o°u r°u°n - t°h°e°y h°i°d°e<<<<<< __________^°^P@R@NOI@^°^}_________________
Admitting I was obsessed by Yeats moon - symbolism expressed in "The cat and the moon" (Wild Swans at Coole,1919): ... THE CAT went here and there And the moon spun round like a top, And the nearest kin of the moon The creeping cat looked up. Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon, For wander and wail as he would The pure cold light in the sky Troubled his animal blood. Minnaloushe runs in the grass, Lifting his delicate feet. Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance? When two close kindred meet What better than call a dance? Maybe the moon may learn, Tired of that courtly fashion, A new dance turn. ...
This is why lyric poetry retains its power to speak to us, down through the ages: because it is perishing before our very eyes, even as our eyes are perishing too. And yet it does not matter. "I am in the place," Yeats maintains, "where the Daimon is."
And what might that be — the presence of "the Daimon"? Such a term can mystify, but surely this refers to some fundamental antinomy of human existence, some intuition of paradox that lies at the heart of conscious being.
warm regards
Temp=)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ A brave man once requested me to answer questions that are key is it to be or not to be and I replied:"so why ask me?" _______________________________________
In Antwort auf:"I am in the place," Yeats maintains, "where the Daimon is."
And what might that be — the presence of "the Daimon"? Such a term can mystify, but surely this refers to some fundamental antinomy of human existence, some intuition of paradox that lies at the heart of conscious being.
Dear Temp,
Still emphasizing the antinomy of human existence .
Keats called it "negative capability"; Scott Fitzgerald praised "that ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." The two ideas? Life and eternity. Death and transcendence. Light and darkness. Perhaps another poet, Arlington Robinson, best described the paradox, in his tribute to Whitman: "When we write / Men's letters on proud marble or on sand, / We write them there forever." To be with the Daimon, to participate in timeless awareness, is why we write lyric poems, and why we return to them—and why we revere the great periods of lyric achievement.
The contrast in the definitions is between understanding by instinct and by knowledge ; between symbol which could have been "said" only in its artistic representation, and allegory, which is better said in words. Allegory, then, must also be symbol to have been worth painting at all; it must overflow the simple verbal channels of thought so that (p.227?Yeats: Symbolism in painting)
"a hundred generations might write out the meaning for the one, and they would write different meanings, for no symbol tells you all its meanings to any generation. . ." but ". . .when you have said . . ., you have told the meaning of the other, and the painting has not told it better. . ."
Similarly, Yeats comments on a line of poetry by Burns which portrays, as symbol,the setting of the moon, "whose relation to the setting of time is too subtle for the intellect. . ." He remarks upon "the continuous indefinable symbolism which is the substance of all style. . ." and, still commenting on the lines from Burns, distinguishes between the use of metaphor and symbol in writing...
warm regards
Temp=)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ A brave man once requested me to answer questions that are key is it to be or not to be and I replied:"so why ask me?" _______________________________________
Robartes: Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon, The full and the moon’s dark and all the crescents, Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty 35 The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in: For there’s no human life at the full or the dark. From the first crescent to the half, the dream But summons to adventure and the man Is always happy like a bird or a beast; 40 But while the moon is rounding towards the full He follows whatever whim’s most difficult Among whims not impossible, and though scarred As with the cat-o’-nine-tails of the mind, His body moulded from within his body 45 Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then Athenae takes Achilles by the hair, Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born, Because the heroes’ crescent is the twelfth. And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must, 50 Before the full moon, helpless as a worm. The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war In its own being, and when that war’s begun There is no muscle in the arm; and after Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon 55 The soul begins to tremble into stillness, To die into the labyrinth of itself.
Dear NID, The phases of the moon do symbolize the life course of humans.
Astrology appears to offer a more ‘objective’ means of determining a person’s Phase than the subjective intuition, analysis or instruction which the Yeatses used, and the first attempt to make the Phases of the Moon work astrologically came in 1921, before he had even published the first version of A Vision. Frank Pearce Sturm was one of the ‘old fellow students’ for whom Yeats claimed that he wrote A Vision, and he described Sturm to Olivia Shakespear in 1931 as an example of the ‘few very devoted readers’ (L 781). In the first flush of excitement after hearing Yeats outline the System in conversation, Sturm writes: ‘I thought I was on the track of something I have been looking for all my life’ (30 March 1921, LTWBY 2, 381). Having ‘worked over three hundred horoscopes in an attempt to substantiate what you told me’, he listed large numbers of people by the phase of the Moon at their birth, but he could find no pattern at all to the System. Indeed he showed a dogged determination and willingness ‘to master what is most abstract’ partly out of interest and enjoyment of the subject, and partly because as a Buddhist, the System held out for him the possibility ‘to calculate how many incarnations any particular person has already endured’. Although Yeats told him in his reply that the ‘phases of the Moon in the symbolism I told you of have nothing to do with the horoscope, but with the incarnations only’ (FPS 80), he pursued the subject further, writing only a fortnight after his first letter, that the Phase in fact indicated was the phase held by the Moon ‘at the time of the soul’s descent, the so-called pre-natal epoch of the astrologers’ and he planned to write a book in which the System would be put into the mouth of Nicholas Flamel, whom he fancies ‘to be still alive in some Arabian or Coptic sect’ (LTWBY 2, 383; as a point of interest, the pre-natal epoch does not work for Yeats’s own chart). Possibly Yeats felt that Sturm might trespass into the territory of Giraldus and Robartes, and he certainly felt that the System was still not clear enough in his own mind and was continuing to evolve, so that he was unwilling to let others adopt it as yet. Whatever the reason, Yeats’s condition that Sturm could not write about the System except with reference to what had already appeared in print at that date, as poetry and the notes attached to it, seems to have dampened Sturm’s enthusiasm. No doubt Yeats lacked the meticulous patience and painstaking tenacity of Sturm in analysing quantities of birth data, but he could very easily have followed Sturm’s lead or used his researches; however, Yeats also was very clear that it was unnecessary, misleading and inappropriate, since ‘You will get all mixed up if you think of my symbolism as astrological or even astronomical in any literal way’ (FPS 88).
Warm regards
Temp=)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ A brave man once requested me to answer questions that are key is it to be or not to be and I replied:"so why ask me?" _______________________________________
I really do admire your tiny but superb representation of Yeats' moon symbolism It faithfully mirrors the twenty-eight phase palindromic waxing and waning, and the score has several quotations from The Phases of the Moon scattered over it. The moon's phases symbolise a cyclical view of history - the shape of the piece returns the way it came. In general, there is a progression towards Nature at the full ("the subjective man"), followed by a progression towards God ("the objective man").
kotl
NID >>>>>y°o°u r°u°n - t°h°e°y h°i°d°e<<<<<< __________^°^P@R@NOI@^°^}_________________
I was trying to get a hold of you by sending you a couple of emails. Will let you know, that not everybody of us is trying to force you struggling with the German language.Just imaginating how to handle things differently-actually playing with some webspace alternatives to get it more intercultural and less defined with narrow borders. I will completely and utterly apologize if the behaviour of the prime discussion has put you off.THAT isn´t my mayor intent (you might know that by now)
Meru (Yeats) Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease Ravening through century after century, Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come Into the desolation of reality: Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye, Rome! Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest, Caverned in night under the drifted snow, Or where that snow and winter's dreadful blast Beat down upon their naked bodies, know That day bring round the night, that before dawn His glory and his monuments are gone.
--------------back to topics--------------------------------------------
How to paraphrase that philosophy in a small space would hardly be possible? Its cardinal point is the division of incarnate man into four faculties: the Will, the Creative Mind, the Body of Fate, and the Mask.
By Will is understood feeling that has not become desire because there is no object to desire . . . an energy as yet uninfluenced by thought, action, or emotion. . . . By Mask is understood the image of what we wish to become, or of that to which we give our reverence. . . . By Creative Mind is meant intellect . . . all the mind that is consciously constructive. . . . By Body of Fate is understood the physical and mental environment, the changing human body, the stream of Phenomena as this affects a particular individual, all that is forced upon us from without, Time as it affects sensation.
“The Will and Mask are predominantly Lunar or antithetical the Creative Mind and the Body of Fate predominantly Solar or primary.” They affect one another according to their respective positions in the Phases of the Moon. There are true and false Masks, true and false Creative Minds, perfections and automatonisms, discords, oppositions and contrasts. All this and much more Mr. Yeats explains with elaborate precision, studying the character of man, often with reference to actual persons, living or dead, under each of the twenty-eight phases at which Will may be; applying his doctrine also to historical epochs; illustrating his theses with mathematical figures.
kotc
Temp =)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ A brave man once requested me to answer questions that are key is it to be or not to be and I replied:"so why ask me?" _______________________________________
I was walking home slowly observating the the rise of the moon radiating its gentle light - soothing my mind´. Well I have to stand up in front of you, telling to be too afraid to write again (>>> prime discussion<<<).Each word can hit like a knife tearing my soul apart.But there´s a light over at those "dark satanic mills" shining forth - there´s Yeats,Wittgenstein,Bourdieu to face with a "TEMPerated" mind - your words ´re still comforting me and brighte-ning my life - my Dearest Temp from overseas - in a vision to cling to while the world is crumbling into pieces. When you put that Sonnet (Yeats) to your last posting I could hardly keep from crying - cause you know exactly how it feels to be hurt and somewhat lost and desperate
Yeats first intended to call this "little philosophical book"(per amica silentia lunae) of 1917 "An Alphabet" , as though he meant it to be a key to the rudiments of his imaginative work, or to the convictions upon which that work was founded. Starting with the poem Ego Dominus Tuus ( 1915) as extended motto, the book divides itself into two reveries, Anima Hominis and Anima Mundi , the first dealing with the Mask and the second with the relation of the Mask to the spiritual world, realm of daimons and the dead. In the total structure of Yeats's work, Per Amica Silentia Lunae serves as introduction to the visionary center, to the later poems in The Wild Swans at Coole , and to Michael Robartes and the Dancer , Four Plays for Dancers , and A Vision itself.
kotc
Temp=)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ A brave man once requested me to answer questions that are key is it to be or not to be and I replied:"so why ask me?" _______________________________________
The cover design for Per Amica Silentia Lunae , done by Sturge Moore at Yeats's suggestion, is the Rose, now a symbol of the Mask, and thus a mark of deliberate continuity between the earlier and later Yeats. In this surpassingly beautiful little book, Pater and the Cambridge Platonist Henry More are made to join hands, as though the creator of Marius had his true affinities not with the second Renaissance of Romanticism but with the Theologica Germanica and related works.
In Per Amica Silentia Lunae Yeats describes how, ‘Each Daimon is drawn to whatever man . . . it most differs from, and it shapes into its own image the antithetical dream of man’ (Myth 362). The Daimon shapes the mask and the mask becomes less the goal in itself, than the means of evoking the anti-self:
‘By the help of an image / I call to my own opposite, summon all / That I have handled least, least looked upon’ (VP 367)
while the Daimon actively comes to the human in search of its complement.
The issue of your latest posting implies some form of joint fall and shared guilt, and, though this is not pursued, it is of a piece with the intertwined themes of love and betrayal which Yeats had outlined in Per Amica Silentia Lunae where ‘there is a deep enmity between a man and his destiny’, yet ‘a man loves nothing but his destiny’ (Myth 336).
The ideas evolved and changed during the preparation of A Vision, and his Instructors upbraided him in September 1921 for ‘identifying the Daimon too exclusively with the anti-self’ (YVP3 96) and for other ideas which were either too simplistic or too much rooted in his old ideas, yet the concept of the Daimon remains recognisably founded on the poetic speculations which predate the System.
kotc
Temp=)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ A brave man once requested me to answer questions that are key is it to be or not to be and I replied:"so why ask me?" _______________________________________
I do admire the course our little discussion´s running . So we have to focus the "Daimon" In A Vision A Yeats writes at some length concerning the Daimon, establishing at least part of the mechanism by which it intervenes in and affects human life, through control of the dark Faculties of Mask and Body of Fate, and the difference of its role in the lives of primary and antithetical incarnations. Yet he was still wrestling with his concept of and following a Sleep in Rapallo in 1927, he writes of one of his Instructors, Dionertes:
He came last night - cross because I did not realize that the Daimon was perfect. He said all Daimons were of course one on a final analysis, & yet they were each unique and each perfect. I said if they are different - there is something of the whole lacking in each and therefore it is not perfect. However he insisted. I must not say the Principles and Faculties expressed the Daimons[,] all man did was approach the Daimon.
Yeats’s frustration with such apparently contradictory statements is understandable, as he found himself still trying to comprehend the nature of the Daimon itself after more than ten years of effort and to see how it fitted in with the other elements of the System such as the Principles.
kotl
NID >>>>>y°o°u r°u°n - t°h°e°y h°i°d°e<<<<<< __________^°^P@R@NOI@^°^}_________________
It feels like magic having you back into this Yeats discussion .All men, even you have to approach the daimon.So let´s get a little closer facing the daimonic archetype:
The Daimon is said to be a unique and self-creating power, contributing to the human being what is personally unique (in which sense it is probably also seen as the Ghostly Self). The Daimon seeks to unite itself with other Daimons but cannot do this without the agency of the human mind. Its mind is simultaneous, untrammelled by either time or space, perceiving things in terms of their kinship to itself. Its symbolic form is the circle or sphere, and all things are present in an eternal instant to the Daimon which ‘remains always in the Thirteenth Cycle’.
kotc
Temp=)
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ A brave man once requested me to answer questions that are key is it to be or not to be and I replied:"so why ask me?" _______________________________________
the daimon and I are occasionally meeting at the underground railroad . But besides joking we have to constitute an archetype <---- to that I´ll contribute: At certain moments (Critical Moments) the human Mask becomes completely identified with the Will of the Daimon such that it can touch a form of this timeless consciousness. Although this implies some separation in the normal state of affairs, man and Daimon should be regarded as part of a single spectrum of consciousness or a continuum of perception.
If man and Daimon are one continuous perception, human and Daimon are loosely like an iceberg, of which the Daimon is the greater part, the ideal or archetype, while the human is the visible local expression of a small, chosen fraction to other perceiving beings. Through the course of time and many incarnations, the human element of the dyad must seek to express as much of the complete sphere as possible, segment by segment, gyre by gyre, until the totality of the Daimonic archetype has been brought into material manifestation.
The human part of the symbiotic dyad is usually unaware of its complement, since this lies hidden in the dark of the mind, or beneath the surface, though it may note the effects which are produced by the more direct forms of contact, those mental experiences which are apparently inexplicable and alien, as if there were a different mind operating within one’s own, which according to Yeats’s theory there is. The Daimon's corresponding limitation, however, is the inability to forge new connections or to make connections with alien. As the living, in particular the poetic, relies upon the relation of what is disparate, the lucidity of the Daimon’s simplicity must be balanced by the richness of human complexity.
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