Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

280The Poetry of William Butler Yeats16. On Yeats and prophecy, see Stallworthy. Whitaker offers thebest analysis of the apocalypse in Yeats, emphasizing its internaland alchemical nature (34–54).17. For a discussion of the pairs in “Two Songs from a Play,” seeEllmann 260–63; on miniaturization and binarism, see Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind 16–33.18. White uses the regulative aesthetic categories of the sublimeand the beautiful to analyze the discipline of history (125–37).19. For an overview of Yeats’s thought on war, see Farag. ForBloom’s position on Yeats’s violence, see, for example, thereadings of “The Second Coming,” “Lapis Lazuli,” and “TheGyres” in Yeats.20. Yeats suppresses this side of Shelley when he derides him for being“terrified of the Last Day like a Victorian child” (Essays 420).21. I do not wish, however, to exaggerate the political flexibility ofthe sublime. The sexual politics of the sublime has traditionallybeen antifeminist, and we still need a full feminist review of thesublime as the violent agon of father and son or as a masculinewar with danger. For these reasons, as well as for pacifist concerns,we may ultimately decide to reject the sublime altogether, as longas we do so consistently. But, in my view, we might also attemptto construct a version of the sublime that would be compatiblewith certain forms of revolutionary feminism.22. See Lewis 184–235. Douglas Robinson criticizes Lewis’sdistinction but goes on to argue that the Augustinian, spiritualview is “suited to political conservatives” as against “implicitlyrevolutionary predictive interpretations”—an assertion thatwould seem to be contradicted by recent fundamentalism in theUnited States. See Robinson’s helpful introductory analysis (17).23. My thanks go to Richard Finneran, Paul Fry, Thomas Whitaker,and George Wright for their valuable comments on earlierdrafts of this essay.WORKS CITEDAdams, Hazard. Blake and Yeats: The Contrary Vision. 1955. New York: Russell,1968.Auden, W. H. Collected Poems. Ed. Edward Mendelson. New York: Random,1976.