The System of W. B. Yeats’s A Vision

This web site is dedicated to the work of the Irish poet W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), specifically to the strange, esoteric system which he and his wife, George, created, and which he expounded in A Vision. It is intended primarily for students of this work, and also for those who are interested in the intellectual and symbolic background to his later poetry and prose. For those who are unfamiliar with Yeats or with A Vision, the Overview offers a brief introductory survey.

The System of Yeats’s A Vision lends itself to hypertext, and to the use of visual material and dynamic diagrams which it enables, since the organisation of the material is notoriously difficult in both editions of A Vision (the ‘A’ version of 1925 and the ‘B’ version of 1937: see The Two Editions). This can leave many readers frustrated by the use of terms which are poorly explained or explained elsewhere and by the lack of easy cross-referencing, areas which hypertext addresses very effectively.

In large part, however, the difficulty still remains, since: ‘A symbol system can only be understood and evaluated by entering its web of internal relationships and noting how and where external criteria impinge on it. The problem is that we cannot start with the complex whole all at once; and if we start at any one point, we immediately introduce distortions’ (The Construction of Reality). While hypertext links enable a more fluid approach, the individual reader still has to approach the material in some form of sequence. The topics on the main contents page are therefore arranged in a rough order of ascending development, from the fundamentals of the System to their effect upon Yeats’s vision of reality.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

from ‘The Second Coming’

The mind, whether expressed in history or in the individual life, has a precise movement, which can be quickened or slackened but cannot be fundamentally altered, and this movement can be expressed by a mathematical form.

Note to ‘The Second Coming’, Michael Robartes and the Dancer (Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1922)

This site does not offer a hypertext of A Vision itself and does not aim to offer a substitute for Yeats’s A Vision; this is not only because of copyright reasons, but because the ‘book of A Vision’ is an artefact in itself (see The Book of Yeats's Vision by Hazard Adams). This link gives some notes about buying a copy over the internet .

NEWS Volume 13 of the Collected Edition of the work of W. B. Yeats, A Vision A (1925), edited by Margaret Mills Harper and Catherine E. Paul came out on 1 April 2008. If you have not yet read A Vision, I have reservations about recommending starting with A Vision A, since it is probably better on the whole to start with Yeats’s final, more considered version, A Vision B; however, this edition has a good introduction and is fully annotated offering a lot of help to the first-time reader in terms of factual detail and background. It also gives a good idea of how elements emerged from the Automatic Script, although it doesn't really seek to explain any of the ideas. See the general caveats mentioned here . Further details are available at: Scribner's/Simon and Schuster's page where the price is listed as $60. However, Amazon.com is offering it at $42 — and Amazon.co.uk at £27.40 (information correct April 23 2008) – thanks to Ruud Bouthoorn for alerting me to this. For the record, Barnes and Noble lists its on-line price as $48 ($43.20 to members).

The pages here do attempt to offer a clear and helpful guide to the ideas of A Vision and, in doing so, they sometimes extend and develop the material beyond what is explicitly contained in A Vision; some of the diagrams in particular represent significantly different reformulations of those created by the Yeatses.

The site does not aim to present a sustained argument either, although much of the material is associated with a doctoral thesis I presented at Oxford University and which I am preparing for book publication with a provisional title of Yeats's A Vision: Human and Divine Images. Inevitably, some complex themes have been simplified somewhat to make them more appropriate for this type of presentation, and much that is discussed in the book has been omitted, while there is more explanatory and descriptive treatment here. The majority of sources are noted, but the scholarly apparatus has also been abbreviated.

These pages are subject to continuing extension and improvement, and if you have any suggestions or comments, please contact me.

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This site is a work in progress, and the content is very gradually expanding, not least in response to readers’ comments and suggestions. There may be some links to pages that are projected but not yet completed, and the site-map gives a picture of the current and projected shape of the site. Any comment is welcome.

All the images and quotations used on these pages are believed to be used legitimately within the laws of copyright. If you notice any that are not, please contact me and they will be removed.

I would like to thank Professor Warwick Gould at the University of London’s Institute of English Studies for his encouragement in the creation of these pages, and Colin McDowell for his helpful comments on them.

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