YEATSとアイルランド演劇運動

抄録

At the name of W. B. Yeats, there floats before our eyes a figure of a subrective poet who, breathing in the Celtic Twilight, sang, "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree." As a matter of fact he was also the leader of the Irish Dramatic Movement. We can not but perceive a deep gulf between a subjective poet and a dramatist combined in the same personality. Seeking to bridge that gulf, we find in his autobiographies his father's liking of dramatic poetry, the poet's habit of playing characters while writing and emotions stirred from a clubhouse with a little theatre in the Bedford Park. And we must not overlook his fancy to the delicate rhythm of poetical speeches which drove him to seek the stage where to exhibit it again in the presence of hearers. He desires to escape from the modern civilization, putting the Golden Age in the ancient world, and admiring the ancient arts which came to a man at his work. In this inclination of his we can trace William Morris's influence upon Yeats. He loved the Irish with all his heart, in whom he found a simple-minded people not yet baptized with the modern civilization and-commercialism. Here his ideas of civilization and patriotism met together. The drama is the most familiar and intimate form of art to people. Even unlettered people, he thought, must listen to impassioned dialogues. Then he took up the dramatic movement to return to the people. But at last in 1919 he said, "I want to create an unpopular theatre." At his failure in the movement we are conscious again of the conflicts between subjectivity and activity, and the superiority of the former in Yeats. Well, the disintegration of one whole personality into subjectivity and activity, soul and body, it may be one of the most remarkable features of the modern civilization.