Group 5

Haleema Mazhar 030388

Sara Arshad 030386

Kinza Zameer 030387

BS English VII

20th Century British Literature

A Dialogue of Self and Soul by

W. B. Yeats
W.B. Yeats:-
W.B. Yeats, born on 13 June 1865 and died on 28 January 1939 was an Irish poet,
dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the
Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served
two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary
Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others.
From 1900, his poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental
beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well
as with cyclical theories of life. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

A Dialogue of Self and Soul by

W. B. Yeats

Form & structure :

It is written in the form of dialogue. It consists of two parts , first part is consist
of five stanzas and second part consists of four stanzas. All stanzas are written in the form of
octave. There are seventy two lines in this poem.

POEM SUMMARY:
In this poem both the self and the soul speak to express their characteristics. In
the first stanza, the soul speaks; here it says that it is the one who guides the body to make all the
actions. Initially it says that “I summon” by this it makes the body to go towards the zigzag
ancient stair, the stair here represents our life and it is ancient (old) as it might get broken here or
there (life is full of suspense). We take the risk of going forward by listening to the voices of our
soul. It makes us to go beyond the limit “human limit” which is the external world. A soul has
the power of getting together all our wandering thoughts (search for reasons) in a single area. In
this section the soul questions itself; can anyone divide darkness from soul?
In the second stanza the self that is the body speaks. Here the poet has used one
of his life experiences in order to express the actual idea of self in our life. He was gifted by one
of his friends named Junzo Sato. The gift was a pious Japanese blade which is actually the heir
loom of his friend. The blade looks like a glass, it appears sharp and ageless. The poet says that
upon his knees lies ‘the Blade’ which was wrapped (protected) by a torn cloth of an old Japanese
court-lady’s gown. Though the Blade is with him; it was Junzo’s, will be Junzo’s and will always
remind as his own. He means that the soul is one; it has no death; it remains the same; the
medium that it uses to be in action might differ for one life to the other; which is the body; the
body might be different but the soul will remain the same and nobody has the hold of the soul.
The soul itself is eternal and the body is its property which it can change when the body becomes
old and decayed (Here the Blade is the soul and the cloth wrapped around it to protect is the
body).
The third stanza is the continuation of the first. The soul here speaks on the
intellect of the human mind which wanders in search of reasons for birth, life and death. The soul
questions, why is the human mind not confined with its remarkable emotions such as love and
war? Why is it wandering hither and tither and the other (the inner self) to get answers? The soul
tries to get together all these wandering thoughts in the first stanza.
The fourth stanza is the connection of the second stanza. The self speaks on the
continuity and repetition of soul’s actions through different mediums (i.e. body). He says the
embroidery of the cloth shows its age but all he sees is the past actions which have the ability to
be repeated. (Here he means the deeds that are left undone will be done sooner or later by the
soul in a different self).
The fifth stanza is connected to the third stanza. Here the soul says that when it
makes a human to bring all his wandering thoughts together and his mind gets filled with the
overwhelming power, he goes to a stage of trance and becomes deaf, blind, and dumb; and loses
his intellect because he will be dead by the stage. His soul will reach the heaven because this is
beyond his reach (moksha).
In the second section of the poem, his self speaks. To be precise, soul is eternal
and so it lives in different forms. The cycle of birth-life-death becomes an infinite loop in
which the soul is same and the self gets to be in different shapes to repeat its life over and over.
The toil of growth, the facing of pain in immature state and the stage of fighting all the enemies
at once in the matured state; these inescapable situations which are faced by the self in different
forms with different forms (other souls and men) in all its lives is an unbreakable chain. Life is
like a ditch he says it is same over and over again; all the people we have faced, all the situations
we have crossed, the life partners we chose, the experiences we have undergone happens again in
a different shape. This sounds depressing. Yet the poet’s self gets a reason to be content.
He says he will feel content to be in the loop because a man’s intellect wanders
in search of reasons which require ultimate thoughts and toil; amid of this he gets the bliss of
attaining remorse. The bliss that spreads all over the breasts, the happiness that the self attains
makes him feel content to be in this loop. Because when he gets the ecstasy of remorse he gets to
laugh, he gets to sing, he gets blessed by everything and everything he looks upon gets blessed.
This is enough for the self to be content with this endless life of toil in this undying loop.
When we analyse this poem we can get to know that William butler Yeats
has mixed up reality with his irreality believes. Here the reality is life’s nature and the
irreality that he has mixed is the essence of abstract things based on Platonism, Plotinus’
philosophy and Eastern Philosophy.
Themes:
 Suffering
 Life, consciousness and existence
 Freedom and confinement
 Wisdom knowledge
 Self vs soul
 Mind vs hear

Symbolism in A Dialogue of Self and Soul:

In the first stanza the Soul calls the reader to the tower of learning where “the
star,” the most distant part of our universe, “marks the hidden pole.” • Soul seems to be
talking about the contemplation of eternity • Poem itself seems to imply that the soul’s goal is so
vague as to be virtually unknowable. • “Thought,” as represented by the tower, cannot
distinguish “darkness from the soul.” • Yeats says the tower is “half dead at the top.” • If we
see the tower as an individual, as a source of knowledge, this would seem to imply that there is
no more original thought there. • If, on the other hand, we see the tower as a phallic symbol, it
has become impotent.

In the second stanza, Self says it holds an ancient Japanese blade wrapped in a
piece of embroidered silk • Seem to be symbols of war and love • Sword can stand for the blood
that has been spilled, while the dress seems to have been given to the samurai out of love • The
sword also seems to represent self-discovery; “a looking glass,” where man discovers his
penchant for violence • Silken embroidery represents art, one thing many romanticists felt
transcended time • Soul argues that these are foolish symbols, and that if imagination would just
“scorn the earth” • Intellect would quit wandering from topic to topic, then together they could
deliver us from the “crime of death and birth,” suggesting a Buddhist-like escape from the cycle
of eternal rebirth.

In the fourth stanza, Self sets purple flowers the color of the heart and the sword,
with its implied blood, against the darkness that the tower represents • Passion, in and of itself,
Yeats seems to suggest can make life meaningful • We shouldn’t try to avoid life and death; we
should live it passionately • Soul finally argues that when intellect and imagination are focused
on philosophy; • that intellect no longer knows Is from Ought or Knower from Known and that is
like ascending to Heaven. • It’s obvious that Yeats is a Romantic and believes in the power of
intuition, not rational arguments.