Yeats's Barfieldian Rebellion: Locating Yeats's Synthetic Symbolism in Barfield's Evolution of Consciousness

In this paper, I draw on Barfield's theory of the evolution of consciousness and language to argue that William Butler Yeats employs language in his poetry in a way which resembles the older, ‘organic’ poetry Barfield describes. I observe how Yeats's ‘concrete’ understanding allowed him to weave a rich web of meaning into his poetry without feeling confined by T.S. Eliot's ‘dissociation of sensibility’. Many of Yeats's Modernist contemporaries struggled to bridge a perceived gap between thought and feeling, but Yeats's view of the world as innately symbolic allowed him to use language both literally and symbolically at once, speaking simultaneously of a literal rock, a symbol for stasis, and an emblem of the idée fixe. Thus, Yeats creates, in Barfield's terms, ‘organic’ poetry where the multilayered meanings arise naturally from Yeats's understanding. I further note how Yeats attempts to create a mythology in A Vision that would function much as Barfield describes mythology operating in ancient, concrete societies. Through this study, I hope to illuminate both the interconnectedness of Yeats's symbolic metaphysic and poetic technique and the relevance of Barfield for understanding Yeats and, perhaps, other poets finding new ways to communicate through an evolving language.