ABSTRACT
The Celtic and Greek cultures presented Yeats and Pessoa respectively with a more authentic and pervasive pagan worldview than the vague pantheism of the English Romantic mystical poets; therefore they were more fitting as a dramatized poetic expression of their Neo-Paganism. Pessoa's emphasis on the Neo-Paganism of the heteronyms proves that they were devised primarily as a counter-reaction to the post-Symbolist aesthetic that pervaded his early poetry. Likewise, Yeats's inclusion of heroic figures from Celtic pagan Ireland as personae in his poetry distanced it from the mainstream European traditions that informed his early poetry. The poems analysed in this chapter denote an increasing criticism of the pastoral mode, underscoring its inherent escapism and its failure to provide a truthful reflection of the self and of the world. The adoption of pastoral masks was Pessoa's and Yeats's most innovative and accomplished re-enactment of the founding convention of pastoral poetry, which concurrently enabled them to create idiosyncratic versions of this poetic genre.
