ABSTRACT
The other self, the anti-self or the antithetical self, as one may choose to name it, comes but to those who are no longer deceived, whose passion is reality. - Ihid.
Any understanding of Yeats' poetry depends upon a realization of his theory of the Mask, and, I believe, some sympathy with that theory. His imagination was by nature intensely active, quick moving, and perpetually excited by the dramatic qualities of men's lives, and it was therefore natural that he should try to draw into himself those aspects of their personalities which he admired. They served to supply psychological compensations, to reinforce his success ori ustify his failure, to excuse the evil or folly that he might have done; and it is probable that he had lingering memories of his father's comparison of him to 'disagreeable people', and was therefore sensitive on the matter. His personality thus oscillated, as it were, between the poles of opposing aspects of personality; one the seeming, the present, the other the wished for, which could, at moments, appear to be justified in action. He could be a romantic lover in the great medieval tradition of Dante, and, iike Dante, present the paradox of high constancy and sin. He could exploit the
THE LONELY TOWER
-with me on the Anglo-Irish background of the Big House and its "mythology'; as well as to the Lecturers of the past four years at the Y eats International Summer School at Sligo -especially to Marion Witt, Myles Dillon and Frank O'Connor - and to the members of the Advanced Seminar Group at those meetings. I owe a particular debt to Francis Warner, for reading this edition both in script and in proof. It is possible that I have inadvertently taken ideas from others which I have not acknowledged; if so, I ask their pardon.
