BL. W. B. Yeats

165. Sharoni, Edna G. ‘At the Hawk’s Well [12]: Yeats’s Unresolved Conflict between Language and Silence’. Comparative Drama 7 (1973): 150-73.

Provocative argument that At the Hawk’s Well closely follows nô convention but fails because ‘Yeats’s attempts to articulate the inner world of silence were weakened . . . by a fundamental indecision about the primacy of the word versus the primacy of the dance’. Includes discussion of Yeats’s interest in Zen and Cuchulain’s failure to grasp Zen precepts: ‘He is lured away from the Zen ideal of unity of being to join the restless throngs of romantic heroes who cling to the notion that one’s destiny must be “sought.” The frustrations of Western energy could scarcely find convincing embodiment in the aesthetics of Eastern passivity.’.