Yeats, Williams, and Sincerity
4-17-96
Where to start? Randomly, guided divinely, I plucked Yeats and W. C. Williams* from the shelf. I read the Yeats intro and then the Williams intro. Both concerned themselves with the question of sincerity in art. Yeats was, by this account, a man of many contradictions: "Afraid of insincerity, he struggled unsuccessfully to fuse or to separate the several characters by whom he felt himself to be peopled." p.2
Yeats himself wrote, "The individual man of entire sincerity has to wrestle with himself, unless transported by rage or passion; he has so much mind to make up, with none to help him and no guide except his conscience; and conscience afterall, is but a feeble glimmer in a labyrinthine cave of darkness."
Gregory answers that "The difficult question of sincerity in art...should be referred to the continuity of [the writer's] imagination and the speech that gives it meaning...the question may arrive at a fruitful, if partial, solution by observing the triple unity of speech, and imagination, and emotion, and their relationship to each other in a book...The clear evidence of sincerity in Dr. Williams' work is...one cannot divorce its theme from the voice that speaks it."
And finally, Yeats said, "A poet by his very nature is a man who lives in entire sincerity. The better his poetry, the more sincere his life...to achieve anything in art, to stand alone for many years, to go a path no other man has gone, to accept one's own thought when the thought of others has the authority of the world behind it...to give one's life as well as one's words, words which are so much nearer to one's soul than to the criticism of the world."
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How do I apply this to myself? I am more like Yeats than the steadfast Williams (no, I'm not). My identity has spent its time churning noisily around and around the blender to the point where I have doubted the sincerity of my every thought and urge and action. I have been paralyzed with indecision. This identity scramble makes it intolerably difficult to stake myself to one voice. According to Yeats' formula, if one maintains his own path, "stays close to home", one's art can be accomplished. The key, I suppose, is identifying oneself and resisting the temptation to stray from it. The implications of this frighten me. My very nature is to wander around, take up different characters, and be and do all there is to be and do, unlimited. How to reconcile my sincerely restless soul with my desire to create and the necessary "stay at home" discipline to do so?
Balance.
Balance, which is instinct, which you've got to survive.
I can do this.
*Yeats, The Man and the Masks Richard Elman 1948
In the American Grain Intro by Horace Gregory 1925
Where to start? Randomly, guided divinely, I plucked Yeats and W. C. Williams* from the shelf. I read the Yeats intro and then the Williams intro. Both concerned themselves with the question of sincerity in art. Yeats was, by this account, a man of many contradictions: "Afraid of insincerity, he struggled unsuccessfully to fuse or to separate the several characters by whom he felt himself to be peopled." p.2
Yeats himself wrote, "The individual man of entire sincerity has to wrestle with himself, unless transported by rage or passion; he has so much mind to make up, with none to help him and no guide except his conscience; and conscience afterall, is but a feeble glimmer in a labyrinthine cave of darkness."
Gregory answers that "The difficult question of sincerity in art...should be referred to the continuity of [the writer's] imagination and the speech that gives it meaning...the question may arrive at a fruitful, if partial, solution by observing the triple unity of speech, and imagination, and emotion, and their relationship to each other in a book...The clear evidence of sincerity in Dr. Williams' work is...one cannot divorce its theme from the voice that speaks it."
And finally, Yeats said, "A poet by his very nature is a man who lives in entire sincerity. The better his poetry, the more sincere his life...to achieve anything in art, to stand alone for many years, to go a path no other man has gone, to accept one's own thought when the thought of others has the authority of the world behind it...to give one's life as well as one's words, words which are so much nearer to one's soul than to the criticism of the world."
-
How do I apply this to myself? I am more like Yeats than the steadfast Williams (no, I'm not). My identity has spent its time churning noisily around and around the blender to the point where I have doubted the sincerity of my every thought and urge and action. I have been paralyzed with indecision. This identity scramble makes it intolerably difficult to stake myself to one voice. According to Yeats' formula, if one maintains his own path, "stays close to home", one's art can be accomplished. The key, I suppose, is identifying oneself and resisting the temptation to stray from it. The implications of this frighten me. My very nature is to wander around, take up different characters, and be and do all there is to be and do, unlimited. How to reconcile my sincerely restless soul with my desire to create and the necessary "stay at home" discipline to do so?
Balance.
Balance, which is instinct, which you've got to survive.
I can do this.
*Yeats, The Man and the Masks Richard Elman 1948
In the American Grain Intro by Horace Gregory 1925
posted by johnz at 9:05 PM
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