“The
human voice can apprehend itself as the sounding of the soul itself.” (Hegel)
There is of course a long-standing tradition identifying the voice with the soul, the soul as present in the voice, and the voice – neither quite matter or spirit - as the immediate manifestation of the soul. There is a related - inextricable perhaps - tradition, amply documented, of seeing writing as something secondary and external.
Now it said about Yeats that “From the beginning, he wrote verses meant to be spoken and heard, not written and read.” His written verse aspired to the condition of the voice.
But however true this may be, it is also true, firstly, that Yeats displays a fascination with writing and the materiality of the book, with book design, fonts, iconography. The early books he produces are like grimoires, the poems supported by arcane footnotes deferring sense and demanding the labour of exegesis.
There is of course a long-standing tradition identifying the voice with the soul, the soul as present in the voice, and the voice – neither quite matter or spirit - as the immediate manifestation of the soul. There is a related - inextricable perhaps - tradition, amply documented, of seeing writing as something secondary and external.
Now it said about Yeats that “From the beginning, he wrote verses meant to be spoken and heard, not written and read.” His written verse aspired to the condition of the voice.
But however true this may be, it is also true, firstly, that Yeats displays a fascination with writing and the materiality of the book, with book design, fonts, iconography. The early books he produces are like grimoires, the poems supported by arcane footnotes deferring sense and demanding the labour of exegesis.
Secondly the voice in Yeats is not only something to which his poetry aspires. It is a theme and a problematic object within the poems themselves. The presence of voices is one of the defining and salient features of the early Yeats: the disembodied voice, the voice out of nowhere. This voice without body, without obvious speaker, is sometimes called the acousmatic voice. It is typically an uncanny voice, nagging at the conscious mind with intimations of the repressed, forgotten or disavowed. Alternatively, it is a voice that intervenes from outside the frame, as it were, that commands or enacts.
There are both types of voice in the early Yeats. And they may well be related. On the one hand the voice of melancholy: sighs and murmurs floating on the wind or exhaled from the earth, barely audible and bearing the freight of lost significance. One the other, a voice of annunciation – declaring, intervening in some decisive way, prophesising. Occasionally, the one flips over into the other:
I wander
by the edge
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge:
Until the axle break
That keeps the stars in their round,
And hands hurl in the deep
The banners of East and West,
And the girdle of light is unbound,
Your breast will not lie by the breast
Of your beloved in sleep.
“Wind” is of course a bearer of or prelude to the voice. The title of Yeats’s early volume, The Wind Among the Reeds hints at the relation, never straightforward, often uneasy, between the voice – and-or spirit - and the instrument of writing, the graphic mark.
Wind works like a voice but without speech, like “pure” voice, a voice cleared of content, it seems to announce something without speaking: “A violent gust of wind made the roof shake and burst the door open”. If it’s a prelude to speech, it can also be a ghost of speech; not the annunciatory note, but the traces of a spirit expired, the almost inaudible words that blow from the sod over the grave in one of Yeats’s short stories.
To some extent, Yeats vacillates between the melancholy ghost voice, the moan, the inaudible cry, and the stentorian voice of annunciation. But increasingly, the voice of annunciation, typically italicised rather than quoted, becomes the primary object of fascination.
This voice, a voice heralded by and nearly-synonymous with the wind, represents the voice that Yeats ends up appropriating for himself. The role performed by the wind in the early poems, a voice that comes from nowhere, suddenly and decisively, to warn or declare, is exactly, so to speak, Yeats’ own voice in the middle and late poems. In the early poems it is a voice, typically signified by italics, which “intervenes” toward the end of the poem and retroactively changes or defines the meaning of what has preceded it. But what Yeats first embodies and-or experiences as a voice outside him becomes the position of enunciation that he takes up himself. The middle and late poems are full of acts of annunciation, naming, declaring (“I declare this tower is my symbol”). The voice as object becomes the voice of the subject, but always with the sense that it might once again become an external thing, and therefore has to be commanded by an act of will (“words obey my call”).
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge:
Until the axle break
That keeps the stars in their round,
And hands hurl in the deep
The banners of East and West,
And the girdle of light is unbound,
Your breast will not lie by the breast
Of your beloved in sleep.
“Wind” is of course a bearer of or prelude to the voice. The title of Yeats’s early volume, The Wind Among the Reeds hints at the relation, never straightforward, often uneasy, between the voice – and-or spirit - and the instrument of writing, the graphic mark.
Wind works like a voice but without speech, like “pure” voice, a voice cleared of content, it seems to announce something without speaking: “A violent gust of wind made the roof shake and burst the door open”. If it’s a prelude to speech, it can also be a ghost of speech; not the annunciatory note, but the traces of a spirit expired, the almost inaudible words that blow from the sod over the grave in one of Yeats’s short stories.
To some extent, Yeats vacillates between the melancholy ghost voice, the moan, the inaudible cry, and the stentorian voice of annunciation. But increasingly, the voice of annunciation, typically italicised rather than quoted, becomes the primary object of fascination.
This voice, a voice heralded by and nearly-synonymous with the wind, represents the voice that Yeats ends up appropriating for himself. The role performed by the wind in the early poems, a voice that comes from nowhere, suddenly and decisively, to warn or declare, is exactly, so to speak, Yeats’ own voice in the middle and late poems. In the early poems it is a voice, typically signified by italics, which “intervenes” toward the end of the poem and retroactively changes or defines the meaning of what has preceded it. But what Yeats first embodies and-or experiences as a voice outside him becomes the position of enunciation that he takes up himself. The middle and late poems are full of acts of annunciation, naming, declaring (“I declare this tower is my symbol”). The voice as object becomes the voice of the subject, but always with the sense that it might once again become an external thing, and therefore has to be commanded by an act of will (“words obey my call”).
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