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“Letter by Strange Letter”: Yeats, Heaney, and the Aura of the Book

1998; Philosophy Documentation Center; Volume: 2; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/nhr.1998.a926598

1534-5815

Rand Brandes,

Joseph Conrad and Literature

Rand Brandes "Letter by Strange Letter": Yeats, Heaney, and the Aura of the Book W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney are bards ofthe book. Their immersion in the entire range of literary production-from the actual writing of the poems, to editing their own work and works of others, and to overseeing the final form, printing, and look ofthe book- is an essential element oftheir aesthetic, philosophical , mystical, and occult projects. This immersion reveals both poets' apprehension ofwhatWalter Benjamin calls a work ofart's"aura"and their awareness of the work's relative "cult value" in an age of mechanical reproduction.1 In addition, these transliterary projects may be seen as part of ancient, ongoing , and mainly European intellectual and spiritual movements informed by what cultural historian Frances A. Yates calls the "art of memory" or "artificial memory" in The Art ofMemory (1966). In his most recent poetry and prose, Heaney has acknowledged his interest in Frances Yates's conception of the art of memory and its esoteric sources and mystical inclinations. W. B. Yeats's exposure to thinkers, texts, and concepts informed by the art of memory is extensive . According to Yates, the art of memory was central to alchemy, various forms of hermeticism, cabalism, Rosicrucianism, astrology, and even tarot cards.2 FrancesYates also argues that many ofthe most significant cultural products ofthe MiddleAges and Renaissance-from the Sistine Chapel and Thomas 1. Walter Benjamin,"The Work ofArt in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), p. 221; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (I 221). Benjamin says ofthe term "aura": "The authenticity ofa thing is the essence ofall that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced .... Since the historical testimony rests on authenticity, the former too is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority ofthe object.... One might subsume the eliminated element in the term 'aura' and go on to say: that which withers in the age ofmechanical reproduction is the aura of the work ofart" (I 221). Benjamin goes on to argue that "the concept ofauthenticity always transcends mere genuineness. (This particularly apparent in the collector who always retains some traces of the fetishist and who, by owning the work of art, shares in its ritual power.) Nevertheless, the function ofthe concept of authenticity remains determinate in the evaluation of art; with the secularization of art, authenticity displaces the cult value ofthe work" (I 224). 2. Frances A. Yates, The Art ofMemory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. xi-xiii; hereafter cited parenthetically, thus: (AM xi-xiii). NEW HIBERNIA REVIEW/IRIS EIRBANNACH NUA, 2:2 (SAMHRADH/SUMMER, 1998), 28-47 "Letter by Strange Letter": Yeats, Heaney, and the Aura ofthe Book Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, to Dante's Inferno and the Globe Theatre--drew upon the premises of the art of memory. Not only did Yeats encounter the art of memory indirectly through many ofthose sources, but also directly through MacGregor Mathers and William Wynn Westcott who adapted the ritual language of Renaissance alchemist John Dee, a practitioner ofthe art ofmemory, for their functions ofthe Hermetic Order ofthe Golden Dawn in the late 1880s.3 Yeats also encountered the art of memory in the works of Renaissance philosopher and occultist Cornelius Agrippa whom he first read in the 1880s and then reread later.4 A passage from Cornelius Agrippa's De Philosphia Occulta (1650)-which Warwick Gould argues was among W. B. Yeats's most often consulted esoteric works--refers to the importance ofremembering the proper names ofthings in magical operations. Agrippa presents a practical example of the application of principles basic to the art of memory: That proper names of things are very necessary in Magicall operations, almost all men testifie; For the naturall power of things proceeds first from the objects to the senses, and then from these to the imagination, and from this to the mind in which it is first conceived, and then is expressed by voices and words. The Platonists therefore say, that in this very voice or word...