SOURCE: Sikka, Shalini. “Yeats's Theory of Symbolism in the Light of the Upanisads.” In W. B. Yeats and the Upanisads, pp. 144-63. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.

In the following essay, Sikka discusses the influence of the Upanishads on W. B. Yeats's thought.

Pythagoras planned it. Why did the people stare? His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move In marble or in bronze, lacked character. But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love Of solitary beds, knew what they were … 

—‘The Statues’

As we have seen in the previous chapter, Yeats's lifelong preoccupation was to write poetry based on truths perceived in moments of revelation, “to discover and communicate a state of being.”¹ Of the two, the first, “to discover,” related to the domain of the mystic, the second, “to communicate” was the responsibility of the poet. Yeats soon discovered that the latter was indeed a...