Yeats’ Doctrine of The Mask

 

Yeats’ Doctrine of The Mask 

Yeats’ doctrine of the Mask expounds the theory that the wearing of an ideal Mask by a poet, and his merger in the ideal self, produces in him a dramatic tension which gives rise to poetic creation, poetic power, and poetic truth. Yeats implies that art and poetry spring from the struggle in the poet’s soul between the two opposite forces of life—the real self and the ideal self. Evidently the conflict between the two is spiritual. When the two meet, there are feelings of self-exploration and self-realization. The dramatic tension results in an enlargement of the soul and a strong emotional experience, in the poet. Thence proceeds “poetry of opposites.” Explaining Yeats’ view on the doctrine of the Mask, Graham Hough remarks:

“All creative activity depends on the energy to assume a mask, to be deliberately reborn as something not oneself. Something of the theatrical element of affectation ever is necessary to all active virtue. When the artist ‘found hanging upon some oak of Dodoha an ancient mask, painted and regild to his liking, and at last put it on, he found that another’s breath came and went within his breath upon the carven lips, and that his eyes were, on the instant, fixed upon a visionary world.”

Merger But No ‘Negative Capability’

Yeats’ doctrine of the Mask implies a merger of the self in the anti-self to such an extent that there is no effacement of the self, no negative capability. The self has to put on the mask of the anti-self, make self-exploration, and assess the degree of self-realization in the anti-self. And here the conflict between the self and the anti-self, the struggle between the opposites, will begin. The self has its own mind. The anti-self has no mind of its own. It has only its mask, its history, its pre-determined behaviour. So the conflict will be between the two visions of the same self. The conflict will be a struggle for power and supremacy between two opposites - the real self and the ideal self. It will cause an enlargement of the poet’s soul and give rise to an intense emotional experience in the mind. It is poetry, filled with an urge for poetic creation. Yeats says the same thing indirectly as follows: Out of the quarrel with the -self, we make poetry.