Deconstructing Platonic Concept Of Love In Yeats’s Poetry

Abstract

W.B. Yeats developed his philosophy of mysticism under various influences both Eastern and Western;  modern and ancient. Yeats deconstructs the view that state of unity of body and soul can be achieved by  renouncing the worldly desires and purifying the heart sick with desire. Yeats aestheticizes Plotinus’s ideas  and re-employs them in his poetry of later phase. Yeats’s poetry instead of reflecting contemporary concerns  delineates his direct apprehension of the world as experienced through the senses. But instead of reproducing  a servile copy of their concepts, he twisted his universe in his own way, producing somewhat an altered version  of mysticism, to suit to his own world in a better way. The poet propounds the view that physical love and  spiritual love are opposite as well as parallel at the same time. The paper underscores the need for wholesome  and complete union of the body and the soul for harmonious human life.