I was rereading that poem just last week. A lot of Yeats’s creative power seems to be connected to the tension between the “sedentary toil” of writing and introversion with his fantasy life’s desire for a life of action that would do his ancestors proud. He mines this tension to great effect in so many poems it seems to constitute more than half his work. It just goes to show you, no irresolveable conflicts, no poetry. With the understanding of course that poetry won’t resolve them either, not one little bit. Which is one of the good things about it.
The fish line reminds me of the two or three places where Yeats refers to the cold dawn, as in “The Fisherman”:
Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.
I don’t see this as a repudiation of the senses or the active life but as an affirmation of a life of the senses that isn’t a distraction from being.
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