In my previous posts, I mostly wrote about the advantages of being an anti-self: we have seen that people with antithetical abilities are all exceptional, talented characters, strongly connected to art and high thinking. But Yeats firmly believes that the antithetical impulse may grow a fanaticism and a terror, and may oppress the ignorant and…
The mask put on by the personaggios or the anti-selves is indispensable for their becoming dominant and, at times, downright oppressive characters. In “Per Amica,” Yeats mentions a saint, St Francis of Assisi, and a politician, Cesare Borgia, to exemplify the importance of this kind of mask: they “made themselves over-mastering, creative persons by turning from…
As mentioned in my previous post, Yeats’s concept of the self and its anti-self (the mask) means that man is, in fact, two men. It also means that they belong to different fields of life, while being strongly connected to one another—the self is stuck in ordinary life, while the anti-self appertains to the fields of…