THE LITERARY DEVELOPMENT OF POETIC DRAMA IN THE WORKS OF ENGLISH POETS OF THE 20TH CENTURY (EXAMPLES FROM T.S.ELIOT AND W.B.YEATS WORKS)

Аннотация

В этом исследовании рассматривается литературное развитие поэтической драмы в произведениях английских поэтов 20-го века, с особым акцентом на Т. С. Элиота и У. Б. Йейтса. Оба поэта возродили поэтическую драму, смешав традиционные стихотворные формы с современными темами, создав произведения, которые перекинули мост между классическим влиянием и современными проблемами. Элиот через такие пьесы, как «Убийство в соборе» и «Семейное воссоединение», привнес религиозную и философскую глубину на сцену. Между тем, Йейтс привнес ирландскую мифологию и символизм в свои драмы, такие как «У ястреба» и «Смерть Кухулина», способствуя ирландскому литературному возрождению. В аннотации рассматривается, как эти поэты использовали поэтический язык не только для эстетической ценности, но и для исследованияидентичности,времени идуховного конфликта. Ключевые слова: поэтическая драма,Т. С.Элиот,У.Б.Йейтс,английская литература XX века, стихотворная драма, модернизм, символизм, ирландское литературное возрождение, религиозные и философские темы, классическое и мифологическое влияние, сценические эксперименты. http://www.internationaljournal.co.in/index.php/jasass 88 Volume15Issue04, April2025 Impact factor: 2019: 4.679 2020: 5.015 2021: 5.436, 2022: 5.242, 2023: 6.995, 2024 7.75 Since Yeats, ‘Uncle Wm’ had by this time been dead almost twenty years it might be thought that Pound’s speculation could not help but be retrospective, but his description of it as ‘insemination’ seems to suggest more fertile possibilities, even that he considers the relationship between two of the greatest poets writing in the twentieth century is still pregnant with possibilities. Later critics have almost uniformly agreed with Pound’s estimation that the two writers were suspicious or hostile towards each other’s work—although it is conceded that after Yeats was safely dead Eliot’s attitude towards him softened, and that he made amends with a noble commemorative lecture in Dublin in 1940, and with the inclusion of Yeats as a significant element inthe‘compound’ ghost inhis last great poem LittleGidding. Reading the newly available letters between both poets, as well as hitherto uncollected articles and prose, suggests that the relationship between Yeats and Eliot was more complex and less antipathetic than has been hitherto thought, and I want to argue that under an apparent indifference, or lack of ‘mutual illumination’ , the two men were not only far more conscious of each other than is generally recognised, but that, ironically, they were more alike in their thinking, or at least in sharing common concerns in their thinking, than they were like Pound— although he impinged more obviously, and boisterously, on both their careers. And there is this implication in Pound’s very words. His regret is not that there was no ‘mutual illumination’ between Yeats and Eliot but that such a potential illumination regrettably lacked sufficient wattage, so that it did not refract and reflect as brightly as he thought it could and should have done. In this sense it is worth exploring just what was ‘mutual’ in the two poets’ ‘illumination’, and in what ways they might be said to have ‘neglected todevelop’ it. And we might remark that, as in the case of matches and flint, illumination may be generated from friction as much as from recognition andassent. Yeats was already an established poet of forty-nine in 1914, when Eliot arrived in England for what turned out to be a permanent residence. His radical change in style and theme, increasingly evident after he had ‘got down off his stilts’ at the turn of the century, was unmistakably registered inhis book Responsibilities of that year, a fact that Pound understood but Eliot didnot. Indeed, Pound, if not the catalytic influence some critics have claimed, certainly encouraged Yeats to be bolder in his poetic experiments. He also exerted an important influence on Eliot— but again, as in his dealings with Yeats, this was less in converting him to new forms and styles than in encouraging him to persevere and develop the poetry he was already writing. Pound at once understood the precocity and individuality of the twenty-six-year-old Eliot, recalling later that he was so poetically gifted as to have evolved his own modernist style apparently byhimself. This very self-fashioning kept Eliot aloof from Yeats. Whereas Pound had arrived in London, five years before him, eager to become a disciple (Dorothy Shakespear recalled in her journal that in February 1909 he ‘talked of Yeats, as one of the Twenty of the world who have added to the World’s poetic matter’ and ‘read a short piece of Yeats, in a voice dropping with emotion, in avoice likeYeats’s own’4),Eliotneeded nosuch addition to hispoeticmatter. If not influenced by Yeats, Eliot was, from early in his English career, keenly aware of him and within a few months of his arrival in Oxford engineered a meeting. In February 1915 he intimated to Pound that he hoped to make Yeats’s a