Yeats’ Cycle of Creation-Destruction in Lapis Lazuli

“Everything falls and is built again,” murmurs William Butler’s speaker of Yeats’s poem, Lazuli. The rude speaker, when he contends that art is superfluous in hard and cold things, denies that not only art is necessary, but also that the artists themselves preserve the subsistence of the world. Saying that the system of life depends on the reviving of the works of the artist, the speaker posits that the cycle of both creation and destruction sustains the existence of all things.

The first stanza “Lapis Lazuli” sets the stage for the rest of the poem. The speaker takes part in the scene of hysterical women who are “palette”, “faithful bow” and “always cheerful poets”, saying that they are ignorant of what “everyone knows”, that is, in the form of imminent war. zeppelins and bomb-dropping airplanes. The three images of the arts which women relate to painters, musicians, and writers, and by vindicating the ignorance of the workmen by reference to the common knowledge of war, women assert that men of art are nothing but frivolities which have nothing. beware of tragedy in life. We gather, women, that if all men were “always gay,” or blissfully ignorant, we would all be utterly destroyed. The speaker, using “[p]sorie like King Billy”, is an insult to the Irish Nationalist Unionists, thus setting up the Irish fight for independence from England as a metaphor for the inevitable destruction.

In the second stanza of the poem, the speaker introduces his theory of the cycle of creation and destruction. He declares;

“The third stanza presents an example of the cycle of creation-destruction. The speaker’s several modes of translation are unique in that the newcomers in the “slain by the swords of the ancient cultures” represent creation with travel. Of necessity, these newcomers pass as well, “they and their wisdom on the rack,” completing the cycle of the creation-destruction process. stating the cyclical nature

The fourth stanza offers an introduction to such an artist. The orator is described on a lapis lazuli stone carved in the shape of the three Chinamen. Above the men “flies a two-legged bird,” or a crane, a symbol of length. One of the servants holds a musical instrument. The crane is an icon of long life, but not of immortality, which knows the inevitability of death. The instrument remains in the notice, because its importance lies not in its name, but in its function as a medium of the artist. Before long, the servant demonstrates his purpose.

The fifth stanza presents a complete refutation of the allegations at the beginning of the poem. The stanza opens with a romantic description of the carving of the lapis lazuli stone, which also opens up through the “color” “a crack or fissure of accident,” its flaws finding harmony in a series of natural images. By mentioning both the beautiful and ugly aspects of sculpture, the speaker highlights the inherent and genuine nature of the cycle of creation and destruction that surrounds everything. The speaker “delights” in the eyes of the Chinese “mountain and sky” for the meeting of Earth and Heaven, lending to the celestial quality of the cycle. He notes that “[o]n every tragic scene they gaze” with the “glowing eyes of the ancients” who are “hilarious” as the servant begins to play a “miserable song” on his instrument, filling ra of hysterical women despised bow fiddle This whole scene represents the destruction of civilization, again comparing it to the drops of tragedy and highlighting both the presence of the musician and the joy of China. Artists, as they face the mid-cycle of destruction, exist to bring about creation — a rebirth not colored by loud noises and roaring cannons, but by serene naanism and quiet tranquility.

William Butler Yeats’s poem Lazuli maintains the need for artists and the existence of a cyclical process of creation and destruction . The speaker uses the power of his substance to provide a powerful counterpoint in the form of a metaphor, and then successfully refutes it with careful examples and vivid images. He uses to help the cause the three main tools of artists: as a painter, evocative; as a musician, medium instruments; As a writer, the analogy is crucial. Even the poem itself demonstrates the cyclical nature — it presents an initial accusation and, at the end, comes full circle. .

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