Yeats: "I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them."
"In "Who Goes with Fergus?", the imagination wins its most triumphant moment. Here, in a compact but richly articulated structure, we gain a vision of imagination's triumph over all creation." -Frank Hughes Murphy
Though the numerous, partial recitations of Yeats's "Who Goes with Fergus?" in Ulysses should not simply be classified as parody, Stephen's transfiguration of the poem parodically sustains Yeats's text while simultaneously subverting and, at times, redefining its symbolic meaning(s). The natural world upon which Stephen gazes from Martello Tower, particularly the sea, gains its symbolic value from Yeats's conception of elemental interconnectedness. In essence, Yeats power to create and delineate borders on the divine. Paradoxically, the way in which Joyce's character resituates stars, wind, and water within the context of a Hamletean purgatory inspires in Stephen an emotional response dialectical to the intended reaction; rather than feel freed by the harmony of the world and the beauty of the imagination, Yeats's symbolism confines Stephen intellectually and spiritually. An occultism which Yeats found reassuring in its iconoclasm, weaving together nature, heaven, intellect, and imagination, instead makes the organic world an inescapable invocation of Stephen's refusal to pray for his mother. Increasing the friction between the original poem and the Joycean alteration, the triumph of imagination in "Fergus" reminds Ulysses' bard of his own artistic impotency: he has not produced a substantial work. He perhaps feels trapped within a world already defined exegetically by a master Irish poet while also invigorated by the potential to subvert and "usurp" all previous art (as Joyce makes so clear that he himself has done with creation of Ulysses).
Who Goes With Fergus?
WHO will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
In one of his letters, Yeats wrote, "I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them." Surrounded by "woodshadows" and "White breast of the dim sea", Stephen contemplates his mother's death completely enveloped by Yeatsean imagery. Yet, rather than provide structure, "Who Goes with Fergus?" gives the landscape coherency while simultaneously constituting merely the mapping of an artist's metaphysics onto an indecipherable land of aporiatic components. Describing the woodshadows as "float[ing] silently by through the morning peace" suggests the shadow so integral to "Fergus" is transitory, even hallucinatory in its mysticism. Its ephemeral, dream-like quality also makes the imagery introspective, as though Stephen's mental vision of the poetic forest has fused with the true scenery around the tower; the real becomes indistinguishable from the artistic, Yeatsean symbolism presenting an intricate veil which the young poet must remove before creating his own original art. The next sentence furthers the disjunction between Yeats's imaginative freedom and Stephen's confinement within that "little world": "Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet." Initially, water (which Yeats suggests represents tears and sorrow) is reflective in its opacity. But, as we know, the mirror is cracked; the ocean yields no insight into his own psyche, nor does it elucidate any true consequence of death. Eventually, water becomes a white swirl, shedding its reflectiveness---art not only creates a distorted reality, but yields nothing but a vast expanse which stretches beyond one's horizon. Also, the mirror is a symbol servitude, making him indentured both to Yeats and to his mother's scorned spirit. Ironically, Stephen's meditations reinforce the value of the sea as a signifier of tragedy, rendering the meaning of his mother's death impenetrable (dialectic to Yeats's "piercable" wood). Moreover, humans do not "dance upon the level shore", but instead spurn the water, transforming a celebratory act into a defiling of art, death, and the meaning of the posthumous in the context of the church.
By embracing art and, arguably, poetry as a usurper of religion, Stephen's confinement within artistic symbolism reinvigorates his refusal to pray for his mother. "Who Goes with Fergus" supplants the language of the church, making poetry the heretical destruction of religious meaning rather than the creation of structure. According to Ellman's The Identity of Yeats, "At the age of twenty-four [Yeats] proposed to the Hermetic Society...that they assemble the affirmations of the greatest poets in their 'finest moments' and make a new religion out of them." Despite Stephen's subversion of Yeats's mythology, he shares an affinity with his predecessor's confidence in imagination, which transcends all established belief; the suggestion that Stephen is a young Joyce, waiting to create his tour de force, i.e. Ulysses, implies that he will one day replace Yeats. The line "Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide" suggests a certain matrimony of all verse, collapsing all artists into a deconstructed world of words. Despite the artistic victory in such an achievement, it also makes the young poet the creator of a world which must be as false as that proposed by "Fergus", as constraining for other writers, and as blasphemous. If Stephen struggles to "pierce" Yeats, imagine the difficulty inherent in trying to "pierce" Joyce. Since words rest on top of the water, they necessarily hide the mirror as their bright shimmer replaces true reflection with manufactured significance. In this context, all English literature, Shakespeare in particular, becomes oppressive because it defines metaphysical delineation; Stephen feels this subjugation in particular, doubly burdened by art and his Irishness.
Yet, as discussed previously, the oppressive weight is not simply creative; it is also spiritual and moral. Due to Yeats's control over nature, he also traps Stephen within signifiers of his betrayal: "And no more turn aside and brood/ Upon love's bitter mystery". Those words do not invigorate; they leave him to forever contemplate love's bitter mystery. In his mind, religion and art can not coexist because he can not believe in both and can not know which is correct or more powerful. Does his mother exist in a Christian purgatory, constantly piercing the thin protection provided by her son's imagination, or is her ashen ghost merely the embodiment of his oppression by the Hamletean notion of a liminal, posthumous existence and all English drama.
Stephen's hallucinatory recitation of "Fergus" (as well as Bloom's misinterpretation) in Circe reinvigorates a natal connection between the young poet and Yetsean symbolism: "[Stephen] stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body." These physical gestures constitute a reverse birth as he holds his hands to the world then collapses back into fetal position, as though consumed and digested by the imagery of his poetic predecessor and creator (Stephen also thinks of vampires immediately proceeding the poem). Bloom brushes wood chips from the young man's clothes, recalling Stephen's violent revolt against his mother's ghost and the consequent shattering of the lamp. In one sense, the act represents an attempt to escape his own, guilty conscience; simultaneously, he lashes out at all of Western tradition, i.e. the rhetoric responsible for granting religion more significance than art. Inevitably, he strikes his own poetic mind, which, one might argue, is responsible for his mother's incarnation. In a liminal state which wavers between life and death, hallucination and reality, the theological value of art itself flirts between truth and blasphemy. Stephen might be imagining a heaven stabilized by poetry; simultaneously, art potentially constitutes damnation, the lines from "Fergus" a murderous conflagration. Here, the poem is reduced to disjointed words which, separated, shed all significance and allow for Bloom's confusion; either language transcends its physical, syntactical existence and the decay of poetic language does not matter (does Bloom's shredding of his letter destroy Flowers?), or the words are self-contained, their power merely as signifiers of authorially constructed emotion.
Murphy: Yeats's Early Poetry
Ellman: The Identity of Yeats
Click here for the excerpts from Ulysses which contain "Fergus"
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