Indian Mythic Vision in W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot
This article is a critical study on the oriental sources which two major poets–W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot–exploited for the exploration of a new centre of life and a new basis of values. They felt irresistibly drawn to the glorious myths of ancient India and attempted to interweave them with those of the West through their immortal works of art. They were influenced by eastern thought, but more as borrowers than as disciples, because the temper of their own thinking was not eastern. What they learned from India was worked over and reshaped by a sense of values that they believed had come down to them through scholars–Indian and English. This sense of values could transform their gleanings is theosophy, magic, Buddhism and spiritualism from a hotchpotch to a harmony. India and her literature of wisdom–perennial sources of inspiration to the world at large–have carved out an abiding place in the hearts of many Western poets, particularly Yeats and Eliot: There is some reason to suppose that Yeats’s affinity with Indian thought and Indian outlook on life has somehow been closer than that of any other comparable Western poet who came under that spell some time or other. In poets like Emerson and Whitman, Indian thought has undoubtedly been an important influence, but strongly as it coloured their reflection, it remained one of the elements of the Philosophical synthesis which they built. (Kantak 1965: 80) Yeats, perhaps more than T.S. Eliot, shares Indian mythic vision. His response to mythical India can be traced to the identity between ancient India and Ireland. Yeats believes that primitive India and Ireland are complementary to each other. Primitive Ireland like India was athrob with tales of wonder and mystery. Naturally, he felt an inner compulsion to explore the meaning and essence of life in Indian myths. Indian attitude towards rebirth caught the poetic fancy of W.B. Yeats. His vision of all the elements of the temporal world of sense and passion equally as parts of a whole is essentially the primitive vision of India. He finds nothing sinful or hateful. Even when he desires