No Country for Gold Men

Been thinking a lot about Plath these past few days, and some of my thoughts brought to mind the bold desire Yeats stated in Sailing to Byzantium:

“Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

This has been bugging me a little—isn’t the only thing humans can conceive of that can exist "out" of Nature the intellect itself? And that is only within the constricting idea which insists upon the human mind as distinct from Nature, rather than in it, and of it. The antipathy expressed toward the external in this mindset is profound, ignoring the possibility that the human imagination is an expression of Nature—often idealized, and often distorted, but sometimes—as within the best of poetry—joining its highest, most genuine, realization. Only this kind of awareness can truly create Yeats' "artifice of eternity", if this kind of artifice is really desired. Obviously, the forms crafted by the Grecian goldsmiths represent what I'm talking about, in Yeats' mind—

However, "the fury and the mire of human veins" (Byzantium) are not compatable with the possibilities of the poet's imagination. So it's all kind of mind-fucking anyway...But I think it might be rather destructive mind-fucking—may lead to a bad place...

Yeah, the lout and the fool and that damn school troubled Yeats considerably...The "filthy modern tide", whose "spawning fury" wrecked his ideal for Ireland--"Base-born products of base-born beds"—like me, undoubtedly. And probably Ralph Emery. I guess that's the reason for the disconnect here—otherwise, why the need to distinguish higher possibility from Nature—from the rest of us?

Kinda hurts my feelings (and I'm not entirely kidding)...

Yeah, well...More later...