PARTISAN REVIEW
461
od which others must pursue after him. . . . It is simply a way of
controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and significance to the im–
mense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary
his–
tory. It is a method first adumbrated by Mr. Yeats." In Yeats's
adumbration, myth structured poems, but it was also a form of
spiritual discipline indispensable to the understanding of the self,
of history, of the self's place in history. With Eliot and Joyce, Yeats
was suspicious of the flux of the subjective self and its ability to
cope with the chaos of the contemporary world.
If
self-mastery were
to be achieved and with it the mastery of history, the self had to de–
termine which phase of the historical moon it was in, the phase of
the psychological moon to which it properly belonged, and then find
its true mask in the proper antithetical phase.
"If
we cannot imagine
ourselves as different from what we are and assume the second self,"
Yeats wrote in his autobiography, "we cannot impose a discipline
upon ourselves, though we may accept one from others. Active
vir–
tue as distinguished from passive acceptance of the present historical
code is therefore theatrical, consciously dramatic, the wearing of a
mask."
Myth then turns the problems of self and history into a cosmic
drama in which the self finds its way through role playing. Eliot
resolved the problem
in
similar fashion, but with a different myth.
As
man and poet he struggled to extinguish the personality so that
he might become the assured spokesman, not of idiosyncratic per–
ceptions but of an ever present salvational order.
As
craftsman he
struggled to displace his own voice, first with those of various per–
sonae, then with voices representing the tradition and the "Mind
of Europe," and finally with the voices of imaginary characters
speaking to each other. The discipline of the poet was paralleled by
the discipline of the personality; through spiritual ascesis the worldly
self dies and the new self, aware of God's redemptive power,
is
born. "In becoming no one, I begin to live," says Lord Claverton
in
The Elder Statesman.
In losing the temporal self, Eliot as man and
poet tames the anarchy and futility of the contemporary and lives
in the recurrent Christian drama.
Joyce too distrusted the chaotic uncertainties of self and his–
tory. Though the theory that the artist must remove himself from
his
creation and stand back coolly paring his nails is Stephen'S, not
his, Joyce nevertheless tried to become the spokesman of the
uni-
