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Yeats's Cuchulain Cycle and the Chinese Drama

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葉惑的「古哈嵐傳奇」與中國國劇 209 aUH

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Richard Londraville

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William Butler Yeats had a life一long fascination with the myth of the Irish hero

Cuchulain. When Yeats was a young boy growing up in the northern coast town of Sligo,

he listened to the tales the Irish peasants told of the great Ulster champion of the Red

Branch. He could look up to see the ve月1 hills upon which Cuchulain was supposed to

have fought with the Sidhe,warrior-women of the spirit world,and he could stroll upon

a stretch of beach which the natives told him was the ve叮 Baile's strand upon which

Cuchulain fought with the sea.

Yeats was disenchanted with the Christianity of his time,and so it is not strange that

he was interested in the myths of his own culture. The poet was drawn to the tales of the

warrior who refused to serve any purpose other than his own. Yeats was pleased that there were so many versions of Cuchulain's life; it seems that each person who repeated the old

stories was likely to add his own interpretation,and Yeats was no different.

In Yeats's version of the Cuchulain cycle, we are shown the Irish hero in youth,

middle age, and appropriately, as Yeats himself was facing his last days, he wrote The

Death of Cuchulain. Although Cuchulain was traditionally supposed to be twenty-seven

when he died, in Yeats's version he seemed to age along with the poet. It is also fitting

that of the seven main treatments of the Cuchulain theme,the first (a poem) and the last

(a play) are titled The Death of Cuchulain.

Before I attempt to explain Yeats's interest in and use of Cuchulain,some general

explanation of his dramaturgy is appropriate. Although Yeats's fame is mainly as a poet,it

is no secret that he thought of himself as a playwright. But the early twentieth century idea

of playwright was at variance with the kind of drama that Yeats preferred. He eschewed

the realistic drama so popular at the time and chose instead a drama of ritual andmyste叮﹒

Yeats belongs to a great tradition of subjective art which has its representatives in

English literature but is not limited to any culture or naticJlality. In his search for an

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210 教學與研究第五期

in several literatures and times. Whenever he found an idea which suited him,Yeats did

not hesitate to include it in his own world-view. In this manner he constructed his own myth.

By the nature of the subjective tradition from which he drew most ofhis ideas,Yeats's

personal mythology and esthetic tend to be heterodox. Any conscious exclusion of ideas might for him be movement toward objectivity. For Yeats objectivity meant a concern

with apparent outward reality, a concentration upon appearance instead of essence. He

believed that objectivity, instead of leading toward reality, rather led away from it by

fostering the delusion that definition captured the essence of an object or idea.

Abstrac-tions such as love or religion, for example,are certainly different for each of us; yet we

tend to submit to the dictionary when we wish to explain them. Communism and de-mocracy are complex ideas which we treat as readily identifiable and stable concepts. Such acceptance of the definition of the idea for the idea itself can close our minds to

further investigation,can make us deal in stereotypes. And stereotypes tend to blind us to

real ideas shaped by living minds. Yeats chose not to deal in stereotypes,not to close his

mind to further investigation.

Undoubtedly one of the appeals of unusual doctrines or systems to Yeats was that

they furnished him with symbols,either existing in the material or suggested by it. For

Yeats symbols were not an adornment to poetry but the basis of its function. He believed that he was living in an objective age which had all but destroyed the power of the word to

心communicate. Symbols gave him a means of penetration to a deeper level of awareness

by a deliberate challenge to the rational,“sensible," and sometimes careless assignment

of arbitrary, fixed values to objects and ideas which may be seen differently by different

individuals.

Yeats could not, as could a poet writing some decades earlier,presume a common

heritage of symbol among his readers; modern life had desensitized man to the point where

he had lost touch with his historical past. The industrial revolution had broken up families

so that there no longer was the passage of tradition from one generation to the next. But Yeats did believe· in an idea which transcended and encompassed all tradition: he believed

in a

greatmemoη, passing on from generation to generation"l which accounted for man's

reaction to symbols.

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葉惡的「古哈嵐傳奇」與中國國劇

All sounds,all colours, all fonns, either because of their preordained energies or

because of long associati 凹, evoke indefinable and yet precise emotions,or,as I

prefer to think,call down among us certain disembodied powers,whose footsteps

over our hearts we call emotions:2

211

Yeats chose symbolism for the prime agent of his drama because he believed that it

might act as a key by which the inexpressible might be expressed. Ifthe word had become

decadent and had its meaning imprisoned by a dictionary,perhaps the very imprecision of

the symbol could again effect communication between men.

Symbolism, as important as it was to Yeats, was only a part of his lifelong search for

the fullest possible 盯tistic expression. He wanted to add to his poetry the kind of shared

emotion which the theatre-goer may experience from his presence in the audience of

like-minded people. He was aware that the printed page,the form with which we usually

associate literature,is in fact quite a late development. Literature existed for ages before

it was written down, and Yeats wanted to recapture some of the original power of the

spoken word.

When we are reading a book we are quite in the snare of words,and if they are

beautiful,one forgets the rest. The human side of it is not thrust before us as it

would be if a living man spoke to us,with a voice trembling with passion or

qui-vering with gayety. Out of the written book has come our decadence,our1i

tera-ture,which puts secondary things first.3

Yeats's concern is that we should not treat the printed word as the final expression of

the poet. The words of the poet need to be shaped,interpreted,by “a living man."

It is easy to understand the appeal of the theatre to a poet who was working with

symbols. Theatre gives added dimension because it appeals more immediately and more

completely than does print. Itinvolves the audience in a way which cannot be approximated

by the book. The senses are involved to a greater degree,and a person's response tends to

become less compartmentalized. His experiences expand from the printed page to the

spoken word,from the description to the dance,to the costume,to the mask.

The modern realistic drama, effective as it is in capturing the imagination of the

audience, still supports the fiction that we are peeping toms looking through an invisible

2. Yeats,‘'The Symbolism ofPoe訂y(1900),inEssays and Introductions(New York,1961),PP.156-57.

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212 教學與研究第五期

fourth wall into the private lives ofhumans quite like ourselves. Yeats wanted a drama

that was not overheard,but one in which the audience was acknowledged and invited into

the play,much as the onlookers at a religious rite are invited to participate in the prayers.

For,

When man cannot dramatize himself,he cannot dramatize anybody. He can no

longer create great personages . . .. Itis because of the written book,in which we

speak:always to strangers and never with a living voice to friends,that we have lost

personal utterance.4

Theatre audiences of the early part of this century were used to direct representations

of characters working out their fates in the natural world. Such representations were

clearly not suited to Yeats's drama. Yeats believed that modern plays were not so much

immoral as ignoble. They did not take inio account man's capacity for the gr~at action.

Their concern with a temporal and local reality could only be misleading.

I do not call these modern plays immoral,and indeed I am inclined to think that

they far more often touch with the intellect and with the conscience some obscure

corner of life than appeal to what is merely gross. But I do think that these plays

will always stir the heart less nobly than plays which set before the imagination

men and women living in a more splendid and passionate world than our eyes

have seen,and speaking a loftier language than our ears have heard.s

Modern realistic drama was therefore not evil or even wrong; it was simply too close to the grubby facts of life for man to see himself as anything other than a chain of antecedent causes.

It is reasonable, then‘ that Yeats turned to mythology for the characters in his plays,

and he saw in Cuchulain an anti-self. Yeats had learned the theory of necessary

opposi-tion from his study of William Blake's poetry, and Cuchulain represented to Yeats

everything that he was not, a kid ofyang to hisyin. Yeats was attempting to

write a

poetical play where eve叮 characterbecame an example of the finding or not finding of

what I have called the Antithetical Self.吋

This antithetical self, elsewhere in his work described as mask or antinomy,is a

poeti-4. Ibid. 5. Ibid,p.7.

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葉慈的「古啥嵐傳奇 j 與中國國劇 213

cal attempt to deal with the paradoxes of life. Rather than shrink from our opposite,

Yeats believed we should embrace it, for only in that acceptance can we hope to find

anything of our real nature. Life is a continual reconciliation of opposites,and we must,as

Yeats suggests,realize that the human condition is uncertainty,and we should embrace this

uncertainty rather than search

irritably" for final answers.

So Cuchulain, the warrior, the man of action,became the opposite of Yeats,the poet

and thinker.

I have chosen three plays and a fragment of a fourth to represent the Cuchulain cycle.

They are At the Hawk~ Well, On Baile~ Strand, The Only Jealousy of Erner, and The

Death of Cuchulain.

In At the Hawk

s

Well the young Cuchulain,not yet famous,comes to a barren place

because he has heard that near it may be found a well of immortality. He finds an old man

near a dry well and a leafless hazel tree. The old man has wasted his life beside the well,

waiting for it to flow. Each time the well has filled,he has missed his chance to drink.

Excepting the old man,the only other creature near is a hawk-like woman,the Guardian

of the Well. In order that he may wait without competition

,

the old man tries to persuade

Cuchulain to leave the well. The well gives signs that it may flow,and the Guardian begins

to dance. The old man falls asleep and Cuchulain is lured away from the well by the dance of the hawk-woman. Both Cuchulain and the old man miss the opportunity to drink from

the well, which has flowed in the meantime. 百Ie old man predicts a tragic destiny for

Cuchulain,and his prediction is immediately realized as the Guardian of the Well arouses

the warrior-woman Aoife and her troops. Cuchulain goes off to confront them as the

playends.

Now theart I long for is also a battle,but it takes place in the depths of the soul

and one of the antagonists does not wear a shape known to the world or speak a

rno此altongue. Itis the struggle of the dreamwi也出eworld.7

Yeats is speaking of the

anti-self" in thispassage,and the opposing forces of

Cuchu-lain and the Old Man, of youthful enthusiasm and crabbed old age,correspond with the

struggle of the dream with the world." Although both fail,Cuchulain's failure is

magnifi-cent,a failure of daring too much,while the old man has lost his life by daring nothing at

7. W. B.Yeats,The Poet and the Actress,an unfmished dialogue of1915,quoted from RichardEllfuan,The Identity

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(9)

葉慈的「古哈嵐傅奇」與中國國劇

De伊s. I spit upon their short bodices,their stiff stays,their toes whereon they

spin like peg-tops,aboveallupon that chambermaid face. They might have looked

timeless, Rameses the Great,but not that chambermaid,that old maid history. I

spit ! I spit! I spit !

217

The play proper begins in medias res with Eithne Inguba bringing a message to the

embattled Cuchulain. It is a false message because Eithne is under the spell of Mae呃,

Queen of the Sidhe. But he is

for the fight" and chooses to go into battle at that moment

rather than wait for reenforcements. He forgives Eithne and goes to fight. He is mortally

wounded during the battle,and tries to fasten himself to a pillar so that he may die on his

feet. Aoi缸,an incarnation of the hawk-woman fromAt the Hawk

s

Well,enters to apply

the fmal blow

,

but she hesitates because she wants him to know who it is that kills him.

She askes him how her son fought in On Baile

s

Strand. He replies:

Age makes more

skillful but not better men." and bitterly recalls that it was the oath that he swore to be

loyal to Conchubar which caused him to fight and kill his only son. The only time in his

life when Cuchulain accepted another's reality resulted in the death of his son. At this

point,Aoife hears someone coming and hides.

The new arrival is the blind old man from On Baile

s

Strand. He is delighted to find

Cuchulain weak and dying,for he has been promised a twelve-penny reward if he brings

back Cuchulain's head to Queen Maeve 'sc位np.

Itis a consummate irony that the greatest fighting man in Ireland will meet his end on

the knife of a blind beggar, but Cuchulain, ready for anything that life brings him,simply

says

Twelve pennies !What better reasonfor 祖llinga man?"

Thisis the Cuchu1ain,blinded by heroism,butchered by a clown,who is envisaged

in the fmal song of the play

uming his place int~efolk memory of Irish

tradi-tion with the occurrence of the Easter Rising of 1916:

What stood.inthe Post Office

With Pearse and Connolly?

What comes out of the mountain

Where men flIst shedth甜 blood?

Who thought Cuchu1aint也 itseemed

He stood where they had stood?8

(10)

218 教學與研究第五期

With his last verse of his last play, Yeats shows us that poetry is not an idle pastime,

but a vital force which changes lives and destinies of nations, for the Irish revolutionaries

who died in the battle of the Post Office said that the spirit of Cuchulain stood beside

them in their last fight. Nor was theirgest叮e ,which seemed so useless at the time,wasted.

Like Cuchulain's fight with the waves,it was the incident which caught the imagnation of

the world and eventually led to the Irish Free State.

The question remains: Why attempt these plays in the style of the Chinese opera?

Itis well known that Yeats modeled his plays after the Japanese drama,specifically because

he wanted to create a theatre of mysterious art,where supernatural beings could appear.

The conventions of scenery,mask,dance,music,and acting have strong parallels,as one

might expect, between Japanese and Chinese drama. What Yeats was looking for was a

model from ritual theatre for his own drama,and since he could find none in the West,he

turned to the East.

The arts which interest me, while seem姐g to separate from the world and us a

group of figures,曲lages, symbols,enable us to pass for a few moments into a

deep of the mind that had hitherto been too subtle for our habitation.9

Certainly the conventions of the Chinese theatre are appropriate to what Yeats had in

mind. The beautiful costumes, the conventions of acting,the music,and especially the

make-up and masks create exactly the effect he wanted. I will describe these effects in

order.

Scenery

InAt the Hawk:SWell,instead of the actual bare tree and well,which are easy enough

to represent on the stage,the chorus enjoins us to imagine the fust scene of the play,just

as the Chinese drama has the chairs and table at the rear of the set represent many different

things.--sometimes even tables and chairs.lO

Yeats's scenery is now in the mind of the audience, differing as each individual

in-terprets it. Anyone who has listened to a radio play can appreciate this effect,even for a

realistic setting. In the non-realistic Yeatsian drama it has even more power.

Music

Yeats was interested in the use of music in his plays almost from the beginning of his

8. W.B.Ye翎at忱s丸,

(11)

葉惑的「古哈嵐傳奇」與中國國劇 219

drama, but he did not fmd the kind of music he wanted until he turned to an eastern

model. He wanted simple instruments which would not overpower the speeches of the

actors. He always regarded music as something which accompanies and enriches the

spoken word,not as an element which has a discrete dramatic validity. Therefore 1 have

decided to use a combination of Chinese folk melodies and the instruments of the wen,

or civil part of the orchestra.

Costumes,Make-up,and Masks

羽田 costumes of the Chinese opera are a way of identifying types of characters,and

as such create the kind of economy of exposition which Yeats aimed for. No informed

member of the Chinese audience would ever confuse the costumes of scholar or a general,

for example.

But it is the masks for which Yeats had an especial fascination. He was always

interested in masks, particularly the idea of mask in occult literature. The masking that

he used in his theatre became,like most of his symbols,rich in associations which

tran-scendedspeci且c times and cultures. As Peter Ure explains,

. . . the immobility and austerity of the mask substitute for flesh an artifact,a dead

face which.is more alive,like the golden bird of Byzantium,because it is unchanging

and because it is liberated from time and the sensual music.l l

In the Chinese opera,的 in the Japanese Noh, the mask allows the audience quickly to

identify the type of character represented. For Yeats,the mask served to remove his drama

from the limitations of temporal reality. There is no living face to remind the audience of

the actor's humanity,and when the character being portrayed is a hero like Cuchulain,no

actor's face could be quite as satisfactory as a mask. As Yeats says,

We are accustomed to faces ofbronze and marble,and what could be more suitable

than that Cuchulain, . .. a half-supernatural,legendary person,should show us a

face, . .. molded by some distinguished artist? . . . .Itwould be a stirring adventure

for a poet and an artist workingtoge也erto create once more heroic or grotesque

types 曲的,keeping always an appropriate distance from life,would seem an image

of these profoundemotions 曲的 existonly in solitude and silence.12

10. PeterU時,W. B. Yeats(New York,1964),p.90.

(12)

220 教學與研究第五期 Dance

One of the most striking elements in the plays of Yeats is the dance; its climactic

function focuses the audience's attention upon it as the highest moment in the drama. It

is the summation and the quintessence of all the arts. Since dance involves the whole

being,it is more than the words which describe it. Itrepresents for Yeats the unification

of intellect with emotion,demonstrated by the similarly unified action of the dance. Who,

indeed,can tell the dancer from the dance or the artist from his 訂t?

The place of dance in his plays is obvious. Since the dance involves the whole body,

since it is both pictorial and sculptural,it is the ideal medium to bridge the gap between

the time and space arts. Dancing becomes not alone the quintessence of the arts,but the

culmination of them all,a spontaneous manifestation of an inWard emotion.

The dance which exists in the Chinese opera is particularly congruent with Yeats's

ideas. The restrained and suggestive dance of the Chinese drama provides the opportunity

for the highly symbolic expression of inner emotion.

Acting

The Chinese audience is informed mosteconomica,lly by certain gestures and actions

of the actors.

Stepping over the threshold and opening and closing the old-fashioned double doors leading into a Chinese house are acted out with perfect mimic action. ...

The gait assumed by an actor is also meaningful. A noble lady walks with grace

and dignity; theflirtswayssu昆estively in her gaudy costume; fighters stalk; scholars

pace thoughtfully; clowns scurry; and officials stride with a grand manner.13

Yeats wanted exactly this effect from his actors as another means by which he could reenforce the non -realistic nature of his drama. At one point he half-seriously considered putting the players of the Abbey theatre in barrels so that he could better control their actions.

Finally, I must add a note of caution. What I will be presenting is not Chinese opera,

but IHsh plays done in the style of the CMn帥 OP?也 I 吋I use the conventions which I

deem appropriate and' omit those which do not seem to be fitting. What I am attempting

is a joining of two dramatic forms which seem to me to be especially compatible. Yeats

intended that his plays represent the soul and mind of his people,combining art,culture

(13)

葉慈的「古哈嵐傳奇」與中國國劇 221

and spirit in one presentation. Since his model is from the East,I believe it is appropriate

that I return to the source of his inspiration. Like all experiments,it must risk failure.

Whatever successithas must be judged by the way in which it forces you to look with new

(14)

222 教學與研究第五期

READING LIST

Yeats,W. B.Essays. New York: The Macmillan Co.,1924.

· Explorations. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1962.

· Four Plays for Dancers. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1921.

· Mythologies. New York: The Macmillan Co.,1959.

· The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W. B. Yeats, eds. Russell K. Alspach

and Catherine Alspach New York: The Macmillan Co., 1966.

Clark, David. W. B. Yeats and the Theatre of Desolate Reality. Dublin: Dolmen Press,

11965.

Dolby,William.A History ofChinese Drama. New York: Barnes and Noble,1976.

Huang,Josephine. Classical Chines Plays. Taipei: 1972.

Nathan, Leonard. The Tragic Drama of William Butler Yeats: Figures in a Dance. New

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