A Reader's Guide to Yeats's "A Vision"

UPDATE: PUBLICATION AND OFFERS

One of the reasons for the dormancy of this blog over the last few years has been my focus on writing a book on A Vision. This is not a crowded field and a relatively straightforward introduction to A Vision is one of the gaps in Yeats Studies, so I hope that A Reader's Guide to Yeats's "A Vision" will be a genuine aid to readers new and old.

The book will be published by Clemson University Press, in association with Liverpool University Press in the UK, and should be out at the beginning of 2019.

The cover art is by Jaff Seijas, whose Vision-inspired art I've featured on the blog here before.

It's divided into four sections of three or four chapters each (plus a coda).

Background
1 Overview: The Book of A Vision
2 Genesis: Making and Remaking A Vision
3 Background: Antecedents and Assumptions
Foundations
4 Presentation: Gyres and Geometry
5 Spirits: Determinism and Free Will
6 Being: Human and Divine
Structure
7 The Faculties: Action and Pursuit
8 The Principles: Reality and Value
9 The Daimon: Opposition and Essence
10 The Divine: One and Many
Process
11 The Circles of Life: Wheels and Rebirth
12 The Twenty-Eight Incarnations: Lives and Phases
13 After Life: Understanding and Preparation
14 History: Cycles and Influx
Epilog
15 Reframing A Vision
Appendix: People in Phases

Background starts off looking at the writing and printing history of A Vision's two editions; then the automatic writing and the questions that raises; and then examines the ideas and baggage that the Yeatses brought to the enterprise and what belief meant to Yeats.

Foundations outlines the fundamental framework of A Vision in its duality, the gyre and the wheel; it continues with a consideration of what Yeats saw as the nature of spiritual and human existence, then looks at the human beings and their relationship to the divine and Unity of Being.

Structure devotes a chapter each to the three major elements in Yeats's anatomy of the human being: Faculties, Principles, and Daimon, and then moves on to the divine, including the Thirteenth Cone.

Process then looks at these elements in action, the cycles of individual lives and recurrent lives, the pageant of the incarnations represented by the phases of the moon, the process of the afterlife, and the processes of historical cycles.

The epilogue is a brief assessment of A Vision's significance, its implications, and its meaning for Yeats. An appendix gives a table summarizing the phases that the Yeatses assign to various individuals in A Vision and the automatic script.

The book is quite a bit thinner than the draft that I finished back in May, having lost almost half of its material to reach the agreed length and to be useful as a guide—it might have been rather daunting and less usable. The good news is that I hope to work up some of the bits that I cut to become entries for this blog. The better news is that I was allowed 40 figures and illustrations. Bad news is that it will be almost as hideously priced as A Vision was when it came out in 1925. A Vision A was priced at 3 guineas (this was the fancy way of pricing a privately produced edition, meaning 3 pounds and 3 shillings, just over $15 at that date); this was roughly equivalent to £180 today, around $240. Incidentally, the 1937 edition was 15 shillings, roughly a quarter of the price. So this could be seen as a bargain at half that price (at current exchange the UK edition is looking cheaper). It will, however, be accessible through universities and libraries, and at least partially through search online, and I hope that eventually it will reach a cheaper format.

I shall give updates when I have them, but will start with some new blog entries from unused material.