Illustrating A Vision 

When we were thinking about a cover image for the book of essays Yeats's "A Vision": Explications and Contexts, the editors were casting around for a suitable picture that would not incur too much copyright payment. Though the obvious image would be Dulac's illustration of the Great Wheel, it has been used quite a few times already and probably appeals more to the symbolically minded—one of the editors found that type of image off-putting, though I recognize that I myself am a sucker for a mandala! However, there is separate problem here, that Dulac's estate, handled through a publishing company, has been slow to process requests for other writers, and of course we had left the matter slightly late... There is also the Charles Ricketts (1866-1931) plate of hawk, unicorn, fountain and moon that was used for the pastedown on the inside boards of Macmillan editions during the 1920s.

In part this appeals to my sense of the importance to Yeats of the unicorn for the symbolism of A Vision—as I noted in an earlier post, he had originally placed a unicorn at the centre of the Great Wheel.

Publishers regard the most commercial option as a portrait of W. B. Yeats himself, as a more instant form of "branding" and this has plenty of virtues, though we would have wanted a picture of both George and W. B. at the very least. In the end, there were not so many of these that appealed, and we started looking at the work of other artists who had worked with Yeats.

One was W. T. Horton (1864-1919), whose work is out of copyright, in particular his Book of Images, for which Yeats wrote the introduction, and The Way of the Soul, which echoes the fictional title of Kusta ben Luka's work, The Way of the Soul between the Sun and the Moon. A few seemed quite possible, though a little stretched perhaps.

The moon presiding over a split landscape—primary and antithetical?—seemed possible, as did the rocky path to the moon, both from The Way of the Soul, but I also have a certain reluctance to emphasize the moon's place in the system more than it already is. It is such a potent symbol that it slightly overwhelms the concepts it represents, as much for Yeats as for us readers.

Images with sun-moon imagery are visually very appealing, but they also tend to run the risk of feminizing the moon—something that Yeats certainly does in his poetry, but actually goes against to some degree in the system. (Though the Graeco-Roman imagery that dominates Western understanding makes sun masculine and moon feminine, and tends to be viewed as "natural," Germanic, Middle-Eastern, Japanese and other mythologies have a male moon and female sun, and in A Vision the antithetical lunar Tincture, is the one associated more with the masculine.)

John Trinick's designs for A. E. Waite's meditation Tarot, at the British Museum

(I realize that I am taking advantage of a kind of apophasis—including all these images by saying that I couldn't include them...). We considered other artists who had collaborated with Yeats or been associated with him such as Althea Gyles (1868-1949) whose work features in the excellent section on Crafting the Book in the National Library of Ireland's online exhibition on Yeats (and there is also a Japanese gallery featuring her work). Here, there did not seem to be an eminently suitable image, and the situation with her estate was unclear.

To get to this section of the National Library of Ireland's online exhibition,
you need to get to the appropriate part of the exhibition "floor":
probably the simplest way is by Searching on "Crafting the Book,"
then going to "view": this display is on the left-hand side.

This led to Thomas Sturge Moore (1870-1944) who created book covers, book plates and other designs for the Yeatses. His work is in copyright, but with clear family holders, and we hoped that it would not be too expensive. In this case, we ended up favouring the plate created for George Yeats, which is directly inspired by elements associated with A Vision as well as a range of other Golden Dawn associations. In many ways the slightly mandala-ish rose on the cover of Per Amica Silentia Lunae might have been the most appropriate, but it has been used by the Yeats Annual, so might have led to some confusion.

Both of the Yeatses' book plates are rather gnomic, and the big question is whether either of them would attract a browsing reader, or please a reader who had a copy of the book. Yeats's book plate is particularly cryptic, including heraldic elements (the goat's head and the gates=Yeats) as well as personal emblems such as the candle in the waves.

George's is more striking and memorable. Though it is not immediately connected with A Vision, it is relevant to anyone who is interested: I've already commented to some extent on the unicorn and I shall go into the symbolism more in the next post.

Sturge Moore's estate, two grand-daughters, was very generous in giving us permission to use the images for a small sum, and we are all very pleased with the outcome. That said, someone involved in publishing criticized it to me as confusing, for including the name of George Yeats on the cover, and as unlikely to attract any readers. I, for one, am delighted to have George's name on the cover, albeit in an odd way, and do not really think that this is the type of book someone is going to stumble upon--if you come upon it, you are probably looking for it or at least have an interest in A Vision and the Yeatses. But I may be wrong, or at least thinking rather uncommercially: I'd love to hear any comments one way or the other, for future reference, and of course I'd be delighted to hear any further suggestions that anyone might have, either for a later edition of this book, or more likely for the next one on A Vision.

Spot the Difference: Answers

In the spot the difference post, I put up three different versions of the Great Wheel designed by Dulac. From the top downwards they come from A Vision A (1925), Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends (1931) and A Vision B (1937). They're all essentially the same, apart from a few significant details.

At first glance, the most obvious difference is probably the least important: they are printed on different types of paper, A Vision A and Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends on lighter, half-glossy paper, tipped into the book, brown and grey respectively, and A Vision B printed on the book's standard white paper.

A Vision A

If you look a little more carefully you might then note that the lines in Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends are thicker and firmer, with fewer breaks than the original and that A Vision B returns to the slightly broken lines of the first version.

Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends

These heavier lines apply particularly to the symbols placed in the top left and bottom right, which are also interchanged in Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends — the symbols for Fire and Water. However, A Vision B again reverts the earlier version.

A Vision B

The big change is the interchanging of the zodiac signs: Cancer and Capricorn are changed in Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends and stay changed in A Vision B.

What does this mean? Effectively it reverses the zodiac from being one that runs in parallel with the phases of the moon and in an anti-clockwise direction into one that runs counter to the phases and in a clockwise direction, a truly solar zodiac.

In their own copies of A Vision A the Yeatses had noted some or all of these these changes. They  kept four copies out of the 600 numbered copies printed, numbers 83, 366, 385 and 498. The first had no markings and is no longer in the Yeatses' library as now held by the National Library of Ireland, but the other three are all marked to a greater or lesser extent. The most fully marked was the last, which was the one sent to the printers to show what they were to retain and adapt for A Vision B (WBGYL 2466b  and YL 2433c). In it Cancer and Capricorn were interchanged on the wheel both on Dulac's illustration (strips glued on) and on the diagram on page 13 of AVA (in ink; see CW13 343). Copy 366 shows the changes that were implemented in Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends: both Cancer and Capricorn and Fire and Water interchanged (CW13 341; WBGYL 2466a  and YL 2433b), while the diagram on page 13 repeats the change of signs, since the elements aren't shown there.

It might have been Yeats's intention for the changes of #366 to be incorporated since, as Connie K. Hood notes, the printers asked him to send them a copy to clarify difficulties that they were having with "The Great Wheel" diagram ("The Search for Authority: Prolegomena to a Definitive Critical Edition of W. B. Yeats's A Vision [1937]", 127–28):

However, in copy #366 of AV-A, which was sent to the printers on 26 July 1937 for "diagram corrections," both the astrological signs and the two triangles are marked for correction. It is not clear whether the diagram correction involved the "Great Wheel" (66) or the placement of Dulac's unicorn plate (64). The triangles were not changed by the printers. It cannot be ascertained whether Yeats intended to make the diagram in AV-B identical to that in SMR (in that case, he could have simply sent to the printers a copy of SMR) or whether, as he so frequently did, he changed his mind again on the galleys. ("The Search for Authority", 220)

The important thing though is the zodiacal signs, and the reversal of direction that this interchange represents. It becomes a (more) solar zodiac.

The Rapallo Notebooks, the earliest of which date from 1928, show Yeats expending considerable effort in clarifying his understanding and exposition of the different zodiacs involved in his system:

when the Husk or symbolic moon by whose movements alone we measure out the month upon the wheel has reached the middle of the second month, the Spirit, the sun in the annual symbol, is passing from [Aries] to [Taurus] & so on. The signs being so innumerated that the [solar] Spirit which moves from left to right [i.e. clockwise] & the [lunar] Husk that moves from Right to left [i.e. anti-clockwise] may both pass through their zodiac in the natural order of signs.

As this passage makes clear, it is important that each element, going round the wheel in its own direction, passes through the stages marking its progress in natural order forwards, whether it is the solar Spirit or its counterpart of Creative Mind, or lunar Husk or its counterpart of Will.

In part the change may be linked to Yeats's greater understanding of how his diagrams related to the precession of the solar equinoxes (AVB 254) and the four cardinal signs of the zodiac (Aires, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn) that had been included in some of the very earliest diagrams in the automatic script. These signs are also linked to the concepts of Head, Heart, Loins and Fall, that lie in cross-form across the wheel. Head, Heart, Loins and Fall deserve their own post or page later, but for the moment it is worth noting that Aries coincides with Head (and the sign is traditionally identified with the head of the body and is the sign of the sun's astrological "exaltation") while Libra coincides with Fall (the sign is traditionally identified with the lumbar region and is the sign of the sun's astrological "fall"). These two don't change. The other two do and towards a more logical form: Cancer is traditionally associated with the stomach region of the body and Capricorn with the knees—neither Heart (Leo) nor Loins (Scorpio)—but the sequence follows better with Aries, the zodiac's first sign, at the Head, followed by Heart aligned with Cancer, the fourth sign, rather than Capricorn, the tenth sign. Putting Libra, seventh sign, at the ambiguous term Fall, and then Capricorn at Loins does seem to give a line down the body.

The mid-points that these terms mark have other significances too including the position of the equinoxes and solstices at the centre of the coming antithetical civilization in ca. 3000 C.E. (AVB 254); the points of equidistance for all the Faculties (cf. CW13 53; AVA 62; AVB 127); points associated with the opening and closing of the Tinctures (e.g. CW13 51; AVA59); and positions linked to the four types of wisdom. Concerning this last, Yeats also had doubts: “I have more than once transposed Heart and Intellect, suspecting a mistake” (AVB 100n), but he kept the automatic script’s original attributions. Part of the complication derives from the fact it is not always clear whether the conditions affecting, for instance, the Mask, which is always opposite Will, should be placed with the Mask's position or the phase it affects.

However, this illustration and its corresponding diagram are crucial so these variations are key. As Yeats noted to Frank Pearce Sturm: "If you master the diagram on page 13 & the movements of the Four Faculties therein you will understand most of the book" (20 January 1926; FPS 90), so the same should in fact be said of the revised version in A Vision B on page 81.

A Vision A, 13

A Vision B, 81

But it must be remembered that the wheel is not a fixed circle and it is the cross currents of "the movements of the Four Faculties therein" that lie at the heart of the wheel and its variations.

Spot the Difference

I'm sure that everybody has looked at puzzles where you have to spot the difference—I remember getting quite hooked on the one in the Washington Post magazine a while back. These ones aren't quite so fiendish, though you will have to make allowances for slightly different dimensions and angles of photographing. Here are three versions of Dulac's engraving of the Great Wheel. Spot the differences!

Three versions of "The Great Wheel"

 (Answers, or at least a few of them, in while. Click here.)

Dulac and the Great Wheel

 

The Great Wheel of A Vision A, printed on brown paper,
tipped into the book on [p. xiv].

The Great Wheel that appears opposite p. xv in A Vision A is one of the enduring images that most readers retain of A Vision, an archaic woodcut that hints at symbolic meanings, some of which are never quite explored in the book itself. Yeats gave Edmund Dulac both guidance and latitude in his instructions for the design, trusting him as a personal friend, who shared many of his own esoteric interests, particularly astrology. He had already asked Dulac to make a picture of Giraldus, his putative author of Speculum Angelorum et Hominum in Cracow,  and in thanking Dulac for the portrait he outlined his requirements for a diagram, supposedly from this Speculum, in October 1923:

My dear Dulac, 

      The portrait of Gyraldus is admirable. I enclose the sketch for the diagram. The pencilled words will have to be in Latin & I will get the Latin I hope tomorrow. The man I count on for it was out yesterday. You can use any symbolism you like for the elements—nymphs, salamanders, air spirits, or Roman gods or more natural objects.…

      The round objects in the enclosed diagram are of course the lunar phases 1. 8. 15. 22 making new moon, half moon, full moon & half moon respectively. They will be nasty things to draw but your Kracow artist would not have drawn them very carefully. I can give the Speculum what date you please.…

(October 14, [1923];  cf. Letters 699–700)

I do not think that the sketch is extant, but its general outline is probably fairly close to the final picture, except in a few details. There are five elements to the final design: (1) the elemental attributions in the corners, (2) the circle of the moon's phases, (3) the zodiacal symbols, (4) the words designating the key phases, and (5) the central motifs.

 - (1) Yeats's sketch must have indicated the placing of the elements, whether by word or symbol and, though he may have hoped for something a little more exuberant and elaborate, Dulac uses just the simple symbols for the four elements, placed on furled banners.

 The kind of picture Yeats was originally thinking of?

Note the elemental corners, which have the same arrangement as that of A Vision. These surround a ring depicting sun and moon formed by two intersecting circles, one dark and one light.
Frontispiece of Musaeum Hermeticum (Frankfurt, 1625).

- (2) The "round objects" might not have been entirely self-explanatory, except that Dulac had no doubt been told about the 28 phases of the moon—everybody else seems to have been—so Yeats could therefore comment that they were "of course the lunar phases 1. 8. 15. 22" (I am using John Kelly's transcription, rather than Wade's; the other letters are drawn from Diana Hobby's unpublished thesis, "William Butler Yeats and Edmund Dulac, a Correspondence: 1916–1938" [Rice University, 1981]).

- (3) The zodiac signs are not mentioned but were almost certainly in the diagram as they were in most iterations of the schema in the notes and drafts, though Yeats was still unclear about their significance and later had doubts about their placing.

 The kind of picture Yeats was originally thinking of?
Classical figures symbolize the elements on either side of the title (clockwise from upper left: Jupiter - Air; Prometheus – Fire; River god [?Nile] – Water; [?]Autumnus – Earth). 
Above, Phoenix and Minerva, on the left, and Pelican and Mercury, on the right,  flank Apollo with the Nine Muses. Below, the sun, with a lion (Leo), and the moon, with a crayfish (Cancer), flank an emblem of Nature, holding the light of perfection, followed by short-sighted researchers with lanterns.
Engraved title page of Musaeum Hermeticum revised (Frankfurt, 1678), by Matthäus Merian.

- (4) The "pencilled words" must have been the English—Beauty (15), Wisdom (1), Temptation (8) and, probably, Power (22)—and a little over a week later Yeats sent on the Latin that he had been given by Louis C. Purser, a distinguished classicist at Trinity College, Dublin: "put Pulchritudo at 15, Sapientia at 1, Tentatio at 8 and Dominatio (or Potestas) at 22. I enclose Purser's letter as his spelling may correct mine" (October 23, [1923]). There are two points of variance from the words Yeats gives, the minor one of "Temptatio" and the major one of "Violentia" rather than "Dominatio". The first may reflect Purser's spelling or Dulac's preference to avoid a spelling that looked more like his native French. "Violentia" is stranger and less readily explicable, but there was plenty of time for Yeats to modify his ideas, since it was over a year and a half before Dulac sent the design to him (see below).

The kind of picture Yeats was originally thinking of?
The four elements are symbolized by animals and the four humours by goddesses: (clockwise from top left) Diana/Artemis – Phlegm, corresponding to Water – Dolphin; Venus/Aphrodite – Blood corresponding to Air – Chameleon; Minerva/Athene – Yellow Bile corresponding to Fire – Salamander; [?]Ceres/Demeter – Black Bile corresponding to Earth – Mole. Septem Planetae, engraved title page by Gerard de Jode (after Maarten de Vos), 1581.

- (5) The emblems at the centre of the diagram seem to have been Dulac's own idea. Yeats had sent him a draft of the introductory material when he requested the portrait of Giraldus—"I send you my preface, in the rough, or rather Owen Aherne's. It will give you all the facts as I see them" (July 26, [1923]). This typescript spoke of a design where "the zodiacal signs were arranged in a circle with a unicorn in the center, while in the corners of the diagram <cancelled words> Biblical symbols", which Dulac seems to have realized only rather late in the day:

Herewith the Diagram. When it was done I remembered in that your description of it you mention that the square in the center is occupied by a design of a unicorn. Thence the accompanying design of the Animal in question. If it is not absolutely necessary that the Diagram should incorporate it leave it as it is, but if its presence in the Diagram is of vital importance, the engraver can make the two blocks and fit that of the Unicorn in its proper place for the purposes of printing. Otherwise it may be used as a tail piece somewhere else in the book. (April 30, 1925; LTWBY2 462)

The animal in question did indeed appear as a tail piece to the poem, "The Phases of the Moon", pasted in at the end.

If the designs were, however, Dulac's idea, Yeats was happy to incorporate them—"The designs are exactly right. 'The Wheel' could take in the whole British Museum" (May 5, [1925]). He changed the introduction so that the "lunar phases and zodiacal signs were mixed with various unintelligible symbols—an apple, an acorn, a cup" (AVA xviii), and later noted that "The East, in my symbolism … is always human power" adding as explanation that "In the decorative diagram from the Speculum Angelorum et Hominum … the East is marked by a sceptre" (AVB 257–58).  

As this indicates, the emblems do logically express the words Yeats had given, at least to some extent: Beauty – a flower, plausibly; Wisdom – a fruit, possibly; Temptation – a cup, possibly too; Power – a sceptre, certainly. But they also show kinship with traditional playing card suits. Though the English-speaking world tends to use the suits of French origin—spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs—the rest of Europe draws on similar but different symbols.

Swiss suits; three variants of German suits; three variants of North Italian suits
from "Andy's Playing Cards", with thanks to Andrea Pollett.

Dulac's flower has definite similarities with the Swiss one, while the fruit seems to have the idea of the acorn mixed with the shape of the bell from Swiss and German iconography and may explain why Yeats refers to an acorn AND and an apple. The cup and sceptre are more clearly linked with the traditional Italian suits—denari, coppe, spade, bastoni—emblems which are also retained in the Tarot cards. Certainly this was in keeping with Yeats's own thought and the early drafts of the Arabian fictions outlined in A Vision A, indicate that "the four suits of the Tarot, the King, the Queen, the Knight & the Knaves should really be King, Queen, Prince & Princes, & were derived through the Saracens from the dance, & … these cards have in turn given birth to our common court cards" (YVP4 153).

In the end, however, what kind of picture was Yeats originally thinking of? He was willing to shift the date from the late sixteenth century to earlier, but he does seem to have conceived of a later, slightly more refined style than he was finally given by Dulac, although the style was clear and agreed on once he had the portrait of Giraldus. Of the illustrations above, one is before the date of 1594 that he gave and the other is other is after it, but both are rather more elaborate than the style that Dulac created. At that date, the woodblock style is more generally used for illustrations inserted into the text, while the finer lines and greater detail of engraving are used for full-page illustrations. It seems possible that Yeats had originally conceived of a more clearly sixteenth-century look, and also that the design would centre on a unicorn—symbol of the Daimon, or of the soul. Might he have been thinking of something more like this?