6. Sex, Philosophy, and the Occult

Yeats’s belief, reflecting his lifelong frustration loving Maud Gonne, that physical consummation is required, and his conflicting belief, citing Lucretius, that ‘The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.’ Spiritual-erotic tension and reconciliation in the ‘Crazy Jane’ and ‘Woman Young and Old’ sequences. Emphasis on the erotic and tangible in the blasphemous ‘A Stick of Incense’ and the exuberant ‘News for the Delphic Oracle.’