Yeats, Cuchulain e la fine del ciclo

Abstract

In analysing two ‘Cuchulain plays’ by Yeats, this study highlights the central quality of modernism in On Baile’s Strand, where tragedy is deflated by farce and contaminated with low-mimetic style, and the full expression of despair is hindered by a Blind Man and a Fool, acting as spectators and providing an alternative view of existence. In The Death of Cuchulain the hero’s tragedy is revisited, thus haunting the final moments of his life. Yet again, Cuchulain is denied his tragic stature and is assigned a farcical death which diminishes his mythical figure. The ultimate stage of demythization is reached in Purgatory, a play with no Cuchulain, where an Old Man and a Boy reproduce the father-son struggle, with the former killing the latter. Yeats’s obsessive theme has come to an end. The annihilation of the Cuchulain myth and its central event, at the end of Yeats’s life, seems to be pointing to the end of all ideals in a final apocalypse devoid of any possible eternal return.