The Sustained Metaphor in The Only Jealousy of Emer

THE SUSTAINED METAPHOR IN THE ONLY JEALOUSY OF EMER YEATS'S BORROWINGS from the structure and spirit of the ancient Japanese Noh drama are recognized and regularly subjected to comment and analysis. His indebtedness to Noh's stark structure, its economy of scenery, its minimum of actors, and its underscoring of intense emotions by a few musical instruments for the development of a unique, indirect, and symbolic form of drama, exemplified in his Four Plays for Dancers, has not been overlooked. Yeats's proscription of all unnecessary acting; his use of mask, song, and dance; his delving into the life of the soul, and the images of his verse form are all Noh influences that have been duly weighed and evaluated. Relatively little attention, however, has been given to the poet's perception of language values in the Noh and his appropriation of specific devices such as the sustained metaphor. Yet, Yeats is particularly indebted to Noh for the dominant image which gives unity to his drama. He observes in his Essays and Introductions with regard to Noh: I wonder am I fanciful in discovering in the plays themselves a playing upon a single metaphor, as deliberate as the echoing rhythm of line in Chinese and Japanese painting. In the Nishikigi the ghost of the girl-lover carries the cloth she went on weaving out of grass when she should have opened the chamber door to her lover, and woven grass returns again and again in metaphor and incident. The lovers, now that in an aery body they must sorrow for unconsummated love, are 'tangled up as the grass patterns are tangled.' Again they are like an unfinished cloth: 'these bodies, having no weft, even now are not come together; truly a shameful story, a tale to bring shame on the gods.' Before they can bring the priest to the tomb they spend the day 'pushing aside the grass from the overgrown ways in Kefu,' and the countryman who directs them is cutting grass on the hill'; and when at last the prayer of the priest unites them in marriage the bride says that he has made 'a dream-bridge over wild grass, over the grass I dwell in'; and in the end bride and bridegroom show themselves for a moment 'from under the shadow of the love-grass.'l Again Yeats notes that in Zeami's Hagoromo "the feather mantle of the faery woman creates also its rhythm of metaphor."2 1 (London, 1961), p. 233. 2 P. 234. 274 MODERN DRAMA December The tracing of a single image in The Only Jealousy of Emer even into characterization may serve as evidence of the playwright's con· scious attempt to use this Noh technique. Emer, the tragic wife, Eithne Inguba, the mistress, both deeply in love with Cuchulain, the Irish legendary warrior, struggle to win him back from the clutches of death. Cuchulain in mad sorrow for having killed his unknown son in battle attempts to fight the "deathless sea" until its waters cover him and cast his senseless body upon the shore. As he lies between life and death in a fisherman's cottage, the only condition on which Emer can save him from death is to renounce her love forever, which she does. In this play, the sea becomes the dominant and unifying symbol, sustained in character delineation, setting, and incident. From the sea Yeats takes the initial symbol introduced as the Musicians unfold the cloth and sing: A woman's beauty is like a white Frail bird, like a white sea-bird alone At daybreak after stormy night Between two furrows upon the ploughed land: A sudden storm, and it was thrown Between dark furrows upon the ploughed land.s The frail beauty of the lone sea-bird suggests the loveliness of the noble tragic heroine, Emer, tossed and torn between the decision to yield her Cuchulain to death, or forever to renounce his love. To emphasize further the exquisiteness of Emer's beauty and her remarkable strength of character, the Musicians cry out: How many centuries spent The sedentary soul In toils of measurement Beyond eagle or mole, Beyond hearing or seeing, Or Archimedes' guess...