ARABIA IN YEATS' POETRY

1sIanic Studies. 29 : 1 ( 1990 ) '1 7
The details of the poem offer some difficulty. The image of
the falcon who is out of the falconer's control should not
be localized as some have suggested, as an image of man
loose from Christ; Yeats would not have cluttered the poem
by referring to Christ both as falconer and as rocking
cradle further on. *
Apart from Yeats' symbolic used of falconry (a favourite sport
among the Arabs), he deepens his Arabic romanticism in The
Second Coming' by further using objects reminiscent of Arabia:
Somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
1s moving its slow thighs, while all about it,
Reel Shadows of the indginant desert bids.z
The name Michael Robartes is nonoriental, but Yeats framed a
strong link between Robartes and the Arabs. Michael Robartes,
according to Yeats, was an English traveller in Arabia. He went to
Damascus to learn Arabic, then proceeded to Makkah. The creation
of Michael Robartes by yeats is an imitation like many other
writers in English literature who made persons undertaking a
journey like that of Robartes and travel in disguise as an Arab,
spending some time among the Bedouins of the desert. It is possible
that Yeats' creation of his character is drawn from books like
Richard Burton's Peltllad Namative 06 a PZgtirnage to Al-Madina
and Meccah (1855). Robartes in his journey eventually found himself
among the tribe of the Judwali whose doctrines resemble those
Yeats examined in Gi&w'~ Speculum Ang&.rrum et HominoluLm as
he explained in a letter to Lady ~re~ory (which has been
mentioned earlier).fy Robartes learnt frqm the Arabs about their
religion and occult practices. The poem Michael Robartes and the
Dancer' has the following passage:
Opinion is not worth a rush;
In this altar-piece the knight,
Who grips his long spear so to push
That dragon through the fading light,'.
The image of a knight and dragon is reminiscent of the Arab
Orient. The dragon still remains a powerful figure among certain
tribes in the East.
Although Yeats' interest in India surpassed his interest in
Arabia, yet the matter of Arabia and the Arabs has a distinct
place in the imaginary world of W.B. Yeats'. The belief of Yeats in
the ancestral roots of the Irish in the Orient seems to have
influenced him greatly. His interest in the Arabs and Arabia as a
whole seems greater than his interest in Indian philosopy, Japanese
drama and other particular oriental areas, though it was an Indian