Michael Robartes and the Dancer
Listen
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Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.
In brief
SummaryA man argues that a beautiful woman should think with her body.
A comic debate between "He", Michael Robartes, and "She", a young dancer. He reads an altar-piece: the knight loves the lady, and the dragon he spears is her own thought, which rises every morning to fight again. She should look in the mirror instead and "grow wise". When she asks to go to college, he tells her to "pluck Athena by the hair", since no book gives the knowledge a beautiful body already has. He calls up Veronese and Michelangelo, whose painted and carved bodies prove that everything must come "to sight and touch", and a Latin text on blessed souls. She has short, dry replies throughout, and the last word: "They say such different things at school."
Lines to remember
Opinion is not worth a rush;
Go pluck Athena by the hair;
They say such different things at school.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 8The knight and the dragon
"Opinion is not worth a rush," he begins, and reads a painting. The knight spearing the dragon loved the lady, and "The half-dead dragon was her thought", which "every morning rose again" to claw and shriek. Her own opinions are the monster her lover must fight.
Lines 9 to 13The looking-glass
If she could only turn her eyes "upon the glass", she would "on the instant" grow wise. Her reply is one flat line that cuts through the allegory: "You mean they argued."
Lines 14 to 19The lover's wage
"Put it so," he concedes, but warns that her lover's only reward is what her mirror shows, and he will "turn green with rage" at anything else. She asks the reasonable question: "May I not put myself to college?"
Lines 20 to 27Athena and the body
He tells her to "pluck Athena by the hair": no "mere book" can give the knowledge of "that beating breast, / That vigorous thigh, that dreaming eye". She presses him: "must no beautiful woman be / Learned like a man?"
Lines 28 to 39Veronese and Michelangelo
His answer is art. Paul Veronese and his company, working "By the lagoon you love so much", painted bodies as proof "That all must come to sight and touch". Michelangelo's figures show how sinew can "rule by supernatural right / Yet be but sinew".
Lines 40 to 44Bread and wine
She has "heard said" that there is "great danger in the body". He answers with a religious riddle: when God shared out "wine and bread", did he give man "His thought or His mere body?" She admits: "My wretched dragon is perplexed."
Lines 45 to 55The Latin text
He now claims "principles" and a "Latin text" proving that blessed souls are "not composite". Beautiful women may live in that blessedness if they banish every thought except what their bodies think, "Even from the foot-sole". She ends: "They say such different things at school."
Themes
Body and mind
The argument is that a woman's wisdom should live in her body, not in "opinion". Robartes wants thought that belongs to "that beating breast, / That vigorous thigh", thought that runs "Even from the foot-sole". It is an idea Yeats returned to often: that the whole being, body and soul together, is wiser than the intellect alone.
Comedy and argument
The poem is a debate that is not quite fair. He gets long speeches full of paintings, theology and a "Latin text". She gets single lines that deflate him: "You mean they argued." "My wretched dragon is perplexed." Her last line, about what they say "at school", leaves the reader unsure who has won.
Art as proof
Robartes treats paintings and sculpture as evidence. The altar-piece explains love, Veronese's bodies are "ceremonious proof", and Michelangelo shows sinew ruling "by supernatural right". For him art does what books and colleges cannot: it makes wisdom visible "to sight and touch".
Context
This is the title poem and opening piece of Michael Robartes and the Dancer, issued by the Cuala Press in February 1921 (the book is dated 1920). The collection also contains "Easter, 1916", "The Second Coming" and "A Prayer for my Daughter".
Michael Robartes is a mystic Yeats invented in the 1890s and revived in these years. The dancer is often identified with Iseult Gonne, Maud Gonne's daughter, though the poem does not name her. The figures of Morning and Night that Robartes credits to Michelangelo are in fact sculptures on the Medici tombs in Florence, not part of the Sistine ceiling.
Form
A dialogue printed as a play, with speeches headed "He" and "She". The lines are mostly of four beats and rhyme alternately ("rush", "knight", "push", "light"), and the rhyme runs on across the speakers, so her short replies complete his rhymes. The tight pattern keeps the argument brisk and witty.
