I took this photo of a stone etching, commemorating Yeats at Coole Park, Ireland.
The following is an excerpt from my book:
In his poem, “Fragments,” Yeats rejects the icon of Christian philosopher, John Locke, and insinuates that mankind may not be “inherently good,” for “Locke sank into a swoon” (l.1) In lines 2-4, he writes, “The Garden died;/God took the spinning-jenny/Out of his side.” Since the spinning jenny enabled laborers to produce many more skeins of yarn, this allowed for the presence of many ‘yarns.’ His play on words creates the yarn. God (Jesus), the male icon of Christianity, has removed the tales of faith, the sins for which He was crucified.
The last stanza provides a reality of the truth, which emanates from a non-Christian source, a medium, then, “Out of nothing it came,” from the Book of Genesis, the beginning of time, and the source of God. He follows this with the pagan version of truth, “Out of the forest loam,” the most fertile, lowest part of the forest floor, where nutrients for the forest thrive. Finally, truth comes “Out of dark night where lay/The crowns of Nineveh.” Here, darkness reveals only ignorance, silence, no words of wisdom, and the source of superficiality.
Yeats juxtaposes the iconic with realistic in this poem to question the dichotomy of human faith, [and to illustrate the strength of human spirit that exists only with God's help.] He moves the reader along his wave of resonating artistic flow, for the next poem in this series is “Leda and the Swan,” his iconic poem that alludes to the rape of Leda in order to illustrate polar opposites in human consciousness.
