Yeats's Plays and the Noh Drama

Abstract

The Noh theatre, as Yeats understood it, does not imitate human beings; it imitates signs. The dramatis personae are not rounded, credible characters and their sensibilities do not deepen. They are masks, ideograms carved in wood and outfitted with arms and legs. The Noh is a sort of treatise on religion carried out by ambulatory pictograms, pointing to truths beyond our world. In the Noh, there is rarely anything that could be called a story; the action, which is minimal, is usually accomplished during, and by means of, the climactic dance. The dramatic action, then, is only a movement towards enlightenment. The action of a Noh play takes no time at all: it is a moment of recognition, an instant of transfiguration, artificially prolonged. Yeats’s Noh plays are discussed as exemplified in The Dreaming of the Bones (1919), At the Hawk’s Well (1917), The Only Jealousy of Emer (1919), Fighting the Waves (1929), and The Death of Cuchulain (1939). 叶芝对日本能剧有其独到的见解。在他看来,能剧不是对人类的模仿,而是对符号的模仿;剧中人物不是圆形的、可靠的,他们的识别力不会加深,他们不过是面具、是木头雕刻出来的装上了四肢的意符;能剧是借助于游走的石壁画实现对宗教的服侍,指向现实世界之外的真理。在能剧中,鲜有材料堪称故事,已然简约至极的动作常常伴随也借助于高潮性的舞蹈,因而戏剧动作旨在引向启示,因而能剧中的动作没有时间的纵深,只是认知的瞬间、变形的刹那,被艺术性地延长了。基于上述观点,本文以《骸骨之梦》、《艾玛的唯一妒忌》、《库胡林之死》等剧作为例,对叶芝的能剧进行了解读。