"Inter Faeces..." Quote

[Charles Doyle]

Obliquely and ironically, to be sure, but it IS childbirth--one one level--that Yeats's Crazy Jane refers to! Well, maybe she doesn't have that point specifically "in mind" (she's crazy!), but the reader should.

Jane is teaching the prim and censorious Bishop a lesson in his religion: "Love" is not only Eros or eroticism but also Christ, who "pitched his mansion" on earth, assuming human form, issuing from a human mother, born in a lowly stable, then dwelling among the wretched and dirty of the world--all places of excrement . . . .

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 20:17:11 -0500
>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject: Re: "Inter Faeces..." Quote

>
>At 2:19 PM -0800 2/4/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>Yeats, moreover, alludes to the idea in "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop."
>>
>>   JL
>
>Pretty obliquely, though.  As in
>
>'Fair and foul are near of kin,
>And fair needs foul,' I cried.
>
>and in
>
>A woman can be proud and stiff
>When on love intent;
>But Love has pitched his mansion in
>The place of excrement
>
>
>I don't think it was childbirth whose location Crazy Jane had in mind with her particular geography lesson...
>
>LH

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