Yeats and the East: A Dialogue with the Upanishads and Noh Drama

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) is one of the most important poets of the twentieth century, a central figure of the Irish Literary Revival and a Nobel laureate. Throughout his career, Yeats sought spiritual alternatives to the materialism of the West, turning to esoteric traditions, Eastern philosophy, and ritual art. Among the Eastern traditions that shaped his later work, two stand out: the Upanishads, the ancient Indian philosophical texts that formed the basis of Vedanta, and Noh drama, the classical Japanese theatrical form that Yeats encountered through translations and performances. This study explores Yeats’s engagement with the Upanishads and Noh drama. It does not aim to trace direct influences or to claim that Yeats fully understood these traditions. Rather, it examines how he read, interpreted, and transformed them in his own work. The Upanishads offered Yeats a philosophy of spiritual unity—the idea that the individual self (Atman) is ultimately identical with the ultimate reality (Brahman). This idea resonated with his own belief in the unity of being and influenced his later poetry, particularly in The Winding Stair and Last Poems. Noh drama, with its stylized gestures, masks, and ritual structure, provided Yeats with a model for a new kind of theater—one that eschewed psychological realism in favor of symbolic action. His own plays, such as At the Hawk’s Well, were directly inspired by Noh. The study is structured in six sections. After this introduction, Section 2 examines Yeats’s reading of the Upanishads and his engagement with Vedanta philosophy. Section 3 explores his encounter with Noh drama and his adaptation of its forms. Section 4 analyzes how these two traditions shaped his later poetry and plays. Section 5 reflects on the implications of this encounter for comparative poetics, suggesting that Yeats’s work offers a model of cultural dialogue that respects both difference and resonance. Section 6 concludes with thoughts on the significance of Yeats’s “Eastern turn” for understanding his work and for contemporary comparative literature. This study does not claim that Yeats was an expert on Indian philosophy or Japanese theater. It does claim that his engagement with these traditions was serious, sustained, and transformative. By examining this engagement, we gain a deeper understanding of Yeats’s work and a richer sense of how Eastern and Western traditions can enter into genuine dialogue. Email: xia.bo.poetry@outlook.com