The Cat and the Moon

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The Cat and the Moon.

  • Published in Wilde swans at coole anthology
  • yeats wrote a play called the cat and the moon about a blind man who carries a saint on his back. the saint was lame, poem was read at start and end of play
  • Yeats uses the theme of opposites: self and antislef , body and soul
  • Man in his normal self is the cat and the moon his his alter ego
  • yeats is looked at a lunarkinship-> related to aesthetic receptiveness. 
  • Yeats saw his wife as a cat, she used to have disturbed dreams that she thought influenced her automatic writing. He's relating her crazy eye movements to that of a cat.
  • If you were artistically sensitive you would feel the changes of the moon.
  • There is a cyclical nature of time and change
  • there is a dance like rhythm, very poised (like a hunting cat) This influences tone making it seems more Romantic and wishful.
  • iambic pentamter, which shows the movement and dancing of the cat ( each iam is a metrical foot)
  • Yeats wants each of his metrical feel to be delicated like a cat or a dancer
  • tried to make it sound like a slow waltz and…

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