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Plagiarism - W B Yeats' story
Identifier
007935
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The problems of having a common spiritual store of ideasA description of the experience
W B Yeats – A Vision
When in 1926 the English translation of Spengler's book came out, some weeks after A Vision, I found that not only were dates that I had been given the same as his but whole metaphors and symbols that had seemed my work alone.
Both he and I had symbolised a difference between Greek and Roman thought by comparing the blank or painted eyes of Greek statues with the pierced eyeballs of the Roman statues, both had described as an illustration of Roman character the naturalistic portrait heads screwed on to stock bodies, both had found the same meaning in the round bird like eyes of Byzantine sculpture, though he or his translator had preferred 'staring at infinity' to my 'staring at miracle'.
I knew of no common source, no link between him and me.