considered themselves mystics. They belonged to theHeretic Order of the Golden Dawn, a society in which they attended seances. Mauddesired a "pure" spiritual life and felt that type of life precluded physical contact(sex) w ith Yeats. Yeats aspired to a like belief system, but was unable to live up tothese idealized standards. Under these conditions, Yeats and Maud Gonne entered into a"spiritual" marriage. Bernard Levine explains that "The marriage was based on a communication through dream correspondence and astral vision (controlled release of spiritualtension)" (127). Levine suggests this spiritual marriage was "the background andpsychological excuse for the writing of 'Leda and the Swan'" (125). Well before thepoem was written, Maud Gonne had become an identifiable entity in Yeats's poetry. Infact, Geoffrey Thurley refers to the poem as another "Maud/Helen" poem (165). Levinealso states that Maud had become identified with Helen (the mythological daughter ofLeda) as early as 1908 (125) and goes on to identify Maud with Leda as well (126). Consistent with his penchant for myth-as-metaphor, and mythology in general,Yeats declared sexual desire to be a myth. Yet, at the same time, he wrote that he"used to puzzle Maud Gonne by always avowing ultimate defeat as a test" and he believedthat his "spiritual love for Maud could never be consummated except through sexualunion," supporting the idea that the "'mystic way and sexual love' are inextricablyrelated" (Levine 125, 127). This conflict serves as an example of the type ofopposition Yea ts could never reconcile and which would later manifest itself in "Ledaand the Swan." Yeats viewed Maud Gonne as having achieved purity and felt as though he tooshould be above sexual longing. Levine argues that, unable to overcome his sexualneeds, Yeats had little alternative but to interpret his continual sexual longing as abetrayal of Maud (128). Interestingly enough, Yeats "kept" a woman i...
