n London for atime. Perhaps Yeats provides a good example for us of a man suffering from theVirgin/Whore syndrome. The "pure" women in his life are untouchable and areromanticized in his po etry while those who succumb to his needs are referred to as"harlots" ("Presences") (Levine 128). Yeats's sense of betrayal, coupled with his failed attempts to suppressunacceptable desires, conceivably led to an enormous amount of guilt. In reference tosexuality and guilt, Francis Oppel suggests that Yeats understood the psychology oftragedy, in that orgasm (which engenders life and also equals death of sexual desire)enables one to overcome pain and, by extension, guilt and death (122). Thisoverwhelming sense of guilt resulted in a disillusioned and angst-ridden Yeats, and theresultant frust ration led to, as Joseph Hassett terms it, an "overwhelmingpreoccupation with hate" (Introduction viii) and a sense of self hatred. This (self)hatred led a despondent Yeats to contemplate suicide. Levine quotes Virginia Moore asstating, "Yeats dreame d that, walking along a path by a broken wall a precipice, hefelt dizzy and longed to throw himself over" (130). By "Leda and the Swan," Yeats was preoccupied with death, both consciously andunconsciously. Bernard Levine states simply that "Because his relationship with MaudGonne remained unconsummated," Yeats's "imagination fastened quite decidedly in hislater years on the themes of sex and death" (126). A bridge that Levine doesn't seem towish to cross, however, is the idea that Yeats's later themes do focus on sex and deathout of this sense of self hatred engendered by the guilt over his inability to live upto Maud's standards and, initially, by the frustration he felt over Maud's unwillingnessto comply with his desires. Some critics even contend that hate is Yeats's generative principle. Joseph M.Hassett contends that Yeats "used his hate to penetrate the uncharted depths of his ownmind" (Introduction v...
