A Vision (1925)

«It is a constant thought of mine that what we write is often a commendation of, or expostulation with the friends of our youth, and that even if we survive all our friends we continue to prolong or to amend conversations that took place before our five-and-twentieth year.» — Yeats abre la dedicatoria situando toda escritura como continuación de las conversaciones de la juventud.

«Perhaps this book has been written because a number of young men and women, you and I among the number, met nearly forty years ago in London and in Paris to discuss mystical philosophy.» — Yeats fecha el origen del libro en las reuniones de Londres y París de casi cuarenta años antes.

«You with your beauty and your learning and your mysterious gifts were held by all in affection, and though, when the first draft of this dedication was written, I had not seen you for more than thirty years,5 nor knew where you were nor what you were doing, and though much had happened since we copied the Jewish Schemahamphorasch6 with its seventy-two Names of God in Hebrew characters, it was plain that I must dedicate my book to you.» — la dedicatoria a Vestigia, con la copia del Schemahamphorasch y sus setenta y dos nombres de Dios como recuerdo compartido; el 5 y el 6 son llamadas a nota de las editoras.

«We all, so far as I can remember, differed from ordinary students of philosophy or religion through our belief that truth cannot be discovered11 but may be revealed, and that if a man do not lose faith, and if he go through certain preparations, revelation will find him at the fitting moment.» — Yeats declara el principio de su grupo: la verdad no se descubre, se revela, y llega a quien no pierde la fe y hace ciertas preparaciones.

«I remember a learned brassfounder12 in the North of England who visited us occasionally, and was convinced that there was a certain moment in every year which, once known, brought with it ‘The Summum Bonum, the Stone of the Wise’.» — Yeats trae la creencia de un fundidor de latón del norte de Inglaterra: hay un momento del año que trae consigo el Sumo Bien, la Piedra del Sabio.

«But others, for it was clear that there must be a vehicle or symbol of communication, were of opinion that some messenger would make himself known, in a railway train let us say,14 or might be found after search in some distant land.» — la expectativa del grupo, según Yeats: tenía que haber vehículo o símbolo de comunicación, y un mensajero se daría a conocer.

«That phantasy did not explain the world to our intellects which were after all very modern, but it recalled certain forgotten methods of meditation and chiefly how so to suspend the will that the mind became automatic, a possible vehicle for spiritual beings.» — Yeats acota qué daba y qué no daba esa fantasía: no explicaba el mundo, pero devolvía métodos de meditación y el modo de suspender la voluntad hasta volver automática la mente.

«Some were looking for spiritual happiness or for some form of unknown power, but I had a practical object.» — Yeats separa su propósito del de los demás y lo llama práctico.

«I wished for a system of thought that would leave my imagination free to create as it chose and yet make all that it created, or could create, part of the one history, and that the soul’s.» — el objeto declarado del sistema: dejar libre la imaginación y a la vez integrar lo creado en una sola historia, la del alma.

«The Greeks certainly had such a system, and Dante—though Boccaccio thought him a bitter partisan and therefore a modern abstract man16—and I think no man since.» — Yeats adjudica a los griegos y a Dante un sistema así y niega que nadie lo haya tenido después.

«Then when I had ceased all active search, yet had not ceased from desire, the documents upon which this book is founded were put into my hands,17 and I had what I needed, though it may be too late.» — el reclamo de recepción, en la voz de Yeats: los documentos en que se funda el libro le fueron puestos en las manos cuando ya había dejado de buscar.

«What I have found indeed is nothing new, for I will show presently that Swedenborg and Blake and many before them knew that all things had their gyres; but Swedenborg and Blake preferred to explain them figuratively,18 and so I am the first to substitute for Biblical or mythological figures, historical movements and actual men and women.» — Yeats niega novedad a su hallazgo y reclama solo una primacía: sustituir por movimientos históricos y personas reales las figuras bíblicas o mitológicas con que Swedenborg y Blake explicaron los giros.

«As I most fear to disappoint those that come to this book through some interest in my poetry and in that alone,21 I warn them from that part of the book called ‘The Great Wheel’ and from the whole of Book II, and beg them to dip here and there in the verse and into my comments upon life and history.» — Yeats advierte a los lectores que vengan por su poesía: que se salten The Great Wheel y el Libro II entero.

«I could I daresay make the book richer, perhaps immeasurably so, if I were to keep it by me for another year, and I have not even dealt with the whole of my subject,23 perhaps not even with what is most important, writing nothing about the Beatific Vision, little of sexual love; but I am longing to put it out of reach that I may write the poetry it seems to have made possible.» — Yeats declara el libro incompleto por decisión: no ha tratado la Visión Beatífica ni casi el amor sexual, y lo publica para poder escribir la poesía que el libro hizo posible.

«In the spring of 1917 I met in the National Gallery32 a man whom I had known in the late Eighties and early Nineties, and had never thought to see again. Michael Robartes33 and I had been intimate friends and fellow-students for a time, and later, after matters of theological difference arose between us, I lost sight of him, but heard a vague rumour that he was wandering or settled somewhere in the Near East. At first I was not certain if this were indeed he, and passed him in hesitation several times, but his athletic body, and his skin that had seemed, even when I first met him, sundried and sun-darkened, his hawk-like profile, could belong to no other man.» — Aherne, que narra la introducción, fecha en la primavera de 1917 el reencuentro con Michael Robartes, a quien había perdido de vista por diferencias teológicas.

«‘The old painters,’ he said, ‘painted women with whom they would if they could have spent the night or a life, battles they would if they could have fought in, and all manner of desirable houses and places, but now all is changed, and God knows why anybody paints anything. But why should we complain, things move by mathematical necessity, all changes can be dated by gyre and cone, and pricked beforehand upon the Calendar.’» — Robartes, hablando dentro de la ficción, enuncia el principio del libro entero: las cosas se mueven por necesidad matemática y todo cambio se data por giro y cono.

«I felt a slight chill, for we had both quarrelled with Mr Yeats on what I considered good grounds.» — Aherne consigna que los dos personajes están peleados con el señor Yeats, que dentro de la ficción es un tercero.

«‘I was fool enough to mind once,’ he said, ‘but I soon found that he had done me a service. His story started a rumour of my death that became more and more circumstantial as it grew. One by one my correspondents ceased to write. My name had become known to a large number of fellow-students, and but for that rumour I could not have lived in peace even in the desert.» — Robartes agradece el rumor de su propia muerte, nacido de un relato de Yeats: sin él no habría podido vivir en paz.

«I did not know where Mr Yeats lived, but said that we could find out from Mr Watkins the bookseller in Cecil’s Court38: and having so found out, he said we must call upon Mr Yeats, and we started, keeping as much as possible from the main streets that we might have silence for our talk.» — el detalle que ancla la ficción en Londres: la dirección de Yeats se averigua con el librero Watkins de Cecil’s Court.

«You will remember the village riot which Yeats exaggerated in “Rosa Alchemica”.39 A couple of old friends died of their injuries, and that, and certain evil results of another kind, turned me for a long time from my favourite studies.» — Robartes remite su propia biografía a un relato de Yeats, de modo que el marco de ficción se declara dentro de sí mismo.

«I went from Paris to Rome, and from Rome to Vienna, in pursuit of a ballet dancer, and in Vienna we quarrelled. I tried to forget my sorrow in wine, but in a few weeks I had tired of that, and then, with some faint stirring of the old interest I went to Cracow, partly because of its fame as a centre of printing, but more I think because Dr. Dee and his friend Edward Kelly had in Cracow practised alchemy and scrying.» — Robartes explica por qué fue a Cracovia: la fama de la ciudad como centro de imprenta y, sobre todo, que ahí practicaron alquimia y escrutinio de espejos John Dee y Edward Kelly.

«One night I was thrown out of bed and when I lit my tallow candle found that the bed, which had fallen at one end, had been propped up by a joint stool and an old book bound in calf.41 In the morning I found that the book was called Speculum Angelorum et Hominorum,42 had been written by Giraldus43 and printed at Cracow in 1594, a good many years before the celebrated Cracow publications,44 and was of a very much earlier style both as to woodcut and type.» — el hallazgo del libro de Giraldus, que dentro de la ficción es la fuente del sistema: un ejemplar que sostenía la cama, impreso en Cracovia en 1594 y de estilo anterior a esa fecha.

«It was very dilapidated and all the middle pages had been torn out; but at the end of the book were a number of curious allegorical pictures;45 a woman with a stone in one hand and an arrow in the other; a man whipping his shadow; a man being torn in two by an eagle and some kind of wild beast; and so on to the number of eight and twenty; a portrait of Giraldus and a unicorn; and many diagrams where gyres and circles grew out of one another like strange vegetables;» — la descripción de las láminas del Speculum: las veintiocho figuras alegóricas, el retrato de Giraldus, el unicornio y los diagramas de giros y círculos.

«What little remained of the text was in Latin, and I was piecing the passages together and getting a little light on two or three of the diagrams when a quarrel with my beggar maid plunged me into wine and gloom once more. Then turning violently from all sensual pleasure I decided to say my prayers at the Holy Sepulchre, and from there I went to Damascus that I might learn Arabic for I had decided to continue my prayers at Mecca, and hoped to get there in disguise.» — Robartes cuenta que del Speculum solo quedaba latín suelto y que las marcas en la arena del camino a la Meca coincidían casi exactamente con un diagrama del libro.

«I went from tribe to tribe for several months, learnt nothing and found myself at last in a remote town where, thanks to a small medicine chest which I always carry, I became first doctor, and then a kind of steward to an Arab chief or petty king. I constantly spoke about those markings upon the sand but learnt nothing till our town or village was visited by a tribe of Judwalis.» — el relato lleva a Robartes de tribu en tribu hasta dar con los Judwalis, que son la tradición viva del sistema dentro de la ficción.

«There are several tribes of this strange sect, who are known among the Arabs for the violent contrasts of character amongst them, for their licentiousness and their sanctity. Fanatical in matters of doctrine, they seem tolerant of human frailty beyond any believing people I have met.» — el retrato de los Judwalis: contrastes violentos de carácter, fanáticos en doctrina y tolerantes con la flaqueza humana.

«I am convinced, however, that this doctrine did not originate with Kusta ben Luka, for certain terms and forms of expression suggest some remote Syriac origin. I once told an old Judwali of my conviction upon this point but he merely said that Kusta ben Luka had doubtless been taught by the desert djinns53 who lived to a great age and remembered ancient languages.’» — Robartes disputa el origen que la propia tribu da a su doctrina y propone una raíz siríaca remota; el viejo judwali le responde que a Kusta ben Luka se lo enseñaron los djinns del desierto.

«I found that though their Sacred Book had been lost they had a vast doctrine which was constantly explained to their growing boys and girls by the aid of diagrams drawn by old religious men upon the sands» — la doctrina se transmite sin libro: diagramas dibujados en la arena por los viejos religiosos para los muchachos y muchachas de la tribu.

«This bundle, he explained, described the mathematical law of history, that bundle the adventure of the soul after death, that other the interaction between the living and the dead» — el contenido de los papeles de Robartes, tal como Aherne lo enumera: la ley matemática de la historia, la aventura del alma tras la muerte y el trato entre vivos y muertos.

«He complained in exaggerated language that I interpreted the system as a form of Christianity, that only those aspects of character that were an expression of Christianity interested me—primary character to use the terms of the philosophy—and that I was neither informed nor interested when I came to the opposite type.» — el desacuerdo que rompe la sociedad: Robartes acusa a Aherne de leer el sistema como una forma de cristianismo y de atender solo al carácter primario.

«I contended that there could be nothing incompatible between his system and Christianity. St Clement of Alexandria had taught the re-birth» — Aherne sostiene la compatibilidad con el cristianismo y la apoya en Clemente de Alejandría; el tramo se corta al cambiar de plana.

«of the Soul and had remained a saint, and in our own time the Capuchin Archbishop Passavalli has taught it and keeps his mitre.» — la segunda mitad de ese apoyo: el arzobispo capuchino Passavalli enseña la reencarnación y conserva la mitra.

«Nothing, however, would persuade him, and he declared that he would give all his material to Mr Yeats and let him do what he liked with it.» — dentro de la ficción, la entrega del material a Yeats es una decisión de Robartes tras la pelea.

«‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I want a lyric poet, and if he cares for nothing but expression, so much the better, my desert geometry will take care of the truth.’» — Robartes justifica la elección de un poeta lírico: la verdad la garantiza su geometría del desierto, no el expositor.

«‘Mr Yeats has intellectual belief but he is entirely without moral faith, without that sense, which should come to a man with terror and joy,61 of a Divine Presence, and though he may seek, and may have always sought it, I am certain that he will not find it in this life.’» — el juicio de Aherne sobre Yeats dentro del propio libro que Yeats firma: creencia intelectual sin fe moral.

«Mr Yeats consented to write the exposition on the condition that I wrote the introduction and any notes I pleased» — el reparto de papeles que la ficción declara: Yeats escribe la exposición y Aherne la introducción y las notas.

«Mr Yeats’s completed manuscript now lies before me. The system itself has grown clearer for his concrete expression of it, but I notice that if I made too little of the antithetical phases he has done no better by the primary.» — Aherne juzga el manuscrito que prologa y reparte el reproche: él descuidó las fases antitéticas y Yeats las primarias.

«The twelve rotations associated with the lunar and solar months of the Great Year first arose, as Mr Yeats understands, from the meeting and separation of certain spheres.» — las doce rotaciones de los meses lunares y solares del Gran Año nacen, según lo entiende Yeats dentro de la ficción, del encuentro y la separación de ciertas esferas.

«I consider that the form should be called elliptoid, and that rotation as we know it is not the movement that corresponds most closely to reality.» — Aherne disiente de la forma geométrica y propone llamarla elipsoide, negando que la rotación tal como la conocemos sea el movimiento más cercano a lo real.

«At any rate I can remember Robartes saying in one of his paradoxical figurative moods that he pictured reality as a number of great eggs laid by the Phœnix and that these eggs turn inside out perpetually without breaking the shell.» — la imagen que Aherne atribuye a Robartes: la realidad como huevos puestos por el Fénix que se vuelven del revés sin romper el cascarón.

«THE COLLECTED WORKS OF W.B. YATES George Bornstein, George Mills Harper, and Richard J. Finneran, General Editors» — la portadilla de la serie nombra a los tres editores generales de la colección; el apellido del poeta sale impreso YATES en la capa de texto del eBook, y así se consigna.

«VOLUME XIII A VISION (1925) ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper VOLUME XIV A VISION (1937) ed. Margaret Mills Harper and Catherine E. Paul» — la colección reparte las dos versiones de A Vision en dos tomos con las mismas dos editoras y el orden de firma invertido: el de 1925 es este volumen.

«Corrections to the Yeatses’ Copies of A Vision (1925) Emendations to the Copy-Text End-of-Line Word Division in the Copy-Text» — el índice anuncia los tres apéndices con que cierra el volumen, que son aparato de las editoras y no texto de 1925.

«In particular, their gift of W. B. and George Yeats’s library and occult papers to the National Library of Ireland has made possible new levels of scholarly investigation of A Vision.» — Paul y Harper adjudican a la donación de la familia Yeats a la Biblioteca Nacional de Irlanda la posibilidad misma de esta edición; los papeles ocultos son la base documental de las notas.

«The editors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Walter Kelly Hood and Connie Hood, former designated editors of AVA and AVB in this series, who shared with us the results of many years of labor as they passed the project on to us.» — las editoras declaran que el encargo de los dos tomos venía de otras manos y que heredaron el trabajo de Walter Kelly Hood y Connie Hood.

«In addition to invaluable published work and personal assistance, he left extensive files that have helped us immeasurably in understanding WBY’s methods of composition and the ordering of many manuscripts and typescripts, not to mention drawing our attention to significant aspects of the genesis of AVA and helping with transcriptions of WBY’s nearly illegible handwriting.» — las editoras nombran a George Mills Harper como quien fijó el orden de los manuscritos y descifró la letra de Yeats; el editor general de la serie es también la fuente del método de lectura.

«Samantha Martin, our editor at Scribner, has been of immense help, and we are more than grateful for her management and expertise.» — el agradecimiento nombra a la editora de mesa de Scribner, que es la casa que imprime el tomo.

«AS Automatic Script (see YVP 1–2) Au Autobiographies. Edited by William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald. The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats 3. New York: Scribner, 1999. AVA W. B. Yeats. A Vision. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1926. AVB W. B. Yeats. A Vision. 1937. London: Macmillan, 1962.» — la tabla de abreviaturas fija los nombres con que el aparato distingue las dos versiones, AVA la de 1925 y AVB la de 1937, y remite la escritura automática a los Vision Papers; nota que el asiento de AVA lleva año 1926, no 1925.

«CVA A Critical Edition of Yeats’s A Vision (1925). Edited by George Mills Harper and Walter Kelly Hood. London:» — la edición crítica anterior del mismo texto, de Harper y Hood, tiene sigla propia en el aparato: esta edición se escribe contra ella y no desde cero.

«Ex Explorations. Selected by Mrs. W. B. Yeats. London: Macmillan, 1962. Foster R. F. Foster. W. B. Yeats: A Life. 2 vols. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 2003. FPS Frank Pearce Sturm: His Life, Letters, and Collected Work. Edited by Richard Taylor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969. Gibbon Edward Gibbon. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Edited by J. B. Bury. 7 vols. London: Methuen, 1909–14. (O’Shea 746) GY George Yeats» — la sigla GY, que el aparato usa a cada paso, se resuelve aquí en George Yeats; la marca (O’Shea 746) remite al catálogo de la biblioteca de los Yeats, que es como las editoras acreditan qué libros tuvieron a mano.

«YVP Yeats’s Vision Papers. 4 vols. George Mills Harper, general editor, assisted by Mary Jane Harper. Vol. 1, The Automatic Script: 5 November 1917–18 June 1918, edited by Steve L. Adams, Barbara J. Frieling, and Sandra L. Sprayberry. Vol. 2, The Automatic Script: 25 June 1918– 29 March 1920, edited by Steve L. Adams, Barbara J. Frieling, and Sandra L. Sprayberry. Vol. 3, Sleep and Dream Notebooks, Vision Notebooks 1 and 2, Card File, edited by Robert Anthony Martinich and Margaret Mills Harper. Vol. 4, “The Discoveries of Michael Robartes,” Version B (“The Great Wheel” and “The Twenty-Eight Embodiments”), edited by George Mills Harper and Margaret Mills Harper. London: Macmillan, 1992; Palgrave, 2001.» — el asiento data la escritura automática entre el 5 de noviembre de 1917 y el 29 de marzo de 1920 y nombra a sus editores; el tomo 4 imprime una versión de la Gran Rueda y de las veintiocho encarnaciones atribuida a Michael Robartes.

«ILLUSTRATIONS 1. [Frontispiece of A Vision] 2. [Title page of A Vision] 3. [Copyright page of A Vision]» — las tres primeras ilustraciones son la reproducción de los preliminares de 1925; los corchetes son de las editoras, que titulan así las piezas que el original no titula. En el troceo esas tres planas son imagen sin capa de texto, de modo que la portada de 1925 con sus referencias a Giraldus y a Kusta ben Luka no se puede citar por su letra, solo por la descripción que las editoras hacen de ella.

«4. The Great Wheel 5. [Unicorn] 6. [Lunar Phases] 7. [Gyres as Lines] 8. [Gyres as Cones] 9. [Gyres of Destiny and Will, Fate, and Mind] 10. [Approaching and Separating Gyres] 11. [Contracting and Expanding Gyres] 12. [Gyres “placed one within the other”] 13. [Gyres of the Four Faculties] 14. [Solar and Lunar Circles] 15. [Solar and Lunar Months] 16. [Solar and Lunar Year] 17. [Solar and Lunar Gyres] 18. [Gyres of Principles and Faculties] 19. [“simplest form” of “History Cone”] 20. [Cones of “entire Era”] 21. The Historical Cones» — el inventario de las dieciocho figuras del sistema: la Gran Rueda, el unicornio, las fases lunares, las nueve láminas de giros y conos y el diagrama de los conos históricos. Todas son imagen sin capa de texto en el troceo, así que lo que dicen los diagramas queda fuera de esta ficha y solo entra lo que el texto corrido dice de ellos.

«Portrait of Giraldus from the Speculum Angelorum et Homenorum» — el pie del frontispicio escribe Homenorum donde el cuerpo del libro escribe Hominorum (pp. 52, 53); la divergencia se consigna sin corregir.

«A Vision appeared in the dead of winter. On 15 January 1926, the London publisher T. Werner Laurie distributed to subscribers six hundred signed copies of W. B. Yeats’s occult mythography» — Paul y Harper datan la salida del libro el 15 de enero de 1926, en tirada de seiscientos ejemplares firmados para suscriptores, y lo llaman mitografía ocultista de Yeats.

«As recently as the previous July, WBY had indulged in high-flown hope for it, telling Laurie, “I dare say I delude myself in thinking this book my book of books.”» — las editoras citan la carta de Yeats a su editor Laurie de julio de 1925, donde él mismo pone en duda su entusiasmo.

«However, Laurie and WBY had long known that, as WBY mentioned understatedly in March 1923, “the book is entirely unlike any other work of mine and will not appeal to the same public.”» — Yeats, citado por las editoras, separa este libro del resto de su obra y de su público desde marzo de 1923.

«As WBY put it to Laurie, “getting a book of this sort into print is a reverse of the Christian miracle for one has to turn twelve basketfuls of fragments into—is it not?—two loaves and two little fishes— a greater miracle than the other.”» — la imagen que Yeats da del trabajo de imprimirlo: el milagro cristiano al revés, doce canastas de fragmentos convertidas en dos panes y dos peces.

«Neither WBY nor others was sure if A Vision contained profound truths and creative genius or if it had been a ridiculous exercise in obsession.» — las editoras dejan la duda sin resolver, en la voz de la época y no en la suya.

«As it was being delivered to booksellers, WBY wrote to Laurie that he was waiting for the book “with some excitement as I don’t know whether I am a goose that has hatched a swan or a swan that has hatched a goose.”» — Yeats, citado por las editoras, no sabe si el libro es cisne o ganso al llegar a las librerías.

«A Vision was a handsome volume, with light blue paper boards, parchment half-binding, woodcuts by Edmund Dulac printed on brown paper, and untrimmed pages, with one striking diagram of “historical cones” in both red and black ink. It was appropriately expensive, selling for £3.6s» — la descripción material del volumen de 1925: papel azul, media pasta de pergamino, xilografías de Dulac sobre papel marrón, páginas sin refilar y el diagrama de conos históricos a dos tintas.

«Owen Aherne and his associate, Michael Robartes, fictional characters revived from the trio of occult stories, “Rosa Alchemica,” “The Tables of the Law,” and “The Adoration of the Magi,” written over two decades earlier for inclusion in The Secret Rose (1897)» — las editoras localizan el origen de los dos personajes en tres relatos ocultistas de 1897 y declaran que iban a exponer la filosofía en diálogo.

«In fact, the story of A Vision is riddled with dialogues and doubles, beginning with the collaboration between WBY and GY, which took place in spiritualistic sessions of automatic writing (and other methods, which will be explained below) during which he asked questions and she wrote the answers that came to her from regions beyond the grave and outside material existence.» — el procedimiento que el libro de 1925 no nombra: él preguntaba y ella escribía las respuestas.

«The spiritualist nature of the automatic script also presumes a second kind of dialogue, between the human partners and a host of “instructors” and “communicators” of various supernatural kinds who wrote or spoke through GY’s hand or voice as she acted as a medium for their revelations.» — las editoras nombran instructores y comunicadores a las voces que escribían o hablaban por la mano y la voz de George Yeats.

«The author is not a unified entity: there is both explanation and instruction, argument and agreement, a sense of monologue or even diatribe, as well as a sense of conversation or even just several voices speaking all at once.» — el diagnóstico de las editoras sobre la autoría del libro: no hay entidad unificada sino varias voces a la vez.

«Edmund Dulac created the frontispiece of Giraldus, the supposed author of a book outlining the system, entitled, in bad (and misspelled) Latin, “Speculum Angelorum et Homenorum.”» — las editoras adjudican el retrato de Giraldus a Edmund Dulac y califican de mal latín y mal escrito el título que le pone.

«WBY was very pleased with the image, writing to Dulac that he even doubted “if Laurie would have taken the book but for the amusing deceit that your designs make possible” (L, 700).» — Yeats, citado por las editoras, atribuye al engaño amable de los dibujos de Dulac que Laurie aceptara el libro.

«George Mills Harper, one of the early scholarly proponents of WBY’s occult interests and general editor of the four-volume edition of the automatic script and related materials, declared the unwieldy work “the most maligned and misunderstood tour de force in the history of modern literature” (MYV 1:xiv).» — juicio de George Mills Harper que las editoras recogen, con su condición de editor general de la escritura automática declarada en la misma frase.

«Richard Ellmann, one of the few critics whom GY allowed to examine the Vision materials after her husband’s death, called it “The strangest work written by a great poet in English since Blake’s Prophetic Books.”» — juicio de Richard Ellmann, a quien George Yeats dejó ver los materiales tras la muerte de su marido.

«R. F. Foster remarks in his authoritative biography that A Vision not only “provides necessary illumination for a key section of [WBY’s] oeuvre” but that “the book’s real value is to students of WBY’s mind, and of his aspirations” (Foster 2:285).» — juicio de R. F. Foster, que traslada el valor del libro de la doctrina a la mente y las aspiraciones de Yeats.

«The 1925 book represents WBY’s final intentions even less than do many modern texts and is inexplicable without many details from stages of composition outside its pages.» — las editoras acotan el estatuto del texto: no representa una intención final del autor y no se explica sin los materiales de composición ajenos a sus planas.

«The challenge of this edition is to document its multiple sources, for AVA is both the culmination of WBY’s many years of occult study as well as the most collaborative of his many esoteric works.» — las editoras declaran el propósito de la edición y llaman a A Vision la más colaborativa de las obras esotéricas de Yeats.

«The pen moved, setting off the immediate genesis of A Vision and the numerous texts associated with it.» — las editoras fechan el arranque en el movimiento de la pluma de George Yeats.

«She was doing what contemporary spiritualists would call “channeling,” relaxing her conscious mind in order to be receptive to messages from outside her ordinary consciousness, and also actively participating in the joint enterprise of discovery, clarification, organization, and application of the system.» — las editoras nombran canalización lo que hacía George Yeats y le adjudican, además, participación activa en el descubrimiento y la organización del sistema.

«as WBY explained later, “I had always to question, and every question to rise out of a previous answer and to deal with their chosen topic” (AVB, 10).» — Yeats, citado desde la versión de 1937, describe su parte: preguntar, y que cada pregunta naciera de la respuesta anterior.

«The instructors are a part of this complicated issue; they, to some degree, mirror the levels of active control over or passive reception of the information that flowed onto the pages of the AS.» — las editoras leen a los instructores como reflejo del grado de control o de recepción pasiva en la escritura automática.

«The system is also guided by daimons, personal genii or otherworldly counterparts, who are enactments of concepts about which WBY had thought and written for some time.» — las editoras identifican los daimones del sistema con conceptos que Yeats ya venía trabajando.

«Reincarnation is assumed, and at times ancestral or historical personages appear—sometimes wrongly, as verifiable information might confirm.» — las editoras consignan que a veces los personajes históricos aparecían equivocados, y lo dicen sin arbitrar.

«The probability of error or mischief is also personified in “frustrators” or spirits whose purpose, like some of the fairy people of Ireland in stories with which WBY was familiar, was to deceive or cause trouble in whatever ways they could.» — el sistema personifica el error mismo en los frustradores; las editoras los emparentan con el pueblo feérico irlandés.

«The intense sessions continued until the spring of 1920, when, on an American lecture tour, the Yeatses were informed by Dionertes that he preferred “other methods—sleeps” (YVP 2:539).» — el cambio de método en la primavera de 1920 lo declara un comunicador nombrado Dionertes.