Building a Symbol ‘at the Foundation of a Nation’: ‘The Tower’, The Tower (1928)

This chapter addresses Yeats’s second tower sequence, which, with its summative and testamentary force, gives a focal point to the volume named after it, The Tower (1928). Incorporating his long-held theme at the root of the tower project, the Gaelic poet Anthony Raftery and his muse at Ballylee, into his poetic property, ‘The Tower’ opens a new phase of the building as public as well as private property, and the architecture functions as a stage for soliloquy, storytelling and public declaration as well as a mnemonic focus and a nest for posterity. Diachronically exploring this poetic autobiography and testament which stands at the centre of Yeats’s project of building a symbol ‘plainly visible to the passer by’, the chapter discusses the underexplored architecture of the most visible landmark of Yeats’s oeuvre.