In this work, W. B. Yeats employs and references a story that is nearly ubiquitous within the canon of Western literature: the story of Adam and Eve and the expulsion from the paradisal Eden. This biblical story of the expulsion from Eden hangs in the background of the poem, though it is never fully explained: its very ubiquity, perhaps, made it unnecessary to summarize. At the same time, whether you're already familiar with the story or not, it's wise to reconsider and review it in light of the poem. Furthermore, it's helpful to consider Yeats's interpretation of the biblical story in light of other literary interpretations. This story has attained a life of its own beyond its original source material, appearing not only in this poem but in countless works of art.
The story of Eden has a role in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism alike. It appears at the beginning of the biblical Old Testament—in the Book of Genesis—as well as in the Koran. However, just as generations of writers and artists have interpreted the story in varied ways, highlighting different elements of the scriptural version, each of these religious traditions has also variously interpreted and reimagined it. In fact, even within the Book of Genesis, several earlier tellings of the story coexist, revealing that it likely stemmed from a cluster of earlier sources that were later canonized into today's Bible. According to literary biblical scholarship, several versions or tellings were compiled together, with certain textual idiosyncrasies shedding light on the manner of that compilation and the potential diversity of source material.
In short, however, the story at the center of Yeats's poem is as follows: God creates the entire world, and places the first two human beings—a man named Adam and a woman named Eve—in a paradisal garden (in Jewish and Muslim traditions, the woman's name is Chava or Hawwa: this was later Anglicized as "Eve"). These two human figures are entirely innocent and untroubled, with all of their needs met. Within the garden, however, God plants a "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," containing all of the knowledge that the innocent Adam and Eve lack. God forbids the two to eat this tree's fruit. However, a snake convinces Eve to eat the tree's fruit. She, in turn, persuades Adam to do the same. Their innocence is suddenly lost. Suddenly embarrassed by their nudity, they even craft clothes to wear. God, as punishment, banishes them from the garden. He condemns them to a life of work and pain, telling them that women must now endure difficult childbirth and that humanity must labor to produce food.
Yeats's interpretation of the story describes this punishment in relation to the creation of beauty, linking the struggle and labor behind beautiful things (whether art, physical attractiveness, or love itself) to this original fall from paradise. The most famous literary reference to the story of Adam and Eve undoubtedly comes from John Milton's seventeenth-century poem Paradise Lost, which places the original biblical story in the center of a sweeping epic drama occurring in both the human and celestial realms. Dante, too, evoked this lost paradise in his Purgatorio, describing it as a place of breathtaking beauty. In C.S. Lewis's popular Narnia books, themselves an allegory for the Christian bible, the realm of Narnia itself represents an Edenic world temporarily corrupted by evil and temptation. These are merely among the more famous and overt literary references to the story of Adam and Eve, among a nearly countless number, not to mention the many more allusions to this story in music, film, and visual art.
In contrast to some of the literary works mentioned above, Yeats does not retell the story of Adam and Eve in his poem, nor does he treat it as his central material. Instead, he uses it as a reference point to get across a broader lament about the difficulty of finding and creating love and beauty. He makes use of humanity's lapse and punishment to identify what he describes as a constant mismatch between the labor humanity does and the rewards they reap. In order to create beautiful art, a lovely face, or a fulfilling relationship, humans must commit to thankless and ultimately debilitating work. This work, Yeats suggest, will always outpace and overwhelm the beauty it produces. At the same time, the human need to create and absorb beautiful things remains strong, making this work both impossible and inevitable.
