Immediately after World War I, four major European and American poets
and thinkers--W. B. Yeats, Robinson Jeffers, R. M. Rilke, and C. G.
Jung--moved into towers as their principal habitations. Taking this
striking coincidence as its starting point, this book sets out to locate
modern turriphilia in its cultural context and to explore the
biographical circumstances that motivated the four writers to choose
their unusual retreats. From the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia to the
ivory towers of the fin de si cle, the author traces the emergence of a
variety of symbolic associations with the proud towers of the past,
ranging from spirituality and intellect to sexuality and sequestration.
But in every case the tower served both literally and symbolically as a
refuge from the urban modernism with whose values the four writers found
themselves at odds. While the classic modernists (Eliot, Woolf, Hart
Crane) often singled out the broken tower as the image of a crumbling
past, these writers actualized their powerful visions: Yeats and Rilke
moved into medieval towers in Ireland and Switzerland, while Jeffers and
Jung built themselves towers at Carmel and Bollingen as secluded spaces
in which to cultivate the traditions and values they cherished. The last
chapter traces this perseverance of the ancient image through its heyday
in the twenties and into the present, where it has undergone renewal,
institutionalization, and parody.
Originally published in 1998.
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