I mutevoli volti dell’eroe

Yeats needed heroes and looked forward to finding one who might embody his ideas and hopes of the beginning of a new era. However, his standard of perfection changed over the years: from a character in whom the best and highest qualities of an individual might come into being, to a model of the hero able to stand as a symbol and guide for his fellow men, in particular those people Yeats felt mainly responsible for, the Irish. There is something Carlylean in this (Yeats knew and appreciated Carlyle, even though he did not like his style), but his view of the hero includes other models, like the tragic hero and the hero of myth. This paper takes into consideration two heroes who frequently recur in his work, Oisin and Cuchulainn, pointing to similarities and difference both in their qualities and functions. However, above and beyond them, it is the poet himself that emerges as a key figure of a hero in Yeats’s poetry, as the only one who can fulfil the double task of developing his self and playing an essential social and moral role