It seems that the swans and the fisherman represent essentially the same thing in Yeats’ mind. As both are representations of the anti-self, both are in conflict with the current self that the speaker is experiencing. As the swans represent an eternal and collective mind, they never fade. As they never fade, there is a kind of harmony between them that is unable to be reached by the speaker as himself, alone. I find the extension of this as Yeats writes “The Fisherman.” He uses the ritualism of fishing, the motion involved and the repetitive nature of it as a whole, along with the tendency for wealthy people as fishermen, to create a place where both can be unified. In doing this, it seems that Yeats believes that there can be a dissolving of both classes into one sort of consciousness, much like that of the swans. However, there is conflict with each of these ideas, as they contradict each other. The swans, if they represent a collective consciousness, cannot remain as such because when the speaker awakens, the role of the swans changes. It appears that it changes from the anti-self to the self of the speaker, and therefore becomes alone and singular. As such, the fishermen cannot correctly represent the unification of the aristocracy and peasant class because that assumes that Yeats’ audience in fact exists in reality. That is not the case because of the shift in language to that used in Arthurian times, suggesting the audience is the middle class, the very thing he despises and looks down upon. As this is the case, it is impossible for the fisherman to be harmonious and it in turn represents the anti-self, which of course the speaker is destined to replace upon awakening from the sleep of life. The difference is that the awakening is that of poetry and being able to write effectively only while asleep.
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