The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the relationship between "the Cave of Mithra at Capri" Yeats visited in1925 and "that curious cave" in Botticelli's painting Mystic Nativity (1501) in the National Gallery of London, and to propose their possible connection with Porphyry's treatise On the Cave of the Nymphs.
This paper first discusses Porphyry's discourse. It interprets 11 verses of Odyssey in which Homer describes the cave of the water-nymphs on the island of Ithaca as an allegory of the soul's cycle of descent and return. Yeats might have read Porphyry's exposition through the translation made by the English Platonist Tomas Taylor. Porphyry's Neoplatonic view of Homer's cave is epitomized in Kathleen Raine's illuminating remark: "Porphyry's cave is the womb by which man enters life; but, seen otherwise, it is the grave in which he dies to eternity."
Secondly, this paper refers to Yeats's visit to the Mithraic cave of Capri. Yeats and his wife Georgie first travelled to Sicily, where they joined the Pounds, and then to Naples and Capri. Pound remembered Yeats trying out the acoustics at the amphitheatre near Syracuse, and staring in wonder at the "golden mosaic" of the superb Byzantine walls at Monreale near Palermo. Unfortunately, there is no photographic record of the poet's visit to Capri, only the recollections recorded in the prose of the Dedication to A Vision and in the note discussing his visit to the cave. Yeats recollects the details he observed: "When I saw the Cave of Mithra at Capri I wondered if that were Porphyry's Cave. The two entrances are there, one reached by a stair of 100 feet or so from the sea..., and one reached from above by some hundred and fifty steps...." Yeats clearly links the Mithraic cave having "two entrances" with "Porphyry's Cave" telling the cycle of generation.
Thirdly, particular attention is paid to Botticelli's Mystic Nativity. According to Yeats, the inscription at the top of the picture says that "Botticelli's world is in the 'second woe' of the Apocalypse," and that "after certain other Apocalyptic events the Christ of the picture will appear." Botticelli's work reflects catastrophic expectations at the end of the 15th century which echo the rebellious Dominican priest Savonarola's apocalyptic visions. In conclusion, Botticelli's use of the "curious cave" located at the centre of Mystic Nativity seems an appropriate way of symbolising "Porphyry's Cave" as a metaphor of the world of matter into which the souls are incarnated.