... But the clouds... and a Yeatsian phantasmagoria

The woman in ...but the clouds... quotes from Yeats's "The Tower," a poem in which Yeats, who was familiar with séances, recalls the dead. "The Tower" is closely related to Yeats's book of occult philosophy, A Vision, in which he refers to 'phantasmagoria,' projections of images of ghosts, in discussing "dreaming back" by the Spirit. By repeatedly reproducing scenes, M's voice, called V, seems to be dreaming back a solitary séance by M, conducted by his past self to see the woman without. For Beckett, television thus produced a version of Yeats's phantasmagoria, a projection of the inner ghost outward.