| 威廉·巴特勒·葉芝 | |||||
| 耶茨 | |||||
| 葉慈 | |||||
閱讀葉芝 William Butler Yeats在诗海的作品!!! | |||||
叶芝
叶芝葉芝是“愛爾蘭文藝復興運動”的領袖，也是艾比劇院（Abbey Theatre）的創建者之一。1865年6月13日出生於都柏林。曾在都柏林大都會美術學院學習繪畫，1887年開始專門從事詩歌創作，被詩人艾略特譽為"當代最偉大的詩人"。但葉芝一嚮對戲劇有濃厚的興趣，先後寫過26部劇本。1939年1月28日，在法國南部羅剋布魯納逝世。
葉芝早年的創作仍然具有浪漫主義的華麗風格，善於營造夢幻般的氛圍，例如他在1893年出版的散文集《凱爾特曙光》便屬於這種風格。然而進入不惑之年後，在現代主義詩人伊茲拉·龐德等人的影響下，尤其是在其本人參與愛爾蘭民族主義政治運動的切身經驗的影響下，葉芝的創作風格發生了比較激烈的變化，更加趨近現代主義了。
葉芝不僅僅是艾比劇院的决策者之一，也曾擔任愛爾蘭國會參議員一職。他十分重視自己的這些社會職務，是愛爾蘭參議院中有名的工作勤奮者。葉芝曾於1923年獲得諾貝爾文學奬，獲奬的理由是“以其高度藝術化且洋溢着靈感的詩作表達了整個民族的靈魂”。1934年，他和拉迪亞德·吉卜林共同獲得古騰堡詩歌奬。
早年的生活和作品
葉芝出生於距離愛爾蘭首都都柏林不遠的山迪蒙（Sandymount）。他的父親約翰·巴特勒·葉芝是亞麻商人傑維斯·葉芝的後裔。這位商人卒於1712年，他的孫子本傑明娶了基爾岱爾郡的望族之女瑪麗·巴特勒。約翰·葉芝結婚的時候正在學習法律，但是很快他便輟學，轉而學習畫肖像畫。他的母親（即威廉·巴特勒·葉芝的祖母）蘇珊·瑪麗·波雷剋斯芬來自斯萊果郡（County Sligo）上一個盎格魯－愛爾蘭裔傢族。詩人出生後不久，便遷至位於斯萊果的大傢族中，他本人也一直認為是斯萊果郡孕育了自己真正的童年歲月。巴特勒－葉芝傢族是一個非常具有藝術氣息的傢族。詩人的哥哥傑剋後來成為一位著名的畫傢，而他的兩個姐妹伊麗莎白和蘇珊則均參加過著名的“工藝美術運動”。
為了詩人父親的繪畫事業，葉芝的家庭後遷至倫敦。起初，葉芝和他的兄弟姐妹接受的是家庭教育。詩人的母親由於非常思念故地斯萊果，經常給孩子們講家乡的故事和民間傳說。1877年，威廉·葉芝進入葛多芬小學（Godolphin），並在那裏學習了四年。不過威廉似乎並不喜歡在葛多芬的這段經歷，而且成績也並不突出。由於經濟上的睏難，詩人全家於1880年底遷回了都柏林。起初住在市中心，其後搬到位於郊外的皓斯（Howth）。
在皓斯的時光是詩人重要的發展階段。皓斯周圍是丘陵和樹林，相傳有精靈出沒。葉芝傢雇了一個女僕，是一個漁人的妻子，她熟知各類鄉野傳奇，娓娓道來的神秘冒險全都收錄在後來出版的《凱爾特黃昏》裏。
1881年10月，詩人在都柏林的伊雷斯摩斯·史密斯中學（Erasmus Smith）繼續他的學業。他父親的畫室就在這所學校附近，於是詩人經常在那裏消磨時光，並結識了很多都柏林城的藝術傢和作傢。在這段時間裏，葉芝大量閱讀莎士比亞等英國作傢的作品，並和那些比他年長許多的文學家、藝術傢們討論。他於1883年12月從這所中學畢業，其後他便開始了詩歌的創作。1885年，葉芝在《都柏林大學評論》上發表了他的第一部詩作，以及一篇題為《賽繆爾·費格森爵士的詩》的散文。從1884年到1886年，他就讀於位於基爾岱爾大街的大都會藝術學校（Metropolitan School of Art），也就是如今愛爾蘭國傢美術與設計學院的前身。
年輕的詩人
在開始進行詩歌創作之前，葉芝便已經嘗試將詩歌和宗教觀念、情感結合起來。後來，他在描述自己童年生活的時候曾說過“……我認為……如果是一種強大且悲天憫人的精神構成了這個世界的宿命，那麽我們便可以通過那些融合了人的心靈對這個世界的欲望的詞句來更好的理解這種宿命。”
葉芝早年的詩作通常從愛爾蘭神話和民間傳說中取材，其語言風格則受到拉斐爾前派散文的影響。這一時期，雪萊的詩對葉芝産生了很大影響。在後來的一篇關於雪萊的文章中葉芝寫道：“我重讀了《解放了的普羅米修斯》。在世界上的所有偉大著作之中，它在我心裏的地位比我預想得還要高得多。”
葉芝早期還受到彼時愛爾蘭著名的芬尼亞組織（Fenian）領袖約翰·奧裏亞雷的影響。詩人晚年曾說，奧裏亞雷是他所見最“風流倜儻的老人”，“從奧裏亞雷的談話以及他藉我或送我的愛爾蘭書籍中，成就了我一生的志業。”在奧裏亞雷的介紹下，葉芝認識了道格拉斯·海德和約翰·泰勒。前者於1893年成立蓋爾語聯盟（Gaelic League），致力於保存並增加愛爾蘭語言的使用。
葉芝的第一首重要詩作是《雕塑的島嶼》，是一首模仿埃德蒙·斯賓塞詩作的夢幻般的作品。這首詩發表在《都柏林大學評論》上，其後沒有再版。葉芝第一部公開出版的作品是一本小册子《摩沙達：戲劇化的詩》。這篇文章也同樣在《都柏林大學評論》上發表過，而且衹是由他的父親出資印刷了100册。此後，他完成了敘事長詩《烏辛之浪跡》（The Wanderings of Oisin），並在1889年出版了詩集《烏辛之浪跡及其他詩作》。這是即使在葉芝風格成熟之後也仍未否定過的第一部作品，取材於愛爾蘭古代勇士的傳說和神話故事。為完成這首詩，詩人花費了整整兩年的時間，其風格清晰的體現出費格森和拉斐爾前派對詩人的影響。這首詩在一定程度上奠定了葉芝以後詩作的主題風格：追求冥思的生活抑或追求行動的生活。這本詩集的前八首抒情詩和歌謠的主題，是源自葉芝少年時代對印度人及阿爾卡迪亞世外桃源的想象——神祗與女神、王子與公主、殿堂、孔雀與神秘的蓮花等等。詩歌中流露出明顯的浪漫主義和拉斐爾前派的痕跡。在《烏辛之浪跡》之後，葉芝再未創作過長詩。他的其他早期作品多半是以愛情或神秘事物為主題的抒情詩。隨着葉芝的作品讀者群的不斷擴大，他結識了當時愛爾蘭和英國的很多著名文學家，包括蕭伯納和王爾德。
葉芝的家庭於1887年重新搬回倫敦。1890年，葉芝和歐那斯特·萊斯（Ernest Rhys）共同創建了“詩人會社”（Rhymer’s Club）。這是一個由一群志同道合的詩人們組成的文學團體，成員們定期集會並於1892年和1894年分別出版過自己的詩選。葉芝的早期作品還包括詩集《詩集》、《神秘的玫瑰》和《葦間風》。事實上，“詩人會社”的文學成就並不高，葉芝幾乎是唯一取得了顯著成就的詩人。
昴德·岡昂、愛爾蘭文藝復興運動和艾比劇院
1889年，葉芝結識了昴德·岡昂小姐。她是一位熱衷於愛爾蘭民族主義運動的女性。岡昂小姐非常仰慕葉芝早年詩作《雕塑的島嶼》，並且主動和葉芝結識。葉芝深深的迷戀上了這位小姐，而這個女人也極大的影響了葉芝以後的創作和生活。經過兩年的密切交往後，葉芝嚮岡昂小姐求婚，卻遭到拒絶。其後，他又共計嚮她求婚三次，分別是再1889年、1900年和1901年，均遭到了拒絶。儘管如此，葉芝對岡昂小姐仍然魂牽夢縈，並以她為原型創作了劇本《凱絲琳女伯爵》。在劇中，凱絲琳將靈魂賣給了魔鬼，好讓她的同胞免於饑荒，最後上了天堂。此劇直到1899年纔得以上演，引發了宗教及政治上的諸多爭議。終於，在1903年，岡小姐嫁給了愛爾蘭民族運動政治傢約翰·麥剋布萊德。在這一年，葉芝動身去美國進行了一場漫長的巡回演講。這段時期他和奧莉薇亞·莎士比亞有過短暫的戀情。他們在1896年結識，卻在一年之後分手。
也正是在1896年，葉芝結識了奧古斯塔·格雷戈裏夫人，介紹人是他們共同的朋友愛德華·馬丁。格雷戈裏夫人鼓勵葉芝投身民族主義運動，並進行戲劇的創作。儘管葉芝受到法國象徵主義的影響，但顯然他的創作具有清晰而獨特的愛爾蘭風格。這種風格在葉芝與愛爾蘭年輕一代的作傢的交往中得到強化。葉芝和格雷戈裏夫人、馬丁以及一些其他愛爾蘭作傢共同發起了著名的“愛爾蘭文藝復興運動”（或稱“凱爾特文藝復興運動”）。
除了作傢們的文學創作外，學院派的翻譯傢們對古代傳奇故事、蓋爾語詩歌以及近代的蓋爾語民歌的翻譯和發掘工作也對愛爾蘭文藝復興運動起到了巨大的促進作用。代表人物是後來成為愛爾蘭總統的道格拉斯·海德，他編纂的《康諾特省的情歌》倍受推崇。
這場運動最不朽的成就之一便是艾比劇院的成立。1889年，葉芝、格雷戈裏夫人、馬丁和喬治·摩爾創立的“愛爾蘭文學劇場”（Irish Literary Theatre）。這個團體僅僅存在了兩年，而且並不成功。在兩位擁有豐富戲劇創作經驗的愛爾蘭兄弟威廉·費依和弗蘭剋·費依以及葉芝不計報酬的秘書安妮·伊麗莎白·弗萊德裏卡·霍爾尼曼（一位曾經於1894年參與過蕭伯納《武器與人》在倫敦首演的富有的英國女人）的鼎力協助下，這個團體成功打造了一個嶄新的愛爾蘭國傢戲劇界。在著名劇作傢約翰·米林頓·辛參與進來以後，這個團體甚至在都柏林靠戲劇演出賺到了不少錢，並於1904年12月27日修建了艾比劇院。在劇院的開幕之夜，葉芝的兩部劇作隆重上映。從此以後一直到去世，葉芝的創作生涯始終和艾比劇院相關。他不僅僅是劇院的董事會成員之一，同時也是一位高産的劇作傢。
在1902年，葉芝資助建立了丹·埃默出版社，用以出版文藝復興運動相關的作傢作品。這個出版社在1904年更名為庫拉出版社。出版社存在至1946年，一直由葉芝的兩個姐妹經營，總共出版了70本著作，其中的48本是葉芝自己寫的。1917年的夏天葉芝和當年的岡小姐重逢，並且嚮她的養女求婚，但是遭到了拒絶。九月份，他改嚮一位英國女人喬治·海德裏斯求婚，她答應了。兩人在當年的10月20日結婚。不久，葉芝買下了位於庫爾公園附近的巴列利塔，並很快將其更名為“圖爾巴列利塔”。葉芝餘生中的大部分夏季都是在這裏度過的。1919年2月24日，葉芝的長女安·葉芝在都柏林出生。安繼承了母親的智慧、寧靜與友善，以及父親不凡的藝術天賦，後來成為一位畫傢。
神秘主義的影響
葉芝一生都對神秘主義和唯靈論有濃厚的興趣。1885年，葉芝和一些朋友創立了“都柏林秘術兄弟會”（Dublin Hermetic Order）。這個組織在6月16日召開了第一次集會，葉芝是領袖。同年，都柏林的神智學會館在通靈法師婆羅門·摩西尼·莎特裏的組織下正式開放，葉芝於次年參加了他的第一次降神會。後來，葉芝沉溺於神秘主義和通靈術之中不能自拔。1900年，他甚至成為“金黎明秘術兄弟會”的領袖。他於1890年參加了這個組織。在結婚以後，葉芝夫婦曾經嘗試過風靡一時的無意識寫作。
葉芝的神秘主義傾嚮在他的名詩《麗達與天鵝》中體現得尤為明顯。這首短詩從希臘神話中取材，講述得是宙斯幻化成天鵝與美女麗達結合併生下兩個女兒的故事（一是著名的海倫，引發了特洛伊戰爭；一是剋呂泰涅斯特拉，希臘軍隊統率阿迦門農的妻子）。這一母題在西方文學藝術作品中曾反復出現。關於葉芝創作這首名作的初衷，西方評論界曾有過各種不同的詮釋和解讀，有的認為是“歷史變化的根源在於性愛和戰爭”，有的則認為是“歷史是人類的創造力和破壞力共同作用的結果”。西方主流的文學史將《麗達與天鵝》作為象徵主義詩歌里程碑式的作品。
在葉芝的神秘主義思想形成過程裏，凱瑟琳·泰楠的影響不可謂不大。泰楠是一位才華橫溢的女詩人，葉芝早年和她過從甚密。正是在泰楠的影響下，葉芝頻繁的參加各類神秘主義組織的活動。泰楠一生都很仰慕葉芝的才華，而葉芝卻在後來逐漸疏遠了她。
葉芝的神秘主義傾嚮受印度宗教的影響很顯著，他晚年甚至親自將印度教《奧義書》譯成英文。通靈學說和超自然的冥思則成為葉芝晚期詩歌創作的靈感來源。一些批評傢曾抨擊葉芝詩作中的神秘主義傾嚮，認為其缺乏嚴謹和可信度。W·H·奧登就曾尖銳的批評晚年的葉芝為“一個被關於巫術和印度的鬍言亂語侵占了大腦的可嘆的成年人的展覽品”。然而正是在這一時期，葉芝寫出了他一生中很多最不朽的作品。若想理解葉芝晚年詩作的奧妙，就必須要瞭解他於1925年出版的《靈視》一書的神秘主義思維體係。今天，人們通過閱讀這本書來理解葉芝後期的詩作，卻不把它當作一本宗教或哲學的著作。
嚮現代主義的轉變
1913年，葉芝在倫敦結識了年輕的美國詩人伊茲拉·龐德。事實上，龐德來倫敦有一部分便是為了結識這位比他年紀稍長的詩人。龐德認為葉芝是“唯一一位值得認真研究的詩人”。從1913年到1916年，每年鼕天葉芝和龐德都在亞士頓森林（Ashdown Forest）的一個鄉間別墅中度過。這段時間裏龐德擔任葉芝名義上的助手。然而當龐德未經葉芝的允許擅自修改了他的一些詩作，並將其公開發表在《詩》雜志上後，兩位詩人的關係便開始惡化了。龐德對葉芝詩作的修改主要體現出他對維多利亞式的詩歌韻律的憎惡。然而很快兩位詩人都開始懷念雙方共事、互相學習的日子。尤其是龐德從歐內斯特·費諾羅薩的寡婦處學到的關於日本能樂的知識為葉芝即將創作的貴族風格的劇作提供了靈感。葉芝創作的第一部模仿了日本能樂的劇作是《鷹之井畔》。他於1916年1月將這部作品的第一稿獻給龐德。
葉芝通常被認為是20世紀最重要的用英文寫作的詩人之一。然而，不同於大多數現代主義詩人在自由體詩領域不斷做出嘗試，葉芝是傳統詩歌形式的大師。現代主義對葉芝詩作風格的影響主要體現在：隨着時間的推移，詩人逐漸放棄早期作品中傳統詩歌樣式的寫作，語言風格也越來越冷峻，直接切入主題。這種風格上的轉變主要體現在他的中期創作中，包括作品集《七片樹林》、《責任》和《緑盔》
1923年葉芝榮獲諾貝爾文學奬，由瑞典國王親自頒奬。他在兩年之後發表了一首短詩《瑞典之豐饒》，以表達感激之情。1925年，葉芝出版了一本嘔心瀝血的散文作品《靈視》，其中他推舉柏拉圖、布列塔諾以及幾位現代哲學家的觀點來證實自己的占星學、神秘主義及歷史理論。
政治生涯
葉芝通過龐德結識了很多年輕的現代主義者，這使得他中期的詩作已經遠離了早期的《凱爾特曙光》時的風格。他對政治的關註也已經不再局限於文藝復興運動早期他所醉心的文化政治領域。在葉芝早期的作品中，他靈魂深處的貴族立場體現無餘。他將愛爾蘭平民的生活理想化，並且有意忽視這個階層貧窮孱弱的現實。然而一場由城市中的下層天主教徒發起的革命運動迫使葉芝不得不改變自己的創作姿態。
葉芝新的政治傾嚮在《1913年9月》這首詩中得到了體現。這首詩抨擊由詹姆斯·拉爾金領導的著名的1913年都柏林大罷工。在《1916年復活節》中，詩人反復吟誦：“一切都已改變/徹底改變/一種恐怖的美卻已誕生”。葉芝終於意識到復活節起義的領袖們的價值就在於他們卑微的出身和貧睏的生活。
整個1920年代和1930年代初期，葉芝無可避免的受到他的國傢以及整個世界動蕩局勢的影響。1922年，葉芝進入愛爾蘭參議院。在他的參議員生涯中，葉芝最主要的成就之一就是曾擔任貨幣委員會的主席。正是這一機構設計了愛爾蘭獨立之後的第一批貨幣。在1925年，他熱心的倡導離婚的合法化。1927年，葉芝在他的詩作《在學童中間》裏如此描述作為一名公衆人物的自己：“一位花甲之年的微笑的名人”。1928年，由於健康問題，葉芝從參議院退休。
葉芝的貴族階級立場以及他和龐德之間的密切關係使得這位詩人和墨索裏尼相當接近。他曾在許多場合表達過對這位法西斯獨裁者的仰慕。他甚至寫過一些歌頌法西斯主義的贊歌，儘管這些作品從未發表過。然而當巴布羅·聶魯達於1937年邀請他到馬德裏時，葉芝在回信中表明他支持西班牙革命，反對法西斯主義。葉芝的政治傾嚮非常曖昧。他不支持民主派，在晚年卻也有意疏遠納粹和法西斯主義。然而縱觀葉芝的一生，他從未真正接受或贊同過民主政治。同時，他深受所謂“優生運動”的影響。
晚年的生活和創作
進入晚年後，葉芝逐漸不再如中年時一樣直接觸及和政治相關的題材，而是開始以一種更加個人化的風格寫作。他開始為自己的傢人兒女寫詩，有的時候則描繪自己關於時間流逝、逐漸衰老的經歷和心緒。收錄在他最後一部詩集中的作品《馬戲團動物的大逃亡》生動的表現了他晚期作品的靈感來源：“既然我的階梯已經消失/ 我必須平躺在那些階梯攀升的起點”。
1929年之後，葉芝搬離了圖爾巴列利塔。儘管詩人一生中的很多回憶都在愛爾蘭國土之外，他還是於1932年在都柏林的近郊租了一間房子。晚年的葉芝非常高産，出版了許多詩集、戲劇和散文，許多著名的詩作都是在晚年寫成的，包括一生的顛峰之作《駛嚮拜占庭》。這首代表性的詩作體現了葉芝對古老而神秘的東方文明的嚮往。1938年，葉芝最後一次來到艾比劇院，觀賞他的劇作《煉獄》的首映式。同年，他出版了《威廉·巴特勒·葉芝的自傳》。
晚年的葉芝百病纏身，在妻子的陪伴下到法國休養。然而最終還是於1939年1月28日在法國曼頓（Menton）的“快樂假日旅館”逝世。他的最後一首詩作是以亞瑟王傳說為主題的《黑塔》。逝世之後，葉芝起初被埋葬在羅剋布羅恩（Roquebrune）。1948年9月，人們依照詩人的遺願，將他的遺體移至他的故鄉斯萊果郡。他的墳墓後來成了斯萊果郡的一處引人註目的景點。他的墓志銘是詩人晚年作品《班磅礴山麓下》的最後一句：“投出冷眼/ 看生，看死/ 騎士，策馬嚮前！”葉芝生前曾說斯萊果是一生當中對他影響最深遠的地方，所以他的雕塑和紀念館也將地址選在這裏。
葉芝的主要作品
1886年 — 《摩沙達 》
1888年 — 《愛爾蘭鄉村的神話和民間故事集》
1889年 — 《烏辛之浪跡及其他詩作》
1891年 — 《經典愛爾蘭故事》
1892年 — 《凱絲琳女伯爵及其他傳說和抒情詩》
1893年 —《凱爾特曙光》
1894年 —《心靈的欲望之田》
1895年 — 《詩集》
1897年 — 《神秘的玫瑰》
1899年 — 《葦間風 》
1903年 —《善惡之觀念》
1903年 — 《七重林中》
1907年 — 《發現 》
1910年 — 《緑盔及其他詩作 》
1913年 — 《挫折的詩歌》
1914年 — 《責任 》
1916年 — 《青春歲月的幻想麯》
1917年 — 《庫利的野天鵝 》
1918年 — 《寧靜的月色中 》
1921年 — 《邁可·羅拔茲與舞者》
1921年 — 《四年》
1924年 — 《貓和月光》
1925年 — 《靈視》
1926年 — 《疏遠》
1926年 — 《自傳》
1927年 — 《十月的爆發》
1928年 — 《塔樓》
1933年 — 《回梯與其他詩作》
1934年 — 《劇作選集》
1935年 — 《三月的滿月》
1938年 — 《新詩》
1939年 — 《最後的詩及兩部劇作》（死後出版）
1939年 — 《氣鍋中》（死後出版）
1923年獲諾貝爾文學奬，主要詩集有《蘆葦中的風》、《責任》、《塔》等。
Yeats was born and educated in Dublin, but spent his childhood in Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slowly paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the lyricism of the Pre-Raphaelite poets.
From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. Over the years Yeats adopted many different ideological positions, including, in the words of the critic Michael Valdez Moses, "those of radical nationalist, classical liberal, reactionary conservative and millenarian nihilist".
Early year
William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount, County Dublin, Ireland. His father, John Butler Yeats, was a descendant of Jervis Yeats, a Williamite soldier and linen merchant who died in 1712. Jervis' grandson Benjamin married Mary Butler, daughter of a landed County Kildare family. At the time of his marriage, John Yeats was studying law, but abandoned his studies to study art at Heatherley’s Art School in London. His mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, came from a wealthy Anglo-Irish family in County Sligo who owned a prosperous milling and shipping business. Soon after William's birth the family relocated to Sligo to stay with her extended family, and the young poet came to think of the area as his childhood and spiritual home. Its landscape became, over time, both literally and symbolically, his "country of the heart". The Butler Yeats family were highly artistic; his brother Jack went on to be a highly regarded painter, while his sisters Elizabeth and Susan—known to family and friends as Lollie and Lily—became involved in the Arts and Crafts movement.
Yeats grew up in a Protestant Ascendancy at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. While his family was broadly supportive of the changes Ireland was experiencing, the nationalist revival of the late 19th century directly disadvantaged his heritage, and informed his outlook for the remainder of his life. In 1997, his biographer R. F. Foster observed that Napoleon's dictum that to understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty "is manifestly true of W.B.Y." Yeats' childhood and young adulthood were shadowed by the marginalization of the Protestant community. The 1880s saw the rise of Parnell and the Home rule movement, the 1890s the momentum of nationalism, while the Fenians became prominent around the turn of the century. These developments were to have a profound effect on his poetry, and his subsequent explorations of Irish identity had a significant influence on the creation of his country's biography.
In 1876, the family moved to England to aid their father, John, to further his career as an artist. At first the Yeats children were educated at home. Their mother entertained them with stories and folktales from her county of birth. John provided an erratic education in geography and chemistry, and took William on natural history explorations of the nearby Slough countryside. On 26 January 1877, the young poet entered the Godolphin primary school, which he attended for four years. He did not distinguish himself academically, and an early school report describes his performance as "only fair. Perhaps better in Latin than in any other subject. Very poor in spelling." Though he had difficulty with mathematics and languages, he was fascinated by biology and zoology. For financial reasons, the family returned to Dublin toward the end of 1880, living at first in the city center and later in the suburb of Howth. In October 1881, Yeats resumed his education at Dublin's Erasmus Smith High School. His father's studio was located nearby and William spent a great deal of time there, and met many of the city's artists and writers. It was during this period that he started writing poetry, and in 1885 Yeats' first poems, as well as an essay entitled "The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson", were published in the Dublin University Review. Between 1884 to 1886, William attended the Metropolitan School of Art—now the National College of Art and Design—in Kildare Street. His first known works were written when he was seventeen, and include a poem heavily influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley which describes a magician who set up his throne in central Asia. Other pieces from this period are a draft of a play involving a Bishop, a monk, and a woman accused of paganism by local shepherds, as well as love-poems and narrative lyrics on medieval German knights. The early works were both conventional and according to the critic Charles Johnson "utterly unIrish", seeming to come out of a "vast murmurous gloom of dreams". Although Yeats' early works drew heavily on Shelley, Edmund Spenser, and on the diction and colouring of pre-Raphaelite verse, he soon turned to Irish myth and folklore and the writings of William Blake. In later life, Yeats paid tribute to Blake by describing him as one of the "great artificers of God who uttered great truths to a little clan".
Young poet
The family returned to London in 1887. In 1890, Yeats co-founded the Rhymers' Club with Ernest Rhys, a group of London based poets who met regularly in a Fleet Street tavern to recite their verse. The collective later became known as the "Tragic Generation" and published two anthologies: first in 1892 and again in 1894. He collaborated with Edwin Ellis on the first complete edition of William Blake's works, in the process rediscovering a forgotten poem "Vala, or, the Four Zoas." In a late essay on Shelley, Yeats wrote, "I have re-read Prometheus Unbound... and it seems to me to have an even more certain place than I had thought among the sacred books of the world."
Yeats had a life-long interest in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism, and astrology. He read extensively on the subjects throughout his life and was especially influenced by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. As early as 1892, he wrote: "If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen ever have come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write." His mystical interests—also inspired by a study of Hinduism, under the Theosophist Mohini Chatterjee, and the occult—formed much of the basis of his late poetry. However, some critics have dismissed these influences as lacking in intellectual credibility. In particular, W. H. Auden criticized this aspect of Yeats' work as the "deplorable spectacle of a grown man occupied with the mumbo-jumbo of magic and the nonsense of India."
Yeats's first significant poem was "The Isle of Statues," a fantasy work that took Edmund Spenser for its poetic model. The piece appeared in Dublin University Review, but has not since been republished. His first solo publication was the pamphlet Mosada: A Dramatic Poem (1886), which comprised a print run of 100 copies paid for by his father. This was followed by the collection The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), which arranged a series of verse that dated as far back as the mid-1880s. The long titular poem contains, in the words of his biographer R.F. Foster, "obscure Gaelic names, striking repetitions [and] an unremitting rhythm subtly varied as the poem proceeded through its three sections".
We rode in sorrow, with strong hounds three,
Bran, Sgeolan, and Lomair,
On a morning misty and mild and fair.
The mist-drops hung on the fragrant trees,
And in the blossoms hung the bees.
We rode in sadness above Lough Lean,
For our best were dead on Gavra's green.
"The Wanderings of Oisin" is based on the lyrics of the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology and displays the influence of both Sir Samuel Ferguson and the Pre-Raphaelite poets. The poem took two years to complete and was one of the few works from this period that he did not disown in his maturity. Oisin introduces what was to become one of his most important themes: the appeal of the life of contemplation over the appeal of the life of action. Following the work, Yeats never again attempted another long poem. His other early poems, which are meditations on the themes of love or mystical and esoteric subjects, include Poems (1895), The Secret Rose (1897), and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899).
During 1885, Yeats was involved in the formation of the Dublin Hermetic Order. The society held its first meeting on 16 June, with Yeats acting as its chairman. The same year, the Dublin Theosophical lodge was opened in conjunction with Brahmin Mohini Chatterjee, who traveled from the Theosophical Society in London to lecture. Yeats attended his first séance the following year. He later became heavily involved with the Theosophical Society and with hermeticism, particularly with the eclectic Rosicrucianism of the Golden Dawn. During séances held from 1912, a spirit calling itself "Leo Africanus" apparently claimed to be Yeats's Daemon or anti-self, inspiring some of the speculations in Per Amica Silentia Lunae. He was admitted into the Golden Dawn in March 1890 and took the magical motto Daemon est Deus inversus—translated as Devil is God inverted or A demon is a god reflected. He was an active recruiter for the sect's Isis-Urania temple, and brought in his uncle George Pollexfen, Maud Gonne, and Florence Farr. Although he reserved a distaste for abstract and dogmatic religions founded around personality cults, he was attracted to the type of people he met at the Golden Dawn. He was involved in the Order's power struggles, both with Farr and Macgregor Mathers, but was most notably involved when Mathers sent Aleister Crowley to repossess Golden Dawn paraphernalia during the "Battle of Blythe Road." After the Golden Dawn ceased and splintered into various offshoots, Yeats remained with the Stella Matutina until 1921.
Maud Gonne
Maud Gonne ca. 1900.In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, then a twenty-three year old heiress and ardent Nationalist. Gonne was eighteen months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a "paint-stained art student." Gonne had admired "The Isle of Statues" and sought out his acquaintance. Yeats developed an obsessive infatuation with her beauty and outspoken manner, and she was to have a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life thereafter. Looking back in later years, he admitted "it seems to me that she [Gonne] brought into my life those days—for as yet I saw only what lay upon the surface—the middle of the tint, a sound as of a Burmese gong, an over-powering tumult that had yet many pleasant secondary notes." Yeats' love remained unrequited, in part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activism. His only other love affair during this period was with Olivia Shakespeare, whom he had first met in 1896, and parted with one year later. In 1895, he visited Gonne in Ireland and proposed marriage, but was rejected. He later admitted that from that point "the troubling of my life began." Yeats proposed to Gonne three more times: in 1899, 1900 and 1901. She refused each proposal, and in 1903, to his horror, married the Irish nationalist Major John MacBride.
A 1907 engraving of Yeats.Yeats' friendship with Gonne persisted, and in Paris in 1908 they finally consummated their relationship. "The long years of fidelity rewarded at last" was how another of his lovers described the event. Yeats was less sentimental and later remarked that "the tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul." The relationship did not develop into a new phase after their night together, and soon afterwards Gonne wrote to the poet indicating that despite the physical consummation, they could not continue as they had been: "I have prayed so hard to have all earthly desire taken from my love for you & dearest, loving you as I do, I have prayed & I am praying still that the bodily desire for me may be taken from you too." By January 1909, Gonne was sending Yeats letters praising the advantage given to artists who abstain from sex. Nearly twenty years later, Yeats recalled the night with Gonne in his poem "A Man Young and Old":
My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay;
The first of all the tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take;
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all Troy to wreck.
In 1896, Yeats was introduced to Lady Gregory by their mutual friend Edward Martyn. Gregory encouraged Yeats' nationalism, and convinced him to continue focusing on writing drama. Although he was influenced by French Symbolism, Yeats concentrated on an identifiably Irish content and this inclination was reinforced by his involvement with a new generation of younger and emerging Irish authors. Together with Lady Gregory, Martyn, and other writers including J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, and Padraic Colum, Yeats was one of those responsible for the establishment of the "Irish Literary Revival" movement Apart from these creative writers, much of the impetus for the Revival came from the work of scholarly translators who were aiding in the discovery of both the ancient sagas and Ossianic poetry and the more recent folk song tradition in Irish. One of the most significant of these was Douglas Hyde, later the first President of Ireland, whose Love Songs of Connacht was widely admired.
Abbey Theatre
In 1899, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Martyn, and George Moore established the Irish Literary Theatre for the purpose of performing Celtic and Irish plays. The ideals of the Abbey were derived from the avant-garde French theatre, which sought to express the "ascendancy of the playwright rather than the actor-manager à l'anglais." The group's manifesto, which Yeats himself wrote, declared "We hope to find in Ireland an uncorrupted & imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for oratory... & that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theaters of England, & without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed."
The collective survived for about two years and was not successful. However, working together with two Irish brothers with theatrical experience, William and Frank Fay, Yeats' unpaid-yet-independently wealthy secretary Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman, and the leading West End actress Florence Farr, the group established the Irish National Theatre Society. This group of founders was able, along with J.M. Synge, to acquire property in Dublin and open the Abbey Theatre on 27 December 1904. Yeats's play Cathleen Ní Houlihan and Lady Gregory's Spreading the News were featured on the opening night. Yeats continued to be involved with the Abbey until his death, both as a member of the board and a prolific playwright. In 1902, he helped set up the Dun Emer Press to publish work by writers associated with the Revival. This became the Cuala Press in 1904, and inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, sought to "find work for Irish hands in the making of beautiful things." From then until its closure in 1946, the press—which was run by the poet's sisters—produced over 70 titles; 48 of them books by Yeats himself.
William Butler Yeats, 1933. Unknown photographer. U.S. Library of Congress.In 1913, Yeats met the young American poet Ezra Pound. Pound had traveled to London at least partly to meet the older man, whom he considered "the only poet worthy of serious study." From that year until 1916, the two men wintered in the Stone Cottage at Ashdown Forest, with Pound nominally acting as Yeats' secretary. The relationship got off to a rocky start when Pound arranged for the publication in the magazine Poetry of some of Yeats's verse with Pound's own unauthorised alterations. These changes reflected Pound's distaste for Victorian prosody. A more indirect influence was the scholarship on Japanese Noh plays that Pound had obtained from Ernest Fenollosa's widow, which provided Yeats with a model for the aristocratic drama he intended to write. The first of his plays modeled on Noh was At the Hawk's Well, the first draft of which he dictated to Pound in January 1916.
In his early work, Yeats' aristocratic pose led to an idealisation of the Irish peasant and a willingness to ignore poverty and suffering. However, the emergence of a revolutionary movement from the ranks of the urban Catholic lower-middle class made him reassess his attitudes. His new direct engagement with politics can be seen in the poem September 1913, with its well-known refrain "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone / It's with O'Leary in the grave." The poem is an attack on the Dublin employers who were involved in the 1913 Dublin Lockout of workers in support of James Larkin's attempts to organise the Irish labour movement. In the refrain of "Easter 1916" ("All changed, changed utterly / A terrible beauty is born"), Yeats faces his own failure to recognise the merits of the leaders of the Easter Rising, due to his attitude towards their humble backgrounds and lives.
Marriage to Georgie
By 1916, Yeats was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heir. His final proposal to Maud Gonne took place in the summer of 1916. In his view, Gonne's history of rabid revolutionary political activism, as well as a series of personal catastrophes in the previous few years of her life, including chloroform addiction and a troubled marriage to John MacBride—an Irish revolutionary who was later executed by British forces for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising—made her an unsuitable wife. Biographer R.F. Foster has observed that Yeats's last offer was motivated more by a sense of duty than by a genuine desire to marry Gonne. Yeats made his proposal in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and both expected and hoped to be turned down. According to Foster "when he duly asked Maud to marry him, and was duly refused, his thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter". Iseult Gonne was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old. She had lived a sad life to this point. Iseult had been conceived as an attempt to reincarnate her short lived brother, and for the first few years of her life was presented as her mother's adopted niece. She was molested by her stepfather when she was eleven, and later worked as a gunrunner for the Irish Republican Army. At fifteen she proposed to Yeats. A few months after the poet's approach to Maude, he proposed to Iseult, but was rejected. Reflecting in later years, Yeats referred to the period as his "second puberty" and asked a friend "who am I, that I should not make a fool of myself".
Yeats photographed in 1923.That September, Yeats proposed to twenty-four-year-old George (Georgie) Hyde-Lees (1892-1968), whom he had met through occult circles. Despite warning from her friends—"George... you can't. He must be dead"—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on October 20. Their marriage was a success, in spite of the age difference, and in spite of Yeats's feelings of remorse and regret during their honeymoon. Around this time George wrote to her husband "When you are dead, people will talk about your love affairs, but I shall say nothing, for I will remember how proud you were". The couple went on to have two children, Anne and Michael.
During the first years of his marriage, he and George engaged in a form of automatic writing, which involved George contacting a variety of spirits and guides, which they termed "Instructors". The spirits communicated a complex and esoteric system of characters and history which they developed during experiments with the circumstances of trance and the exposition of phases, cones, and gyres. Yeats devoted much time to preparing this material for publication as A Vision (1925). In 1924, he wrote to his publisher T. Werner Laurie admitting: "I dare say I delude myself in thinking this book my book of books".
Nobel Prize
In December 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and was determined to make the most of the occasion. He was aware of the symbolic value of an Irish winner so soon after Ireland had gained independence, and sought to highlight the fact at each available opportunity. His reply to the many of the letters of congratulations sent to him contained the words: "I consider that this honor has come to me less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature, it is part of Europe's welcome to the Free State." Yeats used the occasion of his acceptance lecture at the Royal Academy of Sweden to present himself as a standard-bearer of Irish nationalism and Irish cultural independence. As he remarked, "The theatres of Dublin were empty buildings hired by the English traveling companies, and we wanted Irish plays and Irish players. When we thought of these plays we thought of everything that was romantic and poetical, because the nationalism we had called up—the nationalism every generation had called up in moments of discouragement—was romantic and poetical." The prize led to a significant increase in the sales of his books, as his publishers Macmillan sought to capitalise on the publicity. For the first time he had money, and he was able to repay not only his own debts, but those of his father.
Old age
Memorial statue of William Butler Yeats located in Sligo, Ireland.By the spring of 1925, Yeats had published "A Vision", and his health had stabilised. He had been appointed to the first Irish Senate in 1922, and was re-appointed for a second term in 1925. Early in his tenure a debate on divorce arose, and Yeats viewed the issue as primarily a confrontation between the emerging Catholic ethos and the Protestant minority. When the Catholic church weighed in with a blanket refusal to consider their anti position, the Irish Times countered that a measure to outlaw divorce would alienate Protestants and "crystallize" the partition of Northern Ireland. In response, Yeats delivered a series of speeches in which he attacked the "quixotically impressive" ambitions of the government and clergy, likening their campaign tactics to that of "medieval Spain". "Marriage is not to us a Sacrament, but, upon the other hand, the love of a man and woman, and the inseparable physical desire, are sacred. This conviction has come to us through ancient philosophy and modern literature, and it seems to us a most sacrilegious thing to persuade two people who hate each other...to live together, and it is to us no remedy to permit them to part if neither can re-marry." The resulting debate has been described as one of Yeats' "supreme public moments", and began his ideological move away from pluralism towards religious confrontation. His language became more forceful; the Jesuit Father Peter Finlay was described by Yeats as a man of "monstrous discourtesy", and he lamented that "It is one of the glories of the Church in which I was born that we have put our Bishops in their place in discussions requiring legislation". During his time in the senate, Yeats further warned his colleagues: "If you show that this country, southern Ireland, is going to be governed by Roman Catholic ideas and by Catholic ideas alone, you will never get the North...You will put a wedge in the midst of this nation". He memorably said of his fellow Irish Protestants, "we are no petty people".
In 1924, he chaired a coinage committee charged with _select_ing a set of designs for the first currency of the Irish Free State. Aware of the symbolic power latent in the imagery a young state's currency, he sought a form that was "elegant, racy of the soil, and utterly unpolitical". When the house finally decided on the artwork of Percy Metcalfe, Yeats was pleased, though he regretted that compromise had lead to "lost muscular tension" in the finally depicted images. He retired from the Senate in 1928 due to ill health.
Towards the end of his life—and especially after the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression, which led some to question whether democracy would be able to cope with deep economic difficulty—Yeats seems to have returned to his aristocratic sympathies. During the aftermath of the First World War, he became skeptical about the efficacy of democratic government, and anticipated political reconstruction in Europe through totalitarian rule. His later association with Pound drew him towards Mussolini, for whom he expressed admiration on a number of occasions. He wrote three 'marching songs'—never used—for the Irish General Eoin O'Duffy's 'Blueshirts'. However, when Pablo Neruda invited him to visit Madrid in 1937, Yeats responded with a letter supporting the Republic against Fascism, and he distanced himself from Nazism and Fascism in the last years of his life.
Yeats's gravestone in Drumcliff, County Sligo.After undergoing the Steinach operation in 1934, when aged 69, he found a new vigour evident from both his poetry and his intimate relations with younger women. During this time Yeats was involved in a number of romantic affairs with, among others, the poet and actress Margot Ruddock, and the novelist, journalist and sexual radicalist Ethel Mannin. As in his earlier life, Yeats found erotic adventure conducive to his creative energy, and despite age and ill-health he remained a prolific writer. In 1936, he undertook editorship of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892–1935. Having suffered from a variety of illnesses for a number of years, he died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France on 28 January 1939. He was buried after a discreet and private funeral at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Yeats and George had often discussed his death, and his express wish was to be buried quickly in France with a minimum of fuss. According to George "His actual words were 'If I die bury me up there [at Roquebrune] and then in a year's time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo". In September 1948, Yeats's body was moved to Drumcliffe, County Sligo, on the Irish Naval Service corvette L.E. Macha. His epitaph is taken from the last lines of "Under Ben Bulben", one of his final poems:
Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by.
Style
W.B. Yeats is generally considered to be one of the twentieth century's key English-language poets. He can be considered a Symbolist poet in that he used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. Yeats chooses words and puts them together so that in addition to a particular meaning they suggest other meanings that seem more significant. His use of symbols is usually something physical which is used both to be itself and to suggest other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities. Yet, unlike most modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was also a master of the traditional verse forms. The impact of modernism on his work can be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favor of the more austere language and more direct approach to his themes that increasingly characterises the poetry and plays of his middle period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities and The Green Helmet. His later poetry and plays are written in a more personal vein, and the works written in the last twenty years of his life include mention of his son and daughter, as well as meditations on the experience of growing old. In his poem, "The Circus Animals' Desertion", he describes the inspiration for these late works:
Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart
During 1929, he stayed at Thoor Ballylee, near Gort in County Galway (where Yeats had his summer home since 1919) for the last time. Much of the remainder of his life was lived outside of Ireland, although he did lease Riversdale house in the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham in 1932. He wrote prolifically through his final years, and published poetry, plays, and prose. In 1938, he attended the Abbey for the final time to see the premier of his play Purgatory. His Autobiographies of William Butler Yeats was published that same year.
While Yeats's early poetry drew heavily on Irish myth and folklore, his later work was engaged with more contemporary issues, and his style underwent a dramatic transformation. His work can be divided into three general periods. The early poems are lushly pre-Raphaelite in tone, self-consciously ornate, and at times, according to unsympathetic critics, stilted. Yeats began by writing epic poems such as The Isle of Statues and The Wanderings of Oisin. After Oisin, he never attempted another long poem. His other early poems are lyrics on the themes of love or mystical and esoteric subjects. Yeats' middle period saw him abandon the pre-Raphaelite character of his early work and attempt to turn himself into a Landor-style social ironist. Critics who admire his middle work might characterize it as supple and muscular in its rhythms and sometimes harshly modernist, while others find these poems barren and weak in imaginative power. Yeats' later work found new imaginative inspiration in the mystical system he began to work out for himself under the influence of spiritualism. In many ways, this poetry is a return to the vision of his earlier work. The opposition between the worldly-minded man of the sword and the spiritually-minded man of God, the theme of The Wanderings of Oisin, is reproduced in A Dialogue Between Self and Soul.
Some critics claim that Yeats spanned the transition from the nineteenth century into twentieth-century modernism in poetry much as Pablo Picasso did in painting. Others question whether late Yeats really has much in common with modernists of the Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot variety. Modernists read the well-known poem "The Second Coming" as a dirge for the decline of European civilization in the mode of Eliot, but later critics have pointed out that this poem is an expression of Yeats' apocalyptic mystical theories, and thus the expression of a mind shaped by the 1890s. His most important collections of poetry started with The Green Helmet (1910) and Responsibilities (1914). In imagery, Yeats's poetry became sparer, more powerful as he grew older. The Tower (1928), The Winding Stairs (1929), and New Poems (1938) contained some of the most potent images in twentieth-century poetry; his Last Poems are conceded by most to be amongst his best.
Yeats's mystical inclinations, informed by Hindu Theosophical beliefs and the occult, formed much of the basis of his late poetry, which some critics have judged as lacking in intellectual credibility. W. H. Auden criticizes his late stage as the "deplorable spectacle of a grown man occupied with the mumbo-jumbo of magic and the nonsense of India". The metaphysics of Yeats's late works must be read in relation to his system of esoteric fundamentalities in A Vision (1925).
His 1920 poem, "The Second Coming" is one of the most potent sources of imagery about the twentieth century.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
For the anti-democratic Yeats, 'the beast' referred to the traditional ruling classes of Europe, who were unable to protect the traditional culture of Europe from materialistic mass movements. The concluding lines refer to Yeats' belief that history was cyclic, and that his age represented the end of the cycle that began with the rise of Christianity.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Note
^ The Nobel Prize in Literature 1923. Nobelprize.org. Retrieved on 3 June 2007.
^ Frenz, Horst (Edit.). The Nobel Prize in Literature 1923. "Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901–1967", 1969. Retrieved on 23 May 2007.
^ a b c Moses, Michael Valdez. "The Poet As Politician". Reason, February, 2001. Retrieved on 03 June 2007.
^ a b c Obituary. "W.B. Yeats Dead". The New York Times, 30 January 1939. Retrieved on 21 May 2007.
^ "John Butler Yeats". Retrieved on 12 October 2007.
^ The Collected Poems (1994), p. vii.
^ Gordon Bowe, Nicola. "Two Early Twentieth-Century Irish Arts and Crafts Workshops in Context". Journal of Design History, Vol. 2, No. 2/3 (1989). pp. 193–206.
^ Foster (1997), p. xxviii.
^ Foster (1997), p. xxvii.
^ Foster (1997), p. 24.
^ Hone (1943), p. 28.
^ Foster (1997), p. 25.
^ Hone (1943), p. 33.
^ Foster (1997), p. 37.
^ Paulin, Tom. Taylor & Francis, 2004. "The Poems of William Blake". Retrieved on 3 June 2007.
^ Hone (1943), p. 83.
^ Alford, Norman. "The Rhymers' Club: Poets of the Tragic Generation". Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4, March 1996. pp. 535-538.
^ Lancashire, Ian. "William Blake (1757–1827)". Department of English, University of Toronto, 2005. Retrieved on 03 June 2007.
^ Yeats (1900), p. 65.
^ Burke, Martin J. "Daidra from Philadelphia: Thomas Holley Chivers and The Sons of Usna". Columbia University, 7 October 2005. Retrieved on 15 July 2007.
^ Ellmann, Richard (1948). "Yeats: The Man and the Masks". (New York) Macmillan. p. 94.
^ Mendelson, Edward (Ed.) "W. H. Auden". The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Volume II, 1939–1948, 2002. Retrieved on 26 May 2007.
^ Foster (1997), pp. 82-85.
^ Alspach, Russell K. "The Use by Yeats and Other Irish Writers of the Folklore of Patrick Kennedy". The Journal of American Folklore, Volume 59, No. 234, December, 1946. pp. 404-412.
^ Nally, Claire V. "National Identity Formation in W. B. Yeats's 'A Vision'". Irish Studies Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, February 2006. pp. 57–67.
^ Daemon est Deus inversus is taken from the writings of Madame Blavatsky in which she claims that "...even that divine Homogeneity must contain in itself the essence of both good and evil", and uses the motto as a symbol of the Astral Light.
^ Foater (1997), p. 103.
^ Cullingford, Elizabeth. "How Jacques Molay Got Up the Tower: Yeats and the Irish Civil War". ELH, Volume 50, No. 4, 1983. pp. 763-789.
^ Gonne claimed they first met in London three years earlier. Foster notes how Gonne was "notoriously unreliable on dates and places (1997, p. 57)
^ Foster (1997), p. 57.
^ Uddin Khan, Jalal. "Yeats and Maud Gonne: (Auto)biographical and Artistic Intersection". Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 2002.
^ Foster (1997), pp. 86-87.
^ "William Butler Yeats". BBC Four. Retrieved on 20 June 2007.
^ a b c d e Cahill, Christopher. "Second Puberty: The Later Years of W. B. Yeats Brought His Best Poetry, along with Personal Melodrama on an Epic Scale". The Atlantic Monthly, December 2003.
^ a b Ó Corráin, Donnchadh. "William Butler Yeats". University College Cork. Retrieved on 15 July 2007.
^ Foster (1997), p. 394.
^ Corcoran, Neil. After Yeats and Joyce: Reading Modern Irish Literature. (Oxford), Oxford University Press, 1997. p. viii
^ Foster (2003), pp. 486, 662.
^ Foster (1997), p. 183.
^ Text reproduced from Yeats' own handwritten draft.
^ Foster (1997), p. 184.
^ "Irish Genius': The Yeats Family and The Cuala Press". Trinity College, Dublin, 12 February 2004. Retrieved on 2 June 2007.
^ Monroe, Harriet (1913). "Poetry". (Chicago) Modern Poetry Association. p. 123.
^ Sands, Maren. "The Influence of Japanese Noh Theater on Yeats". Colorado State University. Retrieved on 15 July 2007.
^ Foster (2003), p. 59–66.
^ Mann, Neil. "An Overview of A Vision". "The System of W. B. Yeats’s A Vision". Retrieved on 15 July 2007.
^ Foster (1997), p. 286.
^ Foster (2003), pp. 105, 383.
^ Mann, Neil. "Letter 27 July 1924". "The System of W. B. Yeats’s A Vision". Retrieved on 24 April 2008.
^ Foster (2003), p. 245.
^ Foster (2003), pp. 246-247.
^ Foster (2003), pp. 228–239.
^ Foster (2003), p. 293.
^ a b c Foster (2003), p. 294.
^ Foster (2003), p. 296.
^ "Seanad Resumes: Debate on Divorce Legislation Resumed". Seanad Éireann, Volume 5, 11 June, 1925. Retrieved on 26 May 2007.
^ a b Foster (2003), p. 333.
^ Foster (2003), p. 468.
^ "The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats". National Library of Ireland. Retrieved on 15 July 2007.
^ Foster (2003), pp. 504, 510-511.
^ Foster (2003), p. 651.
^ Foster (2003), p. 656.
^ Powell, Grosvenor E. "Yeats's Second "Vision": Berkeley, Coleridge, and the Correspondence with Sturge Moore". The Modern Language Review, Vol. 76, No. 2, April, 1981. p. 273.
Source
Cleeve, Brian (1972). W.B. Yeats and the Designing of Ireland's Coinage. New York: Dolmen Press. ISBN 0-85-105221-5
Foster, R. F. (1997). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-288085-3.
Foster, R. F. (2003). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. II: The Arch-Poet 1915–1939. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-818465-4.
Igoe, Vivien (1994). A Literary Guide to Dublin. London: Methuen Publishing. ISBN 0-413-69120-9.
Hone, Joseph (1943). W.B. Yeats, 1865–1939. New York: Macmillan Publishers. OCLC: 35607726
Longenbach, James (1988). Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-506662-6.
Ryan, Philip B. (1998). The Lost Theatres of Dublin. Wiltshire: The Badger Press. ISBN 0-9526076-1-1.
"The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats" (1994). (London) Wordsworth Poetry Library. ISBN 978-1-85326-454-2.
Yeats, W. B. (1900). "The Philosophy of Shelley's Poetry", in Essays and Introductions, 1961. New York: Macmillan Publishers. OCLC 362823
Further reading
Brown, Terence (2001). The Life of W. B. Yeats. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-18298-5.
Ellmann, Richard (1978). Yeats: The Man and the Masks. W W Norton. ISBN 0-393-07522-2.
Jeffares, A Norman ((1984). A New Commentary on the Poems of W. B. Yeats. Stanford UP. ISBN 0-8047-1221-2.
Jeffares, A Norman (1949). W B Yeats: Man and Poet. Yale UP. ISBN 0-31-215814-9
Jeffares, A Norman (1989). W B Yeats: A New Biography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-28588-8.
King, Francis (1978). The Magical World of Aleister Crowley. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, ISBN 0-69-810884-1
King, Francis (1989). Modern Ritual Magic: The Rise of Western Occultism. ISBN 1-85327-032-6.
W. J. McCormack (2005). Blood Kindred: The Politics of W. B. Yeats and His Death. Pimilico ISBN 0-712-66514-5.
Pritchard, William H. (1972). W. B. Yeats: A Critical Anthology. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-08-0791-8.
Menon, Dr.V. K. Narayana, Development of William Butler Yeats
Vendler, Helen (2004). Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Harvard University Press
Vendler, Helen (2007). Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, Harvard University Press