• Technically we are in a state corresponding to the time of Dryden ... The position of the young poet today is not unlike that of the young Swift in the library of Sir William Temple. Today, we are moving away from the Victorians and on towards the modern equivalent of Pope. We are developing a poetry of statement as against the old metaphor.
• The poetry of tomorrow will be finely articulated fact. T. S. Eliot fascinates us all because he is further on towards this consummation than any other writer.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865 – 1939)
Dull in study, dark in complexion, unsuccessful in love, William Butler Yeats was attracted towards occultism and theosophy, and began writing plays, ballads and poetry.
Symbolism was the highlight of his poetry. Yeats’ later poetry became increasingly realistic and philosophical, described in one of his poems :
"I made my songs a coat,
covered with embroideries…
But now he realizes that
There is more enterprise in
Walking naked."
Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He died in 1939.
Chronology of Life
June 13, 1865 Birth of William Butler Yeats at Georgeville, Sandymount Avenue, in Dublin.
1867 Family moves to London (23 Fitzroy Road, Regent’s Park). Brothers Robert and Jack and sister Elizabeth born here.
1881-1883 Yeats attends Erasmus Smith High School, Harcourt St., Dublin when the family moves there.
1882 Family moves to Ireland View, Howth. Yeats spends holidays with uncle George Pollexfen, at Sligo. Develops adolescent passion for his cousin Laura Armstrong.
1884 Refuses to attend Trinity College, Dublin. Attends instead, the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin. Family moves to Ashfield Terrace, Harold’s cross road, Dublin.
1885 Helps to fund Dublin Hermetic Society. Befriends Katherine Tynan and John O’Leary the nationalist leader.
1886 Abandons art studies and begins to read Irish poets and Gaelic sagas.
1887 Family returns to London (58 Eardley Crescent, Earl’s court). Yeats joins the Blavatsky lodge of the London Theosophical Society.
1888 Family moves to 3 Blenheim Terrace, Bedford Park, London. Meets Oscar Wild, G B Shaw, and W E Henley.
1889 Suffers of consumption. Begins study of Blake’s prophetic books.
Meets and falls in love with Maud Gonne.
1890 Asked to abandon Theosophical movement. Meets Florence Farr.
1891 Founding member of the Rhymer’s club and the London Irish Literary Society. Proposes to Maud Gonne but rejected.
1894 Visits Paris, stays with MacGregor Mathers, and again proposes to Maud Gonne. Meets Olivia Shakespeare (Diana Vernon).
1896 Moves to 18, Woburn Buildings; has affair with Diana Vernon. Meets Lady Gregory. Tours West of Ireland with Symons, visiting Aran Islands. Visits Paris with Symons to find an order of Celtic Mysteries and meets John Synge. Joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood and works to unite the various Irish political factions.
1897 Spends summer at Coole Park.
1898 Conceives idea of an Irish Literary Theatre with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn.
1899 Again proposes unsuccessfully to Maud Gonne in Paris.
1900 Death of Yeats’ mother. Further unsuccessful proposal to Maud Gonne. Head of London branch of the Order of the Golden Dawn.
1901 Again proposes to Maud Gonne but she does not yield to his request.
1902 Family returns to Dublin. Meets James Joyce. Becomes President of newly founded Irish National Theatre Society.
1903 In February, Maud marries Major John Macbride. Yeats’ financially successful lecture tour of USA.
1904 Yeats becomes producer manager of ‘The Abbey Theatre.’
1906 Becomes director of Abbey Theatre, with Lady Gregory and Syunge.
1907 Yeats tours Italian Renaissance cities with Lady Gregory and her son Robert.
1908 Meets Ezra Pound. Visits Maud Gonne in Paris.
1911 Meets Miss Georgie Hyde Lees, whom he is later to marry, through Olivia Shakespeare. Visits Paris with Lady Gregory.
1912 Visits USA with Abbey Theatre company. Lectures on Harvard University on ‘The Theatre of Beauty’. Meets Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet and ‘the mystic’ stays with Maud Gonne in Normandy.
1914 Sets on a lecture tour of USA.
1915 Spends winter of 1914 – 1915 with Ezra Pound at stone cottage.
1916 Yeats again proposes marriage to Maud Gonna.
1917 Proposes marriage (unsuccessfully) to Iseult Gonne, Maud’s daughter. October 26th - marries Georgie Hyde – Lees’.
February 26, 1919 Birth of daughter Anne Butler Yeats. Family moves to Ballylee.
1920 American lecture tour; later goes on tour to Oxford.
August 22, 1921 Son William Michael, born.
1922 The Irish Civil War, during which Yeats supports the Pro-Treaty governments, under Griffith and then Cosgrave, and opposes the intransigents under de Valera.
Father dies in New York. Yeats buys 28 Marrion Square, Dublin. Appointed senator for first Irish senate (until 1928). Received D. Litt. From Trinity college, Dublin.
1923 Visits Stockholm to receive Nobel Prize for Literature. De Valera orders a Republican ceasefire.
1924 Develops high blood pressure. Holiday’s with wife in Sicily in November.
1926 Chairman of committee to advise Minister of Finance on a new coinage.
1927 Summer at Ballylee. Lung congestion and influenza in October lead to collapse.
1928 Winter at Rapallo with Ezra Pound; summer in Dublin and Ballylee and completes term as senator.
1931 Received D. Litt. from Oxford University. Divides time between Dublin, Coole and Oxford.
1932 Lady Gregory dies. Helps to found Irish Academy of letters. Sets on a last US lecture tour. Yeats moves to final Irish home.
1933 Received honorary degree from Cambridge University. Yeats interested in and writing for O’Duffy’s Irish Fascists, the Blueshirts. Hitler comes to power in Germany.
1935 Meets Lady Dorothy Wellesley.
1936 Seriously ill with heart problems and nephritis. Delivers BBC lecture on Modern Poetry. Visits Dublin in June.
1937 Yeats gives four BBC broadcasts. Elected member of a London Club, the Athenaeum. Goes for winter to Menton and Cap Martin in the south of France.
1938 Stays with Dorothy Wellesley and Edith Heald. Maud Gonne visits him at Riversdale.
January 29, 1939 Dies in France; buried at Roquebrune, France. (In 1948, Yeats was reinterred in Drumcliff Churchyard, Sligo, as per his wishes.)
Chronology of Works
A. POETRY :
1885 The Juvenilia. Immature early works of boyhood, not included in the collected works.
1889 The Crossways including poems first published as The Wandering of Oisin and other Poems.
1893 The Rose, including poems first published as The Countess Cathleen and other poems.
1899 The Wind Among the Reeds.
1902 Adam’s Curse and the Folly of being comforted, first published in the monthly review.
1903 In the Seven Woods.
1910 The Green Helmet and other poems.
1914 Responsibilities.
1917 The Wild Swans at Coole.
1921 Michael Roberts and the Dancer.
1928 The Tower.
1933 The Winding Stairs and other poems, include the Poems grouped in words for music, and A woman young and old.
1935 A full moon in March.
1936-1939 Last poem and two plays.
The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, (including all the above poems) edited by Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach.
B. PLAYS
1886 Mosada - a dramatic poem.
1892 The Countess Cathleen.
1894 The land of heart desire.
1900 The Shadowy Waters.
1919 Two plays for Dancer.
1921 Four plays of Dancer.
1922 Plays in Prose and Verse, written for the Irish Theaters.
1934 The king of the great clock tower.
1938 The Herne’s Egg.
1952 The collected plays of W. B. Yeats.
1893 The Celtic Twilight.
1897 The Secret Rose.
1925 A vision - first edition.
1934 The letters of the New Island.
1937 A vision - revised and enlarged edition.
1940 Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley.
1954 The letters of W. B. Yeats, edited by Allen Wade.
1955 Autobiography.
1959 Mythologies.
1961 Essays and Introductions.
1962 Explorations.
1883 The poems of William Blake, ed.
1893 Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, ed.
1895 A book of Irish Verse, selected by W. B. Yeats.
1913 Gitanjali of Tagore, introduced by W. B. Yeats.
1932 An Indian Monk, written by Purohit Swami and introduced by W. B. Yeats.
1936 Oxford Book of English Verse, selected and introduced by W. B. Yeats.
1937 The ten principal Upanishads, translated by Yeats and Purohit Swami.
On Ireland And Irish Literature:
• Behind Ireland fierce and militant is Ireland poetic, picturesque, passionate, remembering, idyllic, fanciful, always patriotic.
• Chance and Destiny have between them woven two-thirds of all history, and of the history of Ireland well nigh the whole. The literature of a nation, on the other hand, is spun out of its heart. If you would know Ireland - body and soul - you must read its poems and stories. They came into existence to please nobody but the people of Ireland.
On Writing
• If we had no other symbols but the tumult of the sea, the rusted gold of the thatch, the redness of the quicken-berry, and had never known the rhetoric of the platform and of the newspaper, we could do without laborious selection and rejection; but, even then, though we might do much that would be delightful, that would inspire coming times, it would not have the manner of the greatest poetry.
• The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
On Poet
• A poet writes always of his personal life, in the his finest work out of its tragedy, whatever it be, remorse, lost love, or mere loneliness; he never speaks directly as to someone at the breakfast table, there is always a phantasmagoria.
• If we understand our own minds, and the things that are striving to utter themselves through our minds, we move others, not because we have understood or thought about those others, but because all life has the same root.
• He must go on perfecting earthly power and perception until they are so subsidized that divine power and divine perception descend to meet them, and the song of earth and the song of heaven mingle together.
• Though a poet may govern his life by his enthusiasms, he must, when he sits down at his desk, but use them as the potter the clay.
On Literature
•I hated and still hate with an ever-growing hatred the literature of the point of view. I wanted, if my ignorance permitted, to get back to Homer.
On Poetic Language
• Not to find one’s art by the analysis of language or amid the circumstances of dreams but to live a passionate life, and to express the emotions that find one thus in simple rhythmical language. The words should be the swift natural words that suggest the circumstances out of which they rose.
• I tried to make the language of poetry coincide with that of passionate, normal speech. I wanted to write in whatever language comes most naturally when we soliloquize, as I do all day long, upon the events of our own lives or of any life where we can see ourselves for the moment.
• Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.
• We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
On Future Of Poetry
• Technically we are in a state corresponding to the time of Dryden ... The position of the young poet today is not unlike that of the young Swift in the library of Sir William Temple. Today, we are moving away from the Victorians and on towards the modern equivalent of Pope. We are developing a poetry of statement as against the old metaphor.
• The poetry of tomorrow will be finely articulated fact. T. S. Eliot fascinates us all because he is further on towards this consummation than any other writer.
His Own Poetry
• EARLY YEARS : All seems confused incoherent inarticulate.
• MIDDLE YEARS: ‘I often wonder if my talent will ever recover from the heterogeneous labor of these last few years… I cry out vainly for liberty and have ever less and less of the inner life.
• MATURE YEARS: ‘You need not be troubled about my poetical faculty. I was never so full of new thoughts for verse though all thoughts quite unlike the old ones. My work has got more masculine. It has more salt in it.’
• LATER YEARS: All art is an endeavor to condense out of the flying vapors of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own not for art’s sake.’
• I had three interests: interest in a form of literature, in a form of philosophy, and a belief in nationality. None of these seemed to have anything to do with the other, but gradually my love of literature and my belief in nationality came together
• When I follow back my stream to its source I find two dominant desires: I wanted to get rid of irrelevant movement - the stage must become still that words might keep all their vividness - and I wanted vivid words.
On Mysticism
• Mysticism has been in the past & probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world & it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writer would treat (say) the Catholic Church or the Church of Luther no matter how much he disliked them.
General
• I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind,
In balance with this life, this death.
• Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
• The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
• I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all . . . like an opera.
• But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
• I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. . . . The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
