William Butler Yeats - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature

20th century in literature

See also: 20th century in poetry, 19th century in literature, other events of the 20th century, 21st century in literature, list of years in literature.Literature of the 20th century refers to world literature produced during the 20th century...

. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator

Seanad Éireann (Irish Free State)

Seanad Éireann was the upper house of the Oireachtas of the Irish Free State from 1922–1936. It has also been known simply as the Senate, or as the First Seanad. The Senate was established under the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State but a number of constitutional amendments were...

for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival

Celtic Revival

Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art...

and, along with Lady Gregory

Augusta, Lady Gregory

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory , born Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of...

, Edward Martyn

Edward Martyn

Edward Martyn was an Irish political and cultural activist and playwright.-Early life:Martyn was the eldest son of John Martyn of Tullira and Annie Mary Josephine Smyth of Masonbrook, Loughrea, both in County Galway. He succeeded his father upon John's death in 1860...

, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre

Abbey Theatre

The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day...

, where he served as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

as the first Irishman so honoured for what the Nobel Committee

Nobel Committee

A Nobel Committee is the working body responsible for the most of the work involved in selecting Nobel Prize laureates. There are five Nobel Committees, one for each Nobel Prize....

described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower
The Tower (book)
The Tower was a book of poems by William Butler Yeats, published in 1928.The title, which the book shares with the second poem, refers to the Thoor Ballylee castle which Yeats purchased and lived in for some time with his family....

(1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends

Irish mythology

The mythology of pre-Christian Ireland did not entirely survive the conversion to Christianity, but much of it was preserved, shorn of its religious meanings, in medieval Irish literature, which represents the most extensive and best preserved of all the branch and the Historical Cycle. There are...

and the occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889 and those slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

, and the Pre-Raphaelite

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...

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.

Early years

An Anglo-Irishman

Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...

, William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount

Sandymount

Sandymount is a coastal seaside suburb in Dublin 4 on the Southside of Dublin in Ireland. It is in the Dublin South East Dáil constituency and the East Pembroke Ward. It was once part of Pembroke Township, which took its name from the fact that this area was part of the estate of the Earl of...

, County Dublin

County Dublin

County Dublin is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Dublin Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the city of Dublin which is the capital of Ireland. County Dublin was one of the first of the parts of Ireland to be shired by King John of England following the...

, Ireland. His father, John Butler Yeats

John Butler Yeats

John Butler Yeats was an Irish artist and the father of William Butler Yeats, Lily Yeats, Lollie Yeats and Jack B. Yeats. He is probably best known for his portrait of the young William Butler Yeats which is one of a number of his portraits of Irishmen and women in the Yeats museum in the National...

(1839–1922), was a descendant of Jervis Yeats, a Williamite

William III of England

William III & II was a sovereign Prince of Orange of the House of Orange-Nassau by birth. From 1672 he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic. From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland...

soldier and linen merchant who died in 1712. Jervis' grandson Benjamin married Mary Butler, daughter of a landed

Landed gentry

Landed gentry is a traditional British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income. Often they worked only in an administrative capacity looking after the management of their own lands....

family in County Kildare

County Kildare

County Kildare is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the local authority for the county...

. 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

Susan Pollexfen

Susan Mary Yeats of Sligo, Ireland, was the wife of John Butler Yeats and the mother of William Butler Yeats, Jack Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Yeats and Lily Yeats....

, came from a wealthy family in County Sligo who owned a prosperous milling and shipping business. Soon after William's birth the family relocated to Sligo

Sligo

Sligo is the county town of County Sligo in Ireland. The town is a borough and has a charter and a town mayor. It is sometimes referred to as a city, and sometimes as a town, and is the second largest urban area in Connacht...

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

Jack Butler Yeats

John "Jack" Butler Yeats was an Irish artist. His early style was that of an illustrator; he only began to work regularly in oils in 1906. His early pictures are simple lyrical depictions of landscapes and figures, predominantly from the west of Ireland—especially of his boyhood home of...

became an esteemed painter, while his sisters Elizabeth

Elizabeth Yeats

Elizabeth Corbett Yeats , known as Lolly, was born at 23 Fitzroy Road, London. She was the daughter of the Irish artist John Butler Yeats and sister of W. B., Jack and Susan Mary "Lily" Yeats. She trained and worked as an art teacher and was a member of William Morris's circle in London before her...

and Susan Mary—known to family and friends as Lollie and Lily—became involved in the Arts and Crafts Movement

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

.

Yeats grew up as a member of the former Protestant Ascendancy

Protestant Ascendancy

The Protestant Ascendancy, usually known in Ireland simply as the Ascendancy, is a phrase used when referring to the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland by a minority of great landowners, Protestant clergy, and professionals, all members of the Established Church during the 17th...

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 power shift away from the minority Protestant Ascendancy. The 1880s saw the rise of Parnell

Charles Stewart Parnell

Charles Stewart Parnell was an Irish landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party...

and the Home rule

Home rule

Home rule is the power of a constituent part of a state to exercise such of the state's powers of governance within its own administrative area that have been devolved to it by the central government....

movement; the 1890s saw the momentum of nationalism, while the Catholics 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 1867, 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 Irish folktales. John provided an erratic education in geography and chemistry, and took William on natural history explorations of the nearby Slough

Slough

Slough is a borough and unitary authority within the ceremonial county of Royal Berkshire, England. The town straddles the A4 Bath Road and the Great Western Main Line, west of central London...

countryside. On 26 January 1877, the young poet entered the Godolphin school

Godolphin and Latymer School

The Godolphin and Latymer School is an independent school for 700 girls aged eleven to eighteen in London. Ms Margaret Rudland was the head mistress of the school for over 20 years before being succeeded by Ms Ruth Mercer.-History:...

, 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 (possibly because Yeats was tone deaf

Tone deafness

Tone deafness is the lack of relative pitch, or the inability to distinguish between musical notes that is not due to the lack of musical training or education...

,) 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 suburb of Harold's Cross and later in the suburb of Howth

Howth

Howth is an area in Fingal County near Dublin city in Ireland. Originally just a small fishing village, Howth with its surrounding rural district is now a busy suburb of Dublin, with a mix of dense residential development and wild hillside, all on the peninsula of Howth Head. The only...

. In October 1881, Yeats resumed his education at Dublin's Erasmus Smith High School

The High School, Dublin

The High School is a co-educational school located in Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland. The school was founded in 1870 in Harcourt Street before moving to its current location in Rathgar in 1971 and amalgamated with The Diocesan School for Girls in 1974, thereby becoming co-educational.-Millennium...

. 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

Samuel Ferguson

Sir Samuel Ferguson was an Irish poet, barrister, antiquarian, artist and public servant. Perhaps the most important Ulster-Scot poet of the 19th century, because of his interest in Irish mythology and early Irish history he can be seen as a forerunner of William Butler Yeats and the other poets...

", were published in the Dublin University Review. Between 1884 and 1886, William attended the Metropolitan School of Art—now the National College of Art and Design

National College of Art and Design

The National College of Art and Design is a national art and design school in Dublin, Ireland.-History:Situated on Thomas Street, the NCAD started as a private drawing school and has become a national institution educating over 1,500 day and evening students as artists, designers and art educators...

—in Thomas Street

Thomas Street (Dublin)

Thomas Street is a street in The Liberties in central Dublin, Ireland.-History:The street is named after the church of St. Thomas, founded in 1175 near St. Catherine's church. The founder was William FitzAldelm, deputy and kinsman of King Henry II. The church was dedicated to Thomas à Beckett...

. His first known works were written when he was seventeen, and included a poem—heavily influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

—that describes a magician who set up a throne in central Asia. Other pieces from this period include a draft of a play about 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

Charles Johnson

Charles Johnson, Charlie Johnson, Charley Johnson or Chuck Johnson may refer to:-American public officials:*Charles Johnson , Democratic-Republican who represented 8th congressional district, 1801–1802...

, "utterly unIrish", seeming to come out of a "vast murmurous gloom of dreams". Although Yeats' early works drew heavily on Shelley, Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser

, and on the diction and colouring of pre-Raphaelite verse, he soon turned to Irish myth

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

and folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

and the writings of William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

. 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".
In 1891, Yeats published "John Sherman" and "Dhoya", one a novella, the other a story. The two were re-published together in 1990 by The Lilliput Press

The Lilliput Press

The Lilliput Press is an Irish publishing house. It was founded in 1984 by Antony Farrell, in County Westmeath, moving to its current premises in 1989...

in Dublin.

Young poet

The family returned to London in 1887. In 1890, Yeats co-founded the Rhymers' Club

Rhymers' Club

The Rhymers' Club was a group of London-based poets, founded in 1890 by W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys. Originally not much more than a dining club, it produced anthologies of poetry in 1892 and 1894...

with Ernest Rhys

Ernest Rhys

Ernest Percival Rhys was an English writer, best known for his role as founding editor of the Everyman's Library series of affordable classics. He wrote essays, stories, poetry, novels and plays...

, 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

Edwin Ellis

Edwin John Ellis was a British poet and illustrator, now remembered mostly for the three-volume collection of the works of William Blake he edited with W. B. Yeats....

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

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

, spiritualism

Spiritualism

Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...

, occultism and astrology

Astrology

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...

. He read extensively on the subjects throughout his life, became a member of the paranormal

Paranormal

Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...

research organisation "The Ghost Club" (in 1911) and was especially influenced by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

Emanuel Swedenborg

was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, and theologian. He has been termed a Christian mystic by some sources, including the Encyclopædia Britannica online version, and the Encyclopedia of Religion , which starts its article with the description that he was a "Swedish scientist and mystic." Others...

. 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 centre 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

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

criticised 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."

His first significant poem was "The Isle of Statues", a fantasy work that took Edmund Spenser

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
The Wanderings of Oisin
The Wanderings of Oisin is an epic poem published by William Butler Yeats in 1889 in the book The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. It was his first publication outside of magazines, and immediately won him a reputation as a significant poet....

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

Fenian Cycle

The Fenian Cycle , also referred to as the Ossianic Cycle after its narrator Oisín, is a body of prose and verse centering on the exploits of the mythical hero Fionn mac Cumhaill and his warriors the Fianna. It is one of the four major cycles of Irish mythology along with the Mythological Cycle,...

of Irish mythology

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 travelled from the Theosophical Society

Theosophy

Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...

in London to lecture. Yeats attended his first séance

Séance

A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...

the following year. He later became heavily involved with the Theosophical Society and with hermeticism

Hermeticism

Hermeticism or the Western Hermetic Tradition is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs based primarily upon the pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus...

, particularly with the eclectic Rosicrucianism of the Golden Dawn

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...

. During séances held from 1912, a spirit calling itself "Leo Africanus

Leo Africanus

Joannes Leo Africanus, was a Moorish diplomat and author who is best known for his book Descrittione dell’Africa describing the geography of North Africa.-Biography:Most of what is known about his life is gathered from autobiographical...

" apparently claimed it was Yeats' Daemon
Daemon (mythology)
The words dæmon and daimôn are Latinized spellings of the Greek "δαίμων", a reference to the daemons of Ancient Greek religion and mythology, as well as later Hellenistic religion and philosophy...

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

Maud Gonne

Maud Gonne MacBride was an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo-Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars...

, and Florence Farr

Florence Farr

Florence Beatrice Emery Farr was a British West End leading actress, composer and director. She was also a women's rights activist, journalist, educator, singer, novelist, leader of the occult order, The Golden Dawn and one time mistress of playwright George Bernard Shaw...

. 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

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...

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

Stella Matutina

The Stella Matutina was an initiatory magical order dedicated to the dissemination of the traditional teachings of the earlier Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Originally, the outer order of the Stella Matutina was known as Mystic Rose or Order of the M.R. in the Outer...

until 1921.

Maud Gonne

In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne

Maud Gonne

, then a 23-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.

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 initially 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 Shakespear

Olivia Shakespear

Olivia Shakespear, , was a British novelist, playwright, and patron of the arts. She wrote six books that are described as "marriage problem" novels. Her works sold poorly, sometimes only a few hundred copies. Her last novel, Uncle Hilary, is considered her best...

, whom he had first met in 1896, and parted with one year later. In 1891, 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

John MacBride

Major John MacBride was an Irish republican executed for participation in the 1916 Easter Rising.-Early life:...

.

There were two main reasons why Yeats was so horrified. To lose his muse to another made him look silly before the public. Yeats naturally hated MacBride and continually sought to deride and demean him both in his letters and his poetry. The second reason Yeats was horrified was linked to the fact of Maud's conversion to Catholicism, which Yeats despised. He thought his muse would come under the influence of the priests and do their bidding. The marriage, as forecast by both their sets of friends and relations was an early disaster. This pleased Yeats as Maud began to visit him in London. After the birth of her son, Seán MacBride

Seán MacBride

Seán MacBride was an Irish government minister and prominent international politician as well as a Chief of Staff of the IRA....

, in 1904, she and MacBride agreed to end the marriage, although they were unable to agree on the child's welfare. Despite the use of intermediaries, a divorce case ensued in Paris in 1905. Maud made a series of allegations against her husband with Yeats as her main 'second' though he did not attend court or travel to France. A divorce was not granted as the only accusation that held up in court was that MacBride had been drunk once during the marriage. A separation was granted with Maud having custody of the baby with John having visiting rights.
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 and dearest, loving you as I do, I have prayed and 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
Hector
In Greek mythology, Hectōr , or Hektōr, is a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War. As the first-born son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, a descendant of Dardanus, who lived under Mount Ida, and of Tros, the founder of Troy, he was a prince of the royal house and the...

down
And put all Troy to wreck.

In 1896, Yeats was introduced to Lady Gregory by their mutual friend Edward Martyn

Edward Martyn

. Gregory encouraged Yeats' nationalism, and convinced him to continue focusing on writing drama. Although he was influenced by French Symbolism

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

, 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

John Millington Synge

Edmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre...

, Seán O'Casey

Seán O'Casey

Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...

, and Padraic Colum

Padraic Colum

Padraic Colum was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Celtic Revival.-Early life:...

, Yeats was one of those responsible for the establishment of the "Irish Literary Revival

Irish Literary Revival

The Irish Literary Revival was a flowering of Irish literary talent in the late 19th and early 20th century.-Forerunners:...

" 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

Douglas Hyde

Douglas Hyde , known as An Craoibhín Aoibhinn , was an Irish scholar of the Irish language who served as the first President of Ireland from 1938 to 1945...

, later the first President of Ireland, whose Love Songs of Connacht was widely admired.

Abbey Theatre

In 1899, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and George Moore

George Moore (novelist)

George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s...

established the Irish Literary Theatre

Irish Literary Theatre

The Irish Literary Theatre was a precursor to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. Founded by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, George Moore and Edward Martyn in 1899, this theatre presented a number of plays by the founders and other writers, including Padraic Colum....

for the purpose of performing Irish and Celtic 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 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 theatres of England, & without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed."

The collective survived for about two years but was not successful. Working with two Irish brothers with theatrical experience, William

William Fay

William George Fay was an actor and theatre producer who was one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre....

and Frank Fay

Frank Fay (Irish actor)

Frank Fay , brother of William Fay, was an actor and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. He worked with his brother, William, staging productions in halls around the city. Finally, they formed W. G...

, Yeats' unpaid-yet-independently wealthy secretary Annie Horniman

Annie Horniman

Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH was an English theatre patron and manager. She established the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founded the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. She encouraged the work of new writers and playwrights, including...

, and the leading West End actress Florence Farr

Florence Farr

, the group established the Irish National Theatre Society. Along with Synge, they acquired property in Dublin and on 27 December 1904 opened the Abbey Theatre. Yeats' play Cathleen Ní Houlihan
Cathleen Ní Houlihan
Cathleen Ní Houlihan is a one-act play written by Irish playwright William Butler Yeats in collaboration with Lady Gregory in 1902 and first performed on 2 April of that year. The play is startlingly nationalistic, encouraging in its last pages that young men sacrifice their lives for the heroine...

and Lady Gregory's Spreading the News were featured on the opening night. Yeats remained 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

Dun Emer Press

The Dun Emer Press was an Irish private press founded in 1902 by Elizabeth Yeats and her brother William Butler Yeats, part of the Celtic Revival. It was named after the legendary Emer and evolved into the Cuala Press.-History:...

to publish work by writers associated with the Revival. This became the Cuala Press

Cuala Press

The Cuala Press was an Irish private press set up in 1908 by Elizabeth Yeats with support from her brother William Butler Yeats that played an important role in the Celtic Revival of the early 20th century.-Origins:...

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.

In 1909, Yeats met the American poet Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

. Pound had travelled 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

Ashdown Forest

Ashdown Forest is an ancient area of tranquil open heathland occupying the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is situated some south of London in the county of East Sussex, England...

, 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
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...

of some of Yeats' 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

Noh

, or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...

plays that Pound had obtained from Ernest Fenollosa

Ernest Fenollosa

Ernest Francisco Fenollosa was an American professor of philosophy and political economy at Tokyo Imperial University...

's widow, which provided Yeats with a model for the aristocratic drama he intended to write. The first of his plays modelled on Noh was At the Hawk's Well, the first draft of which he dictated to Pound in January 1916.

The emergence of a nationalist revolutionary movement from the ranks of the mostly Roman Catholic lower-middle and working class made Yeats reassess some of his attitudes. In the refrain of "Easter, 1916

Easter, 1916

thumb|right|200px|1920 photograph of [[William Butler Yeats]]Easter, 1916 is a poem by W. B. Yeats describing the poet's torn emotions regarding the events of the Easter Rising staged in Ireland against British rule on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. The uprising was unsuccessful, and most of the...

" ("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

Easter Rising

The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...

, 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. John MacBride had been executed by British forces for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising

Easter Rising

, and Yeats thought that his widow might remarry. His final proposal to Maud Gonne took place in the summer of 1916. Gonne's history of revolutionary political activism, as well as a series of personal catastrophes in the previous few years of her life, including chloroform

Chloroform

Chloroform is an organic compound with formula CHCl3. It is one of the four chloromethanes. The colorless, sweet-smelling, dense liquid is a trihalomethane, and is considered somewhat hazardous...

addiction and her troubled marriage to MacBride made her a potentially unsuitable wife and biographer R.F. Foster has observed that Yeats' last offer was motivated more by a sense of duty than by a genuine desire to marry her.

Yeats proposed in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and he both expected and hoped she would turn him 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

Iseult Gonne

Iseult Gonne , was the daughter of Maud Gonne and Lucien Millevoye, and the wife of the novelist Francis Stuart....

was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye

Lucien Millevoye

Lucien Millevoye was a French journalist and right-wing politician, now best known for his relationship with the Irish revolutionary and muse of W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne....

, and at the time was twenty-one years old. She had lived a sad life to this point; conceived as an attempt to reincarnate her short-lived brother, for the first few years of her life, she was presented as her mother's adopted niece. When Maud told her that she was going to marry, Iseult cried and told her mother that she hated MacBride. At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats. A few months after the poet's approach to Maud, he proposed to Iseult, but was rejected.

That September, Yeats proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees

Georgie Hyde-Lees

Georgie Hyde-Lees was the daughter of Edith Ellen and Gilbert Hyde-Lees, and the wife of the poet William Butler Yeats....

(1892–1968), whom he had met through Olivia Shakespear. Despite warning from her friends—"George ... you can't. He must be dead"—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on 20 October. Their marriage was a success, in spite of the age difference, and in spite of Yeats' feelings of remorse and regret during their honeymoon. The couple went on to have two children, Anne

Anne Yeats

Anne Butler Yeats was an Irish painter and stage designer. She was a daughter of the poet William Butler Yeats and a niece of the painter Jack B. Yeats, niece of Lily Yeats an embroiderer associated with the Celtic Revival, and botanic artist Elizabeth Yeats...

and Michael

Michael Yeats

William Michael Yeats was an Irish barrister and Fianna Fáil politician.He was educated in Trinity College, Dublin and was an officer in The Hist...

. Although in later years he had romantic relationships with other women and possibly affairs, George herself 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."

During the first years of his marriage, he and George experimented with automatic writing

Automatic writing

Automatic writing or psychography is writing which the writer states to be produced from a subconscious and/or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the content.-History:...

, and George contacted a variety of spirits and guides they called "Instructors." The spirits communicated a complex and esoteric system of characters and history, which the couple developed during experiments with the circumstances of trance and the exposition of phases, cones, and gyres. The spirits notified George that they were ready to communicate by filling the Yeats's house with the scent of mint leaves. Yeats devoted much time to preparing this material for publication as A Vision
A Vision
A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka, privately published in 1925, was a book-length study of various philosophical, historical, astrological, and poetic topics by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats...

(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

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

in 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 many of the letters of congratulations sent to him contained the words: "I consider that this honour 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 travelling 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

Macmillan Publishers

Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

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 and death

By early 1925, Yeats' health had stabilised, and he had completed most of the writing for "A Vision

A Vision

A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka, privately published in 1925, was a book-length study of various philosophical, historical, astrological, and poetic topics by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats...

" (dated 1925, it actually appeared in January 1926, when he almost immediately started rewriting it for a second version). He had been appointed to the first Irish Senate

Seanad Éireann

Seanad Éireann is the upper house of the Oireachtas , which also comprises the President of Ireland and Dáil Éireann . It is commonly called the Seanad or Senate and its members Senators or Seanadóirí . Unlike Dáil Éireann, it is not directly elected but consists of a mixture of members chosen by...

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 Roman Catholic ethos and the Protestant minority. When the Roman 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 "crystallise" the partition of Northern Ireland.

In response, Yeats delivered a series of speeches that attacked the "quixotically impressive" ambitions of the government and clergy, likening their campaign tactics to those 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's "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

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

...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 selecting a set of designs for the first currency of the Irish Free State

Irish Free State

The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...

. Aware of the symbolic power latent in the imagery of 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

Percy Metcalfe

Percy Metcalfe, CVO, RDI , was an English artist sculptor and designer.He studied art in Leeds, and in 1914 attended the Royal College of Art London....

, Yeats was pleased, though he regretted that compromise had led to "lost muscular tension" in the finally depicted images. He retired from the Senate in 1928 because of ill health.

Towards the end of his life—and especially after the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

, which led some to question whether democracy could cope with deep economic difficulty—Yeats seems to have returned to his aristocratic sympathies. During the aftermath of the First World War, he became sceptical about the efficacy of democratic government, and anticipated political reconstruction in Europe through totalitarian rule. His later association with Pound drew him towards Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

, for whom he expressed admiration on a number of occasions. He wrote three "marching songs"—never used—for the Irish General Eoin O'Duffy

Eoin O'Duffy

Eoin O'Duffy was in succession a Teachta Dála , the Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army , the second Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, leader of the Army Comrades Association and then the first leader of Fine Gael , before leading the Irish Brigade to fight for Francisco Franco during...

's Blueshirts.

After undergoing the Steinach operation

Eugen Steinach

Eugen Steinach was a leading Austrian physiologist and pioneer in endocrinology.-Biography:He was born on January 28, 1861 in Austria....

(vasectomy

Vasectomy

Vasectomy is a surgical procedure for male sterilization and/or permanent birth control. During the procedure, the vasa deferentia of a man are severed, and then tied/sealed in a manner such to prevent sperm from entering into the seminal stream...

) 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

Margot Ruddock

Marguerite Ruddock , who used the stage name Margot Collis, was an actress, poet and singer. She had a relationship with W. B. Yeats starting in 1934. Their correspondence was published as Ah, Sweet Dancer ....

, and the novelist, journalist and sexual radicalist Ethel Mannin

Ethel Mannin

Ethel Edith Mannin was a popular British novelist and travel writer. She was born in London into a family with an Irish background....

. 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 a letter of 1935, Yeats noted: "I find my present weakness made worse by the strange second puberty the operation has given me, the ferment that has come upon my imagination. If I write poetry it will be unlike anything I have done". In 1936, he undertook editorship of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892–1935.

He died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton

Menton

Menton is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.Situated on the French Riviera, along the Franco-Italian border, it is nicknamed la perle de la France ....

, France, on 28 January 1939. He was buried after a discreet and private funeral at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin

Roquebrune-Cap-Martin

Roquebrune-Cap-Martin is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France between Monaco and Menton. The name was changed from Roquebrune to differentiate the town from Roquebrune-sur-Argens in the neighboring Var Department.-History:In pre-Roman times the area was settled by the...

. Yeats and George had often discussed his death, and his express wish was that he 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' body was moved to Drumcliffe

Drumcliffe

Drumcliffe, officially Drumcliff , is a village in County Sligo, Ireland. It is 8 km north of Sligo town on the N15 road between Ben Bulben and the sea.-History:...

, County Sligo, on the Irish Naval Service corvette

Flower class corvette

The Flower-class corvette was a class of 267 corvettes used during World War II, specifically with the Allied navies as anti-submarine convoy escorts during the Battle of the Atlantic...

LÉ Macha

LÉ Macha (01)

LÉ Macha was a ship in the Irish Naval Service. Built as a of the Royal Navy named , she was transferred on 15 Nov 1946 to the Irish Naval Service and renamed LÉ Macha after Macha, an ancient Irish goddess of war....

. Ironically the person in charge of this operation for the Irish Government was Sean MacBride, son of Maud Gonne MacBride, and then Minister of External Affairs. His epitaph is taken from the last lines of "Under Ben Bulben

Under Ben Bulben

Under Ben Bulben is a poem written by celebrated Irish poet W. B. Yeats. It was one of the last poems he wrote, and the last three lines decorate his gravestone in Drumcliffe, County Sligo, Ireland...

", one of his final poems:

Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!

Attempts had been made at Roquebrune to dissuade the family from proceeding with the removal of the remains to Ireland due to the uncertainty of their identity. His body had earlier been exhumed and transferred to the ossuary.

Style

Yeats is generally considered one of the twentieth century's key English language poets. He was a Symbolist poet, in that he used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. Yeats chose words and assembled them so that, in addition to a particular meaning, they suggest other abstract thoughts that may seem more significant and resonant. His use of symbols is usually something physical that is both itself and a suggestion of other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities.

Unlike other modernists

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

who experimented with free verse

Free verse

Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...

, Yeats was a master of the traditional 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 favour 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

The Circus Animals' Desertion

"The Circus Animal's Desertion" is a poem by William Butler Yeats published in Last Poems in 1939. While the original composition date of the poem is unknown, it was probably written between November 1937 and September 1938. In the preface, Yeats suggests that he intended the poem to combine his...

", 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
Rag and Bone
"Rag and Bone" is a song by the American garage rock band The White Stripes, and is the ninth track on their album Icky Thump. The track was released as a free red 7" vinyl with the June 6, 2007 issue of the NME magazine, with 120,000 copies made and an etching with drummer Meg White's face on...

shop of the heart.

During 1929, he stayed at Thoor Ballylee

Thoor Ballylee

Thoor Ballylee Castle, a fortified, 13th century, Norman tower built by the septs de Burgo, or Burke, lies in County Galway near the town of Gort located off the Galway-Ennis road. With four floors, the tower consists of one room on each floor that is connected by a spiral stone stairway built into...

near Gort

Gort

Gort is a town in south County Galway in the west of Ireland. An Gort is the official Irish name for the town, as defined by the Placenames Commission. In spoken Irish, however, the town is known by its traditional name Gort Inse Guaire. It lies just north of the border with County Clare on the...

in County Galway

County Galway

County Galway is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the city of Galway. Galway County Council is the local authority for the county. There are several strongly Irish-speaking areas in the west of the county...

(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

Riversdale

Riversdale was the last home of William Butler Yeats. It is located in the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham off the Ballyboden Road.-W. B. Yeats:He took a 13-year lease on the house in 1932. He lived there with his wife and children...

house in the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham

Rathfarnham

Rathfarnham or Rathfarnam is a Southside suburb of Dublin, Ireland. It is south of Terenure, east of Templeogue, and is in the postal districts of Dublin 14 and 16. It is within the administrative areas of both Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown and South Dublin County Councils.The area 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
Purgatory (drama)
Purgatory is a drama by the Irish writer William Butler Yeats. It was first presented in at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on 19 August 1938, a few months before Yeats' death.-Story:...

. His Autobiographies of William Butler Yeats was published that same year.

While Yeats' early poetry drew heavily on Irish myth and folklore

Irish mythology

, 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
The Wanderings of Oisin
The Wanderings of Oisin is an epic poem published by William Butler Yeats in 1889 in the book The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. It was his first publication outside of magazines, and immediately won him a reputation as a significant poet....

. 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

Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor was an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity...

-style social ironist.

Critics who admire his middle work might characterise 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

Spiritualism

Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...

. 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

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

did in painting while others question whether late Yeats really has much in common with modernists of the Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

and T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

variety. Modernists read the well-known poem The Second Coming
The Second Coming (poem)
"The Second Coming" is a poem composed by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in 1919 and first printed in The Dial and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses titled Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and second coming as allegory to...

as a dirge for the decline of European civilisation 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' poetry became sparer, more powerful as he grew older. The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair (1929), and New Poems (1938) contained some of the most potent images in twentieth-century poetry.

Yeats' mystical inclinations, informed by Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

Theosophical

Theosophy

beliefs and the occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

, provided much of the basis of his late poetry, which some critics have judged as lacking in intellectual credibility. The metaphysics of Yeats' late works must be read in relation to his system of esoteric fundamentalities in A Vision (1925).

His 1920 poem, "The Second Coming

The Second Coming (poem)

"The Second Coming" is a poem composed by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in 1919 and first printed in The Dial and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses titled Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and second coming as allegory to...

" contains some of literature's most potent images of 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.

The poem served as the inspiration for the name of the 1958 novel Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apartis a 1958 English language novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first African...

by Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe

Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe popularly known as Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic...

.

According to some interpretations "the best" 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?

Sources

Cleeve, Brian
Brian Cleeve
Brian Brendon Talbot Cleeve was a prolific writer, whose published works include twenty-one novels and over a hundred short stories. He was also an award-winning broadcaster on RTÉ television. Son of an Irish father and English mother, he was born and raised in England...

(1972). W.B. Yeats and the Designing of Ireland's Coinage. New York: Dolmen Press. ISBN 0-85105-221-5
Foster, R. F. (1997). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. New York: Oxford UP
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

. 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
Hone, Joseph (1943). W.B. Yeats, 1865–1939. New York: Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

. OCLC: 35607726
Igoe, Vivien (1994). A Literary Guide to Dublin. Methuen Publishing. ISBN 0-4136-9120-9
Jordan Anthony J. (1997) 'Willie Yeats & The Gonne-MacBrides' Westport Books ISBN 9780952444712
Jordan Anthony J. [2000] The Yeats Gonne MacBride Triangle Westport Books ISBN 9780952444747
Jordan Anthony J. 'W.B. Yeats Vain ; Glorious ; Lout. (2003) A Maker of Modern Ireland'. Westport Books. ISBN 978-0952444720
Longenbach, James (1988). Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-506662-6
O'Neill, Michael. Routledge Literary Sourcebook on the Poems of W.B. Yeats. Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-23475-1.
Ryan, Philip B. (1998). The Lost Theatres of Dublin. Wiltshire: The Badger Press. ISBN 0-9526076-1-1
Yeats, W. B. (1994). The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. Wordsworth Poetry Library. ISBN 1-85326-454-7
Yeats, W. B. (1900). "The Philosophy of Shelley's Poetry", in Essays and Introductions, 1961. New York: Macmillan Publishers. OCLC 362823

External links

The WB Yeats Society of NY
The National Library of Ireland's exhibition, Yeats: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats
The Yeats theatre, an introduction to his life and work
The 1911 Census return lists W.B. Yeates (sic) and Lady Gregory boarding in South Frederick Street, Dublin
Yeats' correspondence and other archival records at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Early years

Young poet

Maud Gonne

Abbey Theatre

Marriage to Georgie

Nobel Prize

Old age and death

Style

Sources

Further reading

External links