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William Butler Yeats (; , 2007 . such works include ''The Tower'' (1928) and ''The Winding Stair and Other Poems'' (1929). Yeats was educated in London, but spent his childhood holidays in , 2007 . LIFE Early years William Butler Yeats was born in , 2007 . 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 Collected Poems'' (1994), p. vii. 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 .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. 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."Foster (1997), p. xxviii. 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 Fenian s 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.Foster (1997), p. xxvii. In 1876, the family moved to England to aid their father, Jack, 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. Jack provided an erratic education in geography and chemistry, and took William on natural history explorations of the nearby , 2007 . Young poet The family returned to London in 1887. In 1890, Yeats co-founded the , 2007 . 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 (1900), p. 65. Yeats had a life-long interest in 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."Mendelson, Edward (Ed.) " W. H. Auden ". "The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Volume II, 1939–1948", 2002. Retrieved on 26 May , 2007 . Yeats's first significant poem was "The Isle of Statues," a fantasy work that took 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 {Link without Title} an unremitting rhythm subtly varied as the poem proceeded through its three sections".Foster (1997), pp. 82-85. "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.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. 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 are meditations on the themes of love or mystical and esoteric subjects, and 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 , in particular 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''.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. 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''.''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 . 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.Foater (1997), p. 103. He was involved in the Order's power struggles, both with Farr and Macgregor Mathers , most notably 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.Cullingford, Elizabeth. "How Jacques Molay Got Up the Tower: Yeats and the Irish Civil War". ''ELH'', Volume 50, No. 4, 1983. pp. 763-789. Maud Gonne In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne , then a twenty-three year old heiress and ardent Nationalist.Gonne claimed they first met in London three years earlier. Foster notes how Gonne was "notoriously unreliable on dates and places (1997, p. 57) Gonne was eighteen months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a "paint-stained art student."Foster (1997), p. 57. 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 ever after.Uddin Khan, Jalal. "Yeats and Maud Gonne: (Auto)biographical and Artistic Intersection". ''Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics'', 2002. Looking back in later years, he admitted "it seems to me that she {Link without Title} 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."Foster (1997), pp. 86-87. Yeats' love remained unrequited, in part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activistism." William Butler Yeats ". . Retrieved on 15 July , 2007 . 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."Foster (1997), p. 394. 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":
In 1896, Yeats was introduced to , 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.Foster (2003), pp. 486, 662. 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''."Foster (1997), p. 183.Text reproduced from Yeats' own handwritten draft. The group's manifesto, which Yeats himself authored, 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."Foster (1997), p. 184. The collective survived for about two years and was not successful. However, working together with two Irish brothers with theatrical experience, , 12 February , 2004 . Retrieved on 2 June , 2007 . 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. , 1908 .]] In 1913, Yeats met the young American poet , 2007 . 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.Foster (2003), p. 59–66. 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.Mann, Neil. " An Overview of A Vision ". "The System of W. B. Yeats’s A Vision". Retrieved on 15 July , 2007 . 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 McBride—a drunken gunman 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 step-father when she was eleven,Foster (1997), p. 286. 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". That September, he 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 Gyre s.Foster (2003), pp. 105, 383. 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". 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."Foster (2003), p. 245. Yeats used the occasion of his acceptance lecture at the Royal Academy of Sweden to present himself as a standard-bearer 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 lead 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.Foster (2003), pp. 246-247. Old age By the spring of 1925, Yeats had published "A Vision", and his health had stabilised. He had been appointed to the first , Volume 5, 11 June, 1925. Retrieved on 26 May , 2007 . In 1924, he chaired a coinage committee charged with selecting 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 unpolicial".Foster (2003), p. 333. 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.Foster (2003), p. 468. 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. After undergoing the , 1939 . Retrieved on 21 May , 2007 . 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 Roquebrune and then in a year's time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo".Foster (2003), p. 651. In September 1948, Yeats's body was moved to Drumcliffe , County Sligo, on the Irish Naval Service Corvette ''L.E. Macha''.Foster (2003), p. 656. His epitaph is taken from the last lines of " Under Ben Bulben ", one of his final poems: POETIC STYLE Yeats is generally considered to be one of the twentieth century's key English-language poets. Yet, unlike most Modernist s 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: During 1929, he stayed at Thoor Ballylee 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).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. His 1920 poem, " The Second Coming " is one of the most potent sources of imagery about the twentieth century. For the anti-democratic Yeats, 'the best' referred to the traditional ruling classes of Europe, who were unable to protect the traditional culture of Europe from materialistic mass movements. For later readers, 'the best' and 'the worst' have been redefined to fit their own political views. 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. NOTES SOURCES
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