[lit-ideas] Speaking of Yeats
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 20:44:06 -0700
January 30, 1939
W.B. Yeats Dead; Famous Irish Poet
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 is Stricken in France
Noted Too as Playwright
Hailed by Masefield in 1935 as 'Greatest Living Poet' -- An Abbey
Theatre Founder
Wireless to The New York Times
Nice, France, Jan. 29. -- The death of William Butler Yeats, famous
Irish poet and playwright, occurred yesterday near Mentone. Mr. Yeats,
who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923, was 73 years old.
Mentone, France, Jan. 29 (AP). -- Mr. Yeats died in the little French
Riviera town of Roquebrune, after a short illness, at a boarding house
where he and his wife had been staying.
He will be buried tomorrow at Roquebrune. It was expected, however, that
eventually the poet's body would be removed to his native Ireland.
Mr. Yeats arrived in Roquebrune early last month in ill health. He
suffered repeated heart attacks, and was able to take only short walks
in the gardens of the house where he stayed. He had been confined to his
bed since Tuesday.
WROTE POEMS, ESSAYS, AND PLAYS
When he labored at his chosen craft, that of writing poetry, essays and
plays, Mr. Yeats frequently let his mind roam far afield in the realm of
fancy, and it is for the gentle beauty of such works that he was hailed
by many as the greatest poet of his time in the English language.
Yeats found time to crusade for worldly ends, but there his tactics were
notable for tenacity and vigor. At the turn of the century he shared in
the establishment of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and for ten years
devoted himself almost exclusively to drama. The struggle of the Irish
Free State likewise occupied his time. From 1922 until 1928 he was a
Senator in the Dail Eireann.
John Masefield, poet laureate of England, on the occasion of Yeats's
seventieth birthday in June, 1935, called him "the greatest living
poet," and unquestionably it will be for his verse that posterity will
remember him. The high point in a life full with recognition came in
1923, when Yeats received the Nobel Prize for literature.
Nearly fifty years ago he published his first verse in the Dublin
University Review. The flow of words exhibited in that early composition
indicated Yeats's natural command of language. Thus, he wrote:
I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay?
He is a monstrous peacock, and he waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.
WENT TO SCHOOL IN LONDON
Yeats was born at Sandymount, near Dublin, on June 13, 1965, son of John
Butler Yeats, well- known Irish painter. When 10 years old he was taken
to London for training at the Godolphin School in Hammersmith, but much
of his time, especially during the Summers, was spent in County Sligo,
Ireland.
Three years directed to the study of painting failed to satisfy the
young man's desire to express himself and, in 1886, he finally abandoned
his father's profession in preference for a literary one of his own.
Yeats returned to London, where he associated with William Morris, W.E.
Henley, Arthur Symons and Lionel Johnson in the founding of the Rhymers
Club and the maintenance of the Yellow Book. Oscar Wilde interested him,
as did Verlaine, whom Yeats visited in Paris in 1894.
George Moore, his opponent in many a literary battle, wrote of him at
this period: "Yeats was striding to and fro at the back of the dress
circle, a long black cloak drooping from his shoulders, a soft black
sombrero on his head, voluminous black silk tie flowing from his collar,
loose black trousers dragging untidily over his long, heavy feet. His
hair was black and his skin yellow."
It has been said his laughter was "the most melancholy thing in the
world." Throughout a lifetime half in dreamy composition and half in the
thick of political warfare Yeats retained a "hieratic" appearance.
While yet in his twenties the Irish poet dwelt on the possibility of
rejuvenating the intellectual life of his native land. Its energies had
been sapped by politics. An Irish drama was the farthest from the
thoughts of living Irishmen. But Yeats dreamed on, faithfully holding to
the hope of writing Irish plays in verse with Irish folklore as
subject-material and natives of Ireland sharing as actors and audience.
ACTIVE IN ABBEY THEATRE
Lady Gregory and others answered his prayer for the organization of a
national theatre in Dublin. With the opening of the Abbey Theatre, Yeats
found opportunity to fulfill his passion for dramatic writing. Already
he had written "The Land of Heart's Desire" and "The Countess Cathleen."
Important plays by him include: "Kathleen ni Houlihan," "The Pot of
Broth," "The Hour Glass," "Deirdre," "The King's Threshold," "The
Shadowy Waters," "On Balle's Stand," "The Green Helmet," "The Player
Queen," "Plays for Dancers," "The Cat and the Moon," "The Words Upon the
Window Pane" and "King Oedipus."
Yeats wrote more effectively in verse than prose, although there was
frequently scant difference. Innumerable articles slipped from his pen
and, as the years passed, he came to be synonymous with the Irish
Movement in literature. Nevertheless, Sean O'Faolain, a countryman, notes:
"He began independently of Ireland. Some of his finest work was done
under her inspiration. But his positively finest work of all -- his
later poems -- are the work of a man who has again retired into himself
and who writes clean out of his 'heart of darkness'." "The Tower" and
"The Winding Stair" were Yeats's last notable works.
His contribution to Eire will grow out of the Abbey Theatre group, for
the intensity of that campaign brought Ireland wide recognition and far
exceeded anything else Yeats accomplished in a non-literary field.
True, he defended divorce from the floor of the Dail, pleaded for a
restricted use of Gaelic because he had utterly "failed to learn any
language but English," given stump speeches on the tax question,
pre-sided at official functions, inspected schools and in every way
conducted himself after the manner of public politicians."
"I am a Cosgrave man," Yeats once said, "but I believe that de Valera is
dead right in his dispute with Great Britain. Whether or not Ireland can
stand the racket is a ticklish question . . . We are a nation of
believers. We produce anti-clerics, but atheists, never."
In 1917 he married Georgia Hyde Lees of Wrexham, Wales, a woman who is
said to posses powers as a spiritualist medium. They lived for many
years with their two children in an ancient tower on the outer-most
coast of Ireland.
CROWDED YEARS RECALLED
Three years ago to a day the poet suffered a heart attach at Palma,
Mallorca. He rallied, however, and in May published a volume hailed as
among the outstanding intellectual autobiographies of our time.
"Dramatis Personae" continues the thread of reveries started in the
Nineties and covers minutely the crowded years at the turn of the
century when the Irish Dramatic Movement was conceived. In it his duel
with George Moore flares anew.
A one-volume reprint of the autobiographical material was released only
last August. In 1938, too, a book of plays by Yeats attracted interest
because he had rewritten one of them from its original prose form into
verse. He completed an anthology called "The Oxford Book of Modern
Verse," which was seen as a remarkable reflection of his own preferences
-- willful and individual as usual.
His name appeared before the public in typical fashion during the last
two years: When he engaged a Boston professor in argument over a play
offered by the Abbey Theatre, when he delivered a radio broadcast of a
poem and later commented on the political aspects of the microphone, or
the occasion of his statement that the Free State government would
strive to regain certain art treasures now held in London. Of the radio,
Mr. Yeats explained: "I speak quietly, with confidence, as if I were
addressing my wife."
Today the words of Yeats's poem "The Shadowy Waters," written in 1900,
come to mind:
Could we but give us wholly to the dreams,
And get into their world that to the sense
Is shadow, and not linger wretchedly
Among substantial things.
-----------------
Robert Paul
reed.edu
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