[lit-ideas] Re: Speaking of Yeats
- From: "Helen Wishart" <hwishart@xxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 03:14:35 -0400
What is remarkable (or perhaps not) about the very proper 1939 obit is its
silence on the subject of Maud Gonne, a ravishing, revolutionary Irish
beauty (sometimes called "Ireland's Joan of Arc" and sometimes an "Irish
terrorist") to whom Yeats proposed at least four times and who had a
significant influence on his art and his politics. After Maud's final
refusal, he even proposed marriage to her daughter Iseault, who looked like
her extraordinarily beautiful mother.
http://irelandsown.net/gonne.htm
Maud, six feet tall with long red-gold hair and hazel eyes, dressed
dramatically and affected the postures of a pre-Raphaelite model - but not
the languor. Yeats met Maud when she was 22 and already deeply involved
with the Irish Nationalists and he a poor, dreamy, dorky-looking student of
23. Observers often commented on their remarkable appearance together. Her
second marriage in 1903 to Major John MacBride (whose death at the hands of
the British is memorialized in Yeats' Easter 1916
<http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/779/> ) inspired the poem 'No
Second Troy'.
No Second Troy
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
Here is another inspired by his unrequited love of Maud -----
When You are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountain overhead
And hid his face amid a cloud of stars.
The Gonne-Yeats Letters
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0815603029/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-0502742-848482
6> offer Gonne's perspective on the relationship. Most of Yeats' letters
to her were lost because of her frenetic lifestyle although Emory University
recently acquired some.
http://www.news.emory.edu/Releases/YeatsandGonne1044640439.html
The obit also neglects Yeats' fascination with the occult and his
association (with Maud) with the nutbars in the Order of the Golden Dawn
<http://www.cafes.net/ditch/GDgallery.htm>
Cheers
Helen
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Robert Paul
Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2006 11:44 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Speaking of Yeats
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.
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