W. B. Yeats - Wikipedia W. B. Yeats From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   (Redirected from W.B. Yeats) Jump to navigation Jump to search Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize winner "Yeats" redirects here. For other uses, see Yeats (disambiguation). Yeats photographed in 1903 by Alice Boughton William Butler Yeats[a] (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others. Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland, and educated there and in London. He was a Protestant and member of the Anglo-Irish community. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. These 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 its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. From 1900, his 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. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 Young poet 1.3 Maud Gonne 1.4 Abbey Theatre 1.5 Politics 1.6 Marriage to Georgie Hyde Lees 1.7 Nobel Prize 1.8 Old age and death 2 Style 3 Works 4 Legacy 4.1 Adaptations 5 Notes 6 References 7 Sources 8 External links Biography[edit] Early years[edit] William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount in County Dublin, Ireland.[1] His father, John Butler Yeats (1839–1922), was a descendant of Jervis Yeats, a Williamite soldier, linen merchant, and well-known painter, who died in 1712.[2] Benjamin Yeats, Jervis's grandson and William's great-great-grandfather, had in 1773[3] married Mary Butler[4] of a landed family in County Kildare.[5] Following their marriage, they kept the name Butler. Mary was of the Butler of Neigham (pronounced Nyam) Gowran family, descended from an illegitimate brother of the 8th Earl of Ormond.[6] At the time of his marriage, William's father, John Yeats, was studying law, but would later pursue art studies at Heatherley School of Fine Art, in London.[7] William's mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, came from Sligo, from a wealthy merchant family, which owned a milling and shipping business. Soon after William's birth, the family relocated to the Pollexfen home at Merville, 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 personally and symbolically, his "country of the heart".[8] So too did its location by the sea; John Yeats stated that "by marriage with a Pollexfen, we have given a tongue to the sea cliffs".[9] The Butler Yeats family were highly artistic; his brother Jack became an esteemed painter, while his sisters Elizabeth and Susan Mary—known to family and friends as Lollie and Lily—became involved in the Arts and Crafts movement.[10] Yeats was raised a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was 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."[11] Yeats's childhood and young adulthood were shadowed by the power-shift away from the minority Protestant Ascendancy. The 1880s saw the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and the home rule movement; the 1890s saw the momentum of nationalism, while the Catholics became prominent around the turn of the century. These developments had 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.[12] 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 countryside.[13] On 26 January 1877, the young poet entered the Godolphin school,[14] 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".[15] Though he had difficulty with mathematics and languages (possibly because he was tone deaf[16]), he was fascinated by biology and zoology. In 1879 the family moved to Bedford Park taking a two-year lease on 8 Woodstock Road.[17] For financial reasons, the family returned to Dublin toward the end of 1880, living at first in the suburbs of Harold's Cross[18] and later Howth. In October 1881, Yeats resumed his education at Dublin's Erasmus Smith High School.[19] His father's studio was nearby and William spent a great deal of time there, where he met many of the city's artists and writers. During this period he started writing poetry, and, in 1885, the Dublin University Review published Yeats's first poems, as well as an essay entitled "The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson". Between 1884 and 1886, William attended the Metropolitan School of Art—now the National College of Art and Design—in Thomas Street.[1] In March 1888 the family moved to 3 Blenheim Road in Bedford Park [20] where they would remain until 1902.[17] The rent on the house in 1888 was £50 a year.[17] He began writing his first works when he was seventeen; these included a poem—heavily influenced by 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 German knights. The early works were both conventional and, according to the critic Charles Johnston, "utterly unIrish", seeming to come out of a "vast murmurous gloom of dreams".[21] Although Yeats's early works drew heavily on Shelley, Edmund Spenser, and on the diction and colouring of pre-Raphaelite verse, he soon turned to Irish mythology and folklore and the writings of William Blake. 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".[22] In 1891, Yeats published John Sherman and "Dhoya", one a novella, the other a story. The influence of Oscar Wilde is evident in Yeats's theory of aesthetics, especially in his stage plays, and runs like a motif through his early works.[23] The theory of masks, developed by Wilde in his polemic The Decay of Lying can clearly be seen in Yeats's play The Player Queen,[24] while the more sensual characterisation of Salomé, in Wilde's play of the same name, provides the template for the changes Yeats made in his later plays, especially in On Baile's Strand (1904), Deirdre (1907), and his dance play The King of the Great Clock Tower (1934).[25] Young poet[edit] 1900 portrait by Yeats's father, John Butler Yeats The family returned to London in 1887. In March 1890 Yeats joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and with Ernest Rhys[26] co-founded the Rhymers' Club, a group of London-based poets who met regularly in a Fleet Street tavern to recite their verse. Yeats later sought to mythologize the collective, calling it the "Tragic Generation" in his autobiography,[27] and published two anthologies of the Rhymers' work, the first one in 1892 and the second one in 1894. He collaborated with Edwin Ellis on the first complete edition of William Blake's works, in the process rediscovering a forgotten poem, "Vala, or, the Four Zoas".[28][29] Yeats had a lifelong interest in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology. He read extensively on the subjects throughout his life, became a member of the paranormal research organisation "The Ghost Club" (in 1911) and was especially influenced by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.[30] 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."[31] 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. Some critics disparaged this aspect of Yeats's work.[32] His first significant poem was "The Island of Statues", a fantasy work that took Edmund Spenser and Shelley for its poetic models. The piece was serialized in the Dublin University Review. Yeats wished to include it in his first collection, but it was deemed too long, and in fact, was never republished in his lifetime. Quinx Books published the poem in complete form for the first time in 2014. 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 and Other Poems (1889), which arranged a series of verse that dated as far back as the mid-1880s. The long title 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":[33] We rode in sorrow, with strong hounds three, Bran, Sceolan, 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 of Irish mythology and displays the influence of both Sir Samuel Ferguson and the Pre-Raphaelite poets.[34] 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). The covers of these volumes were illustrated by Yeats's friend Althea Gyles.[35] 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 in London to lecture. Yeats attended his first séance the following year. He later became heavily involved with the Theosophy and with hermeticism, particularly with the eclectic Rosicrucianism of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. During séances held from 1912, a spirit calling itself "Leo Africanus" apparently claimed it was Yeats's Daemon or anti-self, inspiring some of the speculations in Per Amica Silentia Lunae.[36] 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'.[b] 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.[37] He was involved in the Order's power struggles, both with Farr and Macgregor Mathers, and was involved 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.[38] Maud Gonne[edit] Main article: Maud Gonne Maud Gonne (c. 1900) In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, a 23-year-old English heiress and ardent Irish nationalist.[c] She was eighteen months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a "paint-stained art student."[39] Gonne admired "The Island of Statues" and sought out his acquaintance. Yeats began an obsessive infatuation, and she had a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life thereafter.[40] 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."[41] Yeats's love was unrequited, in part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activism.[42] 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".[43] Yeats proposed to Gonne three more times: in 1899, 1900 and 1901. She refused each proposal, and in 1903, to his dismay, married the Irish nationalist Major John MacBride.[44] His only other love affair during this period was with Olivia Shakespear, whom he first met in 1894, and parted from in 1897. W. B. Yeats (no date) Yeats derided MacBride in letters and in poetry. He was horrified by Gonne's marriage, at losing his muse to another man; in addition, her conversion to Catholicism before marriage offended him; Yeats was Protestant/agnostic. He worried his muse would come under the influence of the priests and do their bidding.[45] Gonne's marriage to MacBride was a disaster. This pleased Yeats, as Gonne began to visit him in London. After the birth of her son, Seán MacBride, in 1904, Gonne 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. Gonne 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, for the only accusation that held up in court was that MacBride had been drunk once during the marriage. A separation was granted, with Gonne having custody of the baby and MacBride having visiting rights.[46] Charcoal portrait of Yeats by John Singer Sargent (1908) Yeats's friendship with Gonne ended, yet, 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."[43] 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."[47] 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":[48] 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 down And put all Troy to wreck. In 1896, Yeats was introduced to Lady Gregory by their mutual friend Edward Martyn. Gregory encouraged Yeats's nationalism and convinced him to continue focusing on writing drama. Although he was influenced by French Symbolism, 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, Seán O'Casey, and Padraic Colum, Yeats was one of those responsible for the establishment of the "Irish Literary Revival" movement.[49] 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, later the first President of Ireland, whose Love Songs of Connacht was widely admired. Abbey Theatre[edit] Main article: Abbey Theatre Yeats photographed in 1908 by Alvin Langdon Coburn In 1899, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and George Moore began the Irish Literary Theatre to present Irish plays.[50] 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."[51][52] 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."[53] The collective survived for about two years but was not successful. Working with two Irish brothers with theatrical experience, William and Frank Fay, Yeats's unpaid yet independently wealthy secretary Annie Horniman, and the leading West End actress 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's play Cathleen ni Houlihan 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 to publish work by writers associated with the Revival. This became the Cuala Press in 1904, and inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement, sought to "find work for Irish hands in the making of beautiful things."[54] 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. Yeats met the American poet Ezra Pound in 1909. Pound had travelled to London at least partly to meet the older man, whom he considered "the only poet worthy of serious study."[55] From that year until 1916, the two men wintered in the Stone Cottage at Ashdown Forest, with Pound nominally acting as Yeats's secretary. The relationship got off to a rocky start when Pound arranged for the publication in the magazine Poetry of some of Yeats's 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 plays that Pound had obtained from Ernest Fenollosa'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.[56] 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" ("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 ordinary backgrounds and lives.[57] Yeats was close to Lady Gregory and her home place of Coole Park, Co, Galway. He would often visit and stay there as it was a central meeting place for people who supported the resurgence of Irish literature and cultural traditions. His poem, "The Wild Swans at Coole" was written there, between 1916 and 1917. He wrote prefaces for two books of Irish mythological tales, compiled by Augusta, Lady Gregory: Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902), and Gods and Fighting Men (1904). In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "One must not expect in these stories the epic lineaments, the many incidents, woven into one great event of, let us say the War for the Brown Bull of Cuailgne or that of the last gathering at Muirthemne."[58] Politics[edit] Yeats was an Irish nationalist, who sought a kind of traditional lifestyle articulated through poems such as 'The Fisherman'. However, as his life progressed, he sheltered much of his revolutionary spirit and distanced himself from the intense political landscape until 1922, when he was appointed Senator for the Irish Free State.[59][60] In the earlier part of his life, Yeats was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.[61] Due to the escalating tension of the political scene, Yeats distanced himself from the core political activism in the midst of the Easter Rising, even holding back his poetry inspired by the events until 1920. In the 1930s Yeats was fascinated with the authoritarian, anti-democratic, nationalist movements of Europe, and he composed several marching songs for the Blueshirts, although they were never used. He was a fierce opponent of individualism and political liberalism and saw the fascist movements as a triumph of public order and the needs of the national collective over petty individualism. On the other hand, he was also an elitist who abhorred the idea of mob-rule, and saw democracy as a threat to good governance and public order.[62] After the Blueshirt movement began to falter in Ireland, he distanced himself somewhat from his previous views, but maintained a preference for authoritarian and nationalist leadership.[63] D. P. Moran called him a minor poet and "crypto-Protestant conman."[64] Marriage to Georgie Hyde Lees[edit] Main article: Georgie Hyde-Lees Walter de la Mare, Bertha Georgie Yeats (née Hyde-Lees), William Butler Yeats, unknown woman, summer 1930; photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell By 1916, Yeats was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heir. His rival John MacBride had been executed for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, so Yeats hoped that his widow might remarry.[65] His final proposal to Maud Gonne took place in mid-1916.[66] 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 addiction and her troubled marriage to MacBride—made her a potentially unsuitable wife;[43] 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 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 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; 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.[67] When Gonne took action to divorce MacBride in 1905, the court heard allegations that he had sexually assaulted Iseult, then eleven. At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats. In 1917, he proposed to Iseult but was rejected. That September, Yeats proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees (1892–1968), known as George, whom he had met through Olivia Shakespear. Despite warnings from her friends—"George ... you can't. He must be dead"—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on 20 October.[43] 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. The couple went on to have two children, Anne and Michael. Although in later years he had romantic relationships with other women, Georgie 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."[68] During the first years of marriage, they experimented with automatic writing; she contacted a variety of spirits and guides they called "Instructors" while in a trance. The spirits communicated a complex and esoteric system of philosophy and history, which the couple developed into an exposition using geometrical shapes: phases, cones, and gyres.[69] 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".[70] Nobel Prize[edit] Yeats photographed in 1923 In December 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".[71] 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."[72] 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."[73] The prize led 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.[74] Old age and death[edit] By early 1925, Yeats's health had stabilised, and he had completed most of the writing for A Vision (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 in 1922, and was re-appointed for a second term in 1925.[75][76] 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.[77] 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 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."[78] "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."[78] 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.[79] 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".[78] 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... You will put a wedge in the midst of this nation".[80] 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. 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".[81] When the house finally decided on the artwork of Percy Metcalfe, Yeats was pleased, though he regretted that compromise had led to "lost muscular tension" in the finally depicted images.[81] He retired from the Senate in 1928 because of ill health. Towards the end of his life—and especially after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and Great Depression, 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.[82] His later association with Pound drew him towards Benito Mussolini, for whom he expressed admiration on a number of occasions.[73] He wrote three "marching songs"—never used—for the Irish General Eoin O'Duffy's Blueshirts. William Butler Yeats, 1933; photo by Pirie MacDonald (Library of Congress) At the age of 69 he was 'rejuvenated' by the Steinach operation which was performed on 6 April 1934 by Norman Haire.[83] For the last five years of his life Yeats found a new vigour evident from both his poetry and his intimate relations with younger women.[84] During this time, Yeats was involved in a number of romantic affairs with, among others, the poet and actress Margot Ruddock, and the novelist, journalist and sexual radical Ethel Mannin.[85] 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".[86] In 1936, he undertook editorship of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892–1935.[44] From 1935-1936 he travelled to the Western Mediterranean island of Majorca with Indian-born Shri Purohit Swami and from there the two of them performed the majority of the work in translating the principal Upanishads from Sanskrit into common English; the resulting work, The Ten Principal Upanishads, was published in 1938.[87] He died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France, on 28 January 1939, aged 73.[1] He was buried after a discreet and private funeral at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. 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.[88] 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'."[89] In September 1948, Yeats's body was moved to the churchyard of St Columba's Church, Drumcliff, County Sligo, on the Irish Naval Service corvette LÉ Macha.[90] The person in charge of this operation for the Irish Government was Seán MacBride, son of Maud Gonne MacBride, and then Minister of External Affairs.[91] Yeats' final resting place in the shadow of the Dartry Mountains, County Sligo His epitaph is taken from the last lines of "Under Ben Bulben",[92] one of his final poems: Cast a cold Eye On Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by! French ambassador Stanislas Ostroróg was involved in returning the remains of the poet from France to Ireland in 1948; in a letter to the European director of the Foreign Ministry in Paris, "Ostrorog tells how Yeats's son Michael sought official help in locating the poet's remains. Neither Michael Yeats nor Sean MacBride, the Irish foreign minister who organised the ceremony, wanted to know the details of how the remains were collected, Ostrorog notes. He repeatedly urges caution and discretion and says the Irish ambassador in Paris should not be informed." Yeats's body was exhumed in 1946 and the remains were moved to an ossuary and mixed with other remains. The French Foreign Ministry authorized Ostrorog to secretly cover the cost of repatriation from his slush fund. Authorities were worried about the fact that the much-loved poet's remains were thrown into a communal grave, causing embarrassment for both Ireland and France. Per a letter from Ostroróg to his superiors, "Mr Rebouillat, (a) forensic doctor in Roquebrune would be able to reconstitute a skeleton presenting all the characteristics of the deceased."[93] Style[edit] Yeats is considered one of the key twentieth-century English-language poets. He was a Symbolist poet, using allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. He chose words and assembled them so that, in addition to a particular meaning, they suggest abstract thoughts that may seem more significant and resonant. His use of symbols[94] is usually something physical that is both itself and a suggestion of other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities.[95] Unlike the modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was a master of the traditional forms.[96] 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.[97] 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,[98] as well as meditations on the experience of growing old.[99] In his poem, "The Circus Animals' Desertion", 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 shop of the heart.[100] During 1929, he stayed at Thoor Ballylee near Gort in County Galway (where Yeats had his summer home since 1919) for the last time. Much of the remainder of his life was lived outside 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 premiere of his play Purgatory. His Autobiographies of William Butler Yeats was published that same year.[101] In 1913, Yeats wrote the preface for the English translation of Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali (Song Offering) for which Tagore received the Nobel Prize in literature.[102] "A Coat" on a wall in Leiden 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.[103] His other early poems are lyrics on the themes of love or mystical and esoteric subjects. Yeats's middle period saw him abandon the pre-Raphaelite character of his early work[104] and attempt to turn himself into a Landor-style social ironist.[105] 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's 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.[106] 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 while others question whether late Yeats has much in common with modernists of the Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot variety.[107] Modernists read the well-known poem "The Second Coming" as a dirge for the decline of European civilisation, but it also expresses Yeats's apocalyptic mystical theories and is 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 and more powerful as he grew older. The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair (1933), and New Poems (1938) contained some of the most potent images in twentieth-century poetry.[108] Yeats's mystical inclinations, informed by Hinduism, theosophical beliefs and the occult, provided much of the basis of his late poetry,[109] which some critics have judged as lacking in intellectual credibility. The metaphysics of Yeats's late works must be read in relation to his system of esoteric fundamentals in A Vision (1925).[110] Works[edit] See also: W. B. Yeats bibliography and Category:Works by W. B. Yeats Legacy[edit] Yeats is commemorated in Sligo town by a statue, created in 1989 by sculptor Rowan Gillespie. On the 50th anniversary of the poet's death, it was erected outside the Ulster Bank, at the corner of Stephen Street and Markievicz Road. Yeats had remarked on receiving his Nobel Prize that the Royal Palace in Stockholm "resembled the Ulster Bank in Sligo". Across the river is the Yeats Memorial Building, home to the Sligo Yeats Society.[111] Standing Figure: Knife Edge by Henry Moore is displayed in the W. B. Yeats Memorial Garden at St Stephen's Green in Dublin.[112][113] There is a blue plaque located at his former home on Balscadden Road, Howth.[114] Adaptations[edit] Composer Marcus Paus' choral work The Stolen Child (2009) is based on poetry by Yeats. Critic Stephen Eddins described it as "sumptuously lyrical and magically wild, and [...] beautifully [capturing] the alluring mystery and danger and melancholy" of Yeats.[115] Notes[edit] ^ Pronounced /jeɪts/ YAYTS, rhyming with gates. ^ Daemon est Deus inversus is taken from the writings of Madame Blavatsky in which she claimed 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 plane's light. ^ Gonne claimed they first met in London three years earlier. Foster notes how Gonne was "notoriously unreliable on dates and places (1997, p. 57). References[edit] ^ a b c Obituary. "W. B. Yeats Dead". The New York Times, 30 January 1939. Retrieved on 21 May 2007. ^ Jeffares, A. Norman. W. B. Yeats, Man and Poet. Palgrave Macmillan, 1996. 1 ^ Conner, Lester I.; Conner, Lester I. (2 May 1998). A Yeats Dictionary: Persons and Places in the Poetry of William Butler Yeats. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-2770-8. Retrieved 2 May 2018 – via Google Books. ^ Limerick Chronicle, 13 August 1763 ^ Margaret M. Phelan. "Journal of the Butler Society 1982. Gowran, its connection with the Butler Family". p. 174. ^ Old Kilkenny Review, The Journal of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, vol. 2, no. 1, 1979, p. 71 ^ "Ricorso: Digital materials for the study and appreciation of Anglo-Irish Literature". www.ricorso.net. Retrieved 2 May 2018. ^ Yeats 1994, p. vii. ^ W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies (1956), p. 12. London: Macmillan. ^ Gordon Bowe, Nicola. "Two Early Twentieth-Century Irish Arts and Crafts Workshops in Context". Journal of Design History, Vol. 2, No. 2/3 (1989). 193–206 ^ Foster 1997, p. xxviii. ^ Foster 1997, p. xxvii. ^ Foster 1997, p. 24. ^ Hone 1943, p. 28. ^ Foster 1997, p. 25. ^ Sessa, Anne Dzamba; Richard Wagner and the English; p. 130. ISBN 978-0-8386-2055-7 ^ a b c Yeats in Bedford Park, chiswickw4.com ^ Jordan 2003, p. 119. ^ Hone 1943, p. 33. ^ "The attraction of Bedford Park" Archived 19 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine by Amy Davies, 8 April 2013, Weidenfeld & Nicolson ^ Foster 1997, p. 37. ^ Paulin, Tom. Taylor & Francis, 2004. "The Poems of William Blake". Retrieved on 3 June 2007. ^ Doody 2018, pp. 10–12. ^ Doody 2018, pp. 116–123. ^ Doody 2018, pp. 207, 280. ^ Hone 1943, p. 83. ^ Papp, James R. "Review [The Rhymers' Club: Poets of the Tragic Generation by Norman Alford]". Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4, March 1996, pp. 535–538 JSTOR 2933931 ^ Lancashire, Ian. "William Blake (1757–1827): Archived 14 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine. Department of English, University of Toronto, 2005. Retrieved on 3 June 2007. ^ "William Blake: The Four Zoas". Archived from the original on 26 September 2011. Retrieved 27 May 2016. ^ Burke, Martin J. "Daidra from Philadelphia: Thomas Holley, Chivers and The Sons of Usna". Columbia University, 7 October 2005. Retrieved on 15 July 2007. ^ Ellmann 1948, p. 97. ^ Mendelson, Edward (ed.) "W. H. Auden" Archived 10 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine. The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Vol. II, 1939–1948, 2002. Retrieved on 26 May 2007. ^ Foster 1997, pp. 82–85. ^ Alspach, Russell K. "The Use by Yeats and Other Irish Writers of the Folklore of Patrick Kennedy". The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 59, No. 234, December 1946, pp. 404–412 ^ Gould, Warwick (2004). "Gyles, Margaret Alethea (1868–1949)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 1 August 2015. ^ Nally, Claire V. "National Identity Formation in W. B. Yeats' A Vision". Irish Studies Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2006, pp. 57–67 ^ Foster 1997, p. 103. ^ Cullingford, Elizabeth. "How Jacques Molay Got Up the Tower: Yeats and the Irish Civil War". English Literary History, Vol. 50, No. 4, 1983, pp. 763–789 ^ Foster 1997, p. 57. ^ Uddin Khan, Jalal. "Yeats and Maud Gonne: (Auto)biographical and Artistic Intersection". Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 2002. ^ Foster 1997, pp. 86–87. ^ "William Butler Yeats". BBC Four. "William Butler Yeats 1865–1939". Archived from the original on 5 February 2008. Retrieved 20 June 2007. ^ a b c d Cahill, Christopher. "Second Puberty: The Later Years of W. B. Yeats Brought His Best Poetry, along with Personal Melodrama on an Epic Scale". The Atlantic Monthly, December 2003. ^ a b Ó Corráin, Donnchadh. "William Butler Yeats Archived 2 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine". University College Cork. Retrieved on 15 July 2007. ^ Jordan 2003, pp. 139–153; Jordan 1997, pp. 83–88 ^ Jordan 2000, pp. 13–141. ^ Foster 1997, p. 394. ^ Malins & Purkis 1994, p. 124. ^ Corcoran, Neil. After Yeats and Joyce: Reading Modern Irish Literature. Oxford University Press, 1997, p. viii ^ Foster 2003, pp. 486, 662. ^ Foster 1997, p. 183. ^ Text reproduced from Yeats's own handwritten draft. ^ Foster 1997, p. 184. ^ "Irish Genius: The Yeats Family and The Cuala Press". Trinity College Dublin, 12 February 2004. Retrieved on 2 June 2007. ^ Monroe, Harriet (1913). "Poetry". (Chicago) Modern Poetry Association. 123 ^ Sands, Maren. "The Influence of Japanese Noh Theater on Yeats". Colorado State University. Retrieved on 15 July 2007. ^ Foster 2003, pp. 59–66. ^ Lady Gregory, Augusta (1904), Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danann and of the Fianna of Ireland, p. xiv ^ Sanford, John (18 April 2001). "Roy Foster: Yeats emerged as poet of Irish Revolution, despite past political beliefs". Stanford University. Retrieved 7 May 2018. ^ Ellmann 1948, p. 244. ^ Sternlicht, Sanford V. A Reader's Guide to Modern Irish Drama, Syracuse University Press, 1998, p. 48 ^ Nally, Claire. 2010. Envisioning Ireland: W. B. Yeats's Occult Nationalism. Peter Lang ^ Allison, Jonathan (ed.). 1996. Yeats's Political Identities: Selected Essays. University of Michigan Press ^ "An Irishman's Diary" by Brian Maye, The Irish Times, 7 January 2002 ^ Jordan 2003, p. 107. ^ Mann, Neil. "An Overview of A Vision". The System of W. B. Yeats's A Vision. Retrieved on 15 July 2007. ^ Gonne MacBride, Maud. A Servant of the Queen. Gollanz, 1938 pp. 287–289 ^ Brown, Terence. The Life of W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 2001, p. 347. ISBN 978-0-631-22851-6 ^ Foster 2003, pp. 105, 383. ^ Mann, Neil. "Letter 27 July 1924". The System of W. B. Yeats's A Vision. Retrieved on 24 April 2008. ^ "Nobel Prize in Literature 1923". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 7 December 2014. ^ Foster 2003, p. 245. ^ a b Moses, Michael Valdez. "The Poet As Politician". Reason, February 2001. Retrieved on 3 June 2007. ^ Foster 2003, pp. 246–247. ^ Foster 2003, pp. 228–239. ^ "William Butler Yeats". Oireachtas Members Database. Retrieved 19 February 2019. ^ Foster 2003, p. 293. ^ a b c Foster 2003, p. 294. ^ Foster 2003, p. 296. ^ "Seanad Resumes: Debate on Divorce Legislation Resumed". Seanad Éireann, Vol. 5. 11 June 1925. Retrieved 26 May 2007. ^ a b Foster 2003, p. 333. ^ Foster 2003, p. 468. ^ Wyndham, Diana; Kirby, Michael (2012), Norman Haire and the Study of Sex, Sydney University Press, Foreword, and pp. 249–263, ISBN 978-1-74332-006-8 ^ "The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats". National Library of Ireland (search for Steinach). Retrieved on 19 October 2008. ^ Foster 2003, pp. 504, 510–511. ^ Letter to Dorothy Wellesley, 17 June 1935; cited Ellmann, "Yeats's Second Puberty", The New York Review of Books, 9 May 1985 ^ "William Butler Yeats papers". library.udel.edu. University of Delaware. Retrieved 30 October 2020. ^ Jordan 2003, p. 114. ^ Foster 2003, p. 651. ^ Foster 2003, p. 656. ^ Jordan 2003, p. 115. ^ Allen, James Lovic. "'Imitate Him If You Dare': Relationships between the Epitaphs of Swift and Yeats". An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 70, No. 278/279, 1981, p. 177 ^ "The Documents". The Irish Times. Retrieved 8 November 2017. ^ Ulanov, Barry. Makers of the Modern Theater. McGraw-Hill, 1961 ^ Gale Research International. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, No. 116. Gale Cengage Learning, 2002, p. 303 ^ Finneran, Richard. Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies 1995. University of Michigan Press, 1997. 82 ^ Logenbach, James. Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism. Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 13–14 ^ Bell, Vereen. Yeats and the logic of formalism. University of Missouri Press, 2006. 132 ^ Seiden 1962, p. 179. ^ O'Neill (2003), p. 6. ^ Martin, Wallace. Review of "Tragic Knowledge: Yeats' "Autobiography" and Hermeneutics" by Daniel T. O'Hara. Contemporary Literature. Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring 1982, pp. 239–243 ^ Paul, S. K. (1 January 2006). The Complete Poems of Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali: Texts and Critical Evaluation. Sarup & Sons. p. 29. ISBN 978-81-7625-660-5. ^ Howes, Marjorie. Yeats's nations: gender, class, and Irishness. Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 28–31 ^ Seiden 1962, p. 153. ^ Bloom, Harold. Yeats. Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 168 ISBN 978-0-19-501603-1 ^ Raine, Kathleen. Yeats the Initiate. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1990, pp. 327–329. ISBN 978-0-389-20951-5 ^ Holdeman, David. The Cambridge Introduction to W. B. Yeats. Cambridge University Press, 2006 ISBN 978-0-521-54737-6, p. 80 ^ Spanos, William. ″Sacramental Imagery in the Middle and Late Poetry of W. B. Yeats.″ Texas Studies in Literature and Language. (1962) Vol. 4, No. 2. pp. 214-228. ^ Lorenz, Dagmar C. G. Transforming the Center, Eroding the Margins. University of Rochester Press, 2004, p. 282. ISBN 978-1-58046-175-7 ^ 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 ^ "Sligo: W.B. Yeats Statue". atriptoireland.com. 8 July 2014. Retrieved 2 May 2018. ^ Standing Figure: Knife Edge, LH 482 cast 0, Henry Moore Foundation ^ Bromwell, Philip (8 July 2020). "'Hidden gem' restored in Dublin's St Stephen's Green". RTÉ News. Archived from the original on 8 July 2020. Retrieved 8 July 2020. ^ https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/ROCKY-PATH-TO-THE-LIGHTHOUSE-1.68308 ^ Eddins, Stephen (2011). "Kind". AllMusic Review. Retrieved 5 January 2021. Sources[edit] Doody, Noreen (2018). The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W. B. Yeats: "An Echo of Someone Else's Music". Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-89547-5. Ellmann, Richard (1948). Yeats: The Man and the Masks. New York: Macmillan. Foster, R. F. (1997). W. B. Yeats: A Life. Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-288085-7. Foster, R. F. (2003). W. B. Yeats: A Life. Vol. II: The Arch-Poet 1915–1939. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-818465-2. Hone, Joseph (1943). W. B. Yeats, 1865–1939. New York: Macmillan Publishers. OCLC 35607726. Jordan, Anthony J. (1997). Willie Yeats & The Gonne-MacBrides. Westport Books. ISBN 978-0-9524447-1-8. Jordan, Anthony J. (2000). The Yeats Gonne MacBride Triangle. Westport Books. ISBN 978-0-9524447-4-9. Jordan, Anthony J. (2003). W. B. Yeats: Vain, Glorious, Lout – A Maker of Modern Ireland. Westport Books. ISBN 978-0-9524447-2-5. Malins, Edward; Purkis, John (1994). A Preface to Yeats (2nd ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-582-09093-4. O'Neill, Michael (2003). Routledge Literary Sourcebook on the Poems of W. B. Yeats. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-23475-7. Seiden, Morton (1962). William Butler Yeats. Michigan State University Press. Yeats, W. B. (1994). The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Wordsworth Poetry Library. ISBN 978-1-85326-454-2. External links[edit] William Butler Yeatsat Wikipedia's sister projects Media from Wikimedia Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource External video Presentation by R. F. Foster on W. B. Yeats: A Life: The Apprentice Mage, December 7, 1997, C-SPAN W.B Yeats on Magic & The Occult, edited by Claudio Rocchetti, Black Letter Press, 2019 The National Library of Ireland's exhibition, Yeats: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats Works by W. B. Yeats at Project Gutenberg List of Works Works by W. B. Yeats at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) William Butler Yeats: Profile and Poems at Poets.org Yeats's correspondence and other archival records at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center Recordings of 24 lectures Donald Davie gave at Stanford in 1975 on W. B. Yeats Boston College collection of Yeats family papers at John J. Burns Library, Boston College Yeats and Mysticism, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Roy Foster, Warwick Gould and Brenda Maddox (In Our Time, 31 January 2002) Yeats and Irish Politics, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Roy Foster, Fran Brearton & Warwick Gould (In Our Time, 17 April 2008) Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: W.B. Yeats Collection, 1875-1965. Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats Papers William Butler Yeats on Nobelprize.org Finding aid to Yeats family letters at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library. "Yeats, William Butler" . Thom's Irish Who's Who . Dublin: Alexander Thom and Son Ltd. 1923. p. 265  – via Wikisource. v t e W. B. Yeats Poetry Volumes The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889) The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (1892) In the Seven Woods (1903) Responsibilities and Other Poems (1916) The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) The Tower (1928) The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) Poems "The Song of Wandering Aengus" "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" "Adam's Curse" "Blood and the Moon" "The Circus Animals' Desertion" "Down by the Salley Gardens" "A Drunken Man's Praise of Sobriety" "Easter, 1916" "Ego Dominus Tuus" "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz" "Lake Isle of Innisfree" "On being asked for a War Poem" "Politics" "A Prayer for My Daughter" "Remorse for Intemperate Speech" "The Rose of Battle" "The Rose-Tree" "Sailing to Byzantium" "September 1913" "Song of the Old Mother" "The Fiddler of Dooney" "The Gift of Harun Al-Raschid" "The Scholars" "The Second Coming" "The Song of the Happy Shepherd" "The Stolen Child" "Swift's Epitaph" "To the Rose upon the Rood of Time" "The Tower" "Under Ben Bulben "The Wanderings of Oisin" "The Wild Swans at Coole" Plays Mosada (1886) The Land of Heart's Desire (1894) Diarmuid and Grania (1901) Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902) On Baile's Strand (1903) The Countess Cathleen (1911) At the Hawk's Well (1916) The Resurrection (1927) Purgatory (1938) Other works The Works of William Blake: Poetic, Symbolic and Critical (1893; co-author) A Vision (1925) "The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows" Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935 (editor) People Georgie Hyde-Lees (wife) Anne Yeats (daughter) Michael Yeats (son) John Butler Yeats (father) Susan Pollexfen (mother) Jack Butler Yeats (brother) Elizabeth Yeats (sister) Lily Yeats (sister) Maud Gonne (lover) Related W. B. Yeats bibliography Rhymers' Club Dun Emer Press Cuala Press An Appointment with Mr Yeats "Troy" Thoor Ballylee Samhain magazine v t e Irish poetry Topics Irish poetry Chief Ollam of Ireland Irish bardic poetry Irish Literary Revival Metrical Dindshenchas Contention of the bards Aisling Weaver Poets An Gúm Kildare Poems Táin Bó Cúailnge Poets Bardic Mael Ísu Ua Brolcháin Muircheartach Ó Cobhthaigh Gilla Mo Dutu Úa Caiside Baothghalach Mór Mac Aodhagáin Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh Flann mac Lonáin Donnchadh Mór Ó Dálaigh Lochlann Óg Ó Dálaigh Fear Flaith Ó Gnímh Mathghamhain Ó hIfearnáin Cormac Mac Con Midhe Eoghan Carrach Ó Siadhail Fear Feasa Ó'n Cháinte Tadhg Olltach Ó an Cháinte Eochaidh Ó hÉoghusa Proinsias Ó Doibhlin Tarlach Rua Mac Dónaill Gilla Cómáin mac Gilla Samthainde Tadhg Dall Ó hÚigínn Niníne Éces Colmán of Cloyne Cináed ua hArtacáin Muireadhach Albanach Ó Dálaigh Cearbhall Óg Ó Dálaigh Máeleoin Bódur Ó Maolconaire Diarmaid Mac an Bhaird Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh Dallán Forgaill Óengus of Tallaght Sedulius Scottus Saint Dungal Maol Sheachluinn na n-Uirsgéal Ó hÚigínn Philip Ó Duibhgeannain 15th/16th century Tomás Ó Cobhthaigh 17th century Dáibhí Ó Bruadair Piaras Feiritéar Aogán Ó Rathaille 18th century Aogán Ó Rathaille Brian Merriman Jonathan Swift Oliver Goldsmith John Hewitt 19th century Thomas Moore Charles Gavan Duffy James Clarence Mangan Samuel Ferguson William Allingham Douglas Hyde James Henry Antoine Ó Raifteiri Aeneas Coffey Robert Dwyer Joyce Thomas Davis Speranza Katharine Tynan Oscar Wilde 20th century James Joyce Patrick Pearse Joseph Plunkett Thomas MacDonagh Francis Ledwidge Padraic Colum F. R. Higgins Austin Clarke Samuel Beckett Brian Coffey Denis Devlin Thomas MacGreevy Blanaid Salkeld Mary Devenport O'Neill Patrick Kavanagh John Hewitt Louis MacNeice Máirtín Ó Direáin Seán Ó Ríordáin Máire Mhac an tSaoi Michael Hartnett Gabriel Rosenstock Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill Micheál Mac Liammóir Robert Greacen Roy McFadden Padraic Fiacc John Montague Michael Longley Derek Mahon Seamus Heaney Paul Muldoon Thomas Kinsella Michael Smith Trevor Joyce Geoffrey Squires Augustus Young Randolph Healy John Jordan Paul Durcan Basil Payne Eoghan Ó Tuairisc Patrick Galvin Cathal Ó Searcaigh Bobby Sands Rita Ann Higgins Eavan Boland Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Medbh McGuckian Paula Meehan Dennis O'Driscoll Seán Dunne Anthony Cronin W. F. Marshall W. B. Yeats 21st century Thomas McCarthy John Ennis Pat Boran Mairéad Byrne Ciarán Carson Patrick Chapman Harry Clifton Tony Curtis Pádraig J. Daly Gerald Dawe Greg Delanty Eamon Grennan Vona Groarke Seamus Heaney Pat Ingoldsby Trevor Joyce Brendan Kennelly Hugh McFadden Sinéad Morrissey Gerry Murphy Bernard O'Donoghue Conor O'Callaghan Caitriona O'Reilly Justin Quinn Maurice Riordan Maurice Scully William Wall Catherine Walsh Poems Anthologies Faber Book of Irish Verse Epics The Wanderings of Oisin Bardic Timna Cathaír Máir Caithréim Cellaig Le dís cuirthear clú Laighean Is acher in gaíth in-nocht... Is trúag in ces i mbiam Sen dollotar Ulaid ... Sorrow is the worst thing in life ... An Díbirt go Connachta Foraire Uladh ar Aodh A aonmhic Dé do céasadh thrínn A theachtaire tig ón Róimh An sluagh sidhe so i nEamhuin? Cóir Connacht ar chath Laighean Dia libh a laochruidh Gaoidhiol Pangur Bán Liamuin Buile Shuibhne The Prophecy of Berchán Bean Torrach, fa Tuar Broide 18th century The Traveller Suantraí dá Mhac Tabhartha Mná na hÉireann 19th century Tone's Grave The Wind That Shakes the Barley Contemporary Love Songs of Connacht Hi Uncle Sam Meeting The British Horse Latitudes Sweeney Astray Prayer Before Birth D-Day Organizations Poetry Ireland Publications Cyphers Poetry Ireland Review The Lace Curtain Events SoundEye Festival v t e Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1901–1925 1901: Sully Prudhomme 1902: Theodor Mommsen 1903: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson 1904: Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz 1906: Giosuè Carducci 1907: Rudyard Kipling 1908: Rudolf Eucken 1909: Selma Lagerlöf 1910: Paul Heyse 1911: Maurice Maeterlinck 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann 1913: Rabindranath Tagore 1914 1915: Romain Rolland 1916: Verner von Heidenstam 1917: Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan 1918 1919: Carl Spitteler 1920: Knut Hamsun 1921: Anatole France 1922: Jacinto Benavente 1923: W. B. Yeats 1924: Władysław Reymont 1925: George Bernard Shaw 1926–1950 1926: Grazia Deledda 1927: Henri Bergson 1928: Sigrid Undset 1929: Thomas Mann 1930: Sinclair Lewis 1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt 1932: John Galsworthy 1933: Ivan Bunin 1934: Luigi Pirandello 1935 1936: Eugene O'Neill 1937: Roger Martin du Gard 1938: Pearl S. Buck 1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944: Johannes V. Jensen 1945: Gabriela Mistral 1946: Hermann Hesse 1947: André Gide 1948: T. S. Eliot 1949: William Faulkner 1950: Bertrand Russell 1951–1975 1951: Pär Lagerkvist 1952: François Mauriac 1953: Winston Churchill 1954: Ernest Hemingway 1955: Halldór Laxness 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez 1957: Albert Camus 1958: Boris Pasternak 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo 1960: Saint-John Perse 1961: Ivo Andrić 1962: John Steinbeck 1963: Giorgos Seferis 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre (declined award) 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov 1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon / Nelly Sachs 1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias 1968: Yasunari Kawabata 1969: Samuel Beckett 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1971: Pablo Neruda 1972: Heinrich Böll 1973: Patrick White 1974: Eyvind Johnson / Harry Martinson 1975: Eugenio Montale 1976–2000 1976: Saul Bellow 1977: Vicente Aleixandre 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer 1979: Odysseas Elytis 1980: Czesław Miłosz 1981: Elias Canetti 1982: Gabriel García Márquez 1983: William Golding 1984: Jaroslav Seifert 1985: Claude Simon 1986: Wole Soyinka 1987: Joseph Brodsky 1988: Naguib Mahfouz 1989: Camilo José Cela 1990: Octavio Paz 1991: Nadine Gordimer 1992: Derek Walcott 1993: Toni Morrison 1994: Kenzaburō Ōe 1995: Seamus Heaney 1996: Wisława Szymborska 1997: Dario Fo 1998: José Saramago 1999: Günter Grass 2000: Gao Xingjian 2001–present 2001: V. S. Naipaul 2002: Imre Kertész 2003: J. M. Coetzee 2004: Elfriede Jelinek 2005: Harold Pinter 2006: Orhan Pamuk 2007: Doris Lessing 2008: J. M. G. Le Clézio 2009: Herta Müller 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa 2011: Tomas Tranströmer 2012: Mo Yan 2013: Alice Munro 2014: Patrick Modiano 2015: Svetlana Alexievich 2016: Bob Dylan 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro 2018: Olga Tokarczuk 2019: Peter Handke 2020: Louise Glück v t e 1923 Nobel Prize laureates Chemistry Fritz Pregl (Austria) Literature W. B. Yeats (Republic of Ireland) Peace None Physics Robert Andrews Millikan (United States) Physiology or Medicine Frederick Banting (Canada) John James Rickard Macleod (Great Britain) Nobel Prize recipients 1990 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 2000 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 v t e « 1922 Seanad «  Members of the 1922 Seanad (1922–1925) » 1925 Seanad » Cathaoirleach Lord Glenavy (Ind) Elected in 1922 3 years Henry Barniville (CnaG) Thomas Westropp Bennett (CnaG) Richard A. Butler (Ind) John Counihan (Ind) Peter de Loughry (CnaG) Cornelius Irwin (CnaG) Thomas Linehan (FP) Joseph Clayton Love (CnaG) Edward MacEvoy (CnaG) Edward MacLysaght (Ind) Eamonn Mansfield (Ind) George Nesbitt (Ind) Michael O'Dea (CnaG) J. T. O'Farrell (Lab) James Parkinson (CnaG) 9 years William Barrington (Ind) Eileen Costello (Ind) James G. Douglas (Ind) Michael Duffy (Lab) Thomas Farren (Lab) Alice Stopford Green (Ind) Sir John Griffith (Ind) Patrick W. Kenny (CnaG) James J. MacKean (CnaG) John MacLoughlin (Ind) Thomas MacPartlin (Lab) William Molloy (Ind) Maurice George Moore (Ind) Brian O'Rourke (CnaG) William O'Sullivan (CnaG) Nominated by the President 6 years John Philip Bagwell (Ind) Henry Givens Burgess (Ind) Lord Glenavy (Ind) Sir Nugent Everard (Ind) Edmund W. Eyre (Ind) Oliver St. John Gogarty (CnaG) James Perry Goodbody (Ind) Henry Greer (Ind) Benjamin Haughton (Ind) Earl of Wicklow (Ind) Arthur Jackson (Ind) Andrew Jameson (Ind) Sir Bryan Mahon (Ind) Marquess of Headfort (Ind) W. B. Yeats (Ind) 12 years Earl of Mayo (Ind) Countess of Desart (Ind) James Charles Dowdall (Ind) Sir Thomas Esmonde (Ind) Martin Fitzgerald (Ind) Earl of Granard (Ind) Henry Guinness (Ind) Sir John Keane (Ind) James Moran (Ind) Earl of Kerry (Ind) Sir Horace Plunkett (Ind) Sir Hutcheson Poë (Ind) George Sigerson (Ind) Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl (Ind) Jennie Wyse Power (Ind) Elected or appointed later Feb. 1923 William Cummins (Lab) Nov. 1923 Thomas Foran (Lab) Dec. 1923 Samuel Lombard Brown (Ind) 1925 Douglas Hyde (Ind) John O'Neill (CnaG) CnaG: Cumann na nGaedheal FP: Farmers' Party Lab: Labour Party Ind: Independent v t e « 1922 Seanad «   Members of the 1925 Seanad (1925–1928) » 1928 Seanad » Cathaoirleach Lord Glenavy (Ind) Elected in 1925 6 years John Counihan (CnaG) 9 years Thomas Westropp Bennett (CnaG) Sir Edward Coey Bigger (Ind) Francis McGuinness (CnaG) 12 years Henry Barniville (CnaG) Sir Edward Bellingham (Ind) William Cummins (Lab) James Dillon (FP) Michael Fanning (CnaG) Thomas Foran (Lab) Sir William Hickie (Ind) Cornelius Kennedy (CnaG) Thomas Linehan (FP) Joseph O'Connor (CnaG) J. T. O'Farrell (Lab) Michael F. O'Hanlon (FP) Stephen O'Mara (CnaG) James Parkinson (CnaG) Thomas Toal (CnaG) Elected in 1922 9 years William Barrington (Ind) Eileen Costello (Ind) James G. Douglas (Ind) Michael Duffy (Lab) Thomas Farren (Lab) Alice Stopford Green (Ind) Sir John Griffith (Ind) Patrick W. Kenny (CnaG) James J. MacKean (CnaG) John MacLoughlin (Ind) William Molloy (Ind) Maurice George Moore (Ind) Brian O'Rourke (CnaG) William O'Sullivan (CnaG) Nominated by the President in 1922 6 years John Philip Bagwell (Ind) Henry Givens Burgess (Ind) Lord Glenavy (Ind) Sir Nugent Everard (Ind) Edmund W. Eyre (Ind) Oliver St. John Gogarty (CnaG) James Perry Goodbody (Ind) Henry Greer (Ind) Benjamin Haughton (Ind) Earl of Wicklow (Ind) Arthur Jackson (Ind) Andrew Jameson (Ind) Sir Bryan Mahon (Ind) Marquess of Headfort (Ind) W. B. Yeats (Ind) 12 years Earl of Mayo (Ind) Countess of Desart (Ind) James Charles Dowdall (Ind) Sir Thomas Esmonde (Ind) Martin Fitzgerald (Ind) Earl of Granard (Ind) Henry Guinness (Ind) Sir John Keane (Ind) James Moran (Ind) Earl of Kerry (Ind) Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl (Ind) Jennie Wyse Power (Ind) Elected or appointed later Feb. 1926 Samuel Lombard Brown (Ind) Jan. 1927 P. J. Brady (Ind) Mar. 1927 Patrick Hooper (Ind) Mar. 1928 Sir Walter Nugent (Ind) CnaG: Cumann na nGaedheal FP: Farmers' Party Lab: Labour Party Ind: Independent Biography portal Literature portal Poetry portal Authority control BIBSYS: 90052572 BNE: XX1151255 BNF: cb11929497r (data) CANTIC: a10454949 CiNii: DA00335552 GND: 118635867 ICCU: IT\ICCU\CFIV\009382 ISNI: 0000 0001 2096 0541 LCCN: n78095579 LNB: 000017636 MBA: 60ab738d-ffe9-45f6-bc08-f9ef5d4f7731 NDL: 00461588 NKC: jn19990009341 NLA: 36114943 NLG: 68200 NLK: KAC199630758 NSK: 000000646 NTA: 068478682 PLWABN: 9810582430305606 RKD: 85936 SELIBR: 207852 SNAC: w6c930cd SUDOC: 027201082 TePapa: 43078 Trove: 1214756 ULAN: 500019359 VcBA: 495/74025 VIAF: 46768718 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n78095579 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=W._B._Yeats&oldid=1003211955" Categories: W. B. Yeats 1865 births 1939 deaths 19th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights 19th-century Irish poets 20th-century Irish male writers 20th-century British male writers 20th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Irish poets Abbey Theatre Alumni of the National College of Art and Design Anglican poets Anglo-Irish artists Anthologists British male dramatists and playwrights British male poets Burials in the Republic of Ireland Butler Yeats family Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Formalist poets Independent members of Seanad Éireann Irish Anglicans Irish Dominion League Irish expatriates in France Irish fantasy writers Irish male dramatists and playwrights Irish male poets Irish Nobel laureates Irish occult writers Irish occultists Members of the 1922 Seanad Members of the 1925 Seanad Modernist poets Modernist theatre Nobel laureates in Literature People educated at The High School, Dublin People from Sandymount Protestant Irish nationalists Sonneteers Symbolist dramatists and playwrights Victorian writers William Blake scholars Symbolist poets Hidden categories: Articles containing Latin-language text Webarchive template wayback links CS1: Julian–Gregorian uncertainty Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata Use dmy dates from July 2019 Use British English from February 2012 Articles with Project Gutenberg links Articles with LibriVox links Nobelprize template using Wikidata property P8024 Featured articles Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ICCU identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLG identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NSK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with RKDartists identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with TePapa identifiers Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers Wikipedia articles with ULAN identifiers Wikipedia articles with VcBA identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers AC with 28 elements Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Languages Afrikaans العربية Aragonés Asturianu Azərbaycanca বাংলা Bân-lâm-gú Беларуская Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎ Български Brezhoneg Català Čeština Cymraeg Dansk Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Эрзянь Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Frysk Gaeilge Gaelg Gàidhlig Galego 한국어 Հայերեն हिन्दी Hrvatski Ido Ilokano Bahasa Indonesia Íslenska Italiano עברית Jawa ಕನ್ನಡ ქართული Kiswahili Kotava Kurdî Latina Latviešu Lëtzebuergesch Lietuvių Magyar Македонски Malagasy മലയാളം मराठी مازِرونی Bahasa Melayu Монгол Nederlands नेपाल भाषा 日本語 Norsk bokmål Norsk nynorsk Occitan Oʻzbekcha/ўзбекча ਪੰਜਾਬੀ پنجابی Piemontèis Polski Português Română Русский Scots Shqip Simple English Slovenčina Slovenščina Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska Tagalog தமிழ் Татарча/tatarça ไทย Türkçe Українська اردو Tiếng Việt Volapük Winaray 吴语 Yorùbá 粵語 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 27 January 2021, at 23:02 (UTC). 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