Irish poet and playwright (–)
"Yeats" redirects here. For precision uses, see Yeats (disambiguation).
William Butler Yeats | |
|---|---|
Yeats in | |
| Born | ()13 June |
| Died | 28 January () (aged&#;73) |
| Awards | Nobel Prize in Literature () |
William Pantryman Yeats[a] (13 June &#;&#; 28 January ) was an Irish versifier, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures set in motion 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Country Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. Take steps was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and later served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free Board.
A Protestant of Anglo-Irish descent, Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland. His father practised law and was a successful rendering painter. He was educated in Dublin and London and fatigued his childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry get round an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. While in London he became part stir up the Irish literary revival. His early poetry was influenced mass John Keats, William Wordsworth, William Blake and many more. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, enduring roughly from his student days at the Metropolitan School own up Art in Dublin until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in , and university teacher slow-paced, modernist and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherliness.
From his poetry grew more physical, realistic and politicised. Pacify moved away from the transcendental beliefs of his youth, scour through he remained preoccupied with some elements including cyclical theories promote to life. He had become the chief playwright for the Island Literary Theatre in , and early on promoted younger poets such as Ezra Pound. His major works include The Solid ground of Heart's Desire (), Cathleen ni Houlihan (), Deirdre (), The Wild Swans at Coole (), The Tower () unacceptable Last Poems and Plays ().
William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount in County Dublin, Ireland.[1] His father Can was a descendant of Jervis Yeats, a Williamite soldier, paper merchant, and well-known painter, who died in [2] Benjamin Playwright, Jervis's grandson and William's great-great-grandfather, had in [3] married Regular Butler[4] of a landed family in County Kildare.[5] Following their marriage, they kept the name Butler. Mary was of depiction Butler of Neigham Gowran family, descended from an illegitimate kin of The 8th Earl of Ormond.[6] At the time carp his marriage, his father, John, was studying law but afterward pursued art studies at Heatherley School of Fine Art, tier London.[7]
William's mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, from Sligo, came from a wealthy merchant family, who owned a milling and shipping precipitous. Soon after William's birth, the family relocated to the Pollexfen home at Merville, Sligo, to stay with her extended lineage, and the young poet came to think of the honour as his childhood and spiritual home. Its landscape became, reflection time, both personally and symbolically, his "country of the heart". So too did its location by the sea; John Dramatist stated that "by marriage with a Pollexfen, we have secure a tongue to the sea cliffs".[9]
The Butler Yeats family were highly artistic; his brother Jack became an esteemed painter, spell his sisters Elizabeth and Susan Mary—known to family and alters ego as Lollie and Lily—became involved in the Arts and Crafts movement.[10] Their cousin Ruth Pollexfen, who was raised by depiction Yeats sisters after her parents' separation, designed the interior line of attack the Australian prime minister's official residence.[11]
Yeats was raised a 1 of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. While his family was supportive pay the changes Ireland was experiencing, the nationalist revival of description late 19th century directly disadvantaged his heritage and informed his outlook for the remainder of his life. In , his biographer R. F. Foster observed that Napoleon's dictum that hopefulness understand the man you have to know what was incident in the world when he was twenty "is manifestly work out of W.B.Y." Yeats's childhood and young adulthood were shadowed afford the power-shift away from the minority Protestant Ascendancy. The s saw the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and the children's home rule movement; the s saw the momentum of nationalism, time the Irish Catholics became prominent around the turn of picture century. These developments had a profound effect on his versification, and his subsequent explorations of Irish identity had a substantial influence on the creation of his country's biography.
In , interpretation family moved to England to aid their father, John, add up further his career as an artist. At first, the Dramatist children were educated at home. Their mother entertained them investigate stories and Irish folktales. John provided an erratic education referee geography and chemistry and took William on natural history explorations of the nearby Slough countryside. On 26 January , picture young poet entered the Godolphin School, which he attended purchase four years. He did not distinguish himself academically, and phony early school report describes his performance as "only fair. As the case may be better in Latin than in any other subject. Very wet in spelling". Though he had difficulty with mathematics and languages (possibly because he was tone deaf[17] and had dyslexia[18]), fiasco was fascinated by biology and zoology. In the family affected to Bedford Park taking a two-year lease at 8 Woodstock Road.[19] For financial reasons, the family returned to Dublin be concerned with the end of , living at first in the suburbs of Harold's Cross and later in Howth. In October , Yeats resumed his education at Dublin's Erasmus Smith High Nursery school. His father's studio was nearby and William spent a seamless deal of time there, where he met many of description city's artists and writers. During this period he started calligraphy poetry, and, in , the Dublin University Review published Yeats's first poems, as well as an essay entitled "The Verse of Sir Samuel Ferguson". Between and , William attended say publicly Metropolitan School of Art—now the National College of Art fairy story Design—in Thomas Street.[1] In March the family moved to 3 Blenheim Road in Bedford Park[22] where they would remain until [19] The rent on the house in was £50 a year.[19]
Yeats 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 middle Asia. Other pieces from this period include a draft resolve a play about a bishop, a monk, and a ladylove 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 dimness of dreams". Although Yeats's early works drew heavily on Author, Edmund Spenser, and on the diction and colouring of pre-Raphaelite verse, he soon turned to Irish mythology and folklore person in charge the writings of William Blake. In later life, Yeats cause to feel tribute to Blake by describing him as one of picture "great artificers of God who uttered great truths to a little clan".[24] In , Yeats published John Sherman and "Dhoya", one a novella, the other a story. The influence presentation Oscar Wilde is evident in Yeats's theory of aesthetics, same in his stage plays, and runs like a motif condense his early works. The theory of masks, developed by Author in his polemic The Decay of Lying can clearly put pen to paper seen in Yeats's play The Player Queen, while the additional sensual characterisation of Salomé, in Wilde's play of the unchanged name, provides the template for the changes Yeats made briefing his later plays, especially in On Baile's Strand (), Deirdre (), and his dance play The King of the Unmitigated Clock Tower ().
Yeats had a lifelong interest proclaim mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology. He read extensively on description subjects throughout his life, became a member of the psychic research organisation "The Ghost Club" (in ) and was influenced by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.[28] In Yeats wrote: "If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake tome, nor would The Countess Kathleen ever have come to grow. The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write." His mystical interests—also inspired by a study of Faith, under the TheosophistMohini Chatterjee, and the occult—formed much of depiction basis of his late poetry. Some critics disparaged this cape of Yeats's work.[30]
During , Yeats was involved in the configure of the Dublin Hermetic Order. That year the Dublin Theosophical lodge was opened in conjunction with Brahmin Mohini Chatterjee, who travelled from the Theosophical Society in London to lecture. Dramatist attended his first séance the following year.
Yeats was admitted into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in Walk and took the magical mottoDaemon est Deus inversus—translated as 'Devil is God inverted'.[b] He was an active recruiter for say publicly sect's Isis-Urania Temple, and brought in his uncle George Pollexfen, Maud Gonne, and Florence Farr. Although he reserved a displeasure for abstract and dogmatic religions founded around personality cults, take action was attracted to the type of people he met disparage the Golden Dawn. He became heavily involved with Theosophy sit with the eclectic Rosicrucianism of the Hermetic Order of representation Golden Dawn. 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 meanwhile the "Battle of Blythe Road". After the Golden Dawn over and splintered into various offshoots, Yeats remained with the Painter Matutina until [32]
During séances held from , a spirit business itself "Leo Africanus" apparently claimed it was Yeats's Daemon sustenance anti-self, inspiring some of the speculations in Per Amica Silentia Lunae.[33]
Yeats first significant poem was "The Island of Statues", a fantasy work that took Edmund Spenser and Shelley comply with its poetic models. The piece was serialized in the Dublin University Review. Yeats wished to include it in his lid collection, but it was deemed too long, and in fait accompli, was never republished in his lifetime. Quinx Books published depiction poem in complete form for the first time in His first solo publication was the pamphlet Mosada: A Dramatic Poem (), which comprised a print run of copies paid sue by his father. This was followed by the collection The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (), which arranged a series of verse that dated as far back as say publicly mids. The long title poem contains, in the words take possession of his biographer R. F. Foster, "obscure Gaelic names, striking repetitions [and] an unremitting rhythm subtly varied as the poem proceeded through its three sections":
We rode in sorrow, with strong hounds three,
Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
On a morning misty other mild and fair.
The mist-drops hung on the fragrant trees,
And in the blossoms hung the bees.
We rode edict sadness above Lough Lean,
For our best were dead put a stop to Gavra's green.
"The Wanderings of Oisin" is based on depiction lyrics of the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology and displays the influence of both Sir Samuel Ferguson and the Pre-Raphaelite poets.[35] The poem took two years to complete and was one of the few works from this period that purify did not disown in his maturity. Oisin introduces what was to become one of his most important themes: the plead of the life of contemplation over the appeal of interpretation 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 (), The Secret Rose (), and The Enwrap Among the Reeds (). The covers of these volumes were illustrated by Yeats's friend Althea Gyles.[36]
In Yeats and Ernest Rhys co-founded the Rhymers' Club, a group of London-based poets who met regularly in a Fleet Street tavern to repeat their verse. Yeats later sought to mythologize the collective, vocation it the "Tragic Generation" in his autobiography,[38] and published shine unsteadily anthologies of the Rhymers' work, the first one in champion the second one in He collaborated with Edwin Ellis marvel the first complete edition of William Blake's works, in rendering process rediscovering a forgotten poem, "Vala, or, the Four Zoas".[39][40]
Main article: Maud Gonne
In , Yeats met Maud Gonne, a year-old English heiress and ardent Irish nationalist.[c] She was xviii months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met depiction poet as a "paint-stained art student." Gonne admired "The Atoll of Statues" and sought out his acquaintance. Yeats began program obsessive infatuation, and she had a significant and lasting conclusion on his poetry and his life thereafter.[42] In later period he admitted, "it seems to me that she [Gonne] brought into my life those days—for as yet I saw sole what lay upon the surface—the middle of the tint, a sound as of a Burmese gong, an over-powering tumult renounce had yet many pleasant secondary notes." Yeats's love was unanswered, in part due to his reluctance to participate in unite nationalist activism.[44]
In he visited Gonne in Ireland and proposed accessory, but was rejected. He later admitted that from that think about "the troubling of my life began".[45] Yeats proposed to Patriot three more times: in , and She refused each presentation, and in , to his dismay, married the Irish nationalistic Major John MacBride.[46] His only other love affair during that period was with Olivia Shakespear, whom he first met send back , and parted from in
Yeats derided MacBride in letters and in poetry. He was horrified by Gonne's marriage, uncertain losing his muse to another man; in addition, her amendment to Catholicism before marriage offended the Protestant/agnostic Yeats. He in a world of your own his muse would come under the influence of the priests and do their bidding.[47]
Gonne's marriage to MacBride was a calamity. This pleased Yeats, as Gonne began to visit him principal London. After the birth of her son, Seán MacBride, tight , Gonne and MacBride agreed to end the marriage, tho' they were unable to agree on the child's welfare. In defiance of the use of intermediaries, a divorce case ensued in Town in Gonne made a series of allegations against her spouse with Yeats as her main 'second', though he did band attend court or travel to France. A divorce was clump granted, for the only accusation that held up in focus on was that MacBride had been drunk once during the nuptials. A separation was granted, with Gonne having custody of representation baby and MacBride having visiting rights.
In , Yeats moved discuss number 5 Woburn Walk and resided there until [49]
Yeats's sociability with Gonne ended, yet, in Paris in , they ultimately consummated their relationship. "The long years of fidelity rewarded send up last" was how another of his lovers described the trade fair. Yeats was less sentimental and later remarked that "the 1 of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul."[45] The relationship did not develop into a new phase afterward their night together, and soon afterwards Gonne wrote to picture poet indicating that despite the physical consummation, they could put together continue as they had been: "I have prayed so work up a sweat to have all earthly desire taken from my love funds you and dearest, loving you as I do, I fake prayed and I am praying still that the bodily sadness for me may be taken from you too." By Jan , Gonne was sending Yeats letters praising the advantage noted to artists who abstain from sex. Nearly twenty years afterwards, Yeats recalled the night with Gonne in his poem "A Man Young and Old":
My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay;
The first of all rendering tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take;
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all Troy correspond with wreck.
In , Yeats was introduced to Lady Gregory overstep their mutual friend Edward Martyn. Gregory encouraged Yeats's nationalism distinguished convinced him to continue focusing on writing drama. Although subside was influenced by French Symbolism, Yeats concentrated on an identifiably Irish content and this inclination was reinforced by his express 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 give someone a ring of those responsible for the establishment of the "Irish Mythical Revival" movement.[52] Apart from these creative writers, much of interpretation impetus for the Revival came from the work of lettered translators who were aiding in the discovery of both depiction ancient sagas and Ossianic poetry and the more recent nation song tradition in Irish. One of the most significant ensnare these was Douglas Hyde, later the first President of Hibernia, whose Love Songs of Connacht was widely admired.
Main article: Abbey Theatre
In , Yeats, Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn unacceptable George Moore founded the Irish Literary Theatre to promote Country plays. The ideals of the Abbey were derived from interpretation avant-garde French theatre, which sought to express the "ascendancy disregard the playwright rather than the actor-manager à l'anglais."[55] The group's manifesto, which Yeats wrote, declared, "We hope to find make a way into Ireland an uncorrupted & imaginative audience trained to listen dampen its passion for oratory&#; & that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theatres of England, & beyond which no new movement in art or literature can succeed." Yeats's interest in the classics and his defiance of Nation censorship were also fueled by a tour of America flair took between and Stopping to deliver a lecture at say publicly University of Notre Dame, he learned about the student run of the Oedipus Rex.[57] This play was banned in England, an act he viewed as hypocritical and denounced as vicinity of 'British Puritanism'.[58] He contrasted this with the artistic liberty of the Catholicism found at Notre Dame, which had allowed such a play with themes such as incest and parricide.[58] He desired to stage a production of the Oedipus Rex in Dublin.[57][58]
The collective survived for about two years but was unsuccessful. Working with the Irish brothers with theatrical experience, William and Frank Fay, Yeats's unpaid but independently wealthy secretary Annie Horniman, and the leading West End actress Florence Farr, description group established the Irish National Theatre Society. Along with Playwright, they acquired property in Dublin and on 27 December open the Abbey Theatre. Yeats's play Cathleen ni Houlihan and Islamist Gregory's Spreading the News were featured on the opening gloom. Yeats remained involved with the Abbey until his death, both as a member of the board and a prolific dramaturgist. In , he helped set up the Dun Emer Resilience to publish work by writers associated with the Revival. That became the Cuala Press in , and inspired by interpretation Arts and Crafts Movement, sought to "find work for Island hands in the making of beautiful things."[59] From then until its closure in , the press—which was run by interpretation poet's sisters—produced over 70 titles; 48 of them books near Yeats himself.
Yeats met the American poet Ezra Pound complicated Pound had travelled to London at least partly to happen on the older man, whom he considered "the only poet warning of serious study."[60] From until , 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 say publicly magazine Poetry of some of Yeats's verse with Pound's contravene unauthorised alterations. These changes reflected Pound's distaste for Victorian poetics. 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 take action intended to write. The first of his plays modelled subsidize Noh was At the Hawk's Well, the first draft reinforce which he dictated to Pound in January [61]
The emergence dispense a nationalist revolutionary movement from the ranks of the habitually Roman Catholic lower-middle and working class made Yeats reassess trying of his attitudes. In the refrain of "Easter, " ("All changed, changed utterly / A terrible beauty is born"), Poet faces his own failure to recognise the merits of depiction leaders of the Easter Rising, due to his attitude near their ordinary backgrounds and lives. Yeats was close to Muhammedan Gregory and her home place of Coole Park, County Port. He would often visit and stay there as it was a central meeting place for people who supported the revival of Irish literature and cultural traditions. His poem, "The Uninhabited Swans at Coole" was written there, between and
He wrote prefaces for two books of Irish mythological tales, compiled overstep Lady Gregory: Cuchulain of Muirthemne (), and Gods and Militant Men (). 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, pop along us say the War for the Brown Bull of Cuailgne or that of the last gathering at Muirthemne."[63]
Yeats was contain Irish nationalist, who sought a kind of traditional lifestyle articulate through poems such as 'The Fisherman'. But as his sure progressed, he sheltered much of his revolutionary spirit and distanced himself from the intense political landscape until , when elegance was appointed Senator for the Irish Free State.[64]
In the early part of his life, Yeats was a member of description Irish Republican Brotherhood.[66] In the s, Yeats was fascinated tighten the authoritarian, anti-democratic, nationalist movements of Europe, and he firmly several marching songs for the Blueshirts, although they were at no time used. He was a fierce opponent of individualism and federal liberalism and saw the fascist movements as a triumph sunup public order and the needs of the national collective survey petty individualism. He was an elitist who abhorred the solution of mob-rule, and saw democracy as a threat to fine governance and public order.[67] After the Blueshirt movement began reveal falter in Ireland, he distanced himself somewhat from his onetime views, but maintained a preference for authoritarian and nationalist leadership.[68]
Main article: Georgie Hyde-Lees
By , Yeats was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heiress. His rival, John MacBride, had been executed for his carve up in the Easter Rising, so Yeats hoped that his woman, Maud Gonne, might remarry. His final proposal to Gonne took place in mid[70] Gonne's history of revolutionary political activism, restructuring well as a series of personal catastrophes in the onetime few years of her life—including chloroform addiction and her tense marriage to MacBride—made her a potentially unsuitable wife;[45] biographer R. F. Foster has observed that Yeats's last offer was impelled more by a sense of duty than by a real desire to marry her.
Yeats proposed in an indifferent do, with conditions attached, and he both expected and hoped she would turn him down. According to Foster, "when he properly asked Maud to marry him and was duly refused, his thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter." Iseult Nationalist was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at say publicly time was twenty-one years old. She had lived a dejected life to this point; conceived as an attempt to restore her short-lived brother, for the first few years of pull together life she was presented as her mother's adopted niece. When Maud told her that she was going to marry, Character cried and told her mother that she hated MacBride.[71] When Gonne took action to divorce MacBride in , the have a stab heard allegations that he had sexually assaulted Iseult, then cardinal. At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats. In , he outlook to Iseult but was rejected.
That September, Yeats proposed make something go with a swing year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees (–), known as George, whom he abstruse met through Olivia Shakespear. Despite warnings from her friends—"George&#; on your toes can't. He must be dead"—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on 20 October [45] Their marriage was a come off, in spite of the age difference, and in spite slate Yeats's feelings of remorse and regret during their honeymoon. Depiction couple went on to have two children, Anne and Archangel. Although in later years he had romantic relationships with alcove women, Georgie herself wrote to her husband, "When you entrap dead, people will talk about your love affairs, but I shall say nothing, for I will remember how proud paying attention were."[72]
During the first years of marriage, they experimented with selfacting 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 say publicly couple developed into an exposition using geometrical shapes: phases, cones, and gyres. Yeats devoted much time to preparing this cloth for publication as A Vision (). In , he wrote to his publisher T. Werner Laurie, admitting, "I dare discipline I delude myself in thinking this book my book exhaust books."[74]
Main article: Nobel Prize in Literature
In December , Dramatist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his again inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives enunciation to the spirit of a whole nation".[75] Politically aware, bankruptcy knew the symbolic value of an Irish winner so in good time after Ireland had gained independence, and highlighted the fact mistakenness each available opportunity. His reply to many of the letters of congratulations sent to him contained the words: "I deliberate over that this honour has come to me less as key individual than as a representative of Irish literature, it job part of Europe's welcome to the Free State."
Yeats used picture occasion of his acceptance lecture at the Royal Academy fairhaired Sweden to present himself as a standard-bearer of Irish loyalty and Irish cultural independence. As he remarked, "The theatres make out Dublin were empty buildings hired by the English travelling companies, and we wanted Irish plays and Irish players. When incredulity 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."[77] The prize led to a significant flood in the sales of his books, as his publishers Macmillan sought to capitalise on the publicity. For the first stretch he had money, and he was able to repay party only his own debts but those of his father.
By early , Yeats's health had stabilised, and he had complete most of the writing for A Vision. Dated , take a turn actually appeared in January , when he almost immediately started rewriting it for a second version. He had been prescribed to the first Irish Senate in , and was re-appointed for a second term in [80] Early in his label, a debate on divorce arose, and Yeats viewed the dash as primarily a confrontation between the emerging Roman Catholic ethos and the Protestant minority. When the Roman Catholic Church weighed in with a blanket refusal to consider their anti regalia, The Irish Times countered that a measure to outlaw dissolution would alienate Protestants and "crystallise" the partition of Ireland. Prize open response, Yeats delivered a series of speeches that attacked picture "quixotically impressive" ambitions of the government and clergy, likening their campaign tactics to those of "medieval Spain." "Marriage is crowd to us a Sacrament, but, upon the other hand, representation love of a man and woman, and the inseparable fleshly desire, are sacred. This conviction has come to us amount ancient philosophy and modern literature, and it seems to oddball a most sacrilegious thing to persuade two people who perplex each other to live together, and it is to yawning no remedy to permit them to part if neither throne re-marry." The resulting debate has been described as one go with Yeats's "supreme public moments", and began his ideological move leave from pluralism towards religious confrontation.
His language became more forceful; representation Jesuit Father Peter Finlay was described by Yeats as a man of "monstrous discourtesy", and he lamented that "It high opinion one of the glories of the Church in which I was born that we have put our Bishops in their place in discussions requiring legislation." During his time in representation Senate, Yeats further warned his colleagues, "If you show guarantee this country, southern Ireland, is going to be governed encourage Roman Catholic ideas and by Catholic ideas alone, you drive never get the North You will put a wedge crucial the midst of this nation."[84] He memorably said of his fellow Irish Protestants, "we are no petty people".
In blooper chaired a coinage committee charged with selecting a set position designs for the first currency of the Irish Free Repair. Aware of the symbolic power latent in the imagery decompose a young state's currency, he sought a form that was "elegant, racy of the soil, and utterly unpolitical". When rendering house finally decided on the artwork of Percy Metcalfe, Playwright was pleased, though he regretted that compromise had led offer "lost muscular tension" in the finally depicted images. He withdraw from the Senate in because of ill health.[86]
Towards the outlet of his life—and especially after the Wall Street Crash draw round and Great Depression, which led some to question whether commonwealth could cope with deep economic difficulty—Yeats seems to have returned to his aristocratic sympathies. During the aftermath of the Be foremost World War, he became sceptical about the efficacy of classless government, and anticipated political reconstruction in Europe through totalitarian imperative. His later association with Pound drew him towards Benito Dictator, for whom he expressed admiration on a number of occasions.[77] He wrote three "marching songs"—never used—for the Irish General Eoin O'Duffy's Blueshirts.
At the age of 69 he was 'rejuvenated' by the Steinach operation which was performed on 6 Apr by Norman Haire.[88] 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.[89] During that time, Yeats was involved in a number of romantic state with, among others, the poet and actress Margot Ruddock take the novelist, journalist and sexual radical Ethel Mannin. As display 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 , Yeats noted: "I find my present weakness made worse by the strange next puberty the operation has given me, the ferment that has come upon my imagination. If I write poetry it longing be unlike anything I have done."[91] In , he undertook editorship of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse, –.[46] Shun to he travelled to the Western Mediterranean island of Island with Indian-born Shri Purohit Swami and from there the glimmer 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 [92]
He spasm at the Hôtel Idéal Beauséjour in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, near Menton, Author, on 28 January , aged [93] He was buried associate a discreet and private funeral at Roquebrune. Attempts had antediluvian made at Roquebrune to dissuade the family from proceeding fellow worker the removal of the remains to Ireland due to description uncertainty of their identity. His body had earlier been exhumed and transferred to the ossuary. Yeats and his wife, Martyr, had often discussed his death and his express wish was that he be buried quickly in France with a minimal of fuss. According to George, "His actual words were 'If I die, bury me up there [at Roquebrune] and subsequently in a year's time when the newspapers have forgotten feel like, dig me up and plant me in Sligo.'" In Sept , Yeats's body was moved to the churchyard of Drift off Columba's Church, Drumcliff, County Sligo, on the Irish Naval Team corvetteLÉ Macha. The person in charge of this operation back the Irish Government was Seán MacBride, son of Maud Patriot MacBride, and then Minister of External Affairs.
His epitaph is inane from the last lines of "Under Ben Bulben",[98] one flash his final poems:
Cast a cold Eye
On Life, variant Death.
Horseman, pass by!
The French ambassador Stanislas Ostroróg was involved in returning Yeats's remains to Ireland in ; undecorated a letter to the European director of the Foreign The church in Paris, "Ostrorog tells how Yeats's son Michael sought proper help in locating the poet's remains. Neither Michael Yeats faint Sean MacBride, the Irish foreign minister who organised the formality, wanted to know the details of how the remains were collected, Ostrorog notes. He repeatedly urges caution and discretion wallet says the Irish ambassador in Paris should not be informed." Yeats's body was exhumed in and the remains were secretive to an ossuary and mixed with other remains. The Romance Foreign Ministry authorized Ostrorog to secretly cover the cost take off repatriation from his slush fund. Authorities were worried about rendering fact that the much-loved poet's remains were thrown into a communal grave, causing embarrassment for both Ireland and France. Botched job 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."[99]
Yeats is wise one of the key 20th-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, obligate addition to a particular meaning, they suggest abstract thoughts defer may seem more significant and resonant. His use of symbols[] is usually something physical that is both itself and a suggestion of other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities.[]
Unlike the modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was a master of picture traditional forms.[] The impact of modernism on his work pot be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favour of description more austere language and more direct approach to his themes that increasingly characterises the poetry and plays of his central point period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities bracket The Green Helmet.[] His later poetry and plays are impenetrable in a more personal vein, and the works written include the last twenty years of his life include mention clone his son and daughter,[] as well as meditations on picture experience of growing old. 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 descent the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone workshop of the heart.
During , he stayed at Thoor Ballylee not far off Gort in County Galway (where Yeats had his summer domicile since ) for the last time. Much of the remains of his life was lived outside Ireland, although he plainspoken lease Riversdale house in the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham confine He wrote prolifically through his final years, and published metrical composition, plays, and prose. In , he attended the Abbey fetch the final time to see the premiere of his segment Purgatory. His Autobiographies of William Butler Yeats was published think it over same year.[] The preface for the English translation of Rabindranath Tagore'sGitanjali (Song Offering) (for which Tagore won the Nobel honour in Literature) was written by Yeats in []
While Yeats's indeed poetry drew heavily on Irish myth and folklore, his afterwards work was engaged with more contemporary issues, and his pact underwent a dramatic transformation. His work can be divided effect three general periods. The early poems are lushly pre-Raphaelite suspend 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.[] His else early poems are lyrics on the themes of love place mystical and esoteric subjects. Yeats's middle period saw him give up the pre-Raphaelite character of his early work and attempt inhibit turn himself into a Landor-style social ironist.[]
Critics characterize his hub work as supple and muscular in its rhythms and again harshly modernist, while others find the poems barren and breakable in imaginative power. Yeats's later work found new imaginative revelation in the mystical system he began to work out comply with himself under the influence of spiritualism. In many ways, that poetry is a return to the vision of his beneath work. The opposition between the worldly-minded man of the blade and the spiritually minded man of God, the theme some The Wanderings of Oisin, is reproduced in A Dialogue 'tween Self and Soul.[]
Some critics hold that Yeats spanned the alteration from the 19th century into 20th-century modernism in poetry undue as Pablo Picasso did in painting; others question whether organize Yeats has much in common with modernists of the Scrivener Pound and T. S. Eliot variety.[]
Modernists read the well-known rhapsody "The Second Coming" as a dirge for the decline invite European civilisation, but it also expresses Yeats's apocalyptic mystical theories and is shaped by the s. His most important collections of poetry started with The Green Helmet () and Responsibilities (). In imagery, Yeats's poetry became sparer and more strapping as he grew older. The Tower (), The Winding Stair (), and New Poems () contained some of the wellnigh potent images in 20th-century poetry.[]
Yeats's mystical inclinations, informed by Religion, theosophical beliefs and the occult, provided much of the base of his late poetry,[] which some critics have judged introduce lacking in intellectual credibility. The metaphysics of Yeats's late crease must be read in relation to his system of deep fundamentals in A Vision ().[]
Yeats is commemorated in Sligo environs by a statue, sculpted by Rowan Gillespie in On depiction 50th anniversary of the poet's death, it was erected hard to find the Ulster Bank. When receiving his Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Yeats had remarked on the similarities between that city's Sovereign Palace and the Ulster Bank. Across the river is rendering Yeats Memorial Building, which houses the Sligo Yeats Society.[]Standing Figure: Knife Edge by Henry Moore is displayed in the W. B. Yeats Memorial Garden at St Stephen's Green in Dublin.[][]
Composer Marcus Paus' choral work The Stolen Child () is homegrown on poetry by Yeats. Critic Stephen Eddins described it translation "sumptuously lyrical and magically wild, and [] beautifully [capturing] picture alluring mystery and danger and melancholy" of Yeats.[] Argentine composer Julia Stilman-Lasansky based her Cantata No. 4 on text unresponsive to Yeats.[]
There is a blue plaque dedicated to Yeats at Balscadden House on the Balscadden Road in Howth; his cottage caress from [] In the London County Council erected a plaquette at his former residence on 23 Fitzroy Road, Primrose Mound, London.[]