ࡱ> @B?%` LbjbjNN 0(,,Lvvvv/y/{/{/{/{/{/{/$0h3///y/y/ pѐ]vy//0/3@33d\0///   The Book of Irish Writers, Chapter 34 - W.B. Yeats, 1865-1939 To state that W. B. Yeats is Irelands greatest poet is still to sell him short. He was also a dramatist, essayist, autobiographer, and editor. He founded and joined numerous mystical, political and literary societies, one of which led to the foundation of the Abbey Theatre, the first national theatre in the English-speaking world. Although he increasingly presented himself as aristocratic, Yeats was born in suburban Dublin in 1865. Family was important not just in shaping Yeats, but also because it gave him a sense of connection: I am delighted with all that joins my life to those who had power in Ireland His father, John Butler Yeats, was a barrister, but in 1867 when Yeats was 2 - he gave up the law and moved the family to London to pursue his ambitions as a painter. Yeats moved between London and Dublin for the rest of his life. Yeatss mother, Susan, came from a wealthy Sligo merchant family, the Pollexfens - and for much of his childhood and youth Yeats spent long periods with his grandparents in Sligo. For Yeats his father represented the world of art and education, while his mother represented the natural world and oral traditions: She read no books, but would tell stories that Homer might have told As a writer, his aim was to unite both worlds. By the age of 20, he had begun to publish poetry and developed his life-long interest in mysticism. While self-consciously posing as a dreamy young poet, Yeats also drew on his more practical, maternal Pollexfen side to establish not just himself as a poet - but an entire culture for Ireland. In essays and anthologies he drew together a literary tradition which he and others could use. The Wanderings of Oisin, his first collection, published when he was 24, deliberately drew on old Irish tales. Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there, When we followed a deer with our baying hounds 1889 was also the year in which he met Maud Gonne. While his artistic side pined for Gonne for nearly thirty years, his practical side wrote many beautiful poems of unrequited love: I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. During the 1890s, Yeats gained a reputation as a poet and brought together many people who shared his aims, notably Lady Gregory and J.M. Synge. In The Celtic Twilight of 1893, Yeats published supernatural tales hed collected in Sligo. It affirms his belief that an ancient culture existed among the peasantry. Celtic was a deliberately chosen term that everyone in Ireland - regardless of politics or religion - could feel comfortable with. Yeats was striving once more for unity. By 1904, and not yet 40, Yeats had written at least one poem that almost everyone knows, The Lake Isle of Inisfree: I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: He had also published more than 20 books of poetry, plays, essays and stories. He was the central figure of the Irish Literary Revival. And he had founded the Abbey Theatre. In the middle period of his career his poetry confronted the real rather than romantic Ireland. These were years of conflict. The riots caused by Synges provocative Playboy of the Western World in 1907 and Dublins refusal to accept a collection of modern paintings in 1913, convinced Yeats that the philistines were winning: Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave. The Easter Rising seemed like another setback to his aims, but in his great commemorative poem, Easter 1916, he sees it as his duty: To murmur name upon name He would continue to do this in many poems commemorating friends. In 1923 he won the Nobel Prize and his acceptance speech was a manifesto for the development of culture in newly independent Ireland. His role as a public figure included a period as a senator. In 1925 he attacked the prohibition of divorce as an infringement of the rights of Protestants: We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe ... We have created the most of the modern literature of this country. This signaled the final and most complex period of his writing. He completed a cycle of plays about Cuchulain and his poetry celebrated the Traditional sanctity and loveliness of aristocracy. The sense of ceremony in the poems of these years is often accompanied by what he called noble rage. This was a form of energy that kept him working for the Ireland that he thought should exist right up until his death in 1939 when he was 74. Yeats may well have invented the Ireland that we know; he certainly intended to. ?o [  ]eBS@S p]agh3KLM=IJҮҠҮ҇ hFZph#hFZphFZp>*OJQJ^JmH sH hFZphFZp6OJQJ^J#hFZphFZp5OJQJ^JmH sH #hFZphFZp6OJQJ^JmH sH  hFZphFZpOJQJ^JmH sH hFZphFZpOJQJ^JhFZphFZp5>*OJQJ^J1?@ Z [ I J   K L sABkRS} 7]^7gdFZp]gdFZpL}<= 7pq gh23L $7^7a$gdFZp 7]^7gdFZp71$7$8$H$^7gdFZpgdFZp]gdFZp 7]^7gdFZpLM=>KLgdFZp]gd$a$gdFZp 7]^7gdFZp]gdFZpJKL hFZphN hhFZpOJQJ^JmH sH .:pFZp|. 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C' AThe Book of Irish Writers, Chapter 31 - Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900 Title  !"#$%&'()*+,-.012345689:;<=>ARoot Entry F`]C1Table3WordDocument0(SummaryInformation(/DocumentSummaryInformation87CompObjq  FMicrosoft Office Word Document MSWordDocWord.Document.89q