William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats: An Irish Literary Pioneer
Working Draft: Still Under Construction

      That an uneducated, illiterate Irish child would blossom into a prolific literary figure is irony at its finest. William Butler Yeats entered the world in the fine Irish city of Dublin as the child of John B. Yeats and Susan Pollexfen. John was more interested in “Willie” (as he was referred to by John) become a robust, athletic young boy than in his intellectual development and schooling. However, his father would read to Willie on a regular basis, usually from the compositions of Walter Scott, and would recall to young Willie the plots of Balzac novels, “which do not sound very suitable at Willie’s age” (Malins 11). A few of Willie’s aunts made a concerted effort to teach the boy to read, and John continued to attempt success with Willie in this department, but had little patience for it, giving up readily. On one occasion, however, when John returned from one of his numerous trips to London, he found out that Willie had been taught to sing at a “dame’s school.” The song was as follows:

“Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean,
And the pleasant hand” (Malin 13).

     From the moment his father heard this, Willie was prohibited from continuing his schooling, and it was hence that his formal education halted for a period. Grim as this may seem for a boy who would aspire to be a magnificent poet and playwright, these days were actually joyful for Willie, who had a more turbulent road ahead.
     Yeats father, a lawyer turned portrait painter, married William’s mother, the daughter of a wealthy Sligo (Ireland) family. The Yeats family followed his father’s job to Bedford Park, Cheswick, in London(1867). It was here that Yeats entered “the chilled Victorian portals” of the Godolphin School in Hammersmith (1877) and enrolled for four years (Malins 13). The family returned to Ireland, where Yeats, 15, attended Erasmus Smith High School in Dublin, followed by a stint at the Metropolitan School of Art (1884 to 1886). When he returned to Dublin, Yeats’ intent was to study painting, but he quickly became infatuated by poetry, as his first poems were published in the Dublin University Review (1885).
     Maud Gonne, a young heiress who devoted herself to the Irish nationalist movement, was an admirer of one of Yeats’ first epic poems, “The Isle of Statues,” so she sought out his acquaintance. When they met in 1889, Yeats almost immediately became obsessed with Gonne and, though they never married (Yeats did, however, propose to her and her daughter several times), she had a lasting effect on both his life and his poetry.
     Yeats meets Lady Gregory (1896), a patron who would encourage his nationalism and his continuance in writing drama, but it was some time before e met the next woman of key influence upon the poet, his future wife, Georgia Hyde-Lees (October 1917).
     Yeats’ mother died (1900), and then his father (1922), falling only a year and a half short of seeing his son receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (December 1923). Yeats died at Cap Martin in southern France (28 January 1939), was buried in nearby Roquebrune, but Yeats’ remain were re-interred at Drumcliff, Sligo near his home in Ireland (1948).
     Poetry was Yeats’ first love, though he is also an accomplished and well known playwright. His career began with epic poems, but he moved on after writing only two: “The Isle of Statues” and “The Wanderings of Oisin.” Early on, Yeats’ work focuses on several central themes, including love or mystical or esoteric subjects, and, though he never learned Gaelic, Irish mythology and folklore played a strong influential role early in Yeats’ career. The middle of Yeats’ career abandoned the earlier themes he pursued and he became a social ironist, while his late works drew from “inspiration in the mystical system he began to work out for himself under the influence of spiritualism” (William http://www.fact-index.com). In his later works, Yeats almost appears to return to the concepts of his earlier works, and in his plays he also begins to experiment with masks, dance, and music and is heavily influenced by Japanese “Noh” plays. His greatest volumes of poetry include “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1919), “Michael Robartes and the Dancer” (1921), “The Tower” (1928), “The Winding Stair and Other Poems” (1933), and “Last Poems and Plays” (1940). “The Countless Cathleen” (1892), “The Land of Heart’s Desire” (1894), “Cathleen ni Houlihan” (1902), “The King’s Threshold” (1904), and “Deirdre” (1907) are counted among his greatest dramas as a playwright.
     Yeats’ was befriended by a circle of authors during his lifetime, though some did disagree with his ideals and his works. Among the high company he held was Ezra Pound, who served as his secretary (1913), Oscar Wilde, John Millington Synge, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf. T.S. Eliot was perhaps the most critical of Yeats’ writings, and the two were never on great terms. Yeats criticized the technicalities and the structure of T.S. Eliot’s works, and Eliot almost always returned the favor. Yeats was, for the most part though, well received by his fellow writers and literary critics of the day.
     Yeats’ poetry and drama was so widely appreciated that it put Ireland on the map artistically.
     Yeats only improved with age, diving headfirst into new territory as he grew older, constantly inovating as a writer. Poet Louise Bogan said that Yeats had “this intellectual energy, this ‘whirling’ yet deeply intuitive and ordered mind, with its balancing a streak of common sense.” Bogan noted that Yeats incorporated his entire personality into his writing, able to provide “anger and harshness, as well as tenderness.”
     Current literary critics view Yeats with reverence, respect, and wonder. Some critics, however, believe Yeats to be an incapable and incompetent writer. Yeats was fascinated by the mystery to the universe, and he devoted much of his work to this. These aspects of Yeats, combined with his devotion to breaking conventional though, make Yeats a most intriguing figure for modern critics, one whose work cannot be fully comprehended since his intent is often mystical.
     His Irish homeland torn by political strife, Yeats spoke through his poems and plays, and in his writings achieved fame.