W. B. YEATS AND HIS PART IN THE CELTIC REVIVAL
The prize of 1923 has been awarded:
Yeats, William Butler, born 1865: “for his consistently emotional
poetry, which in the strictest artistic form expresses a people’s
spirit.”[158]
In the book, _Ideals in Ireland_, edited by Lady Gregory (London and
New York, 1901), the editor speaks of the various contributors to this
revival of letters including George Moore, Æ (George Russell), Douglas
Hyde and W. B. Yeats as “candle-stick makers.” Unlike the “butcher and
the baker,” who have their daily newspaper and appointed tasks that are
appreciated, this type of worker, who makes and holds the candle, is
not so well served. He is the _idealist_ who finds himself, too often,
ignored or maligned; he searches out the “dark places of the earth”;
he is the seer, seeking for truth, aspiration, idealism. This analogy
holds good for many of the winners of the Nobel prizes--Björnson,
Mistral, Tagore, Maeterlinck, Selma Lagerlöf, Heidenstam, Rolland. By
universal consent of readers the name of W. B. Yeats would be added to
this list, the winner of 1923. With delicate imagery Lady Gregory has
expressed the subtle gift of this Irish poet-dramatist, his ability to
catch “the will o’ the wisp fire, miscalled evanescent,” which is the
mark of universal idealism. In his paper, contributed to this book,
_Ideals in Ireland_, Mr. Yeats writes a brief “History of the Literary
Movement” in his country and asks whether this revival of folklore and
poetry of the soil, which is called the Celtic revival, will become a
part of the intellectual and social development of Ireland. These words
were written in 1899; the quarter century since then has answered the
question in the affirmative and has accorded to Mr. Yeats a large share
in this appreciation of simple beauty, love, and chivalry. The names of
Donn Byrne and Padraic Colum, James Stephens and Winifred Letts, Lord
Dunsany and St. John Ervine, suggest some of the poets and playwrights,
“the candle-holders,” who have followed the inspiring leadership of
Lady Gregory, John Synge, Dr. Douglas Hyde, and W. B. Yeats, weaving
their romances and poems about old ballads and folklore of the
“sage-cycles” of Irish literary history. In this Gaelic literature are
songs of battles and of love, legends of saints and heroes, that have
the simplicity and musical vigor of old Greek odes and plays.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by Bain News Service_
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS]
As dramatist, certain critics will aver, with reason, that Synge was
greater than Mr. Yeats; as researcher among the peasantry for folk
tales and forgotten poetry, Lady Gregory and Dr. Douglas Hyde may
deserve higher rank. In the writings of Mr. Yeats, however--lyrics,
ballads, and plays--there are three distinctive qualities: lyrical
beauty, mystical strains, blended wistfulness, and merriment. These
poetic distinctions are found in many of his ballads, notably in “The
Host of the Air,” “The Stolen Child,” and “The Fiddler of Dooney”; they
form the literary warp of such plays as _The Land of Heart’s Desire_,
_The Hour-Glass_, and _On Baile’s Strand_. In every edition of his
plays Mr. Yeats has emphasized his indebtedness to Lady Gregory for
assistance as well as inspiration. In his Notes to _Plays in Prose and
Verse_ (New York, 1924) he acknowledges the sources of “the greater
number of his stories,” as those found in Lady Gregory’s _Gods and
Fighting Men_ and _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_. He affirms that these
two books have made the legendary tales of Ireland as familiar as
are the stories of Sir Arthur and his Knights. Again, he records his
gratitude to Lady Gregory for introducing him to firesides where he
might get “the true countenance of country life.” A third form of
helpfulness was the skill of this friend in her mastery of dialect and
her generous work in revising the lines of Mr. Yeats in this detail
of form. His own ability to evoke music and poetry from dreams and
traditions, and to portray the simple, domestic incidents of peasant
life, was coördinated with Lady Gregory’s aspiration and background of
folklore.
The father of William Butler Yeats was a well-known artist, John Butler
Yeats, R.H.A. The son, named for his paternal grandfather, was born
at Sandymount, Dublin, June 15, 1865. His father’s family had been
identified with the church; the grandfather of the poet was Rector of
Tullylish Down. His mother’s father was a merchant and shipowner at
Sligo. The boy passed much time with these grandparents in the old
town by the sea. When he was of school age, he was living with his
parents in London and went to the Godolphin School, Hammersmith. At
fifteen he returned to Dublin, attending the Erasmus Smith School and
living with his relatives at Sligo. Memories of these early days are
interwoven with legends and fancies in _The Celtic Twilight_, and the
novel of autobiographical trend, _John Sherman_, which appeared under
the pseudonym of “Gauconagh.” Like his hero of this tale, Yeats was
homesick in London and longed to return to the environment of Sligo (or
Ballah), to the familiar streets, the rows of tumble-down cottages
with thatched roofs, the wharves covered with grass and the walls of
the garden where, it was said, the gardener used to see the ghost of
the former owner in the form of a rabbit.[159] In his poems he recalled
the waves dashing upon the cliffs, the island of Innisfree, and the
distant hills at sunset.
His father hoped he would become an artist and so continue the family
profession; the youth studied art for a brief time but he was restless
and unproductive. He preferred to browse in libraries, reading
translations--or making them--from Gaelic tales and poems. Even more he
liked to sit by the turf fires in old Connaught and listen to the folk
tales of the peasantry. The first poem in his collection of 1906, is
addressed “To Some I Have Talked With By the Fire.” Here he saw again,
in reverie, the ghostly companions and heard the weird tales of
the dark folk who lived in souls
Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees.
When he was nineteen his first poem, “The Island of Statues,” was
published in the _Dublin University Review_. With other young men at
the University he became interested in a Brahmin, who was in London;
on their invitation he came to Dublin to teach his philosophy. This
yearning towards the occult was natural for a temperament like that
of Yeats. He recalled that they fed the Brahmin a plate of rice or an
apple every day and listened to his expositions.
Mrs. Katherine Tynan Hinkson, a friend of Yeats in young manhood
and later life, in her _Twenty-Five Years; Reminiscences_ has given
interesting stories of his zest in reciting his poems, even in the
middle of the night and of his dreamy, gentle nature. In 1889, _The
Wanderings of Oison_ established the fame of the young Irish lyrist.
Besides the title-poem here were “The Stolen Child” and “The Madness
of King Goll.” Influences of Tom Moore were traceable in a poem, with
lilting rhymes, like “Down by the Salley Gardens,” pictorial and
sentimental. In London, after the poems were published, Yeats was
still homesick, although he made congenial friends at the Cheshire
Cheese--Arthur Symons, Lionel Johnson, and W. E. Henley, who obtained
for him a commission to write some topics about Ireland for Chambers’
_Encyclopedia_. His interest was strong in varied “cults” and forms of
symbolism which he revealed in his poems, _The Wind Among the Reeds_,
and the essays, _Ideas of Good and Evil_.
Mr. Yeats is both lyrist and playwright; to the latter type of writing
he owes his recognition by students of the drama in every country;
the two qualities are interwoven in his plays. George Moore, Lady
Gregory, Forrest Reid, his critic and biographer, and others have
stressed his large part in the success, as well as the inception, of
the Abbey Theatre, “a gift of immense and national importance upon
Ireland.”[160] One would not minimize the work of Lady Gregory and
Douglas Hyde, of William Fay and Florence Farr and Miss Horniman, who
contributed as actors, playwrights, and financial supporters. The
assurance of this theater for performance of his plays gave incentive
to the dramatic impulse of Yeats. He created new plots and utilized
folk tales interwoven with fantasy and poetry. With the aid of Lady
Gregory and Edward Martyn, he won success with plays like _The Pot of
Broth_, _Cathleen ni Hoolihan_, _The King’s Threshold_, _The Land of
Heart’s Desire_, _Deirdre_ and _The Hour-Glass_. This last play, first
in prose, later in verse, is a masterpiece of the morality-play; the
Wise Man, faced with death within an hour, goes desperately in search
for “one person who believes in God and Heaven,” so that he may go
to Paradise. Only in Teague, the fool, who has learned his lessons,
_not_ in the schools of the Wise Men but in the _woods_, can he find
such assurance. In later versions of this play the author introduced a
strange Gaelic ballad.
In his Notes to the volume of _Plays in Prose and Verse_, recently
reissued (New York, 1924), Mr. Yeats gives credit for the first use
of correct dialect to Synge’s _Riders to the Sea_ and Lady Gregory’s
_Spreading the News_. In this same Note he declares that his words
“never flow freely but when people speak in verse”: it need not be
rhymed verse, for some of the finest lines in _Deirdre_ and _The
King’s Threshold_ are _rhythmical_ but not in rhyme. In _The Land of
Heart’s Desire_ the poet-playwright’s words all “flow freely.” This
is a general favorite among his plays with professionals and amateurs
upon the stage. Forrest Reid may be extreme in praise when he calls
it “the most beautiful thing that has been done in our time,” for it
invites comparison with _The Sunken Bell_, _Peter Pan_, and _The Blue
Bird_ among poetic, fanciful plays. It lingers in memory, however, as
pictorial and dramatic, simple and beautiful in May Eve legends and
“fairy spell,” in the natural characters, well contrasted, of Maire
Bruin and her husband, Shawn, of Father Hart and the old parents by the
fireside. That is an exquisite couplet that Maire speaks to her sturdy
husband, when the fairy calls,
O you are the great door-post of this house,
And I the red nasturtium climbing up.[161]
_The Shadowy Waters_ is another symbolic play, with an undertone of
idealism. Begun when Yeats was young, it changed form often before the
poet was satisfied. Into this he has introduced varied types--the magic
harpist, the sailors, and Dectora, the restless, craving woman. The
king, Forgel, who cares not for gold or fame, voices some tenets of the
author’s creed in the lines:
All would be well
Could we but give us wholly to the dreams,
And get into their world that to the sense
Is shadow, and not linger wretchedly
Among substantial things; for it is dreams
That lift us to the flowing, changing world
That the heart longs for.[162]
Mr. Yeats has ever been a dreamer-poet; he said once that, if our
dreams could all come true, there might not be any poetry to be
written; so we are told by his biographer, Forrest Reid. Many of
his dreams are embodied in his lyrics, his plays, his short stories
and sketches, and his essays, _Ideas of Good and Evil_. _The Celtic
Twilight_ and _The Secret Rose_ contain some of his most fanciful,
poetic tales; “The Binding of the Hair” is an example of his highest
art in this form. Dreams of love and service are found in the volumes
of poems, like _The Wind Among the Reeds_, _In the Seven Woods_,
_The Wild Swans at Coole_, and _Responsibilities_. These separate
collections are now appearing in the uniform edition of his _Works_
(Macmillan). Like Keats and William Blake, Mr. Yeats has been
criticized for the lack of human contacts; he has been accused of
more interest in and sympathy with waves and winds, with trees and
fairy-lore than with deep human emotions. His absorption emotionally
seems to be in lyrical and spiritual rhapsodies. In reading a love
lyric, like “A Poet to His Beloved,” one feels that the dreams and
the words are more ardent than the passion of love. One of the best
interpretive essays ever written upon Shelley is found in _Ideas of
Good and Evil_; these two poets were alike in many moods, in their
delicate, elusive fancies. In the exquisite diction of some of his
lines, and the fluctuating moods that affect his themes and modes of
expression, Mr. Yeats seems to me comparable to Thomas Bailey Aldrich
and such delicate lyrics, as “Nocturne” and “A Mood.”
In these later years Mr. Yeats has carried his ideals into more
active life; he has undertaken _Responsibilities_ other than poetic
expression. He has been deeply concerned about the future of Ireland
and has been a member of the Senate of the Irish Free State. He has
become a leader in political and educational, as well as literary,
movements. Through the _Daily Express of Dublin_, he entered the lists
of combatants against Bernard Shaw and his adherents who maintained
that “poetry is a criticism of life.” In expanded thought upon this
idea, in _Literary Ideals in Ireland_, Mr. Yeats has prophesied that,
as the years pass, the function of poetry as _criticism_ will be
discarded; for it, will be substituted poetry as _revelation_ of life,
sometimes in tangible forms, more often in idealistic spirit.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1923.
[159] John Sherman, pp. 88-90, and _W. B. Yeats: a Critical Study_ by
Forrest Reid, New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1915.
[160] _Op. cit._, p. 151.
[161] _Land of Heart’s Desire_ by W. B. Yeats, copyright by W. B.
Yeats, New York, 1911; also in _Plays and Controversies_, New York,
1925. By permission of the Macmillan Co.
[162] _Poems_ by W. B. Yeats, copyright by W. B. Yeats, New York, 1911,
1919, pp. 206, 207. By permission of the Macmillan Co.