BACKGROUND:

Name: William Butler Yeats

Born: June 13, 1865
Dublin, Ireland
Died: January 28, 1939
Roquebrune, France
IRISH POET AND DRAMATIST
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist
(playwright). Some think he was the greatest poet of
the twentieth century. He won the Nobel Prize for
literature in 1923. The works of William Butler Yeats form a bridge between the romantic poetry
of the nineteenth century and the hard clear language of modern poetry.

EARLY YEARS:
William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865, in Dublin, Ireland, the oldest child of
John Butler Yeats and Susan Mary Pollexfen. Although John trained as a lawyer, he abandoned
the law for art soon after his first son was born. Yeats spent much of his early years in London,
where his father was studying art, but frequently returned to Ireland as well.
In the mid-1880s, Yeats pursued his own interest in art as a student at the Metropolitan
School of Art in Dublin. Following the publication of his poems in the Dublin University Review
in 1885, he soon abandoned art school for other pursuits.

CAREER BEGINNINGS:
After returning to London in the late 1880s, Yeats met writers Oscar Wilde, Lionel
Johnson and George Bernard Shaw. He also became acquainted with Maud Gonne, a supporter
of Irish independence. This revolutionary woman served as a muse for Yeats for years. He even
proposed marriage to her several times, but she turned him down. He dedicated his 1892 drama
The Countess Kathleen to her.
Around this time, Yeats founded the Rhymers' Club poetry group with Ernest Rhys. He
also joined the Order of the Golden Dawn, an organization that explored topics related to the
occult and mysticism. While he was fascinated with otherworldly elements, Yeats's interest in
Ireland, especially its folktales, fueled much of his output. The title work of The Wanderings of
Oisin and Other Poems (1889) draws from the story of a mythic Irish hero.
ACCLAIMED POET AND PLAYWRIGHT:
In addition to his poetry, Yeats devoted significant energy to writing plays. He teamed
with Lady Gregory to develop works for the Irish stage, the two collaborating for the 1902
production of Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Around that time, Yeats helped found the Irish National
Theatre Society, serving as its president and co-director, with Lady Gregory and John Millington
Synge. More works soon followed, including On Baile's Strand, Deirdre and At the Hawk's Well.
Following his marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees in 1917, Yeats began a new creative period
through experiments with automatic writing. The newlyweds sat together for writing sessions
they believed to be guided by forces from the spirit world, through which Yeats formulated
intricate theories of human nature and history. They soon had two children, daughter Anne and
son William Michael.
The celebrated writer then became a political figure in the new Irish Free State, serving as
a senator for six years beginning in 1922. The following year, he received an important accolade
for his writing as the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. According to the official Nobel
Prize website, Yeats was selected "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form
gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."
Yeats continued to write until his death. Some of his important later works include The
Wild Swans at Coole (1917), A Vision (1925), The Tower (1928) and Words for Music Perhaps
and Other Poems (1932). Yeats passed away on January 28, 1939, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin,
France. The publication of Last Poems and Two Plays shortly after his death further cemented
his legacy as a leading poet and playwright.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS BELIEFS & STYLE OF WRITING:

His father added to William's formal schooling with lessons at home that gave him an
enduring taste for the classics. John Yeats had a forceful personality. His personal philosophy
was a blend of aestheticism (a belief that art and beauty are important for everything) and
atheism (a belief that there is no God). William felt its influence much later as it showed up in
his interest in magic and the occult (supernatural)
Yeats devised his doctrine of the mask as a means of presenting very personal thoughts and
experiences to the world without danger of sentimentality or that kind of "confessional poetry"
that is often a subtle form of self-pity.
By discovering the kind of man who would be his exact opposite, Yeats believed he
could then put on the mask of this ideal "anti-self" and thus produce art from the synthesis of
opposing natures. For this reason his poetry is often structure red on paired opposites, as in
"Sailing to Byzantium," in which oppositions work against each other creatively to form a single
unity, the poem itself. Yeats turned to magic for the nonlogical system that would oppose and
complete his art. He drew upon theosophy (Theosophy, occult movement originating in the 19th
century with roots that can be traced to ancient Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. The
term theosophy, derived from the Greek theos (“god”) and sophia (“wisdom”), is generally
understood to mean “divine wisdom.”), Hermetic writings (Hermetic writings, also
called Hermetica, works of revelation on occult, theological, and philosophical subjects ascribed to the
Egyptian god Thoth (Greek Hermes Trismegistos [Hermes the Thrice-Greatest]), who was believed to be
the inventor of writing and the patron of all the arts dependent on writing.), and Buddhism, as well as
upon Jewish and Christian apocryphal books (for example, the Cabala). To explain his theories
he invented "a lunar parable": the sun and moon, day and night, and seasonal cycles became for
him symbols of the harmonious synthesis of opposites, a means of capturing "in a single thought
reality and justice."
He illustrated his theory with cubist drawings of the gyres (interpenetrating cones) to
show how antithetical elements in life (solarlunar, moral-esthetic, objective-subjective) interact.
By assigning a different type of personality to each of the 28 phases of the moon (arranged like
spokes on a "Great Wheel"), he attempted to show how one could find his exact opposite and at
the same time discover his place in the scheme of universal order. Yeats believed that history
was cyclic and that every 2,000 years a new cycle begins, which is the opposite of the cycle that
has preceded it. In his poem "The Second Coming," the birth of Christ begins one cycle, which
ends, as the poem ends, with a "rough beast," mysterious and menacing, who "slouches towards
Bethlehem to be born."
WORKS:
1 THE SECOND COMING
Published: 1920
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- This poem was written at the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of
Independence. In it Yeats uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming
to describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe. The speaker first gives an account of anarchy and
violence in the world; and then uses it as a sign to indicate that “the Second Coming is at hand.”
He concludes with the prophesy that a rough beast is on its way to Bethlehem, the birthplace of
Christ, to be born into the world. The Second Coming is regarded as one of the most important
works of Modernist poetry. It is one of the most influential poetic works of the 20th century and
the most famous poem by William Butler Yeats.
2. LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE (Published: 1890)
3. SAILING TO BYZANTIUM Published: 1928
4. EASTER, 1916 (Published: 1921)
5. WHEN YOU ARE OLD (Published: 1892)
6. THE STOLEN CHILD (Published: 1889)
7. LEDA AND THE SWAN (Published: 1928)
8. AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN (Published: 1899)
9. AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN (Published: 1928)
10. A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER (Published: 1921)