Assignment on W.B.

Yeats

Course Title: Modern Poetry

Course Code: Eng 445

Section: 01

Submitted To

Israt Jahan

Assistant Professor

Department of English

East West University

Submitted By

Rezaul Karim

Id: 2014-3-46-072
 W.B.Yeats: A Poet with Political Ideology, Prophetic
Vision and Occult Philosophy
William Butler Yeats is one of the greatest poets of his time in English literature and is the link
between the 19th and 20th centuries in the field of literature. He is a poet with more than one
distinction: a lyrical poet, a mystic, a mythologist, a romantic — at the same time; a poet with a
political ideology; a poet with a prophetic vision and an occult philosophy. He was the Republic
of Ireland's national poet. Yeats was born in Dublin. He was born in George's Ville, Dublin,
South Ireland, on 13 June 1865. But he lived in England for the longer part of his life, and
therefore he is both an Irish poet and an English poet. Although Yeats lived in England for a
longer period of his life, he could never forget his associations with Ireland and never stopped
being an Irish poet. In fact, his constant companions were the lush green, the lively hills and
dales, the sparkling streams as well as the abundant myths, the audacious nationalism and the
Gaelic fancy of Ireland.

One of the most traumatic experiences in Yeats ' life began in 1889 when Maud Gonne, the
paragon of beautiful women and an active nationalist, visited Bedford Park, where the Yeats
family had established themselves. Yeats was barely twenty- four then. He met Maud Gonne, fell
in love with her headlong, and offered to write The Countess for her as a token of his heart-
burning. In his heart, Yeats bore this love throughout his life. The first shock of unrequited love
intensified his propensity to esotericism and Eastern wisdom and became a disciple of the great
occult Madame Blavatsky. Blavatsky, H.S. Olcott together in 1875, founded the Theosophical
Society. Yeats was attracted to Blavatsky by his colleague Charles Johnston, who by reading
A.P. Sinnett's ‘The Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism’ became a confirmed believer in
occultism. In June 1885 a Hermetic Society was founded to discuss these issues. In April 1886,
the Hermetic Society was succeeded by the Theosophical Society's Dublin Lodge, in which
Yeats participated more distantly. His interest in occultism and theosophy led Yeats to a
thorough study of William Blake 's works( 1757- 1827) and the symbolism of Blake. His still
vibrant attraction to Maud Gonne and Yeats plunged himself into Ireland's cultural movement,
perhaps as an indirect reward for his love for Gonne, because Gonne was also involved in the
cultural and national movements of Ireland called the Celtic Revival. In the 1890s he published a
large number of prose works and poems affected by the symbolist movement in France and
England. Yeats went to Paris in 1896, where he met J. Synge who founded the order of Celtic
Mysteries. Yeats also have become a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and
through it conceived the concept of uniting Irish political parties but Yeats cut off his
relationship with the Brotherhood in 1900 for some reasons.

Yeats, however, received the knighthood in 1915, but refused to accept the honor allegedly for
the sake of Irish liberty. Then, in utter desperation and in need of a wife of understanding, Yeats
turned to a certain Georgie Hyde- Lees with whom Yeats eventually married on 20 October
1917. He published his collection of romantic poems in the same year: The Wild Swans in
Coole. Yeats discovered in a few months after their marriage that Hyde- Lees was a good
mediumistic subject and an expert in automatic writing. From then on, Yeats studied the
phenomena of planchet, eschatology and supernatural visions for a long time. During the first
four years of marriage, 450 automatic sessions of writing were held and 3,627 pages of preserved
script were produced, a mass of material teeming with literary, historical, psychological,
philosophical and occult ideas(AV-1925 xix- xxi). Yeats sculpted this mass between 1917 and
1925 to A Vision. In February 1922, the Yeatses arranged to rent 82 Merrion Square, a large and
pleasant Georgian house in one of the most distinguished neighborhoods in Dublin. Meanwhile,
the family moved to Thoor Ballylee, where they spent the summer while the Irish Civil War was
flapping across the country. Yeats supported the treaty, both ending the Anglo- Irish war and
initiating civil war, and supported the new Free State government led by William Cosgrave, all
of which separated him from Maud Gonne, whom Cosgrave's administration was to imprison. At
the end of September the family moved to the Merrion Square house. The neighborhood was
occasionally bombed, and on 24 December 1922 two bullets were fired through the window of
Yeats, but otherwise both the family and the house were unscathed during the war. Yeats was an
Irish nationalist who sought a traditional way of life articulated by poems like ' The Fisherman.'
As his life progressed, however, he sheltered much of his revolutionary spirit and moved away
from the intense political landscape until 1922. Before the year came to an end, Yeats status as a
new state dignitary was sealed with two honours. President Cosgrave on 7 December, acting on
the recommendation of the old friend of Yeats, Oliver St. John Gogarty appointed Yeats to the
new Irish Senate for a six- year term. The coveted Noble Prize in Literature was awarded to
Yeats next year.
Almost in 1924 he completed his book A Vision, published in 1925, on mysticism and reading
history and philosophy. Then he met Mohini Chatterjee in London, who was a Bengali Brahmin,
who learned spiritually. Chatterjee spiritually and esthetically stimulated him and introduced him
to mysticism. The spiritual quest of Yeats was further intensified later by his meeting with the
Indian monk Purohit Swami and the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. His predilection for
spiritual philosophy can be seen in his poem' A Prayer for my Son,' where he says his son is only
God's incarnation. Yeats became seriously ill in 1936. He had suffered from heart disease and
nephritis for a long time. However, even with his ill health, in the summer of 1936 he
broadcasted modem poetry. He revised and published A Vision in 1937. He wrote his last play
The Herne’s Egg in January 1938. In August 1938, his last public appearance took place at the
Abbey Theater where his play Purgatory was performed. On 28 January, 1939, Yeats died.