No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
W. B. Yeats has often been accused of espousing the ideal of l'art pour l'art. For example in 1898 in an essay entitled “What Should be the Subjects of a National Drama” John Eglinton expressed fears that Yeats' interest in developing ideals of literary experience in Ireland would be corrupted by his association with the aesthetic movement. A.E., though he had defended Yeats earlier, soon found himself in agreement with Eglinton. Yeats, of course, publicly renounced any intimate intercourse with the principle of art for art's sake. On the other hand, he agreed with aesthetes such as Hallam, Wilde, and Pater when they cautioned the artist against contamination by the mores and concerns of society. He also knew that the artist's ideal of beauty affected his life in a very profound way and was therefore capable of having a similar effect upon the lives of other human be-beings. I should like, in this paper, to look at Yeats' ideas about the relationship between the artist and other human beings.
To Yeats the artist and his art bore a crucial relationship to society. Certainly, Yeats did feel that society was a corrupting influence. It was certainly necessary for the artist to be in society but not of it, and to fly by the nets of family, race, and religion. Nevertheless, Yeats felt that such a separation was not ideal, neither was it the fault of the true artist. Ideally, the artist and his society should share a unity of culture and a unity of being. Even during the early years of his career, he thought that art should arise spontaneously out of society as the expression of soul, just has it had in the Renaissance, in the fifth century B.C., in the Byzantine civilization, and around the turf fires in the west of Ireland.
Originally presented at the Pacific Northwest Conference on British Studies, University of Puget Sound, April 15, 1976.
1 Literary Ideals in Ireland, with Yeats, W. B., A.E., Larminie, William (London and Dublin, 1899)Google Scholar.
2 Letter of 1900. Some Passages from the Letters of A.E. to W.B. Yeats (Dublin, 1936), pp. 24–27Google Scholar.
3 The Man and the Masks (New York, 1948), p. 255Google Scholar.
4 “The Freedom of the Theatre,” The United Irishman, Nov. 1, 1902, p. 5.
5 Samhain: 1903, Explorations (London, 1962), p. 111Google Scholar.
6 Symons, Arthur, Aubrey Beardsley (New Edition: London, 1966), pp. 23–24Google Scholar. Although this work was not published until long after the period under consideration, it is certainly justifiable to conjecture that Symons had held this opinion since the 'nineties.
7 Explorations, pp. 154-155.
8 “William Blake and the Imagination” (1897), in Yeats, W. B., Essays and Introductions (New York, 1961), pp. 111–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar. [Hereafter cited as E & I.]
9 “The Well at the World's End,” The Bookman, (Nov. 1896), Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats, ed. Frayne, J. P. (New York, 1970), I: 420Google Scholar. Behmen is usually called Boehme.
10 Ibid., p. 419.
11 Samhain: 1903, Explorations, p. 117.
12 E & I, pp. 157-58.
13 (1904 version), The Variorum Edition of the Plays, ed. Alspach, Russell K. and Alspach, Catharine C., (London, 1966), pp. 264-265, 298–299Google Scholar. [Hereafter cited as Variorum Edition.]
14 Ibid. pp. 280 ff.
15 E & I, p. 165; Samhain: 1902, Explorations, p. 96.
16 “To a Shade” (1913), Variorum Edition, p. 292.
17 Estrangement (w. 1909) (Dublin, 1926), p. 4Google Scholar.
18 “William Blake,” The Bookman (April 1896), Uncollected Prose, I: 401Google Scholar.
19 “The Theatre” (1900), E & I, p. 167.
20 Quoted by Monroe, H., A Poet's Life (New York, 1938), p. 338Google Scholar.
21 See the chapter “The Magic of Primitive Man” in The Occult by Colin Wilson (New York, 1971). The connection between shaman and artist was justified by Yeats in an article on “Bardic Ireland” in The Scots Observer: “The bards were the most powerful influence in the land, and all manner of superstitious reverence environed them round. No gift they demanded might be refused them …. A poem and an incanatation were almost the same” ([Jan. 4, 1890], Uncollected Prose, 1: 162Google Scholar).
22 E & I, p. 157.
23 Clutton-Brock, A., “The State Called Reverie,” LXVI, No. 1623Google Scholar, The Academy (June 13, 1903): 589–90Google Scholar.
24 (May 30, 1903), Some Critical Appreciations (n. pl., n.d., n.p.), p. 16, my italics. The word “glamour” is used in the Celtic sense here. I know of only two existing copies of this book. One is in the Queen's University's Library in Kingston, Ontario.
25 It must be admitted, however, that the attitudes of the audience in Lady Gregory's drawing room and in the Abbey, though different from each other, were certainly utterly distinct from any shaman's congregation.
26 “Preface” to The Poetical Works of William B. Yeats, Vol I, “Lyrical Poems” (New York and London, 1906), Var. Poems, p. 849.
27 “Rosa Alchemica,” The Savoy, I, No. 2 (April 1896): 57–58Google Scholar.
28 North American Review (Oct. 1902), Some Critical Appreciations, p. 14.
29 Letter to John O'Leary, during the week ending July 23, 1892, in Wade, A., ed., The Letters of W. B. Yeats (London, [Hereafter cited as Letters.] 1954)Google Scholar.
30 Letter to Katharine Tynan, Sunday Sept. [7, 1890], Letters, p. 156.
31 Yeats, , “Introduction,” in Horton, W. T., A Book of Images (London, 1898), p. 12Google Scholar.
32 E & I, p. 195.
33 Nor was Yeats the only intellectual anticipating such destruction. In the “Autobiography” he reveals that Mathers had not only predicted universal war, but also had believed, at one time, that it had already begun (Donaghue, D., ed., Memoirs, [London, 1972]Google Scholar).
34 “The Valley of Lovers” (1897), “The Fiddler of Dooney” (1892), “The Travail of Passion” (1896), “The Valley of the Black Pig” (1899), “O'Sullivan Rua to the Secret Rose” (1896), “O'Sullivan The Red to Mary Lovell I” (1896), “Aodh to Dectora” (1898), “Mongan laments the Change that has come upon him and his Beloved, and longs for the End of the World” (1899).
35 Variorum Edition, p. 143.
36 Ibid., pp. 169-70.
37 “Rosa Alchemica”, The Savoy, p. 58.
38 Letters, p. 280.
39 The Savoy, I, No. 2 (April 1896): 56, 58, 63, 59.
40 O'Driscoll, Robert, ed., “The Tables of the Law”: A Critical Text, Yeats Studies, No. 1 (1971), pp. 106, 110, 112Google Scholar. Unless otherwise indicated the 1896 Savoy version is being used.
41 “Rosa Alchemica,” The Savoy, pp. 57, 69.
42 Ibid., p. 60.
43 O'Driscoll, , “The Talbes of the Law,” p. 115Google Scholar.
44 O'Driscoll, , “The Tables of the Law,” pp. 116–117Google Scholar. I have quoted here from the 1897 revision. According to Professor O'Driscoll these words do not appear in the 1896 version. However, their introduction in 1897 and use in 1904, 1908 and 1925 indicate that Yeats felt they helped explain Aherne's dilemma more completely.
45 Ibid., p. 117. I have used the 1897 version in this case.
46 Mythologies (New York, 1959), pp. 309, 310, 312Google Scholar.
47 O'Driscoll, , “The Tables of the Law,” p. 103Google Scholar.
48 Autobiographies, pp. 148-149.
49 E & I, p. 203.
50 Yeats was alluding to Morris' News from Nowhere (published in The Commonweal in 1890 and in book form in 1891), “Autobiography,” in Donoghue, , Memoirs, p. 20Google Scholar.
51 Variorum Edition, p. 266.
52 E & I, p. 278.
53 Explorations, p. 180.
54 Samhain: 1906, Explorations, p. 208.
55 “II. Two Songs from a Play, “Variorum Edition, p. 438.
56 Ibid., p. 787.