Counter-Currents
William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939
227 words
“W. B. Yeats” (1943)
“Translated into political terms, Yeats’s tendency is Fascist. Throughout most of his life, and long before Fascism was ever heard of, he had had the outlook of those who reach Fascism by the aristocratic route. He is a great hater of democracy, of the modern world, science, machinery, the concept of progress—above all, of the idea of human equality.”
“How do Yeats’s political ideas link up with his leaning towards occultism?
[. . .] To begin with, the theory that civilisation moves in recurring cycles is one way out for people who hate the concept of human equality. If it is true that “all this,” or something like it, “has happened before,” then science and the modern world are debunked at one stroke and progress becomes for ever impossible. [. . .] Secondly, the very concept of occultism carries with it the idea that knowledge must be a secret thing, limited to a small circle of initiates. But the same idea is integral to Fascism. Those who dread the prospect of universal suffrage, popular education, freedom of thought, emancipation of women, will start off with a predilection towards secret cults. There is another link between Fascism and magic in the profound hostility of both to the Christian ethical code.”
The full text is online at: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79e/part20.html
2 comments
This is an interesting way to look at Yeats. Poetry, generally, works this way. Not because it’s the poet’s choice. In the US, poetry is read by a self-selected few. I earned an MFA in 2013. I don’t believe poets are fascists.
I truly believe that any artistic endeavor can lead us toward democracy, progress, and recognizing the potential that lies in coupling emotion, mind, and body as ground for whatever you might think of next. I’m not sure if Orwell valued emotion.
I dont think the comments from orwell are levelled at poetry as a whole, but at yeats, who was a self identified fascist sympathizer; his occult fascist cosmology is outlined in his nonfiction prose text, “a vision”
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