160 words
William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet, playwright, and politician, was born on this day in 1865. One of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century, Yeats’ life and work straddle the great divide between Romanticism and Modernism. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
In life and in art, Yeats rejected modern rationalism, materialism, and egalitarianism. He saw them as coarsening and brutalizing.
Spiritually, Yeats was drawn to mysticism and the occult, influenced in particular by Emanuel Swedenborg and William Blake. Politically, like so many great literary artists of the first half of the 20th century, Yeats was drawn to fascism. To learn more about Yeats’ life, art, and politics, see the following works on this site:
- Kerry Bolton, “W. B. Yeats” (from Artists of the Right)
- Jonathan Bowden, “W. B. Yeats”
- Greg Johnson, “Yeats’ Pagan Second Coming” (Spanish translation here)
- Vic Olvir, “William Butler Yeats: A Poet for the West”
- George Orwell, “W. B. Yeats as Occult Fascist”
2 Comments
Born in the same week as myself, I am also in part of his kind.
Following a much earlier article on this site about W B Yeats I purchased his complete works. Indeed, I recognised much that is a part of my own spiritual, political and meta-political aspect
A fine collection of articles on Yeats. I thought Michael O’Meara had written one as well for CC, but perhaps I am thinking of Cu Chulainn in the GPO, which I suppose is not really about Yeats.
And speaking of Mr. O’Meara …