The collected letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 1, 1865-1895

The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Volume I, 1985-1895

The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Volume I, 1865-1895, edited by John Kelly and Eric Domville (Oxford, 548 pp., $29.95)

IN THEIR LIVELY introduction, the editors convincingly state that Yeats's letters "offer an insight into a private self that was often hidden in public; they illuminate his literary development; and they chart the ways in which the larger intellectual, political, and social forces of his age helped to mold his consciousness and his creativity.' The editors have found seven thousand Yeats letters, of which 350 (half published for the first time) appear in this volume, the first of 12. The excellent and exhaustive notes (about one-third of the text) and useful forty-page biographical and historical appendix compensate for the lack of a full-scale biography. The editors have also taken great care to reproduce Yeats's atrocious spelling and punctuation.

During the first thirty years of his life Yeats published several volumes of poetry, wrote his earliest plays, and edited William Blake's prophetic books. He believed "poetry should have a local habitation,' felt Irish writers should express nationalist feelings for their country's use, helped found the National Literary Society, and brought out five anthologies of Irish poems, stories, and folk tales. Most of his letters concern his literary work and publishing business. He addresses a favorite correspondent as "Miss Tynan' in 1887, boldly shifts to "Katey' in 1889, and regresses to "Mrs. Hinkson' after her marriage in 1893.

Though London provided the research library at the British Museum, a host of cultivated people, and close contacts with editors and publishers, Yeats hated that "detestable cauldron' and felt nothing could "make amends for the loss of green field & mountain slope & for the tranquil hours of ones own country side.' But he was moved by the dreamlike beauty of Oxford and exclaimed: "One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all--the colleges I meen--like an Opera.' He was often pressed for money at the beginning of his career (down to three halfpence in December 1891) and hastened to finish one nocturanl letter before he ran out of candles: "I have only a little peice now about, going to come to an end. It will only last about five minutes at most and you know what a slow writer I am.' His poetry in London was long premeditated, and he achieved inspiration only when "away in the country and easy in my mind.'

Yeats told the skeptical revolutionary John O'Leary, who had identified a weakness at the core of the poet's work: "The mystical life . . . the flux and flow of spirits between man and the Unresolvable Mystery . . . is the centre of all that I do & all that I think & all that I write.' He believed in Theosophy, spiritualism, second sight, seances, horoscopes, and Irish fairies--which "are not popular this side of the water, are considered unscientific.'

He had no patience with reviewers who criticized his idealizations and tried to bring him back to reality. When the Athenaeum said he should represent the stupidity as well as the cleverness of the peasants, he pragmatically answered: "I wonder who would have read the book had I done so.' When the Freeman objected that peahens do not dance, he loftily responded: "As to the poultry yards, with them I have no concern--The wild peahen dances or all Indian poets lie.'

Yeats makes some amusing and perceptive observations on contemporary writers and their works. William Morris chases away little boys who play under his window but does not mind the parrot in his house "that keeps up a great noise whistling and sneizing and holding conversations with itself.' Shaw is certainly very witty, "but like most people who have wit rather than humour, his mind is maybe somewhat wanting in depth.' Maeterlinck touches "the nerves sometimes when he should touch the heart.' When Stevenson praised "The Lake Isle of Innisfree,' Yeats replied: "It is the liking or disliking of one's fellow craftsman, especially of those who have attained the perfect expression one does but grope for, which urges one to work on.' And after Wilde's disgrace in 1895, Yeats expressed unusual sympathy for the hounded man and praised his courage: "He says he will stand it out & face the worst & no matter how it turns out work on.'

Yeats's two love affairs during this period are merely hinted at in his letters. He twice proposed to the violent revolutionary, Maud Gonne, who acted the title role of Cathleen ni Houlihan and inspired his greatest love lyrics. They became lovers in 1910; he later made a vain proposal to her daughter. In 1895 he asked the married Olivia Shakespear (later the mother-in-law of Ezra Pound) to elope with him, but then decided to postpone their departure until the death of her mother. When the lady gave no sign of expiring, he again changed his mind, ordered a wide bed for his rooms, and, after a sexual failure caused by nerves, finally consummated the affair.

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