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W. B. Yeats—a life finished

Contemporary Review, June, 2004 by Edward Bradbury

W. B. Yeats: A Life. II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939. R. F. Foster. Oxford University Press. xxiv + 798 pages. ISBN 0-19-818465-4. The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats Volume VIII: The Irish Dramatic Movement. Mary FitzGerald and Richard J. Finneran, editors. Palgrave Macmillan. [pounds sterling]22.00. xl + 310 pages. ISBN 0-333-32541-9. A W. B. Yeats Chronology. John S. Kelly. Palgrave Macmillan. [pounds sterling]60.00. xvii + 367 pages. ISBN 0-333-46006-5.

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In this, Prof. Foster's final volume, he is dealing with a different Yeats from the man in the first volume. By 1915, Yeats was a figure in the literary firmament and had begun working on his 'image'. The only way to get behind this image is by a strict adherence to chronology, by an emphasis on 'the everyday' life of his subject and by an account of the dramatic changes overtaking Irish life in this period. In his later years Yeats was also more 'contentious' as well as more unorthodox in his searchings in the world of the occult. The period covered here saw Yeats become not only famous as a poet and writer but revered as a sage and, after 1922, as a Senator in the Upper House of the Irish Free State's Parliament. It also saw the growth in his commitment to psychic and occult movements. Prof. Foster is keen to point out those connexions which united the older, famous Yeats to the younger, unknown boy: the legacy of his youthful emotional insecurity, the ambition to see his life as a whole and intertwined with the world round him, the desire to be part of Ireland's history.

At his death in 1939, Yeats was 'the century's greatest poet writing in English' and his last work, published after his death, was marked by 'excitement, metrical ingenuity, variety, edginess and jarring juxtapositions' and, above all, 'modernity.' The genius had not escaped him in his declining years. He, more than any other poet had shaped Irish consciousness and his private life, or lives, are, as this excellent and exhaustive biography shows, inseparable.

The second new title reviewed here is from Palgrave Macmillan: the ninth in its fourteen-volume edition of Yeats' works. This volume, edited by Richard J. Finneran and the late Mary FitzGerald, gives readers Yeats' most important dramatic criticism written between 1899 and 1919. The text is made up of The Irish Dramatic Movement, a section of the 1923 collection, Plays and Controversies, combined with those pamphlets never before re-issued as part of Yeats' works. The articles collected here, begin with The Irish Dramatic Movement and are followed by 'Prefaces and Note', which contains two prefaces to earlier collections (1908 and 1923) and a note published in Mythologies of 1931-2. The final section, 'Uncollected Contributions' is made up of the contributions to three publications: Beltaine, Samhain, and The Arrow published between 1899 and 1909 and here collected for the first time. The volume will help Yeats scholars to get a more rounded view of his literary output by showing how important was his work as a dramatist.

The final new title is John Kelly's A W. B. Yeats Chronology whose aim is 'to trace and register' Yeats' 'multiple interests' and 'to show how they were pursued simultaneously, and how apparently disparate activities impacted on each other to produce a rich, energetic and ultimately coherent canon.' The chronology is based on the thousands of letters to and from Yeats as well as published material. Because Yeats corresponded with so many people Prof. Kelly has given short biographies under the person's index heading. This arrangement makes this a most important source of information for anyone interested in the poet's life and works.

W. B. Yeats—a life finished

Contemporary Review, June, 2004 by Edward Bradbury

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