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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS: poet, saviour/slayer of Leaving Cert students – and a man in love.
The popular perception of WB as a man who suffered a lifelong unrequited passion for revolutionary Maud Gonne has inspired a tongue-in-cheek book of illustrations from artist Annie West.
Yeats in Love will be launched this Friday night in Dublin, and the following Friday, 21 November, in Sligo.
West, who lives in the heart of Yeats country in Sligo and whose grandmother played the church organ at the poet’s funeral, has taken scenes from the Maud and William story and poked fun at the high-mindedness of the poetry they inspired.
While Yeats wrote reams of adoring love poetry about his passion for Maud Gonne (probably more about his passion for her, than about Gonne herself), she once said:
As for Willie Yeats I love him dearly as a friend but I could not for one minute imagine marrying him.
Not that it put off WB. He proposed to Gonne on four separate occasions; she refused him each time. He then proposed to Gonne’s 22-year-old daughter Iseult; she turned him down too.
This seeming whiff of desperation is captured neatly in the vignettes in West’s book:
In an introduction to the book Yeats in Love, poet Theo Dorgan questions whether Yeats really loved Maud Gonne as a mature adult, or if he remained wedded to the ideal of the high passion for her that he experienced as a young man.
Looking at West’s illustrations, he notes:
Two things struck me. The first is that it is indeed possible to find a gentle comedy in Yeats’s professed lifelong infatuation; the second is that perhaps, after all, the old boy was putting it on a bit.
Yeats in Love by Annie West will be launched at the 2014 Dublin Book Festival this Friday, 12 November at 6pm at the Winter Garden, Smock Alley Theatre.
It will be launched the following Friday, 21 November, at 6pm in the Yeats Memorial Building in Sligo.
Yeats in Love is published by New Island; book design by Amy West.
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WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
Now, when you think about it, this other Troy might have been saved if she had done an ice bucket challenge.
I would spread my dreams under your feet tread softly least you step on my dreams
The Pity of Love
A pity beyond all telling
Is hid in the heart of love:
The folk who are buying and selling;
The clouds on their journey above;
The cold wet winds ever blowing;
And the shadowy hazel grove
Where mouse-grey waters are flowing
Threaten the head that I love.
Gonne with the Wind
Gonne but not forgotten !
I wrote a poem once.
He accused John Macbride of child abuse out of jealousy, then went and proposed to marry that very same child! Strange guy!
Maude, Iseult- shame all the old weird anglo-Irish names have pretty much vanished.
Not much of that intellectual influence to be found in current Ireland I’d imagine.
Because they’re rotten names
.
Maud gonne is gone maufe
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