The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats Noreen Doody The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats

“An Echo of Someone Else’s Music” Noreen Doody Dublin City University Dublin, Ireland

ISBN 978-3-319-89547-5 ISBN 978-3-319-89548-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89548-2

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Acknowledgements

Wilde and Yeats have been my companions now for many years—and have never been dull company. Our first venture together was in my doctoral thesis, which was where this book had its beginnings. Since then, the work has been much expanded and greatly developed along its own lines to become The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats: “An Echo of Someone Else’s Music”. During the process of writing this book, there have been many who supported and encouraged me, and many who gave generously of their wisdom and expertise, and others who brought good conversation and fun to the enterprise. I would like to thank all of you, friends, stu- dents, mentors and colleagues: Gerald Dawe, Terence Brown, Frank McGuinness, Luke Smith, Eibhear Walshe, Brendan Kennelly, Darryl Jones, Margaret Robson, Thomas Docherty, Nicholas Grene, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, John Scattergood, Frances Coghlan, Brenda Boyce, Nicky Allen, Aaron Kelly, Sandrine Brisset, Ann Fallon, Cormac Lambe, Audrey Baker, Alan English, James Kelly, Daire Keogh, Jonathan Williams, Graham Price, Alan Graham, Stanley Van der Ziel, Joe Morris, Denis O’Brien, Una Murray, J.D. Murphy, Imelda Dyas, Ronald Schuchard, Alan Sinfield, Gillian Duffy, Andy Fitzsimons, James Heaney, Jarlath Killeen, Emmanuel Vernadakis, Carle Bonafous-Murat, Wesley Hutchinson, Orla NicAodha, Liam O’Dwyer, Mary Shine Thompson, Martin Ward, Kevin Power, Nora Whyte, Richard Whyte, Brian Doody, Danny Fagan, Lara Smith, Layla Fagan and Milo Smith. I would like to thank my great friend, Declan Kiberd, for his encour- agement and for the unfailing kindness that he has always shown to me. I am grateful to him and to my friends and colleagues, Derek Hand and

v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

P.J. Mathews, for the bright conversation, radical ideas and witty sponta- neity of many a collegial meeting. I also offer my sincere thanks to my friends and colleagues in the School of English, Dublin City University, Sharon Murphy, Julie Anne Stevens, Jim Shanahan, Eugene McNulty, Marina Carr, Claire Keegan and Louise O’Callaghan for their support and for making my time as Head of English a sheer pleasure. To my friend Merlin Holland, I owe a particular debt of gratitude for his kind consideration throughout the writing of this work and for the many interesting and informative discussions about his grandfather, Oscar Wilde. I am also grateful to the late Anne Yeats for the many conversations that I had with her and for welcoming me into her home and her father’s library. I am indebted to Margaret Byrne for her friendship that has been a constant source of encouragement during the writing of this book. I would like to extend my gratitude to the librarians and staff of the National Library of Ireland, Dublin; the Berkeley Library and Early Printed Books, Trinity College, Dublin; the Cregan Library, St Patrick’s Campus, Dublin City University; the British Library, London; and the National Archives, Kew, for all of their help and expertise. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the College Research Committee of the former St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University, and Graduate Studies, Trinity College Dublin for the welcome award of research bursaries. My sincere thanks to Palgrave Macmillan for accepting this book for publication and to my editors, Vicky Bates and Tomas René, to the art designers, and Dhanalakshmi Jayavel and the production team at Palgrave for bringing this book into its final and elegant form. Thank you to the readers at Palgrave for their careful reading of my manuscript and very helpful comments and suggestions. I am deeply indebted to my daughters, Chloë, Justine, Aude, Chantal and Léan, for their love, belief and constant support. I offer my gratitude to them for the many ways in which they have helped with this publication and for the very many ways in which they have always been there for me. I dedicate this book to my daughters as a small token of my love, admira- tion and respect for each of them. Contents

Section I Influence and Identity 1

1 Introduction: “An Echo of Someone Else’s Music” 3

2 Establishing Influence 31

3 “A Provincial Like Myself”: Yeats, Wilde and the Politics of Identity 63

Section II Mask and Image 107

4 Metaphysics and Masks (1908–1917) 109

5 The Idea Incarnate: Mask and Image (1915–1917) 135

vii viii CONTENTS

Section III Salomé : Symbolism, Dance and Theories of Being 171

6 “Surface and Symbol”: Wilde’s Salomé, French Symbolism and Yeats (1891–1906) 173

7 Yeats’s Creative Use of Wilde’s Salomé in his Revisions of The Shadowy Waters, On Baile’s Strand and Deirdre 203

8 “Drama as Personal as a Lyric”: The Centrality of Wilde’s Concepts of Dance, Desire and Image to Yeats’s Developing Aesthetic (1916–1921) 241

9 “There Must Be Severed Heads”: Yeats’s Final Transumption of Oscar Wilde (1923–1939) 279

10 Conclusion 309

References 313

Index 331