A Comm Ntary on the Autobiographies of W
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ý. 4 lýý A COMM NTARY ON THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF W. B. YEATS Gretchen L. Schwenker University of Stirling Degree of Ph. D. October 1980 CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 33 THE TRENBLING OF THE VEIL 136 BOOK I: FCAJRYEARS 1887-1891 137 BOOK II: IRELAND AFTER PARNELL 232 BOOK III: HODOS CHAMELIONTOS 285 BOOK IV: THE TRAGIC GENERATION 299 BOOK V: THE STIRRING OF THE BONES 350 DRAMATIS PERSONAE 374 ESTRANGEMENT 448 THE DEATH OF SYNGE 472 THE BOUNTY OF SWEDEN 495 APPENDICES 515 BIBLIOGRAPHY 524 All page references for the annotations in this commentary are to the text of Yeats's Autobiographies (Macmillan: London, 1955). ACI OWLIDGMIINTS I would like to express thanks to the following librarians, curators and institutions for all the help I have received during the course of my research: Mrs. Richard B. Currier, The Houghton Library, Harvard University; Mr. J. A. Dlwards, University of Reading Library; Mr. D. S. Mack, University of 6 a Stirling Library; Mr. Alf Lochlainn and Mr. D. Lu.anaigh, the National Library of Ireland; Dr. Lola Szladits, the Berg Collection, New York Public Library; the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Firestone Library, Princeton University; the British Library, the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and the National Library of Scotland. Special thanks and gratitude to Senator Michael B. Yeats and Miss Anne Yeats for their help and generosity in my research. I would also like to thank Dr. C. L. Barber, Mr. George Bruce, Dr. Ian Fletcher, Mr. Alastair Macrae and Dr. Herman Ward. To my parents, I owe an immense debt not only for their financial support but for their constant faith and encouragement. My typist, Mrs. Doris Williamson, has courageously endured a seemingly endless supply of additional annotations. Several friends have been most helpful, but I must especially thank Mr. Douglas Clark, Miss Geraldine Digney, Mr. Edward Furgol and Mrs. Clay Weatherly. Finally, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor A. Norman Jeffares for his invaluable aid, judgement and patience. 1. YEATS AS AUTOBIOGRAPHER I It was no business of mine, and that was precisely why I could not keep out of it. Every enterprise that offered, allured just in so far as it was not my business.... Nor did I understand as yet how little that Unity, however wisely sought, is possible without a Unity of Culture in class or people that is no longer possible at all. The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy ind natural content Out of my heart. On Friday we visit the great Town Hall, which is the greatest Swedish work of art, ... all that has not come out of the necessities of site and material, no matter in what school the artist studied, carries the mind backward to Byzantium. (Autobio raphie. g p. 554 Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of is to what past, or passin (Collected, or come. Poems, p. 217) Although ... my wits have gone On a fantastic ride, my horses flanks are spurred By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen, Or of a Middleton, whose name you never heard, And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died Before time, like my seem a vivid memory .... I am thinking of a child's vow sworn in vain Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home. (Collected Poems, p. 202) William Butler Yeats published the first section of the Autobiographies in 1915 with the appearance of Reveries Over Childhood and Youth and published the last contribution to the 2. final volume of 1955 with Dramatis Personae in 19352 For a period of twenty years, Yeats was formulating this official version of his life. The constant building and selecting for this version created a volume that, for the most part, carefully edited out too personal reflections and also served to present an incomplete and disjointed autobiography. The former characteristic caused George Russell to complain: What I regard as the chief defect in these autobiographies will, I think, be considered by others as their main virtue. The poet tells us but little about his internal life, but he has 3 much about the people met ... Yeatsts internal, private life is not on view in the Autobiographies, but there is the compensating factor which Russell does not mention, of much of Yeats*s internal thought being openly discussed. A dialogue with self runs through the book as well as the relation of stories about Yeats's contemporaries. Here is Yeats reviewing the ideas of his youth 'Yet I in things Pre-Raphaelite had - was all .... I made a new religion, almost an infallible Church of poetic tradition' (Autobiographies,, pp. 114-15) - as well as discussing concerns that marked his later years: I know now that revelation is from the self, but from that age-long memoried self, that shapes the elaborate shell of the mollusc and the child in the womb, that teaches the birds to make their nest; and that genius is a crisis that joins that buried self for certain moments to our trivial daily mind. There are, indeed, personifying spirits that we had best call but Gates and Gate-keepers, because through their dramatic power they bring our souls to crisis, to Mask (Artob and Image ... iogr ahie_, p. 272) What makes this dialogue even more revealing is that whether Yeats is dreaming of a new Byzantium, remembering tan 3. old cross Pollexfen*, or musing over Mask and Image, the resultant prose often anticipates the poetry or the poetry anticipates the prose-writer: ILLE By the help of an image I call to my own opposite, summon all That I have handled least, least looked upon. HIC And I would find myself and not an image. (Collected Poems, p. 180) Indeed, in contrast to the high-minded rhetoric of the prose obviously related to the poetry, Yeats is also agreeably full of information and anecdotes about the personalities of William Morris, W. E. Henley, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Lionel Johnson and many others. He develops this fascinating line of recollections into one of pure gossip particularly when he depicts George Moore in Dramatis Personae: I told Martyn that Moore had ... good points, he replied: II know Moore a great deal longer than you do. He has no good points*. (A_tobio ram es, p. 401) However, though Yeats reveals little of a personal nature and concentrates great effort on studies of his friends and enemies, this is not the autobiography of a man concerned solely with the precise relating of factual events, nor is it the autobiography of a man concerned with the cleansing and opening of his soul through the catharsis of writing. Yeats does involve himself with a contemplation of his thought about his poetry, its development and philosophic content. What effect has this involvement with ideas had on the Autobiographies? 4. The autobiography of Sir Edmund Gosse, Father and Son (1907), provides a good example of an autobiography with a very different emphasis. Gosse leads the reader year by year through his strict childhood with parents and friends of the Plymouth Brethren. It is a book painfully straightforward in its severe factual accounting and also one painfully accurate in describing the emotional conflict between father and son. Gosse wrote in his preface of September 1907: ... the following narrative in all its parts, and so far as the punctilious attention of the writer has been able to keep it so, is scrupu- lously true. If it were not true, in this strict sense, to publish it would be to trifle with all those who may be induced to read it. It is offered to them as a document, as a record of educational and religious conditions which, having passed away, will never return. How very different this is from the Yeats of the Autobiographies, who gives the reader an endless collection of stories and speculations ranging from Maxy Battlers psychic experiences with a blood-stained shirt to Lionel Johnsonts totally imagined encounters with Cardinal Newman. (Autobiographies,, pp. 70,305). Yeats entertains and records but not with the solemn eye of the biographer. He deletes names, misspells others, and shows a general lack of concern for dates, delighting in his one great exception about the latter: I am certain of one date, for I have gone to much trouble to get it right. I met John Synge for the first time in the 1896 autumn of ... (AutobioKraphies, p. 343) It was actually 27 December, 1896. 5" As to misspelled names 'Slievoughter range' does not exist, there is not a painter by the name of Jongsen, and the Japanese painter Kanoka is correctly Kanaoka (Autobioaaphie_f PP. 392,292,547). Yeatsts casualness about these fine points is endless, but what about the casual way in which he put together the Autobiographies? Reveries Over Childhood and Youth covers his early years and brings the reader to the young Yeats's apprenticeship with old John O'Leary, whom he in Dublin in 1885. The Trembling the Veil met of ,continues the story back in Bedford Park and London at the close of the eighties, and finishes with the 1898 centenaxy celebrations in Dublin. Dramatis Personae presents the overlapping development of the early Irish dramatic movement from 1896 to 1902 and looks ahead to the contributions of Synge and Lady Gregory.