Notes

Chapter 1: 'Marbles of the Dancing Floor': Image, Symbol and Dancer

1. Plays and Controversies, published in 1923 by Macmillan, was the third volume in the Collected Edition. It included 'The Irish Dramatic Movement' and' A People's Theatre,' to which the second part of the title must particularly refer.

2. 'When we look at the faces of the old tragic paintings ... we find there a sadness and gravity, a certain emptiness even, as of a mind that waited the supreme crisis (and indeed it seems at times as if the graphic art, unlike poetry which sings the crisis itself, were the cele­bration of waiting)' (E&1 244).

3. Jean Lassus, The Early Christian and Byzantine World (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1967) p. 86. After the lapse of a century and more, however, the Empress Theodora, who held the opposite view, restored figura­tive images, including the one on the palace gates.

4. The Institute and Lecturers' Gazette (1 June 1899) from 'Henderson's Press Cuttings' in the National Library of Ireland.

5. 'Immaterial' in the sense that language, as opposed to speech or writing, is so. See Chapter 2, 'Written Speech .. .' , pp. 19ff. for further discussion of this issue.

6. Frank Kermode, Romantic Image (New York: Vintage Books, 1957) pp. 63, 72.

7. In a letter to George Russell, Yeats used the terms 'Incarnation' / 'Transfiguration' and 'Dionysian' / 'Apollonian' for these inverse processes. See CL3 369-70.

8. See Ronald Schuchard, 'The Minstrel in the Theatre: Arnold, Chaucer and Yeats's New Spiritual Democracy', Yeats Annual (YA) 2 (1983): 3-24; and Steve Ellis, 'Chaucer, Yeats and the Living Voice', (YA) 11, 45-60. See also "'Written Speech" .. .' pp. 19ff. below.

9. Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot (London: Faber, 1954). 10. Pound 1954: 379-80. 11. 'Image and Emblem in Yeats', in The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1984) pp. 145-238. 12. These are discussed in Chapter 7 'Mr. Yeats, Michael Robartes and

their Circle,' below, pp. 108ff. 13. Who may herself act a role, pull 'her tragic buskin on' (VP 490). 14. It is also on occasion applied to men. See, for instance, E&I292. 15. For a Joycean critique of this notion see p. 60 below.

176

Notes 177

16. Loizeaux, Elizabeth B., Yeats and the Visual Arts (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986); Giorgio Melchiori The Whole Mystery of Art: Pattern in the Work ofW. B. Yeats (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960). Examples are of such figures are found in: 'On Mr. Nettleship's Picture at the Royal Hibernian Academy'; 'Leda and the Swan'; 'On a Picture of a Black Centaur by Edmund Dulac'; 'Lapis Lazuli'; 'News for the Delphic Oracle'; and 'Under Ben Bulben'.

Yeats does not use the figure of ekphrasis in its classical form of making pictures speak as, for example, in Paul Durcan's Crazy About Women (Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1990), which is wholly based on this figure.

17. See 'First Work ... ' below, pp. 152ft. 18. See 'Mr. Yeats, Michael Robartes and their Circle,' below pp. 108-36. 19. See Michael J .Sidnell, Dances of Death: the Group Theatre of London in the

Thirties (London: Faber, 1984), Appendix A 'The Superior Landlord' pp.263-5.

20. Sidnell1984: 266-9, Appendix B 'The Poets' Theatre'.

Chapter 2: 'Written Speech': Writing, Hearing and Performance

1. This is an expanded version of a talk given at the IASAIL Japan con­ference in Kyoto in October 1992. Since the talk is about speech I have allowed traces of the original occasion to remain. I am most grateful to my hosts for their kind invitation to give the talk and to Warwick Gould for valuable suggestions.

2. A. Norman Jeffares, A New Commentary on the Poems of w. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1984) pp. 92--4.

3. Yeats is referring to Cuchulain of Muirthemne: the Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster, arranged and put into English by Lady Gregory, with a Preface by W. B. Yeats (London: John Murray, 1902) and Gods and Fighting Men: the Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland, arranged and put into English by Lady Gregory, with a Preface by W.B. Yeats (London: John Murray, 1904). In the present connection it is noteworthy that 'a few copies' of both books were issued as a 'Colonial Edition' in Murray's Imperial Library (Wade 263-5).

4. Lady Gregory Augusta, Seventy Years: Being the Autobiography of Lady Gregory, edited and with a foreword by Colin Smythe (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1973) p. 392.

5. John Montague, ed., The Faber Book of Irish Verse (London: Faber & Faber, 1974) p. 345.

6. John Montague, A Fair House (Dublin: Cuala Press, 1972) p. iii. 7. Michael Hartnett, Poems in English (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1977) p. 58. 8. Dawe, Gerald, ed., The New Younger Irish Poets (Belfast: Blackstaff

Press, 1991) p. 52. 9. Seamus Deane et ai., eds, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, III

(Lawrence Hill, Derry: Field Day Press, 1991) p. 1313. 10. Brian Friel, Selected Plays (London: Faber & Faber, 1984) p. 418.

178 Notes

11. See also A VB 55. 12. It was revived for special effect in The Herne's Egg (1938). 13. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend, ed. Barbara Rooke (London:

Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) I, p. 51: 'But how are we to guard against the herd of promiscuous Readers? Can we bid our books be silent in the presence of the unworthy?'

14. Robert O'Driscoll and Lorna Reynolds, eds, Yeats and the Theatre (Toronto: MacmiIIan of Canada, 1975) p. 74.

15. Maud Gonne MacBride, A Servant of the Queen (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938) p. 328.

16. Yeats's dissatisfaction with these lines is registered by the draft revi­sions (never printed) that he made of them in 1910 (Mem 244).

17. Warwick Gould reminds me that, in Yeats's poetry, 'thereupon' occurs in a number of major poems and sixteen times in all; observing further that it often indicates an epiphany or sudden change.

18. The substitution of 'On finding ... ' for 'In finding ... ' also contributes to this effect in the poem.

19. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land: a facsimile and transcript of the original drafts including the annotations of Ezra Pound, ed. Valerie Eliot (London: Faber & Faber, 1971) p. 16.

20. Ronald Schuchard, 'The Minstrel in the Theatre: Arnold, Chaucer and Yeats's New Spiritual Democracy', YA 2 (1983): 3-24. For the transi­tion from actual theatres to an 'empty theatre' as the implied context for Yeats's poetic performances see Warwick Gould, 'An Empty Theatre? Yeats as Minstrel in Responsibilities', Studies on W. B. Yeats, ed. Jaqueline Genet (Caen: Groupe de Recherches d'Etudes anglo­irlandaises du CN.R.S., 1989) pp. 79-118.

21. Richard EHmann, James Joyce, new and revised edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) p. 154.

22. See "'Tara Uprooted" .. : below, pp. 62ff. 23. Yvor Winters, 'The Audible Reading of Poetry', Twentieth Century

Poetry: critical essays and documents, ed. Graham Martin and P. N. Furbank (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1975) p. 126.

24. Paul Valery, 'De la diction des vers', Oeuvres II, ed. Jean Hytier (Paris: Gallimard, 1960) p. 1255. 'Consider ... that necessarily there are almost as many ways of speaking as there exist or have existed poets, for each composes his work to suit his own ear. On the other hand, there are as many manners of reciting as there are kinds of poetry and different forms or metres. There is another source of variety: there are as many ways of speaking as there are speakers, each of whom has his methods, his tone of voice, his reflexes, his habits, his aptitudes, his physiological difficulties and dislikes.

The product of all these factors is an amaZing number of possible decisions and misunderstandings - not to mention differences of inter­pretation.' ('On Speaking Verse', The Art of Poetry, translated by Denise Folliot [New York: Vintage Books, 1961] p. 161.)

25. 'Audenesques for 1960', TLS 4661 (31 July 1992) p. 4. 26. Yeats appears to miss two lines inadvertently. They are 'With the

other masquerades/ That time resumes'.

Notes 179

27. Loreto Todd, The Language of Irish Literature (London: Macmillan, 1989) p. 36.

28. See especially Jacques Derrida, De la Grammatologie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1967) pp. 375-445.

29. T. 5. Eliot, 'Yeats', On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber & Faber, 1957) p. 258. For a discussion of 'The Spur', and Eliot's response to it, see p. 104 below.

30. John Drakakis, ed., British Radio Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) p. 31.

31. John Montague, ed., The Faber Book of Irish Verse (London: Faber & Faber, 1974) p. 21.

Chapter 3: Joyce and Yeats: A Daintical Pair of Accomplasses

1. See also L 913. 2. North American Review (November 1897) (UP2 54-70). 3. 'Burnt Norton', Collected Poems 1909-1962 (London: Faber & Faber,

1963) p.195. 4. See William Blissett, 'James Joyce in the Smithy of his Soul', James

Joyce Today: Essays on the Major Works, ed. Thomas F. Staley (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1966, rpt 1970) pp.96-134.

5. See Letters of James Joyce, ed. Richard EHmann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966) II, p. 311.

6. See 'Tara Uprooted ... ', p. 71 below. 7. Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (New York: Oxford University Press,

1966) p. 608. 8. Richard EHmann, Eminent Domain (New York: Oxford University

Press 1967) p. 5l. 9. Transition 11 (Feb. 1928) p. 8 (d. FW 283.32-284.4).

10. Transition p. 15 (cf. FW 296.28-297.1). 11. Transition p. 16 (cf. FW 299.13)

Chapter 4: 'Tara Uprooted': Yeats and Modernism

1. Geoffrey Hill, The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Peguy (London: Deutsch, 1983) p. 36.

2. The 'Hedgers and ditchers' of poem 5, p. 16, for example, are French countrymen, but there is also an allusion here to the two wings of the Tory party during their constitutional battle with the Liberals over the fate of the House of Lords in and before 1906.

3. Hill, The Mystery ... , 1983: 8. 4. Virginia Woolf, The Captain's Death Bed and Other Essays (London:

Hogarth Press, 1950) p. 91. 5. C. F. Masterman, The Condition of England (London: Methuen, 1909),

quoted by Barbara Tuchmann in The Proud Tower: A Portrait of The World Before the War, 1890-1914 (New York: Macmillan, 1966) p.382.

180 Notes

6. Hugh MacDiarmid, Complete Poems, 1920-1976, ed. Michael Grieve and W. R. Aitken (London: Martin Brian & Q'Keeffe, 1978) 1,299. The works particularly alluded to are: D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915); G. B. Shaw, Heartbreak House (1919); Leonard Woolf, After the Deluge (1931); and Cecil Day Lewis, Noah and the Waters (1936).

7. Herbert Read, Art Now: An Introduction to the Theory of Modern Painting and Sculpture, 2nd edn (New York: Harcourt, Brace, n.d. [1936]) p. 59.

8. The quoted phrases are from The Autumn of the Body' (E&I 192, 194). In a characteristic passage in Discoveries of 1906, Yeats wrote: 'we should ascend out of common interests, the thoughts of the news­papers, of the market-place, of men of science, but only so far as we can carry the normal, passionate, reasoning self, the personality as a whole' (E&I272).

9. 'I have said nothing of my own work, not from modesty, but because writing through fifty years I have been now of the same school with John Synge and James Stephens, now in that of Sturge Moore and the younger 'Michael Field': and though the concentration of philosophy and social passion of the school of Day Lewis and in MacNeice lay beyond my desire, I would, but for a failure of talent have been in that of Turner and Dorothy Wellesley' (OBMV xli-xlii).

10. For examples of 'pre-modernist' versions, see Harold H. Williams, Modern English Writers: Being a Study of Imaginative Literature. 1890-1914 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1925) pp. 152-7, and J. Middleton Murry's review of The Wild Swans at Coole, rpt. in W. B. Yeats: The Critical Heritage, ed. A. Norman Jeffares (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977) pp. 216-20.

11. For examples of 'modernist' versions, see 'The Later Yeats', in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot (London: Faber & Faber, 1954) pp. 378-81, and the Introduction to FBMV 1-35.

12. See T. S. Eliot, Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley (London: Faber & Faber, 1964) p. 149 and passim.

13. Eliot actually refers to 'the volume of 1904' in citing these poems. He is clearly using the date assigned to the 'In the Seven Woods' section of Collected Poems (London: Macmillan, 1933).

14. David Perkins, A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976) pp.3-4.

15. In Poems, 1899-1905 (London: Macmillan, 1906) the narrative poems were included in the same section as the lyric poems of In the Seven Woods, but in The Poetical Works, Vol. I, Lyrical Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1906), which appeared shortly afterward, they were sep­arated. They remained so in all later editions.

16. 'Both are flat, faded, two-dimensional pieces,' wrote Louis MacNeice in his The Poetry of W. B. Yeats (London: Faber & Faber, 1967) pp. 92-3.

17. It is clear from a series of allusions in Ulysses that Joyce was acquainted with both the volume published in 1903 and the printing of 'Baile and Aillinn' in the Monthly Review of July 1902.

18. See Wade 67, where the note is reprinted. 19. T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (London: Faber & Faber, 1963) p. 72. 20. Hill 1983: 26.

Notes 181

Chapter 5: Yeats, Synge and the Georgians

1. Reprinted in The Permanence of Yeats, eds James Hall and Martin Steinmann (New York: Collier Books, 1961) pp. 9-13.

2. T. S. Eliot, 'A Foreign Mind: Athenaeum 4653 (4 July 1919) pp. 552-3 (a review of The Cutting of an Agate).

3. I am thinking not only of Yeats's Prologue to The Death of Cuchulain (VPI1051-2) but also of his Introduction to the Oxford Book of Modern Verse (pp. v-xliii), of his broadcast on 'Modern Poetry' (E&I491-508), and such late poems as 'The Man and the Echo' (VP 632-3).

4. John Masefield, Some Memories of W. B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan, 1940) p. 10; So Long to Learn (London: Heinemann, 1952) p. 127; Recent Prose (London: Heinemann, 1924) p. 181.

5. Letters of John Masefield to Florence Lamont, eds Corliss Lamont and LanSing Lamont (London: Macmillan, 1979) p. 119.

6. Masefield 1924: 181. 7. Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh: Patron of the Arts: a Biography

(London: Longmans, 1959) pp. 196-7. 8. See Hassall1959: 207, 211, 228. For Yeats's attitude to King George V

see 'Cracked Mary's Vision' of 1929, printed in Richard EHmann's The Identity of Yeats, 2nd edn (London: Faber & Faber, 1965) pp. 101-2; and 'Crazy Jane on the Mountain' (VP 628).

9. Letter from Ezra Pound to Dorothy Shakespear, 22 December 1912, (supplied by A. Walton Litz).

10. Three poems by Stephens appeared in Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912 (London: Poetry Bookshop, 1912), the first volume of the series. His suggestion that Seamus O'Sullivan also be invited to contribute was not taken (Hassall1959: 197).

11. Edward Thomas, The Country (London: Batsford, 1913) p. 39. 12. Robert H. Ross, The Georgian Revolt: Rise and Fall of a Poetic Ideal

1910-22 (London: Faber & Faber, 1967) p. 37. 13. L. A. G. Strong, John Masefield (London: Longmans, Green, 1952) p. 19. 14. John Masefield, The Everlasting Mercy (London: Sidgwick & Jackson,

1911) p. 9. 15. Wilfred W. Gibson, Kestrel Edge and Other Plays (London: Macmillan,

1924) pp. 91-2. 16. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1979) I, p. 183. 17. Letter to Sallie Hopkin, 26 April 1911 (Boulton 1979: 260). 18. Letter to Edward Garnett, 1 February 1913 (Boulton 1979: 509.) 19. D. H. Lawrence, Complete Plays (London: Heinemann, 1965) pp. 50, 51,

57. 20. D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock (London: Heinemann, 1955) p. 128. 21. Lawrence 1955: 131. 22. Review of Georgian Poetry, 1911-12, reprinted in D. H. Lawrence

Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers 1936, ed. Edward D. MacDonald (New York: Viking Press, 1968) p. 306.

23. Edward Marsh, ed. Georgian Poetry, 1913-1915 (London: Poetry Bookshop, 1918) pp. 156-8.

24. Marsh 1918: 156.

182 Notes

25. J. M. Synge, Collected Works, Vol. II, Prose, ed. Alan Price (London: Oxford University Press, 1966) p. 347.

26. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake: a Facsimile of Buffalo Notebooks VI.B9-VI.B12, prefaced and arranged by David Hayman (New York: Garland, 1978) p. 101 (VI.BI0 44).

27. Walter de la Mare, Complete Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1969) p.116.

28. De la Mare 1969:105. 29. 'Ulysses, Order and Myth', Dial LXXV, 5 (November 1923): 480-3. 30. An Honoured Guest, eds. Denis Donoghue and J. R. Mulryne (London:

Edward Arnold, 1965) p. 45. 31. The poem was first published in 1913. In Later Poems (1922), Yeats

made this passage more artificial by the repetition of 'mauled and bit', as in the text quoted here.

32. Edward Thomas, 'I Never Saw that Land Before' Collected Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1969) p. 100.

33. Martin Burgess Green, Children of the Sun (New York: Basic Books, 1976) p. 26.

Chapter 6: The Presence of the Poet: or, What Sat Down at the Breakfast Table?

1. Nobel Lecture, Odczy w Akademii Szwedzkiej (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980) p. 11. Hereafter Nobel.

2. ' ... a few minutes ago I expressed my longing for the end of a contra­diction which opposes the poet's need of distance to his feeling of solidarity with his fellow men. And yet, if we take flight above the earth as a metaphor of the poet's vocation, it is not difficult to notice that a kind of contradiction is implied, even in those epochs when the poet is relatively free from the snares of history. For how to be above and Simultaneously to see the Earth in every detail? And yet, in a precarious balance of opposites, a certain equilibrium can be achieved thanks to a distance introduced by the flow of time' (Nobel, p. 21) . There is an interesting parallelism between this passage and the one in Discoveries (E&I266-7) in which Yeats speaks of 'the two ways before literature - upward into ever-growing subtlety ... or downward, taking the soul with us until all is simplified and solidi­fied again'.

3. Poetry in a Divided World: the Clark lectures 1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) p. x, 11.

Chapter 7: Mr. Yeats, Michael Robartes and their Circle

1. 'Our modern poetry is imaginative. It is the poetry of the young. The poetry of the greatest periods is an expression of the appetites and habits. Hence we select where they exhausted' (Mem 145). See also E&I 152 and Au 521.

Notes 183

2. See especially E&I509, and the Preface to The Wild Swans at Coole, 1919 and 1920 (VP 852).

3. 'Ego Dominus Tuus'; 'A Prayer on Going into my House'; 'The Phases of the Moon'; 'The Cat and the Moon'; 'The Saint and the Hunch-back'; 'Two Songs of a Fool'; 'Another Song of a Fool'; 'The Double Vision of Michael Robartes'. Only the first of these had ap­peared in The Wild Swans at Coole (Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1917) and the lapse of time between the composition of this poem and the later seven is significant. 'Ego Dominus Tuus' was the germinal poem of the cycle and more tentative than those that followed.

4. 'Mr. Yeats' Swan Song', Athenaeum 4640 (April 4, 1919), reprinted in The Permanence of Yeats, edited James Hall and Martin Steinmann (New York, 1950, rpt. Collier Books, 1961) pp. 9-12.

5. Yeats sometimes spelt 'Aherne' without the final 'e'. John Aherne may have been a fused recollection of Owen Aherne (founded on Lionel Johnson) and John Hearne, the father of the protagonist in The Speckled Bird.

6. I am grateful to Senator Michael B. Yeats and Professor George Mills Harper for allowing me to examine the unpublished dialogues. As I read them, they amplify but do not alter the account of the Robartes works given here.

7. Donald Davie, 'Michael Robartes and the Dancer', in An Honoured Guest, edited Denis Donoghue and J. R. Mulryne (London: Edward Arnold, 1965) pp. 76-80.

8. In 'A People's Theatre' (1919), Yeats's allusion to 'a certain friend' seems to imply that Robartes, in addition to his other contributions is also a poet: 'Are we approaching a supreme moment of self­consciousness, the two halves of the soul separate and face to face? A certain friend of mine has written upon this subject a couple of intri­cate poems called The Phases of the Moon and The Double Vision respec­tively which are my continual study, and I must refer the reader to these poems for the necessary calculations' (Ex 259). Since the poems had been published a few months earlier as Yeats's work, the alert reader would quickly recognize a drama of the 'halves of the soul sep­arate and face to face' but not in their usual roles.

9. Jon Stalworthy, Between tbe Lines (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963) pp.8~.

Chapter 8: First Work for the Stage: Earliest Versions of The Countess Kathleen

1. This outline is primarily based on a group of the 'W. B. Yeats Papers' deposited in the National Library of Ireland. This group is assigned the number 8758 and I have given a description and a chronology of the manuscripts it contains in 'Manuscript Versions of Yeats's The Countess Cathleen', Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 56.1 (1962). Extracts from these manuscripts are used by kind permission of Mrs. Yeats.

184 Notes

2. The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892). Hereafter CKVLL. The dedication is printed in mixed roman and gothic type and laid out in nine lines.

3. A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949) p. 60.

4. 'The Countess Kathleen O'Shea', Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (London: Walter Scott, 1888) a collection commissioned from Yeats by Walter Scott for the Camelot Series. Hereafter FFTIP. It is in­teresting to note that Yeats first saw the story as more appropriate to the group he put under the general heading 'The Devil' than to what he heads 'Saints, Priests'. Yeats found the story 'quoted in a London­Irish newspaper' and, at the time, was unable to discover the source (though the newspaper actually gave the author and - in English trans­lation - the title of its original). The newspaper version appeared in The Shamrock for 5 October 1867, where it was headed' An Irish Legend from France' and translated as 'The Traders in Souls' . Yeats later dis­covered the Shamrock's source ('Les marchands d'ames' in Les Matinees de Timothee Trimm by J. Napoleon Lespes, Paris 1865) and included it in the notes to the 1901 and subsequent editions of Poems.

5. Jeffares 1949:59,60. 6. Jeffares 1949:69. The word 'pence' in this passage is suspect. Should it

not be 'peace'? Cf. J. Hone, W. B. Yeats, 1865-1939 (London: Macmillan, 1942) pp. 87-8.

7. MSS. 6A and 68. See 'Manuscript Versions ... ', cited in note 1, for an account of the first (non-extant) and second prose versions.

8. In quoting from the MSS on this occasion, I have not attempted to repre­sent fully all that appears but only the emergent reading, silently omit­ting words and phrases deleted by Yeats and incorporating those that he adds. And for darity, given the present intentions, spelling is corrected, speech headings italicized and a minimum of punctuation added.

9. FFTIP, p. 235. 10. MacBride, Maud (Gonne), A Servant of the Queen (Dublin: Golden

Eagle Books, 1950) pp. 217-18. 11. See the Preface to CKVLL. 12. FFTIP, p. 2. In the introductions to the various sections of this volume

Yeats makes some of the distinctions between the various kinds of su­pernatural beings mentioned in the play.

13. Griffin in his ballad 'The Fate of Cathleen' has one version of the tale. In Griffin's ballad as in Yeats's play, God sees the motive and disre­gards the deed when Kevin drowns Cathleen in a desperate attempt to maintain his holy vows. See The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Gerald Griffin (Dublin: James Duffy, 1867) pp. 1-16.

14. This copy is designated No. 110. I examined it by kind permission of the Lord Chamberlain.

Chapter 9: The Allegory of The Wanderings of Oisin

1. Russell K. Alspach, 'Some Sources of Yeats's The Wanderings of Oisin', PMLA LVII (1943): 849-66.

Notes 185

2. Harold are!, The Development of William Butler Yeats: 1885-1900 (Lawrence, Kan.: University of Kansas Publications, 1968) p. 14.

3. Morton Seiden, 'A Psychoanalytical Essay on W. B. Yeats', Accent (Spring, 1946): pp. 178-90.

4. T. S. Eliot, 'Yeats', On Poetry and Poets (New York: Faber & Faber, 1957) p. 302.

5. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks (New York: Macmillan, 1948, rpt. 1958) p. 137.

6. T. R. Henn, The Lonely Tower, 2nd edn (London and New York: Methuen, 1965) p. 112.

7. See, for example, Louis MacNeice, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1941) pp. 44, 47, 63-4, 74. Peter Faulkner in his William Morris and W. B. Yeats (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1962) p. 9, dissents from the conventional view of the influence of Morris on 'Oisin'.

8. 'The Symbolism of Painting' (1898) (E&I148). 9. Preface to Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men (1904) (Ex 24ff).

10. Richard EHmann, The Identity of Yeats, 2nd edn (London and New York: Oxford UniverSity Press, 1963) pp. 19-20.

11. Druid Craft: The Writing of The Shadowy Waters, Manuscripts of W. B. Yeats, transcribed, edited and with a commentary by Michael J. Sidnell, George P. Mayhew and David R. Clark (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1971) p.174.

12. 'Two Songs from a Play' (VP 438). 13. 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen' (VP 429). 14. The cluster of images of lion, fallen king and fallen sun are reminis­

cent of Shakespeare's Richard II , on which Yeats wrote in 1901 (E&I pp ??; UPI pp. 247-52). They make this a book of daylight, dejection and defiance in which Yeats is not unlike the Oisin at the end of the earlier poem.

15. 'Gods and Fighting Men' (Ex 18). 16. These lines and another similar one were added in 1895 with the

intent, it appears, of strengthening the symbolism of sun and moon. See VP 9:102-5 and 12:152. For a reading of Oisin as sun-god, Niamh as moon-goddess and the demon as 'the sun in its evening or winter aspect', see Morton Seiden, William Butler Yeats: The Poet as a Myihmaker (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 1962) p. 226n.

17. 'Gods and Fighting Men' (Ex 24--6, 29). 18. In 1888, the house was made of 'antlers and shaggy skin' (VP 17:249). 19. 'Ancestral Houses' (VP 417) and 'Easter 1916' (VP 391), come immedi­

ately to mind. 20. 'The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson', Dublin University Review (Nov.

1886) p. 923, (UP1 88). 21. 'The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson', p. 924 (UP1 88-9). 22. Originally'a nine days' corpse' (VP 40:179). 23. EHmann 1958: 51. 24. Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn (Chicago: Aries Press, 1937) I, p. 110. 25. P. W. Joyce, Old Celtic Romances (London: C. K. Paul, 1879; rpt. Dublin,

1900) pp. nO-B.

186 Notes

26. See Yeats's note after the title of 'The White Birds' (VP 121). 27. ' Alternative Song for the Severed Head in The King of the Great Clock

Tower' (VP 549-50). 28. 'From Wheels and Butterflies', reprinted in Ex 392-3.

Index

Abbey Theatre 17,28 Abercrombie, Lascelles 79 'Adam's Curse' (Yeats) 24,25-7,

68,69,73,89 'Adoration of the Magi, The'

(Yeats) 69 After the Deluge (Woolf, L.) 180n 'All Souls' Night' (Yeats) 48,130,

134 'All that's Past' (de la Mare) 84 'Among School Children' (Yeats)

11 'Another Song of a Fool' (Yeats)

119, 120, 183n Armstrong, Laura 141 Arrah-Na-Pogue (Boucicault) 48 'At the Hawk's Well' (Yeats) 165 Auden, W. H. 18,31-2,33,74 'Audible Reading of Poetry, The'

(Winters) 30 Autobiographies (Yeats) 5,16,23,

33-4,103,114,124,135,169-70 'Autumn of the Body, The' (Yeats)

123,180n

'Baile and Aillinn' (Yeats) 28,69, 70,71,72,88,180n

Binyon, Laurence 89 'BlackTower, The' (Yeats) 43 Blake, William 38, 54, 72, 135, 160 'Blood and the Moon' (Yeats) 9 Bottomley, Gordon 79 Boucicault, Dion 48 Brooke, Rupert 75

'Cat and the Moon, The' (Yeats) 118, 119,183n

Calvary (Yeats) 112 Cathleen-ni-Houlihan (Yeats)

49-50 Celtic Twilight, The (Yeats) 99-100

'Circus Animals' Desertion, The' (Yeats) 106-7,161

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 23, 107 Collected Works, J. M. Synge, Vol. 1:

Poems (ed. Skelton) 77, 84, 85 Comyns, Michael 164 Conolly, James 148 'Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931'

(Yeats) 9,65 Countess Kathleen, The (Yeats) xi,

xiii, 4, 16,57,58,139-59,174 Craig, Edward Gordon 17 'Crazy Jane' (Yeats) 53,61 Critical Edition of Yeats's A Vision, A

(ed. Harper & Hood) 65,92, 112,117,124,127,129,133,134

Croiza, Mme. 31 'Cruelty and Love' (Lawrence)

81-2

'Dance of the Four Royal Persons, The' (Yeats) 133

'Danny' (Synge) 77 Davidson, John 92 Day-Lewis, Cecil 62, 180n de la Mare, Walter 84,85,91 De Man, Paul 10 'Dead, The' (Joyce) 55 Death of Cuchulain, The (Yeats)

181n 'Death of Irish' (Mathews) 21 'Dedication to a Book of Stories,

The .. : (Yeats) 173 'Dedication to Vestigia' (Yeats)

130, 133-4 Derrida, Jacques 33 'Desert Geometry or The Gift of

Harun AI-Rashid' (Yeats) 109,130-3

Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles

187

188 Index

and Commons in Athens and Rome (Swift) 60

Discoveries (Yeats) 12,64, 180n Dolmetsch, Arnold 27-8 Donne, John 49 Doone, Rupert 18 'Double Vision of Michael

Robartes, The' (Yeats) 119, 120-2,125,132,183n

Dowden, Professor 169-70,172 Dowson, Ernest 87, 92 Dreaming of the Bones, The (Yeats)

112 Dllbliners Goyce) 50,52, 43, 54-5,

57 Dumb Waiter, The (Pinter) 48 Dunn, Douglas 31-2,33

'Easter 1916' (Yeats) 103 'Ego Dominus Tuus' (Yeats) 115,

116,l17,l19,120,183n Eliot, George 169 Eliot, T. S. xiii, 18,28, 32, 33, 36,

54,57,65-6,67-8,69,71,73,74, 88-9,92,104,110, 165,180n

EHmann, Richard 37,41,58-9, 161, 162, 165, 167, 170, 171

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 84 Eminent Domain (EHmann) 41,

58-9 Essays and Introductions (Yeats) 6,

7,12,13,24,28,34,36,38,64-5, 72,86,89,92,102,123,161

Everlasting Mercy (Masefield) 78-9,89

Explorations (sel. Mrs W. B. Yeats) 8,19-20,22,27,28-9,34,38,46, 60

Faber Book of Modern Verse, The (ed. Roberts) 75,92

Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (Yeats) xi, 140, ISO, 184n

Farr, Florence 27, 31, 57 'Fate of Cathleen, The' (Griffin)

184n Ferguson, Sir Samuel 169,172 Fighting the Waves (Yeats) 17

Finnegans Wake Goyce) xii-xiii,41, 43,44-9,54,58-9,61,99

'Fisherman, The' (Yeats) 25,35-6 Fleet Street Eclogues (Davidson) 92 'Folly of Being Comforted, The'

(Yeats) 68,69 'Fool by the Roadside, The' (Yeats)

130 Four Years (Yeats) 114 Friel, Brian 21-2 Full Moon in March, A (Masefield)

89

Galsworthy, John 79 'General Introduction for My

Work, A' (Yeats) 102 George V, King 76 Georgian Poetry (Marsh) 75-6,81-3 Gibson, Wilfred 79 Gifford, Henry 97 Gods and Fighting Men (Lady

Gregory) 45-6, 177n Gonne, Maud xi, 23, 25, 58, 78,

91-2,123,125,139-41,148,152, 15~, 159

'Grace' Goyce) 50,55 'Grafted Tongue, A' (Montague)

20 Granville-Barker, Harley 79 Green Helmet, The (Yeats) 69,78,

85,89,100,165 Greene, Martin 92 Gregory, Lady Augusta 19-21,23,

45-6,52,56,57,84,140,l77n 'Grey Rock, The' (Yeats) 87-8 Griffin, Gerald 184n Griffith, Arthur 148 Guthrie, Tyrone 18

Hartnett, Michael 21 Heaney, Seamus 63 Heartbreak House (Shaw) 180n Henley, W. E. 23,92 Henn, T. R. 89 Hill, Geoffrey 62,63,73,106 History of Modern Poetry (Perkins)

68 'Hour Before Dawn, The' (Yeats)

90-1

Index 189

Housman, A. E. 76 Hyde, Douglas 20 Hyde-Lees, Georgie 125, 134

'Image from a Past Life, An' (Yeats) 114,125-6

In the Seven Woods (Yeats) xiii, 68-73,78,85,88-9,100,18Dn

Irish Literary Theatre 16, 139 'Ivy Day' (Joyce) 50, 56

Jeffares, A. Norman 19 Johnson, Lionel 15, 74, 87, 92,

183n Johnston, Denis 33 Jolas, Eugene 59 Joyce, James xii-xiii, 27-8, 37-8,

41,43,44-61,65,69,70,72,74, 83,89,99,124,180n

Joyce, P. W. 172

Keats, John 115, 160 Kestrel Edge (Gibson) 79 Kiberd, Declan 21 Kinsella, Thomas 38

Lady Chatterley'S Lover (Lawrence) 81

Lane, Hugh 56 'Lapis Lazuli' (Yeats) 14,65, 177n Lawrence, D. H. 62,74,78,79-82,

lOOn 'Lay of Oisin on the Land of Youth,

The' (Comyns) 164 'Leda' (Yeats) 130,177n Letters ofW. B. Yeats, The (ed.

Wade) 24,32,35,56,64,69, 81,91,111,123,124,135,140, 141-2,149,154,159,160,161, 168

'Little Cloud, A' (Joyce) 55 'Looking-Glass, The' (Yeats) 12

MacDiarmid, Hugh 62-3 MacNeice, Louis 38,69, 180n 'Man and the Echo, The' (Yeats)

181n Marsh,Edward 75-6,78,81-3

Masefield, John 75,77,78-9, 89-90

Masterman, C. F. 62 Mathers, I. MacGregor 113-14,

124, 125, 134 Mathews, Aidan Carl 21 Memoirs (ed. Donoghue) 178n,

182n 'Men Improve with the Years'

(Yeats) 120 Michael Robartes and the Dancer

(Yeats) xii,7, 12, 59-60, 110, 112-14,122-3,124,125,127,128

'Michael Robartes and the Dancer' (Yeats) 12, 13,60, 128

Milosz, Czeslaw 97 Montague, John 20,38 Morris, William 32,38, 160 'Mother, A' (Joyce) 50 'Municipal Gallery Revisted, The'

(Yeats) 25 Murder in the Cathedral (Eliot) 32 Murry, John Middleton 74,

109-10,118 Mystery of the Charity of Charles

Peguy, The (Hill) 62 Mythologies (Yeats) 99,101,123,

173

Neuman, Shirley 105 New Science (Vico) 60 'News for the Delphic Oracle'

(Yeats) 177n Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 104,

107 Noah and the Waters (Day-Lewis)

180n

Q'Casey,Sean 65 'Old Age of Queen Maeve, The'

(Yeats) 28,29,69-70,88, 99-100

O'Leary, John 23 'On a Picture of a Black Centaur by

Edmund Dulac' (Yeats) 177n 'On a Political Prisoner' (Yeats)

124 'On Baile's Strand' (Yeats) 69,72

190 Index

'On Mr. Nettleship's Picture at the Royal Hibernian Academy' (Yeats) 177n

Only Jealousy of Emer, The (Yeats) 4,112

'Owen Aherne and His Dancers' (Yeats) 131

Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935 (chosen by W. B. Yeats) 12,13,65,66,76,92, 180n

'Pardon Old Fathers' (Yeats) 101 Pater, Walter Horatio 92 Patrick, St. 42,44-6,54,57,58,

161-2 Peguy, Charles 62,65 'People, The' (Yeats) 25 'People's Theatre, A' (Yeats) 183n 'Per Arnica Silentia Lunae' (Yeats)

101 Perkins, David 68 'Phases of the Moon, The' (Yeats)

115,116-17,118-19,120,129, 183n

Pinter, Harold 48 Pirandello, Luigi 65 Plato 4, 23, 33 Plays and Controversies (Yeats) 3,

176n 'Plays for Dancers' (Yeats) 6 Poems Written in Discouragement

(Yeats) 98 Poets and Dreamers (Lady Gregory)

52 Pollexfen, William 104 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,

A Goyce) 50-2, 56, 124 Pound, Ezra 6,8,17,28,65,74,76,

87,92 'Prayer for a Second Flood'

(MacDiarmid) 62-3 'Prayer for My Daughter, A' (Yeats)

124-5, 127-8 'Prayer for Old Age, A' (Yeats)

103-4 'Prayer on Going into My House,

A' (Yeats) 117, 183n

Purgatory (Yeats) 47,81

'Queens' (Synge) 77-8,88

Rainbow, The (Lawrence) 180n Read, Herbert 63 'Red Hanrahan's Song about

Ireland' (Yeats) 51,55 Regardie, Israel 171 Responsibilities (Yeats) 18,55-7,

66,68,69,71,85,87,89-90,91, 100

'Results of Thought, The' (Yeats) 11

Resurrection, The (Yeats) 4,115-16 Rhymer's Club 56,87-8 'Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and

Aillinn' (Yeats) 71 Riders to the Sea (Synge) 79,80 Rimbaud, Jean Nicolas 73 Roberts, Michael 74-5 'Rosa Alchemica' (Yeats) 113,115 'Rose of the World, The' (Yeats)

173 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 33 Russell, George (AE) 159

'Sailing to Byzantium' (Yeats) 11, 59

'Saint and the Hunch-back, The' (Yeats) 119,120, 183n

'Second Coming, The' (Yeats) 4, 114,124

Secret Rose, The (Yeats) 53 Selected Prose ofT. S. Eliot (ed.

Kermode) 67-8,69,71 Shadowy Waters, The (Yeats) xi-xii,

51,83,164 Shakespeare, William 11, 38,67,

101, 123, 139, 147 Shaw, George Bernard 23,33,62,

79, 180n Shelley, Percy Bysshe 6-7,160,

170 Shropshire Lad, The (Housman) 76 Silver Tassie, The (O'Casey) 65 'Snapdragon' (Lawrence) 81 'Snare, The' (Stephens) 82-3

Index 191

Socrates 97,98 'Solomon and Sheba' (Yeats) 53 'Solomon and the Witch' (Yeats)

126-7 Spenser, Edmund 38 'Spirit Medium, The' (Yeats) 93 'Spur, The' (Yeats) 36-7,104-5 Stallworthy, Jon 131 Stendhal (Henri Beyle) 12, 13 Stephen Hero Goyce) 50-1,55,56 Stephens, James 7~, 82-3, 180n Stevens, Wallace 163 Stories of Michael Robartes and His

Friends: an Extract from a Record Made by one of His Pupils (Yeats) 53, 134-6

Stories of Red Hanrahan (Yeats) 52-4,55

Strong, L. A. G. 78 'Sunday Morning' (Stevens) 163 'Supernatural Songs' (Yeats) 53 Swift, Jonathan 60,91-2,123 Symons, Arthur 92 Synge, John xiii, 20, 56,57,74,75,

76-80,81,83,84,85,88,89,92, 103, 180n

'Tables of the Law, The' (Yeats) 41,111-12,129

Tempest, The (Shakespeare) 152 Tennyson, Alfred 160 'These are the Clouds' (Yeats) 165 Thomas, Edward 76, 91 'Three Beggars, The' (Yeats)

89-90 Time and the Witch Vivien (Yeats)

141 Todd, Loreto 32-3 Tower, The (Yeats) 66,130 'Tower, The' (Yeats) 11,66-7,71,

105,123 Tragedy of Nan (Masefield) 79 Translations (Friel) 21-2 'Tribes of Danu' (Yeats) 53 'Twisting of the Rope' (Yeats)

105 'Two Gallants' Goyce) 55 'Two Kings, The' (Yeats) 86-7

'Two Songs of a Fool' (Yeats) 119, 120, 130, 183n

Tynan, Katharine 141-2,148-9, 153-4,161

Ulysses Goyce) 37-8,52,53, 54, 57, 69,70,72,123,180n

Uncollected Prose by W. 8. Yeats, vol. 2 (ed. Frayne and Johnson) 72

'Under Ben Bulben' (Yeats) IS, 177n

'Under the Moon' (Yeats) 72 'Upon a House Shaken by Land

Agitation' (Yeats) 19-20, 100-1

Valery, Paul 30-1, 178n 'Valley of the Black Pig, The'

(Yeats) 173 Variorum Edition of the Plays of W. B.

Yeats, The (ed. Alspach) 4,16, 112,174

Variorum Edition of the Poems ofW. B. Yeats, The (ed. Allt and Alspach) 10,11,12,13,14,15, 17,22,24,34-5, 36, 37, 43, 46, 47,50,51,54, 56-7, 58, 59-61, 65,66,67,70,71,72,84,87,88, 90,91,92,93,99,100-1,103, 104, lOS, 106, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118,119,120-2,124,125, 126-8, 130-3, 161, 163-75

Villiers de L'Isle Adam, Auguste 135

Virgil 15 Vision, A (Yeats-Macmillan 1962)

3, 10, 13, 134-6 Vision, A (Yeats) xii, 10-11, 17,48,

58-9,61,109,111,112,114,116, 127,129-31,133-6

'Voyage of Maildun' Goyce, P. W.) 172

Wade, Allan 111,112,115 Wanderings ofOisin, The (Yeats)

154-5 'Wanderings of Oisin, The' (Yeats)

xiii,41-9, 54, 57-8, 160-75

192 Index

'Wheel and the Phases of the Moon, The' (Yeats) 130

White Peacock, The (Lawrence) SD-l Whitman, Walt 15,84 Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, The

(Lawrence) 79-80 Wild Swans at Coole, The (Yeats)

10,66,68, 7D-l, 74, 85, 91-2, 101, 109-10, 116, 120, 183n

Wilde, Oscar 23 Wind Among the Reeds, The (Yeats)

7, 51, 66, 112, 123, 125-6, 164, 166

Winters, Yvor 30,32 'Wisdom' (Yeats) 14-15 'Wisdom of the King, The' (Yeats)

173 Woolf, Leonard 62,18Dn 'Words' (Yeats) 34-5,100 Wordsworth, William 49 'Work in Progress' Goyce) 59,60 World War 1 62,64-5,66, 97,

124

Yeats, John Butler 23,33-4,35,36, 91,169