Almanac of Story Tellers: William Butler Yeats

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of June 13th

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    It is the 164th day of the year, leaving 201 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1865, the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats was born.

   

    Yeats is regarded as one of Ireland's foremost poets, and one of its greatest writers. His work has mystified and glorified Ireland for generations. 

    Although a member of the Protestant aristocracy in heavily Roman Catholic Ireland, as a young man he rejected both traditions is favor of a third: early Celtic mythology with a smattering of mysticism and romanticism. 

    His first writings were works and collections of old legends. He was also influenced by the poet William Blake and the Platonic traditions.

    His later poems and plays tended more toward realism, and he flirted with Irish Nationalism during the days of the Easter Rising and the ensuing Civil War. In the early 1920s, he served in the new Senead Éireann, or the Irish Senate. His poems -- including Easter 1916 --  reflected his new interests.

                I write it out in a verse --

                MacDonagh and MacBride

                And Connolly and Pearse

                Now and in time to be,

                Wherever green is worn,

                Are changed, changed utterly;

                A terrible beauty is born

    Throughout his life, Yeats was interested in literature as a cause. One of his earliest poems, The Wanderings of Oisin, reaches back into Irish mythology for his theme: Whether a life of contemplation is to superior to a life of action.

    While living and studying in London, he helped found the Rhymer's Club. Back in Ireland, he founded the Dublin Hermetic Order, which combined his love of mysticism and literature. He was one of the founders of the Irish Literary Theater, now the Abbey Theater, to promote Irish plays and dramatists. 

    He wrote his best poetry late in life. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, and in 1928 published The Tower, a collection of his poems. It included Leda and the Swan, Among School Children, and Sailing to Byzantium, a metaphor for an old man's spiritual journey.

            An aged man is but a paltry thing,

            A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

            Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

            For every tatter in its mortal dress