William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in
Dublin. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter. Yeats was
educated in London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers in the west of
Ireland in the family's summer house at Connaught. The young Yeats was very
much part of the fin de siècle in London; at the same time he was
active in societies that attempted an Irish literary revival. His first volume
of verse appeared in 1887, but in his earlier period his dramatic production
outweighed his poetry both in bulk and in import. Together with Lady Gregory
he founded the Irish Theatre, which was to become the Abbey Theatre, and
served as its chief playwright until the movement was joined by John Synge.
His plays usually treat Irish legends; they also reflect his fascination with
mysticism and spiritualism. The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land
of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The
King's Threshold (1904), and Deirdre (1907) are among the best
known.
After 1910, Yeats's dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical,
static, and esoteric style. His later plays were written for small audiences;
they experiment with masks, dance, and music, and were profoundly influenced
by the Japanese Noh plays. Although a convinced patriot, Yeats deplored the
hatred and the bigotry of the Nationalist movement, and his poetry is full of
moving protests against it. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922.
Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the
award of the Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his
dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His
poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919),
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The
Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays
(1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century
poets writing in English. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and
life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding stairs), and
the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life.
William Butler Yeats died on January 28, 1939.