Table Of ContentYEATS'S HEROIC FIGURES
YEATS'S HEROIC
FIGURES
Wilde, Parnell, Swift, Casement
Michael Steinman
M
Palgrave Macmillan
© Michael Steinman 1983
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1983 978-0-333-34382-1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1983 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-06557-8 ISBN 978-1-349-06555-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06555-4
To
My Mother and Father
If one remembers the men who have dominated Ireland for the last
hundred and fifty years, one understands that it is strength of
personality, the individualising quality in a man, that stirs Irish
imagination most deeply in the end. There is scarcely a man who has
led the Irish people, at any time, who may not give some day to a
great writer precisely that symbol he may require for the expression
of himself.
W.B. YEATS, 1904
You have given us the most important part of history, its lies.
Nature notes a fact and gets rid of it as quickly as possible, that is
how she lures us. I don't believe that events have been shaped so
much by the facts as by the lies that people believed about them.
W. B . YEATS to Lady Gregory,
after she had read him the
chapter of her autobiography on
the Easter Rising
History seems to me a human drama ... the drama has its plot, and
this plot ordains character and passions and exists for their sake.
W.B. YEATS, 1930
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
2 Wilde:" ... Oscar ruled the table"
3 Yeats and Wilde's Art
4 Parnell: "A proud man's a lovely man"
5 Swift: "The tomb of Swift wears it away"
6 Swift's Poetry
Appendix: Roger Casement:
"They ... blackened his good name"
List ofA bbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Vll
Acknowledgements
This book grew out of a doctoral dissertation done at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook and I am grateful to Thomas
Flanagan and Jack Ludwig, who read the manuscript and offered
Vlli
advice and encouragement. Special thanks are due Paul Dolan, a
perceptive reader, teacher, and friend. I am also grateful to Narayan
1
Hegde and the staff of the William Butler Yeats Archives at Stony
Brook for making unpublished material available which contributed
greatly to my understanding of Yeats. For permission to quote from
that unpublished material, I thank Michael and Anne Yeats.
28
Many Yeats scholars gave generously of their time, energy, and
ideas. David R. Clark was always a model for original approaches to
54
Yeats; Donald T. Torchiana patiently corresponded and made
invaluable letters available to me. I thank Richard Ellmann, Edward
103
Engelberg, Augustine Martin, and William Martin Murphy for
their kind answers to my questions. I am also indebted to the
144
Reference Department of the Hofstra University Library, who
eagerly found the unavailable, and to Nora J. Quinlan, of the
Kenneth Spencer Research Library of the University of Kansas.
152
My friends and colleagues at Stony Brook and Hofstra who
offered encouragement and tangible help are many, but I must
164
thank Barbara and Dennis Bengels, Joann Krieg, Carol Levenstein,
Hyman Lichtenstein, Jennifer Randisi, and Bob, Laurie, and
166
Charles Rozakis. I am most indebted to Maureen Murphy, of
Hofstra and the American Committee for Irish Studies, who first
l84
taught me Yeats and read the manuscript in innumerable versions.
Her wise guidance and friendship never faltered, and, without her,
191
this book would never have existed. My greatest debt outside the
circle offriends and scholars is, of course, noted in my dedication.
The author and publisher wish to thank the following who have
kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: A.P.
Watt, Ltd., Michael Yeats, Anne Yeats, and the Macmillan
Vill
Acknowledgements lX
Publishing Co., for the extracts from William Butler Yeats,
Mythologies (©Mrs W. B. Yeats, 1959), Essays and Introductions
(©Mrs W. B. Yeats, 1961), The Variorum Edition of the Poems ofW B.
Yeats, ed Peter AlIt and Russell K. Alspach (©the Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc., 1957), The VariorumEditionofthePlaysofW B.
Yeats, ed. Russell K. Alspach (©Russell K. Alspach and Bertha
Georgie Yeats, 1966, ©Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1965), The
Autobiography of William Butler Yeats (© 1916, 1936 by Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc., © 1944, 1964 by Bertha Georgie Yeats), The
Letters of W B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (© 1953, 1954 by Anne Butler
Yeats), Explorations (©Mrs W. B. Yeats, 1962), A Vision (©1937 by
W. B. Yeats, renewed 1965 by Bertha Georgie Yeats and Anne
Butler Yeats), Collected Plays (©1934, 1952 by Macmillan Publishing
Co., Inc.) and Collected Poems (©1912, 1916, 1918, 1919, 1924,
1928, 1933, 1934 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., renewed
1940,1944, 1946, 1947,1952,1956, 1961,1962byBerthaGeorgie
Yeats, © 1940 by Georgie Yeats, renewed 1968 by Bertha Georgie
Yeats, Michael Butler Yeats and Anne Yeats); CorneH University
Press, for the extracts from William Martin Murphy, Prodigal Father:
the Life of John Butler Yeats (1839-1922), (©Cornell University
Press, 1978); Littlefield, Adams, and Company, and the Macmillan
Press, Ltd., for E. H. Mikhail, ed., W B. Yeats: Interviews and
Recollections, (©E. H. Mikhail, 1977); Oxford University Press, for
the extracts from William Butler Yeats, The Oxford Book Of Modern
Verse, 1892 -1935, (©Oxford University Press, 1935); Random
House, Inc., for the extracts from Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic:
Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde, ed. Richard EHmann, (©Richard
EHmann, 1968, 1969); A. P. Watt, Ltd., for the extracts from
William Butler Yeats, Memoirs, ed. Denis Donoghue (©Denis
Donoghue, M. B. Yeats, and Anne Yeats, 1972); and Columbia
University Press, for the extracts from Uncollected Prose by W B.
Yeats, vol. I, ed. John P. Frayne (©John P. Frayne and Michael
Yeats, 1970) and Uncollected Prose by W B. Yeats, vol. II, ed. John P.
Frayne and Colton Johnson (©John P. Frayne, Colton Johnson,
and Michael Yeats, 1975, 1976).
1 Introduction
When William Butler Yeats described Blake as " ... crying out for
a mythology, and trying to make one because he could not find one
to his hand", he described himself. 1 Separated from traditional
national heroes and an orthodox religious mythology by sensitive
skepticism, Yeats made a personal mythology offo ur heroic figures:
Oscar Wilde, Charles Stewart Parnell, Jonathan Swift, and Roger
Casement. These four were essential, rather than others he
celebrated, because they resembled Yeats's heroic conception of
himself, and in the artistic ways he chose to re-create their images.
They were all distinguished by singular personality, which often
approached idiosyncracy or eccentricity. It usually revealed itself in
aristocratic pride, their disdain for the common, as they defined
themselves outside the accepted social, artistic, or political laws,
creating worlds to suit themselves. This defiance of common
expectations often led to their ruin, an inevitable result of their
heroic conceptions of themselves. When facing their tormentors,
they were proud and gallant: Wilde on trial, Parnell in Committee
Room Fifteen, Swift as the Drapier, Casement's mad audacity. All
had almost conquered England: Wilde, art's prophet, Parnell,
Ireland's uncrowned King, Swift as the man whose arrest would
require ten thousand men, and Casement, ready to free Ireland by
force. Like Yeats, they were born in Ireland and did their work in
English, constituting an Anglo-Irish Protestant lineage of intellectual
freedom, an answer to Douglas Hyde's Gaelic Irish heroes. They
battled an often ignorant and conservative Catholicism, and Yeats
invoked them as allies against the "Paudeens", William Martin
Murphy, or the Abbey rioters.
A corollary to their heroism was their martyrdom at the hands of
the many, for their heroic singularity made the mob hate, fear, and
crucify them. Yeats celebrated them in decline; paradoxically, their
heroism was most vivid when they were attacked, even defeated.
Wilde, Parnell, and Casement had been destroyed by hysterica passio,
1
