Pilgrim Soul: Readable portrayal of the enigma of WB Yeats

Do we need another book about Yeats, given the National Library catalogue lists 7,000 items about him? The author of this book aims to capture the “elongated meandering Irish journey” of a pilgrim soul. A strength is it will encourage the reader to explore Yeats again, the less familiar poems as much as those we know well.

Yeats had a complex relationship with Ireland, his “fool-driven land”, describing himself as Anglo-Irish and lauding the 18th century as a golden age. He nursed a strong antipathy towards England and its monarchy, even though he lived there for some time and he welcomed independence when it came.

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The author tries to skirt around Yeats’ complex love life. But his endless rejected marriage proposals to Maud Gonne, herself a free spirit and a constant theme in his poetry, and the many affairs he had after he married are central to the story. Late in life he even underwent a dubious operation to restore his virility. Yeats’ wife, George, described AE after he died as almost a saint but of her husband added stoically: “You are a better poet but no saint. I suppose one has to choose.”

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The book covers so many aspects of Yeats’ life: his Nobel Prize (Bertie Smyllie rang him with the news), the Hugh Lane Gallery controversy, nationalism, reflections on the Easter Rising, the Abbey Theatre, the War of Independence and the Civil War, as well as his committed membership of the Seanad, risky in 1922. Jack Yeats took the anti-Treaty side, William was pro-Treaty, barely noticing the skirmishes going on around Thoor Ballylee. He feared more the growing power of the church and the dark cloud of censorship that blighted the country, later describing the 20 years after independence as a “history of disappointment”.

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Also covered are Yeats’ aberrations such as his fascination with the occult, the thousands of pages of his wife’s strange “automatic writing”, dallying with fascism and even eugenics. Yet he supported the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War; not an easy person to label.

A bit rambling and repetitive in parts, Pilgrim Soul is a readable attempt to understand the enigma that is Yeats and his efforts to reconcile his background and personal ideals with the emerging new order.

Fergus Mulligan is an author and publisher

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