FOR HALF a century now at the same time every summer, students have gathered at a simple grave outside Drumcliff church and pondered the meaning of “Horseman, pass by”.
Yesterday, as a damp mist shrouded Ben Bulben, they came from Vietnam and Korea, Italy and Moscow, Brazil and Slovakia, and once more puzzled over one of the most famous epitaphs in the world at the start of the 51st Yeats International Summer School.
Joe Cox, president of the Sligo-based Yeats Society, expressed some sadness that despite the school’s enormous standing internationally, it was not appreciated closer to home.
This, he acknowledged, was due to a long-standing view in some quarters that the event was elitist, perhaps partly because of the high academic standard the founders insisted on, at what they saw as a two-week mini-university.
Mr Cox said that while these very standards had served the school well for many decades, “perhaps it is time we introduced a complementary ‘Yeats Lite’ with a more accessible programme” for those daunted by the academic focus of the school.
Numbers are down this year, with just 60 registered compared to more than 100 last year, a drop which Stella Mew, director of the Yeats Society, attributed to a combination of volcanic ash and recession which appears to have kept US students away. But she said the organisers were gratified at the growing appeal of the writer around the globe.
As students gathered for the opening ceremony in the Hawk’s Well Theatre yesterday, Katarina Korenova from Slovakia said she was there partly because of a long-held desire to visit Ireland.
After two days in Sligo, she said a trip to Rosses Point and her first experience of the beach had fulfilled her dreams.
“The first thing I noticed when I got to Sligo was the cosy train station – it felt like I was in somebody’s living room. The second thing was the smell, which is everywhere – I cannot describe it, but it is a cosy smell”.
For the next two weeks, students will be treated to lectures on such weighty subjects as “Yeats and the Poetics of Exterior Intimacy: Transgressing Modernity” and “Losing the theme: Animal cries in Yeats Poetry”.
For those less ambitious followers of Yeats and related matters, there will be a talk by sculptor Imogen Stuart on her memories of Maud Gonne and her daughter Iseult – Stuart’s grandmother-in law and mother-in-law – while Lady Gregory’s great great grand daughter, Julia Kennedy, will read from her famous ancestor’s memoir, written in 1884 but never published.
