Volume 45, Number 3 · February 19, 1998
The Myth of W.B. Yeats
By Denis Donoghue
W.B. Yeats: A Life
Volume I: The Apprentice Mage, by R.F. Foster
Oxford University Press, 640 pp., $35.00
The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats
Volume II: 1896-1900, edited by Warwick Gould, by John Kelly, by Deirdre Toomey
Oxford University Press, 790 pp., $75.00
W.B. Yeats was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865, the eldest child of mismatched parents. His father, John Butler Yeats, came from an Irish Protestant middle-class family much reduced in fortune and repute: he furthered the reduction by being a barrister who did not practice at the bar, a portrait painter who rarely completed a portrait, and a gentleman who cultivated a social style without adequate means. JBY, as R.F. Foster calls him, acted upon the belief, which he conveyed to his son Willie, that 'a society of poor gentlemen upon whose hands time lies heavy is absolutely necessary to art and literature.' He remained improvident, except for the production of conversation, letters, speeches, and an engaging manner, all his life. WBY's mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, came from a Protestant trading family in Sligo: they had money enough from shipping and flour-milling, but they retained it in Sligo; it did not find its way to Susan and her debt-ridden husband. The Pollexfens, as Foster says, 'were drawn to mysticism and morbidity.'
Review, 3622 words
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