Autobiographies consists of six autobiographical works that
William Butler Yeats published together in the mid-1930s
to
form a single, extraordinary memoir of the first fifty-
eight years of his life, from his earliest memories of
childhood to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. This
volume provides a vivid series of
personal accounts of a
wide range of figures, and it describes Yeats's work as
poet and playwright, as a founder of Dublin's famed Abbey
Theatre, his involvement with Irish nationalism, and his
fascination with occultism and visions. This book is most
compelling as Yeats's own account of the growth of his
poetic imagination. Yeats thought that a poet leads a life
of allegory, and that his works are comments upon it.
Autobiographies enacts his ruling belief in the connections
and coherence between the life that he led and the works
that he wrote. It is a vision of personal history as art,
and so it is the one truly essential companion to his poems
and plays.
Edited by William H. O'Donnell and Douglas
N. Archibald, this volume is available for the first time
with invaluable explanatory notes and includes previously
unpublished passages from candidly explicit first drafts.
Yeats is without doubt one of the great English
language poets of the twentieth century . His greatest
poems and lines are in the hearts and minds of most lovers
of poetry. How disappointing then to feel that the person
is in many ways so mediocre in both his thought and his
personal relationships. The whole business of automatic
writing is one part of it. But also the whole search for
some kind of mythic system smacks of superstition, and
perhaps makes Yeats suitable for an age where the 'New Age'
sections of bookstores are far larger than the Religion of
Philosophy sections. As a person Yeats seems a somewhat
remote husband and distant relative even to his closest
family members. This autobiography has no great moving
intellectual center, no ideas which truly make sense in
understanding our world . " Things fall apart the center
does not hold, " the great lines which describe our
condition are unfortunately not complemented by a true and
deep understanding of the human situation. The more I have
learnt about Yeats and his life the more approachable and
enjoyable I have found his poetry.
I bought this book
for a close friend and fellow lover of Yeats poetry and
read it after she did. Yeats writes about his life and
philosophy with the same skill and breadth he brings to his
poetry. I found the notes added for this edition both
useful and interesting. I would recommend this book to
anyone with an interest in Yeats, his philosophy, life and
poetry
professor of English at the University of
Memphis, is the author of A Guide to the Prose Fiction of
W. B. Yeats and The Poetry of William ButlerEdited by
William H. O'Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, this volume
is available for the first time with invaluable explanatory
notes and includes previously unpublished passages from
candidly explicit first drafts.
.