William Butler Yeats Research Paper

A poet and didn’t know it is a catchy phrase that could easily describe William Butler Yeats early life. Yeats was a boy who lived in London but was born in Dublin Ireland and who would grow up to write poetry about the Irish life style and their traditions trying to keep them alive. The question is why did William Butler Yeats care about the Irish traditions and the people of Ireland? William Butler Yeats even though he lived in London he spent most of his childhood with his grandparents in Sligo Ireland, and with that he grew up around their traditions and customs and saw how they were losing all the traditions and began to feel concerned. William butler Yeats believed in Ireland because of his family. His mother would speak of leprechauns

In fact it would be as some people say “Repellent” to Yeats. He was known as a visionary and would rather surround himself with poetic images than anything else. Yeats began studying different works by William Blake and by doing so brought him into contact with other traditions such as Platonic intimate and affectionate, the Neoplatonic (Abstract) and Swedenborgian (modern), and the alchemy. Yeats with all his work and sense of artistic style he became involved in the literary life of London. He was friends with William Morris and W.E. Henley and was a cofounder of thee Rhymers’ Club. Some of the members of this club actually included some of his friends like Lionel Johnson and Arthur Symons. In 1889 when Yeats met Maud Gonne an Irish woman who was beautiful, enthusiastic, and brilliant he was in love with her by the time he wrote “the troubling of my life began” “Without this romantic torment, “Willie would never have become Yeats the poet that we know today. Equal to Ireland itself Maud Gonne became and remained the major wellspring of Yeats’s poetic endeavor” (Steven Payne) It was an unrequited love meaning no matter how much he loved her it was a hopeless venture. It is true that she did admire him and looked up to him but did not love him. Yeats latter joined the Irish nationalist cause he joined partly because of his conviction, but mostly because of his love for Maud. Yeats made a play called” The Countess Cathleen” it was performed in Dublin in 1902, to which Maud played the title role. It was actually during this time period that Yeats started to come under the influence of John O’Leary, a charismatic leader of the Fenians, they were a secret society of Irish nationalist. The rapid decline and death of the controversial Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell in 1891 left William Butler Yeats