William Butler Yeats and William Blake

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William Butler Yeats and William Blake

A study of William Butler Yeats is not complete without a study of William Blake, just as a study of Blake is greatly aided by a study of Yeats. The two poets are inexorably tied together. Yeats, aided by his study of Blake, was able to find a clearer poetic voice. Yeats had a respect for and an understanding of Blake's work that was in Yeats' time without parallel. Yeats first read Blake at the age of 15 or 16 when his father gave him Blake to read. Yeats writes in his essay "William Blake and the Imagination" that "...when one reads Blake, it is as though the spray of an inexhaustible fountain of beauty was blown into our faces (Yeats, Essays xxx)." Yeats believed Blake to be a genius and he never wavered in his opinion. It is his respect for Blake that caused him to study and emulate Blake. He tried to tie Blake closer to himself by stressing Blake's rumored Irish ancestry. He strove to understand Blake more clearly than anyone had before him, and he succeeded. As with other pursuits Yeats held nothing back. He immersed himself fully in Blake's writings. As with many of his mental pursuits he deepened his understanding of the subject by writing about it.

In 1887 he wrote his essay "William Blake and the Imagination." This essay articulated his thoughts on the genius of the poet William Blake. He still however had not conceived his full vision of Blake's works. In 1889 he approached Edwin Ellis, a friend of his father's, for assistance in understanding Blake. Ellis wrote of this meeting "Very little could be given him to satisfy so large a demand, but with his eye for symbolic systems, he needed no more to enable him to perceive that here was a myth as well worth studying as any that has been offered to the world (Ellis, Vol I ix)." Thus began Yeats' and Ellis' collaboration on William Blake. This collaboration came to fruition, after four years of work, with the 1893 publication of their The Works of William Blake Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical.

It has been acknowledged by many scholars that Yeats' study of Blake greatly influenced his poetic expression. This gives rise to the widely held assertion that Yeats is indebted to Blake. While I concur with this assertion, I feel that the perhaps greater debt is Blake's.

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