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Yeats: The Man and the Masks
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One of the most influential poets of his age, W.B. Yeats eluded the grasp of many who sought to explain him. His life was complex in both its outer and inner events. Yeats's mystical concerns, such as his involvement with spiritualism and construction of a transcendental world system in A Vision, coexisted and occasionally clashed with his active involvement in public affairs. In this classic critical examination of the poet, Richard Ellmann strips away the masks of his subject: occultist, senator of the Irish Free State, libidinous old man, and Nobel Prize winner.
One of the most influential poets of his age, W.B. Yeats eluded the grasp of many who sought to explain him. His life was complex in both its outer and inner events. Yeats's mystical concerns, such as his involvement with spiritualism and construction of a transcendental world system in A Vision, coexisted and occasionally clashed with his active involvement in public affairs. In this classic critical examination of the poet, Richard Ellmann strips away the masks of his subject: occultist, senator of the Irish Free State, libidinous old man, and Nobel Prize winner.
346 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
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About the author
Richard Ellmann
100 books112 followersRichard David Ellmann was an American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats. He won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction for James Joyce (1959), one of the most acclaimed literary biographies of the 20th century. Its 1982 revised edition won James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Ellmann was a liberal humanist, and his academic work focuses on the major modernist writers of the 20th century.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
January 21, 2019
Forty percent of the way in, Ellmann notes that a chronological account of Yeats' activity is always challenged by his manic and mixed pursuits: it is, the author notes, as if Yeats was in a large hotel running up and down the halls, knocking on random doors, looking for his own room.
The interest in myth, theosophy and spiritualism all receive fair analysis--though at the expense of the man himself. Yeats is left masked, an author behind some brilliant work and a legion of batshit ideas. Ellmann avoids the tempest of Yeats' family and instead devotes considerable to time to persuading the reader that Yeats wasn't a fascist (his penchant for wearing blue shirts was fashion not ideology) despite some speeches which soundly suspiciously so. Reading this wasn't a bad way to spend a Sunday, but I had hoped for more.
The interest in myth, theosophy and spiritualism all receive fair analysis--though at the expense of the man himself. Yeats is left masked, an author behind some brilliant work and a legion of batshit ideas. Ellmann avoids the tempest of Yeats' family and instead devotes considerable to time to persuading the reader that Yeats wasn't a fascist (his penchant for wearing blue shirts was fashion not ideology) despite some speeches which soundly suspiciously so. Reading this wasn't a bad way to spend a Sunday, but I had hoped for more.
January 12, 2022
This very unusual biography contains virtually none of the factual information one might expect in a biography - in fact it seems like the author has done no research at all. Instead the book is more of a literary work - sort of an analysis of Yeats' poetry over time, as influenced by various life events. So we get a lot on Yeats' ever-changing poetic theories, but really just vague details about everything else, so the sense at the end is very incomplete, almost like you've learned practically nothing about Yeats as a person.
However, as a poet - the book was of extraordinary value, for several reasons, one making me feel like the process of writing poetry leads to experiences and attitudes shared with other poets, also sympathy for how poetry changes over time as you write, and finally Ellmann shows the process whereby Yeats wrote poems (including showing earlier and later drafts). These things are more of a purely literary rather than biographical nature, but their value to me personally was very high - I kept quoting excerpts and even sending photos of pages to my poet friends. For example Yeats was largely a symbolist poet but his symbols informed the poem, they weren't "necessary" to the poem. It's very interesting to see "how" he wrote.
Yeats was a complicated man who led a quite extraordinary life. Yeats has a large number of poems which are of exceptionally high "immortal" quality and is probably the greatest Irish poet - and one of the greatest poets in the English language - and this book is very informative as to the "how". But still, there's a huge thing missing in the biography, any sense of Yeats himself as a person, so I really can't recommend it, except to other poets.
However, as a poet - the book was of extraordinary value, for several reasons, one making me feel like the process of writing poetry leads to experiences and attitudes shared with other poets, also sympathy for how poetry changes over time as you write, and finally Ellmann shows the process whereby Yeats wrote poems (including showing earlier and later drafts). These things are more of a purely literary rather than biographical nature, but their value to me personally was very high - I kept quoting excerpts and even sending photos of pages to my poet friends. For example Yeats was largely a symbolist poet but his symbols informed the poem, they weren't "necessary" to the poem. It's very interesting to see "how" he wrote.
Yeats was a complicated man who led a quite extraordinary life. Yeats has a large number of poems which are of exceptionally high "immortal" quality and is probably the greatest Irish poet - and one of the greatest poets in the English language - and this book is very informative as to the "how". But still, there's a huge thing missing in the biography, any sense of Yeats himself as a person, so I really can't recommend it, except to other poets.
October 13, 2012
Useful for understanding a little bit more about the human Yeats, rather than the august mage or dreamy star-gazer we see in so many other guises, both of his creation and by the free assumption of others.
It's also extremely good for the soul to see an artist one admires being kind of a drip: over-analytical and somewhat pathetic (his love for Maud Gonne didn't work out so well, even when it was kind of working), self-important verging on pretentious, an anguished wuss who valroized the "man of action" to his own regret, initially naieve and unlettered, etc.
Gives quite a bit of background on John Yeats, the artist father, and his eccentric, frenetic, earnest dabbling in all kinds of kooky mysticism and how this effected Yeats's intellectual development.
The Yeatses were an interesting family: you've got the notably talented paterfamilias, W.B., his brother Jack who was also a painter (and quite a good one, I saw a few of his paintings in Dublin and really loved them) and the sisters Lilly and Lolly who attained a certain eminence in their own respect. Ellmann gets into that but doesn't dwell on it much. It's interesting and noteworthy stuff if you're a fan.
Orwell was surely right when he said that biography was not to be trusted unless it disclosed something shameful.
Ellmann doesn't necessarily shame the poor sad bastard, but he definitely tries to see him soberly, all-in-all.
ALWAYS does my heart good to see that the writers I love aren't brilliantly articulate and piercingly thoughtful 100% of the time, let alone even MOST of the time.
This little study isn't of the eminence of Ellmann's massive and canonical life of Joyce (and how could it be?) but interesting and valuable in and of itself.
January 23, 2012
This was pretty amazing. Published in 1948, Ellmann's dissertation on Yeats reworked. I learned so much, but the best thing was that the writing was lucid and comprehensible. Oh Yeats! Your wacky occult obsessions were more weighty than I thought! Also, you were wrong about fascism but right about a lot of other things that mattered more instead. I have a recording of Yeats reading "The Lake Isle Of Innisfree" and it is just about the best thing ever.
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September 26, 2008My Yeats obsession continues with Ellmann's book, first published in 1947 in close consultation with Yeats's widow George. The book was updated and reissued in 1982. Ellmann describes Yeats's life but is more interested in his work as a poet. Early Yeats is pictured as a Symbolist heavily influenced by Blake. This is placed in the context of his work on Irish folklore andhow tales of fairies and leprechauns reinforced Yeats's interest in the occult. He felt that ancient Irish lore, still widely circulated in the west of Ireland, offered access to the same kind of ancient wisdom that lay at the foundation of organized religion. Ellmann traces Yeats's growth into a modernist poet as his fame and influence spread. The concept of the 'mask' is central to Yeats because he believed the self was always prone to adopting other identities that must be carefully presented to others. Ellmann was a master of literary criticism who studied both Yeats and james Joyce in depth. Yeats's poems can be read by themselves although some are quite difficult but a book like this one can really increase your appreciation of the many layers of style and meaning that went into Yeats's best poems.
October 5, 2009
The late Professor Ellmann's brief biography of Yeats does not quite merit the appellation "definitive"--the "definitive" biographer of this most complex poet, playwright, politician, lover, father, occultist, true believer and skeptic, is Roy Foster. Ellmann's book focuses primarily upon 'Yeats the Poet', his dictum "myself I must remake", his poetic processes and evolution, and Ellmann thoroughly understands and explains them as no other literary critic does.
Ellmann's own style makes this particular book extraordinarily accessible to the lay reader, and for that reason alone it will always remain the "classic" biography of W.B. Yeats. No other 20th-century literary critic understood the major Irish modernists--Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett--as well as Richard Ellmann. So if you are interested the the writers who verily created both "Modernism" and "Post-Modernism", you should read this book, and read it as a prelude to Ellman's other works, for "Yeats: The Man and The Masks" intended to introduce the world to the literary explosion that occurred in Ireland in the late 19th century. And something extraordinary did indeed happen here in Ireland because of W.B. Yeats
Ellmann's own style makes this particular book extraordinarily accessible to the lay reader, and for that reason alone it will always remain the "classic" biography of W.B. Yeats. No other 20th-century literary critic understood the major Irish modernists--Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett--as well as Richard Ellmann. So if you are interested the the writers who verily created both "Modernism" and "Post-Modernism", you should read this book, and read it as a prelude to Ellman's other works, for "Yeats: The Man and The Masks" intended to introduce the world to the literary explosion that occurred in Ireland in the late 19th century. And something extraordinary did indeed happen here in Ireland because of W.B. Yeats
July 7, 2008
Of the three biographies that I have now read by Mr. Ellmann (James Joyce, Oscar Wilde), this is probably the most interesting in that it shows the artist and his vision in constant evolution. Perhaps that was the nature of Yeats' life and work.
Furthermore, the book is more concise and less anecdotal. Once again, this is probably due to the life of Yeats in opposition to the more flamboyant Joyce and Wilde. Whatever the reason, this makes for a more precise study of an artist's vision and eveolution.
I was much less familiar with Yeats' plays than his poetry so I found this aspect very informative. It is a rare feat not to spend too much time on hagiography and to put almost all the emphasis on a great author's constant shifts in vision and ideals. Too often, authors are portrayed as born invested with their vision and mission. Ellmann succeeds in presenting Yeats as an artist on a lifelong quest for a coherent vision. I suspect that this is the case for most of our great writers
Furthermore, the book is more concise and less anecdotal. Once again, this is probably due to the life of Yeats in opposition to the more flamboyant Joyce and Wilde. Whatever the reason, this makes for a more precise study of an artist's vision and eveolution.
I was much less familiar with Yeats' plays than his poetry so I found this aspect very informative. It is a rare feat not to spend too much time on hagiography and to put almost all the emphasis on a great author's constant shifts in vision and ideals. Too often, authors are portrayed as born invested with their vision and mission. Ellmann succeeds in presenting Yeats as an artist on a lifelong quest for a coherent vision. I suspect that this is the case for most of our great writers
January 20, 2012
Yeats says gyre with a hard g. Sailing to Byzantium ("This is no country for old men...") is all about a bird. Byzantium, the other poem, is a description of how it is to make a poem. ("Those images that yet/Fresh images beget...") Yeats was miserable with love for Maud Gonne, who refused to marry him over and over. Thankfully, Yeats finally found a happy marriage and had two children. He lived in a refurbished castle, was enmeshed in the theater and politics and what seems to me today as crazy mysticism. Besides being a Nobel Prize winner, he was a Hermetic Student of the Golden Dawn; much of his poetry is an effort to express mystics' magic. I share their impossible reach when I read his poetry.
Must read this again, because there's much more to absorb. I'm the yokel who used to think his name was William Buster Yeats. Maybe I should re-read it more than once.
Must read this again, because there's much more to absorb. I'm the yokel who used to think his name was William Buster Yeats. Maybe I should re-read it more than once.
December 31, 2008
some angel unloaded this and “Eminent Domain” at Spoonbill. Do you have any idea how long I’ve yearned for cheap reading copies of these two? No, you don’t, but this adolescent fave holds up brilliantly even if the 1959 Faber edition I got has a green cover instead of the one where he looks like Morrissey in a black cape. Even if you haven’t read any of Yeats’s poetry, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t find every chapter fascinating, especially when Oscar Wilde invites him to Christmas dinner 1888 and Yeats spoils it by wearing yellow shoes.
dropped
December 23, 2020Winter, 2012
College reads: I only read chapters/sections relevant to my studies, hence the dnf (2. Fathers and Sons; 4. Combating the 'Materialists'; 9. Search for Unity; 13. Spirits and Matter: Towards Harmony; 15. Esoteric Yeatism: the Flowering of a Dream; 18. Reality)
College reads: I only read chapters/sections relevant to my studies, hence the dnf (2. Fathers and Sons; 4. Combating the 'Materialists'; 9. Search for Unity; 13. Spirits and Matter: Towards Harmony; 15. Esoteric Yeatism: the Flowering of a Dream; 18. Reality)
November 30, 2024
By the opening pages of the book I was already enraptured as Ellmann cast Yeats’s filial line in a dialectical relationship: grandfather—believer, thesis; father—atheist, antithesis; W. B. Yeats—poet and mystic, synthesis. Ellmann has an instinct for biography, and knows how to weave in historical context not as requisite reading or footnote but as, like with a man’s life, a fascination in itself, in equal parts the culmination of contingent forces and inevitabilities. I understood why intellectuals took to Theosophy here more than I have before, and I was impressed by Ellmann’s identification of paternal revolt and the split self as recurrent leitmotifs in literature of this period across Europe. Ellmann does a good job distilling Yeats’s highly esoteric philosophy as laid out in A Vision and tracks how his understanding of the relationship between Art and Life evolved as he aged.
Yeats would hate me for saying this. In reading about the lives of great historical figures we want to see our own banal lives reflected back to us, whether in years of frustration, or a grave personality defect, or some failure that took place right around the time they were exactly our age. All of these things I was happy to check off here, with Yeats’s longtime unrequited love for Maud Gonne.
I’m not sure if it was a feature of my reading experience or a flaw of the book, but it felt a little top-heavy with insight and intrigue. For a poet who T. S. Eliot called the “poet of middle age,” those middle and late years are treated with diminishing excitement. But perhaps this is simply the reality of his, and all, life, as Yeats testified to again and again in his most astonishing poems.
Yeats would hate me for saying this. In reading about the lives of great historical figures we want to see our own banal lives reflected back to us, whether in years of frustration, or a grave personality defect, or some failure that took place right around the time they were exactly our age. All of these things I was happy to check off here, with Yeats’s longtime unrequited love for Maud Gonne.
I’m not sure if it was a feature of my reading experience or a flaw of the book, but it felt a little top-heavy with insight and intrigue. For a poet who T. S. Eliot called the “poet of middle age,” those middle and late years are treated with diminishing excitement. But perhaps this is simply the reality of his, and all, life, as Yeats testified to again and again in his most astonishing poems.
July 6, 2022
This is a biography but unlike Ellmann's more comprehensive, all-encompassing one on James Joyce; the difference is that Yeats lived his life in obsessive pursuit of obscure things, while Joyce studied everything with wide eyes. Consequently, the chapters of this biography ignore Yeats' moves from city to city, his friendships and many of his romances, and even a great deal of his literary activity, and instead focus primarily on his own mental conception of esoterics and Irish nationalism. If Yeats' life was spent in double pursuit of The Golden Dawn for the sake of his own soul and a pointed revival of Irish culture for the sake of Maud Gonne, both masks, this book in turn bounces back and forth between the two life-long fixations and Yeats' attempts to synthesize them inside of his own mysterious personality & self. This is one of the best efforts I've seen to date to fully explain Yeats' own private philosophy, and while it still isn't to my eye an exhaustive account of A Vision (a difficult task) it is perhaps the most thorough exegesis of Yeats' poetry in light of his occultist ideals. I strongly suggest complementing this with Hugh Kenner's majestic A Colder Eye, which is a more purely literary study on Yeats that glosses over much of the theosophy and mysticism and contains a fuller analysis of Yeats' impact on the other Irish writers; although Ellmann's book is often even better at that, analyzing many of Yeats' plays (so often ignored!). This is a great book !
December 7, 2019
The balance of biographical accounting versus critical engagement with his work was too low for most of the work, but the moments of critical discussion are high-quality, and the ending couple chapters are magnificent. That is not to say the more biographical elements aren't good in their own right. Yeats conflicted and dual-personality feels sympathetic and universal, even if he manifests them in his own distinctive garb. As I feel like is the case with all books that talk about the metaphysics of literary symbolism I constantly feel like the discussion is on the verge of a breakthrough to some deeper understanding, but doesn't quite get there, and instead tantalizes in a mode that is both mystically enchanting and frustrating. (Of course I am inclined to think that is the nature of the subject matter. But the case of representation in AI is what leaves me thinking perhaps there is a "there" there.) Anyway, Ellman is a great critic. His criticism attained more depth in the Joyce bio than here, but this still enhanced my reading of Yeats considerably.
November 14, 2018
Well, this was a bit of a slog. I had no idea how very strange Yeats and his interests were. The occult, secret societies, his obsession with developing his own spiritual system. Sorry, but it was just a bit much. Ellman also focuses much more on the poetry than the life. He mentions that Yeats and his wife had two children, but don't even give their names. I found Ellman's style dense and tough to enjoy. If you're already a fan of Yeats' poetry, I think you might enjoy this. I'll be looking for another biography that's a bit more focused on his life in context. My interest in Yeats is ultimately more as a player in the history of Ireland than in his bizarre theories about art and poetry and the immortal soul.
June 14, 2020
ellmann spends most of the book explaining and justifying (product of his time! etc) yeats’s mysticism / budding fascism. which, like, cool, I now have a grasp on A Vision and the broad outlines of Yeats’s personal mythology, and I now know why he was so into magic and spirituality and all that... but like what was his day job? Where did he live? How’d he meet his wife?
A good intro to Yeats but not a substitute for a full biography
A good intro to Yeats but not a substitute for a full biography
August 20, 2011
I wanted to learn more about Yeats and his work...this was touted as perhaps his best biography..an in-depth analysis of the psychology/life experiences/complexities that drove Yeats' writing through his lifetime. Very academic/interesting.
May 27, 2015
A must-read for any Yeats' aficionado and a good biography that's never too factual, though it's too heavily based on the bogus theory that Yeats' poetry pre-1917 is mediocre and plain.
... That's his best stuff, people!
... That's his best stuff, people!
November 7, 2018
Richard Ellman is a professor of English at Oxford who has woven together a piece of work which combines biography and literary criticism. One gains insight into Yeats's work by looking at his life. To say this is an intense read is to say the least.
Yeats was influenced by the Romantics - Keats and Shelley, his painter father, his early life in Sligo, Rosetti and his muse, Maud Gonne. His love poems and his poems looking back on his life are all about his unrequited love for this feisty lady. His other great love was Ireland. Yeats looked to Greece and in his Wanderings of Oisin gave Ireland her Ulysses.
"A poet has what Thomas Nashe called a 'double soul'.....A poem even when it begins with a actual experience, distorts, heighten, simplifies and transmutes." (p.5) Yeats used symbols and his poems are multi-layered. Many of his pieces are ethereal and demonstrate longing yet he wanted to show insight. The intellect and heart were battling it out. Reconciliation of reason and instinct are key to his poetry.
Ellman writes in depth about Yeats' childhood, his feeling for Maude and his development from Elegiac sonnets to epic to sparse. In later life, Yeats was influenced by American poet Ezra Pound who became his secretary from 1913-1916. The author also touches on Yeats interest in the occult and mysticism. He was a man searching.
What poems stood out for me? Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swans at Coole, Among School Children, Easter 1916 and Never Give All the Heart.
This would be helpful to anyone studying Yeats in depth.
Yeats was influenced by the Romantics - Keats and Shelley, his painter father, his early life in Sligo, Rosetti and his muse, Maud Gonne. His love poems and his poems looking back on his life are all about his unrequited love for this feisty lady. His other great love was Ireland. Yeats looked to Greece and in his Wanderings of Oisin gave Ireland her Ulysses.
"A poet has what Thomas Nashe called a 'double soul'.....A poem even when it begins with a actual experience, distorts, heighten, simplifies and transmutes." (p.5) Yeats used symbols and his poems are multi-layered. Many of his pieces are ethereal and demonstrate longing yet he wanted to show insight. The intellect and heart were battling it out. Reconciliation of reason and instinct are key to his poetry.
Ellman writes in depth about Yeats' childhood, his feeling for Maude and his development from Elegiac sonnets to epic to sparse. In later life, Yeats was influenced by American poet Ezra Pound who became his secretary from 1913-1916. The author also touches on Yeats interest in the occult and mysticism. He was a man searching.
What poems stood out for me? Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Wild Swans at Coole, Among School Children, Easter 1916 and Never Give All the Heart.
This would be helpful to anyone studying Yeats in depth.
November 26, 2021
I kept thinking of Vico as I was reading this now-classic intellectual biography of Yeats, even though the Italian philosopher is only mentioned once in the book. Specifically, I kept thinking of Vico's notion of the "Imaginative Universal" and its function in myth, and how much of what Ellmann describes as Yeats' quest for unity between poetic vision and life could be explained and illuminated by means of Vico's discovery. I have not yet read Ellmann's celebrated biography of Joyce, so I do not know what use he makes of Vico there (and Vico was much more of an overtly acknowledged influence on Joyce than he was on Yeats), but it seems to me that both Yeats and Joyce, like Blake before them, sought to create mythology in the midst of a most anti-mythical epoch, and their respective attempts rank amongst the great noble failures that populate the annals of the humanities. Ellmann's book was initially a doctoral dissertation, and at times it reads as such, but he approaches his subject with both sympathy and clear-eyed appraisal, and keeps his focus squarely on the art Yeats produced. I was especially appreciative of all the background information regarding Yeats' preoccupation with theosophy and the occult, about which I had previously known very little.
April 6, 2024
The 'Fontana Modern Masters' series from the 1970s had a reputation for producing some idiosyncratic, sometimes knotty texts which were definitely not for those coming new to a particular 'Master' (none were devoted to women with exception of one volume on Hannah Arendt late in the series!). Denis Donoghue's book on Yeats does fall into that bracket. He calls it a study of 'Yeats’s sensibility...so far as it manifests itself in the poems and plays.' You might think this a bit vague, a licence to write about and around anything on the subject. And so it proves. There are many interesting insights, but it's not, doesn't attempt to be, a systematic or even consistent overview. Worthwhile then, but try and get a grip on Yeats before you come to this and it will be far more rewarding.
October 16, 2023
A very interesting and thoughtful critical biography of Yeats. It analyses the different characters or masks of the poet at different stages of his life. Of great interest is his experiences in spiritualism and his discovery, through a medium, of Leo Africanus who tells him that he is the anti-soul of Yeats. They exchange long speeches and letters. This connects to the fictional novel of Amin Maalouf about Leon the African .
October 10, 2017
Ellmann's advantage is that he is no sycophant. He is not in love with his subject.
August 31, 2012
This biography is not up to par with the author's biographical work on Joyce, considered to be one of the best biographies ever written, and with which I concur.
One of the reasons for this is that this book was written when Richard Ellman was much younger, and while he did have some funding in order to gather information worldwide, it was not near that which he received to write his work on James Joyce. Also, he had matured when the latter book was written; and had become more perceptive.
What is not to be found in this book are comprehensive accounts of Yeats's personal life. Even his own mother is dismissed in a sentence or two. The reader never gets to know her. His active love life is merely skirted around and even many of his friendships, especially those with Ezra Pound and James Joyce, are not even mentioned.
We do get a better look at his artist father, who seems to have raised Yeats rather severely (his mother died when he was young) and Yeats struggled for years to overcome feelings of incompetence, unworthiness and inferiority. All his life he fought his problem with timidity and lack of self-confidence.
We the readers do learn a lot about his artistic path that was always parallel to extensive seeking up to the end of his life for higher truth and reality, and the mastery thereof through the vehicles of Tibetan Buddhism (under Madame Blavatsky who eventually kicked him out of her organization), symbolism in the Golden Dawn (he was a lifelong member), occultism, psychic research and spiritualism (his wife was a medium), besides living a very active outer life as theatre manager, politician and involvement in nationalistic movements.
Yeats was always developing, altering and changing his personal philosophy. I found his writings about this subject in the book to become quite tedious. So did his wife who wouldn't read them because she said they were boring. She urged him instead to concentrate on his poetry. Still, even at the very end of his life when he knew he was dying because his health was fading so fast, he continued to reconstruct and reinvent his own philosoophy wherein he finally came to believe (but no doubt had he lived longer, this would have even been altered) that it is necessary for symbolic and outer reality to unite.
There are important insights in the book that make it well worth reading. But I would have liked to have learned much more about Yeats's personal life and relationships than I did.
One of the reasons for this is that this book was written when Richard Ellman was much younger, and while he did have some funding in order to gather information worldwide, it was not near that which he received to write his work on James Joyce. Also, he had matured when the latter book was written; and had become more perceptive.
What is not to be found in this book are comprehensive accounts of Yeats's personal life. Even his own mother is dismissed in a sentence or two. The reader never gets to know her. His active love life is merely skirted around and even many of his friendships, especially those with Ezra Pound and James Joyce, are not even mentioned.
We do get a better look at his artist father, who seems to have raised Yeats rather severely (his mother died when he was young) and Yeats struggled for years to overcome feelings of incompetence, unworthiness and inferiority. All his life he fought his problem with timidity and lack of self-confidence.
We the readers do learn a lot about his artistic path that was always parallel to extensive seeking up to the end of his life for higher truth and reality, and the mastery thereof through the vehicles of Tibetan Buddhism (under Madame Blavatsky who eventually kicked him out of her organization), symbolism in the Golden Dawn (he was a lifelong member), occultism, psychic research and spiritualism (his wife was a medium), besides living a very active outer life as theatre manager, politician and involvement in nationalistic movements.
Yeats was always developing, altering and changing his personal philosophy. I found his writings about this subject in the book to become quite tedious. So did his wife who wouldn't read them because she said they were boring. She urged him instead to concentrate on his poetry. Still, even at the very end of his life when he knew he was dying because his health was fading so fast, he continued to reconstruct and reinvent his own philosoophy wherein he finally came to believe (but no doubt had he lived longer, this would have even been altered) that it is necessary for symbolic and outer reality to unite.
There are important insights in the book that make it well worth reading. But I would have liked to have learned much more about Yeats's personal life and relationships than I did.
May 1, 2012
Richard Ellmann's biography of Yeats was very readable and well researched. I was fascinated by Yeats's troubled childhood, his relationship with his father, and his lifelong interest in the occult. Yeats's tragic, unrequited love for the actress Maude Gonne is also explored in detail. Ellmann focuses primarily on the development of Yeats's style and how his understanding of 'the mask' and the 'double man' shaped his poetry, prose, and plays. Although I sometimes wished Ellmann had gone into a bit more detail in regard to some of Yeats's personal relationships, I found this biography to be a thoroughly entertaining and informative read. I really loved learning more about one of the 20th century's most influential voices.
Two of my favorite quotes in the book come from people other than W.B. Yeats:
"A work of art is the social act of a solitary man."
-John Butler Yeats
"The first duty in life is to assume a pose; what the second is no one yet has found out."
-Oscar Wilde
Two of my favorite quotes in the book come from people other than W.B. Yeats:
"A work of art is the social act of a solitary man."
-John Butler Yeats
"The first duty in life is to assume a pose; what the second is no one yet has found out."
-Oscar Wilde
September 16, 2013
After reading Yeats: The Man and the Masks by Richard Ellmann I think I better understand the poetry of William Butler Yeats. Mostly, though, I better understand why the poetry of William Butler Yeats is so difficult to understand. As I read, I kept handy a copy of The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats edited by Richard J. Finneran. Whenever a poem was referred to in the biography, I'd read it from the collection. I also had my laptop at the ready to look up a wide range of political, mythological, historical and literary references. Obviously the reading went slowly but I was rewarded by frequent "aha moments" as the some of the clouds of obscurity were lifted. Yeats' poetry is a reflection of the poet, complex and multi-dimensonal. I'm glad I took the time to take a closer look at this literary giant and his powerful work.
September 27, 2011
LOVE IT. Got an old edition from Cooks Hill Books years ago when I was doing the HSC. My ex's Dad was heaps into Yeats and I guess I wanted to impress her and him. I've been slowly working my way through ever since. Obviously slower after we broke up. Irish poetry at it's best. England was so boring and dour in the late 1800s. This book made me realise how big a part the Irish and American's played in keeping the art of poetry alive, after the romantics all kinda died off young and dumb and full of syphilis infested cum.
October 20, 2014
Ellman can't really be bothered with the details of Yeats' life (his mother, for example, is barely mentioned), but instead focuses on how Yeats' always changing beliefs in some irrational mumbo-jumbo influenced his poetry. This would be a fair subject for a dissertation, but as a bio this book is pretty lacking. Ellman also gives short shrift to Yeats' earlier poetry, including much of his finest verse that he wrote when pining after Maud Gonne.
April 22, 2013
Great biography of Yeats. Not quite as astonishingly, scarily thorough as Foster's, but elaborates on the Yeats mythology and provides a timeline of his life that illuminates his artistic and spiritual evolution.
August 30, 2007
Very lively. More readable than Ellmann's biography of Joyce.
March 20, 2012
Review pending.
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