This is an argument that surfaces with some regularity. It would be so nice
if our heroes and heroines in the distant or not-so-distant past had led
exemplary political lives or if those who didn't wrote badly. As it is, one
compromises: Shakespeare was rather too monarchist for my taste, Chaucer
recanted, Milton painted parliament as the devil's work, Spencer was an
agent of the Elizabethan suppression and exploitation of the Irish, Marlowe
was apparently a spy, the whole crowd during the Restoration are pretty
dicey...need I go on? We cope by compartmentalizing, much as they did.
Otherwise there'd be not much left to read and learn from. In my own case I
have to deal with the sometimes vicious sometimes merely polite
antisemitism of many of the writers most important to me, some of whom were
cheerleaders for the nazis. No fun, to say the least, but I'd hate to give
up Celine, Pound, Williams, Spicer, or even, in Pound's case, specific
cantos in which he spews forth hate.
How does this affect "Among School Children" or "Byzantium"? Or the plays?
Or the various fictions, the Red Hanrahan stories or the stories
incorporated into the two versions of _A Vision_? Or his various memoirs,
including "The Death of Synge"? Is Yeats more all-of-a-piece than most of
us? Does everything get tarred, even invaidated, by his late De Valerian
politics?
And a query: as nominally a Protestant, and increasingly as an Anglo-Irish
Protestant, did Yeats actually vote against the interests of the class with
which he chose to identify?
Is there a statute of limitations?
At 09:36 AM 9/19/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>
>
>"Do you mean Long Legged Fly is an Irish Fascist
>Marching Song? Confused.
>
>
>Yeats seems a little complex to be boxed into
>slogans."
>
>Yeats boxed himself into two very short slogans -
>'yes' and 'no'. As a representative of a reactionary
>right-wing Irish political party he consistently voted
>against the interests of the working class, women,
>non-Catholics and intellectuals.
>The limits for any discussion of the relation between
>his poems and his politics have to be set by his
>political practice in the real world.
>
>
>"Peter Brook puts it quite well, talking about
>Shakespeare: to be
>optimistic (about life/politics) is stupid. To be
>pessimistic is
>indulgent. All that's left is to try to see the
>astonishing beauty and
>the terror, both _at once_. (He does say it better
>than I do.)"
>
>Not much help when the Division Bell rings though, is
>it? And it rings every day for us all.
>
>Cheers
>Scott
>
>
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