The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe: The Athlone Critical Traditions Series: The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe 9781472543271

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Series Editor's Preface

The reception of British authors in Britain has in good part been studied; indeed, it forms our literary history. By contrast, the reception of British authors in Europe has not been examined in any systematic, long-term or large-scale way. With our volume on Jonathan Swift (2005), we altered our Series tide to 'The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe', as a reminder that many writers previously travelling under the British flag may now be considered or claimed as belonging to the Republic of Ireland (1948), or Eire. If Swift's career in England was as prominent and embattled as his career in Ireland, while Joyce in 'silence, exile and cunning' recreated himself as a European, it is the name of William Butler Yeats that has come by his own fierce choice to stand for 'his country's biography', the life history of Ireland, as his most recent biographer has put it. (R. F. Foster, I, xviii). In his lifetime the crucial moment was the founding of the Irish Free State in January 1922 as a full member of the Commonwealth, although the Republic of Ireland did not come into being until 1948. Not only did his poetry and drama help forge a nation and a national identity, but it did so although he wrote in English and came to rank as a major English poet, even while his status as an 'Irish poet' was marked out in the award citation of the Nobel Prize in 1923. It is the aim of this Series to initiate and forward the study of the reception of British and Irish authors in Continental Europe, or, as we would now say, the rest of Europe as a whole, rather than as isolated national histories with a narrow national perspective. The perspectives of other nations greatly add to our understanding of individual contributors to that history. The history of the reception of British authors extends our knowledge of their capacity to stimulate and to call forth new responses, not only in their own disciplines but in wider fields and to diverse publics in a variety of historical circumstances. Often these responses provide quite unexpected and enriching insights into our own histories, politics and culture. Individual works and personalities take on new dimensions and facets. They may also be subject to enlightening critiques. Our knowledge of the writers of the British Isles is simply incomplete and inadequate without these reception studies. By 'authors' we mean writers in any field whose works have been recognized as making a contribution to the intellectual and cultural history of our societies. Thus the Series includes literary figures such as Laurence Sterne, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce; philosophers such as Francis Bacon and David

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Hume; historians and political figures such as Edmund Burke; and scientists such as Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton, whose works have had a broad impact on thinking in every field. In some cases individual works of the same author have dealt with different subjects, each with virtually its own reception history; so Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) was instantaneously translated, and moulded thinking on the power struggles in the Europe of his own day; his youthful .4 Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) exerted a powerful influence on aesthetic thought and the practice of writing and remains a seminal work for certain genres of fiction and of art. Similarly, each of Laurence Sterne's two major works of fiction, Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey, has its own history of reception, giving rise to a whole line of literary movements, innovative progeny and concomitant critical theory in most European countries. The research project examines the ways in which selected authors have been translated, published, distributed, read, reviewed and discussed on the continent of Europe. In doing so, it throws light not only on specific strands of intellectual and cultural history but also on the processes involved in the dissemination of ideas and texts. The project brings to bear the theoretical and critical approaches that have characterized the growing fields of reader response theory and reception studies in the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. These critical approaches have illuminated the activity of the reader in bringing the text to life and stressed the changing horizons of the reading public or community of which the reader is a part. The project also takes cognizance of the studies of the material history of the book that have begun to explore the production, publication and distribution of manuscripts and books. Increasingly, other media too are playing a role in these processes, and to the history of book illustration must be added lantern slides (as in the popular versions of Scott's and Dickens's works), cinema (whose early impact forms an important part of our H. G. Wells volume), and more recently television (as recounted in the Jane Austen volume). Byron's writings, like Ossian's and Scott's, have almost as extensive a history in images and in sound as in prose and poetry. Performance history requires strenuous tracing, beyond the texts, whether for works written for the stage or for adaptations; Yeats's poetic drama had remarkable resonances across Europe, extending to Catalan nationalism and Basque separatism. The study of material history forms a curious annexe, that is of the objects that form durable traces of the vogue for a particular author, which may be parts of himself (as with the macabre story told in our Shelley volume of the wish to possess the poet's heart), or items of his wardrobe (as with Byronic shirtsleeves), or souvenir objects associated with his characters, or the more elaborate memorial gardens and graveyards such as linked Rousseau and Sterne in France.The moving of Yeats's grave in Roquebrune to his birthplace in Ireland is an aspect of such history. The author's own image may achieve iconic status, as with Byron 'in Albanian dress', or Yeats, vast of stature, both mage and sage, aesthete and Senator. The significance of such cults and cult objects requires further analysis as the examples multiply and diversify. The Series as published by Continuum Books is open-ended and multi-

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volumed, each volume based on a particular author. The authors may be regarded according to their discipline, or looked at across disciplines within their period. Thus the reception of philosophers Bacon and Hume may be compared; or Hume may be considered as belonging to an eighteenth-century group that includes writers like Swift and Sterne, and historians and political figures such as Gibbon and Burke. As the volumes accumulate they enrich each other and our awareness of the full context in which an individual author is received. The Swift volume shows that in many places Swift and Sterne were received at the same time, and viewed sometimes as a pair of witty ironists, and sometimes as opposites representing traditional satire on the one hand (Swift) and modern sentimentalism on the other (Sterne), and equally or diversely valued as a result. The Romantic poets were carried forward into mid-century nationalist movements and late nineteenth-century Symbolist movements; Yeats often appeared to be their coeval. The Jln-de-siecle aspects of Pater, early Yeats, Woolf and Joyce are interwoven in a wider European experience. In the twentieth century, Sterne was paired with Joyce as subversive of the novel form; and Joyce and Woolf became Modernists. These chronological shifts, bringing different authors and different works into view together, are common to the reception process, so often displacing or delaying them into an entirely new historical scene or set of circumstances. Thus Byron's two major works, Childe Harold and Don Juan, came to stand, after his death, for whole epochs of feeling in Europe, first the melancholic, inward post-Napoleonic Weltschmerz, then the bitter and disillusioned mocking tones of the failed Revolution of 1848. Yeats's own distinct creative phases, brought into conjunction with those of his period, make him an epitome of the process: his early mythological poetry culminated in the founding of the Abbey Theatre Dublin and a national drama; his later poetry stood more aloof. His identification with Ireland both forwarded and impeded his reception abroad. In some countries, a fight for liberty and national identity associated with folk tradition raised immediate sympathies well established from the mid-nineteenth century. In Poland, Yeats's drama coincided with the first, much delayed performances of the exiled Romantic Mickiewicz's national drama; in Hungary and Croatia the Ossianic laments for a lost society and the Byronic summons to liberty seemed come again. By contrast, the early poetry might be regarded favourably as quite the reverse of animating a local 'folk' spirit but rather as part of a European movement of Symbolism and aesthetics, as in France (where he was associated with Mallarme) and in Russia. In either case, the later 'mature' poetry might be ignored or deprecated. Yet a succession of first-rate poet-translators recognized the 'mature' poetry, while in the many fine translations Yeats sometimes seems to move body and soul into another age; in the Italian of Giorgio Manganelli or Mario Luzi he sounds like Leopardi, but in the French versions of Yves Bonnefoy the haunting symbolist shade of Mallarme is perhaps finally laid to rest. The kaleidoscope of reception displays and discovers new pairings and couplings, new milieux, new matches and mismatches, and, of course, new valuations. In period terms one may discern within the Series a Romantic group; a Victorian group; a Jln-de-siecle group and an early Modernist group. Period designations differ from discipline to discipline, and are shifting even within a

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discipline: Blake, who was a 'Pre-Romantic' poet a generation ago, is now considered a fully fledged Romantic, and Beckford is edging in that direction. Virginia Woolf may be regarded as a fm-de-siecle aesthete and stylist whose affinities are with Pater or as an epoch-making Modernist like Joyce. Terms referring to period and style often vary from country to country. What happens to a 'Victorian' author transplanted to 'Wilhelmine' Germany? Are the English Metaphysical poets to be regarded as 'baroque' in continental terms, or will that term continue to be borrowed in English only for music, art and to an extent architecture? Is the 'Augustan' Swift a classicist in Italian terms, or an Enlightenment thinker in French terms? It is most straightforward to classify them simply according to century, for the calendar is for the most part shared. But the various possible groupings will provide a context for reception and enrich our knowledge of each author. Division of each volume by country or by linguistic region is dictated by the historical development of Europe; each volume necessarily adopts a different selection of countries and regions, depending on period and on the specific reception of any given author. Countries or regions are treated either substantially, in several chapters or sections where this is warranted, for example, the French reception of Yeats, Woolf or Joyce (and nearly all English-language works until after World War II pass first through the medium of French language and the prism of French thought), or on a moderate scale, or simply as a brief section. In some cases, where a rich reception is located that has not been reported or of which the critical community is not aware, more detailed coverage may be justified. In general, comparative studies have neglected Spain in favour of France, Germany and Italy, and this imbalance needs to be righted. For example, we have shown the reception of Woolf in the different linguistic communities of the Iberian peninsula, and given a detailed treatment of a play of Yeats in Catalan, Galician and Basque. Brevity does not indicate lack of interest. Where separate coverage of any particular country or region is not justified by the extent of the reception, relevant material is incorporated into the bibliography and the Timeline. Thus an early translation may be noted, although there was subsequently a minimal response to the author or work, or a very long gap in the reception in that region. This kind of material will be fully described in the database (see below). It is, of course, always possible, and indeed to be hoped and expected that further aspects of reception will later be uncovered, and the long-term research project forwarded, through this initial information. Reception studies often display an author's intellectual and political impact and reveal effects abroad that are unfamiliar to the author's compatriots. Thus, Byron, for example, had the power of carrying and incarnating liberal political thought to regimes and institutions to whom it was anathema; it is less well known that Sterne had the same effect, and that both were charged with erotically tinged subversion, and that Pater suggested a style of aesthetic sensibility in which sensation took precedence over moral values. Woolf came to be an icon for women writers in countries where there was little tradition of women's writing. By the same token, the study of censorship, or more broadly impediments to dissemination, and of modes of circumventing control, becomes an important aspect of

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reception studies. In studies on Bacon, the process of dissemination of his ideas through the private correspondence of organized circles was vital. Certain presses and publishers also play a role, and the study of modes of secret distribution under severe penalty is a particularly fascinating subject, whether in Catholic Europe or Soviet Russia. Much translation was carried out in prisons. Irony and Aesopian devices, and audience alertness to them, are highly developed under controlling regimes. A surprising number of authors live more dangerously abroad than at home. Where Yeats was at home was a moot point; some Irish groups attacked him as aristocratic, elitist, even 'fascistic'; yet he has been seen as the first prominent Western advocate of decolonization, and The Tower (1928) as advancing the prophetic perception that 'colonial violence has to be counteracted by a politics of reason'. Translation itself may provide a mode of evading censure. There is probably no more complex and elaborated example in the annals of Europe of the use of translation to invent new movements, styles, and political departures than that of Ossian, which became itself a form of'pseudo-translation', that is, works by writers masquerading under pseudonyms suggestive of 'dangerous' foreigners but providing safety for mere 'translators'. 'Ossian' became the cover name for new initiatives, as 'Byron' flew the flag of liberation. New electronic technology makes it possible to undertake reception studies on this scale. An extensive database stores information about editions, translations, accompanying critical prefaces or afterwords, illustrations, biographies and correspondence, early reviews, important essays and booklength studies of the authors, and comments, citations and imitations or reworkings, including satire and pastiche by other writers. Some, as often Pater, live in the echoes of their style as understood in another language. Some authors achieve the status of fictional characters in other writers' works; in other cases, their characters do, like Sterne's uncle Toby, Trim and his own alter ego Yorick; or even their characters' family members, as in the memorable novel by a major Hungarian contemporary writer chronicling the early career of the (Hungarian) grandfather of Joyce's Leopold Bloom. No one was so often mistaken for a character in his own works than Byron. The recording of full details of translations and translators is a particular concern, since often the names of translators are not supplied, or their identity is concealed behind pseudonyms or false attributions. The nature of the translation is often a determining factor in the reception of a work or an author; yet often the work was translated from a language other than English. The database also records the character and location of rare works. Selected texts and passages are included, together with English translations. The database can be searched for a variety of further purposes, potentially yielding a more complete picture of the interactions of writers, translators, critics, publishers and the public across Europe in different periods from the Renaissance to the present. Dr Elinor Shaffer, FBA Director, Research Project Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe

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Acknowledgements

The Research Project on the Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe is happy to acknowledge the support of the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Board, the Modern Humanities Research Association and other funding bodies. We are also greatly indebted to the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where the research project was based during the early preparation of this volume, and to the Institute of Germanic Studies, Institute of Romance Studies (now merged as the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies), Institute of English Studies, and Institute of Historical Studies, with whom we have held a series of seminars, colloquia and conferences on Reception Studies since 1998. We are grateful to Clare Hall College, Cambridge, which has provided the Project with a second institutional home from 2003. We are especially indebted to the Institute of English Studies for its collaboration in the Colloquium held in October 2000 in preparation for this volume, 'Irish and British ^/m-Je-siede in Europe: Wilde and Yeats', sponsored by the British Academy. We also gratefully acknowledge the advice and guidance of the Advisory Board of the Project, which has met regularly since the launch of the Project. The Research Director, Dr Elinor Shaffer, is also pleased to acknowledge the indispensable services of the staff of the Research Project during the preparation of this volume: the AHRB Research Fellow, Dr Wim Van Mierlo; the MHRA Research Associate, Dr Alessandra Tosi; and the Project Assistant, Dr Lachlan Moyle. We would like to express our gratitude to the following scholars who gave us advice: Dr Paul Barnaby (Edinburgh University Library), Professor Roger Beaton (King's College London), Dr Rachel Polonsky, Professor Martin Prochazka (Charles University, Prague), Dr Catherine Sandbach-Dahlstrom (University of Stockholm) and Dr Nina Terlecka-Taylor. Ljiljana Ina Gjurgjan is grateful to the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport for the financial support of the research project 'National Ideologemes in Modern Croatian and Irish Literature'. Roger Keys received a grant from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities in Scotland which enabled him to spend three weeks in Moscow working in various libraries. Klaus Peter Jochum would like to thank the Universitatsbund Bamberg for a grant towards meeting the costs of editing and producing this book and the University Library Bamberg for supplying much of the material on which this book is based. He is grateful to M. Eric Celan for kindly allowing him to quote the Yeats translations of Paul Celan, his father, to Dr Colin Smythe and Professor Warwick Gould for many acts of kindness and to R.E.G.MJ.HJ. for heroic forbearance.

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Acknowledgements

Permission to quote from the works of W. B. Yeats was given by A. P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Michael B. Yeats. Scattered lines from 'Easter 1916', 'Michael Robartes and the Dancer', 'The Second Coming', 'Byzantium', 'After Long Silence' and 'In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz' are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Variorum Edition of the Poems ofW. B. Yeats, edited by Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach. Copyright © 1924 by The Macmillan Company; copyright renewed © 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. Scattered lines from 'The Tower', 'The Road at My Door', 'Sailing to Byzantium' and 'The Gift of Harun Al-Rashid' are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, edited by Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach. Copyright © 1928 by The Macmillan Company; copyright renewed © 1956 by Georgie Yeats. Scattered lines from 'Polities' are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, edited by Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach. Copyright © 1940 by Georgie Yeats; copyright renewed © 1968 by Bertha Georgie Yeats, Michael Butler Yeats and Anne Yeats. Excerpt from p. 793 and scattered lines from 'The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart', 'The Scholars', 'The Fiddler of Dooney', 'The Withering of the Boughs', 'Down by the Salley Gardens', 'To Ireland in the Coming Times', 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' and 'He Mourns for the Change' are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, edited by Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach (New York: Macmillan, 1957). Scattered excerpts from 'The Hour-Glass', 'The Countess Cathleen' and 'At the Hawk's Well' are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, edited by Russell K. Alspach (New York: Macmillan, 1966). Scattered excerpts and quotations from 'Cathleen ni Houlihan', 'At the Hawk's Well' and 'The Land of Heart's Desire' are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats, Revised Edition by W. B. Yeats. Copyright © 1934, 1952 by The Macmillan Company; copyright renewed © 1962 by Bertha Georgie Yeats and 1980 by Anne Yeats. Scattered excerpts from pp. 167, 185, 439 and 522 are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from Essays and Introductions by W. B. Yeats. Copyright © 1961 by Mrs. W. B. Yeats. Scattered excerpts from p. 286 are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from Mythologies by W. B. Yeats. Copyright © 1959 by Mrs. W. B. Yeats. Scattered excerpts from p. 3 are reprinted with the permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, from Explorations by W. B. Yeats. Copyright © 1962 by Mrs. W. B. Yeats.

List of Contributors

Rodica Albu is an associate professor in the English Department of the 'Al. I. Cuza' University of Ias.i (Romania). Her research interests focus on the study of language in its socio-cultural aspects and include Irish cultural studies, linguistic approaches to poetry, semantics and the varieties of English. She is the author of the first Romanian book entirely devoted to Yeats (Myth and Folk Elements in the Poetry ofW. B.Yeats: A Romanian Perspective, 1998) and of related articles published over a period of more than twenty-five years. She is the coordinator of the Varieties of Present-Day English series of the Ars Longa Publishing house, as well as the author, co-author and co-ordinator of English for Advanced Students (1993), Using Englishes) (2002, 2003), Irish Studies Reader (2004), Inklings: Litera si spiritul (2004) and other volumes. Nicholas Allen is Assistant Professor in the English Department, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of George Russell (Ai) and the New Ireland, 1905—30, and editor, with Aaron Kelly, of The Cities of Belfast (both Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003). He is currently at work on a study of Irish Modernism. Jonathan Allison is Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky and a former director of the Yeats International Summer School, Sligo. His publications include Yeats's Political Identities (1996), Patrick Kavanagh: A Reference Guide (1996) and Poetry and Contemporary Culture (edited with Andrew Roberts, 2002). He is editing the letters of Louis MacNeice. Csilla Bertha teaches Irish and English literature at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. She is the author of A drdmairo Yeats (Yeats the playwright, 1988), co-author (with Donald E. Morse) of Worlds Visible and Invisible, Essays on Irish Literature (1994) and co-editor of several volumes of essays on Irish literature and culture. She has published widely on Irish drama including works by W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, Brian Friel, Thomas Murphy, John B. Keane and other playwrights; on the fantastic in literature and the arts and on parallels between Irish and Hungarian literature. She has edited an anthology of post-World War II Hungarian poetry in English translation. Presently she is a member of the Executive Board of IASIL (International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures) as well as of the Advisory Board and the Bibliography Committee of Irish University Review.

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List of Contributors

Carle Bonafous-Murat is Professor of Irish Literature at the University of Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris III, where he is also head of the Irish Studies programme. He is the author of a PhD thesis on Yeats and genealogy, and has published a book on Joyce, Dubliners, logique de {'impossible (Paris: Ellipses, 1999) and a critical edition of Oscar Wilde's Intentions (2001). He has written several articles on twentieth-century Irish fiction and poetry, ranging from Yeats and Beckett to contemporary Northern Irish poetry. He is currently preparing a collection of essays on contemporary Irish poetry and the classical tradition. Eamonn R. Cantwell graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from University College Cork in 1960. He then worked in engineering and management positions for 36 years with the Irish Electricity Supply Board (ESB). During his final years with ESB he completed a BA degree with the UK's Open University, and on taking early retirement in 1997 completed an MPhil in Anglo-Irish Literature followed by a PhD at Trinity College Dublin. His PhD thesis was on W. B. Yeats's reception in Ireland during his lifetime. Dr Cantwell has presented papers on Yeats at IASIL conferences in 2002 and 2004 and on George Moore at University College Cork in 2005. Theo D'haen is Professor of American Literature at the K.U. Leuven (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium) and Emeritus Professor of English and American Literature at Leiden University (the Netherlands). He has published widely on literatures in European languages, mainly in the fields of (post)modernism, (post)colonialism, and popular literature. He is a member of the Academia Europaea. Jolanta Dudek (DPhil Oxon/dr. hab. UJ.) teaches twentieth-century poetry and also the theory of literature; she is a professor in the Faculty of Polish Language and Literature at thejagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. Her main interest is the interpretation of complex nineteenth- and twentiethcentury poetry (mainly English and Polish) including Kasimir Wierzynski, Czeslaw Milosz, and Yeats. Her publications include Liryka Kazimierza Wierzynskiego z lat 1951-1969 (The Poetry of K W from 1951 to 1969, 1975), Gdzie wschodzi stance i kfdy zapada: Europejskie korzenie poezji Czeslawa Milosza (Where the sun rises and where it sets: The European roots of the poetry of C M, 1991, second edition 1995), The Poetics of William Butler Yeats and Kazimierz Wierzynski: A Parallel (1993, Polish edition 2001), Poeci polscy XX wieku (Polish poets of the 20th century, 1994) and Poezjapolska XX wieku wobec tradycji (Polish poetry of the 20th century in relation to tradition, 2002). She is currently working on a second volume of interpretations of the greatest Polish poems of the twentieth century. Fiorenzo Fantaccini is a lecturer in English Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of Florence (Faculty of Letters and Philosophy). He is the author of essays on translation and on American, English and especially Irish literature (Hawthorne, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Wilde, Lowry, Sean O'Faolain, Kate O'Brien, Brian Friel, Roddy Doyle, Emma Donoghue,

List of Contributors

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Tom Murphy). He co-edited The Cracked Lookingglass: Contributions to the Study of Irish Literature (with Carla De Petris and Jean Ellis D'Alessandro, 1999) and Le riscritture del Postmoderno: Percorsi angloamericani (Postmodern rewritings: Anglo-American journeys, with Ornella De Zordo, 2002). He translated works by E. A. Poe, Hawthorne, Jane Austen, Conal Creedon and Brian Friel. His book on W. B. Yeats e la cultura italiana (WBY and Italian culture) is due to be published in 2006. Currently he is working on Carlo Linati's translations of Yeats, Synge and Lady Gregory. Ljiljana Ina Gjurgjan is associate professor at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, where she teaches Irish Modernism, Romanticism and Women's Writing. She has taught at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies, University of London. She has published two comparativist studies in Croatian (on young Joyce and his Croatian counterpart J. P. Kamov and on the role of the mythical and national in the poetry of W. B. Yeats and V. Nazor) as well as several articles on Irish literature in English (Joyce, Yeats and others) and on English Modernism, Women's Writing and literary theory. Presently she is the main researcher on the project 'National Ideologemes in Modern Croatian and Irish Literature'. Jacqueline A. Hartley holds a Chair of Literature in English at the University of Barcelona, Spain. She has lectured and published on literature from the Renaissance up until the present. Her publications include Jose Janes: Editor de literatura inglesa (JJ: Publisher of English literature, 1992), awarded the Enrique Garcia y Diez Research Prize by the Spanish Association for AngloAmerican Studies (AEDEAN). She has contributed chapters to the Virginia Woolf and Walter Pater volumes in this Series. Klaus Peter Jochum is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Bamberg, Germany. He has also held teaching positions at the universities of Frankfurt and Freiburg and was visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana and at University College Galway. He is the author of numerous publications on Anglo-Irish literature, particularly W. B. Yeats, and the compiler ofW. B. Yeats: A Classified Bibliography of Criticism. He has also written on English drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Henry James. Roger Keys did his first degree and obtained his PhD at Cambridge University. He is Lecturer in Russian at the University of St Andrews. He has published The Reluctant Modernist: Andrei Belyi and the Development of Russian Fiction 1902-1914 (Oxford 1996) and Aleksei Remizov's 'Trud' (Berkeley 2004) and translated (in collaboration) Leonid Tsypkin's Summer in Baden-Baden (New York 2001, London 2005). He is currently working on a book entitled The Modernist Tradition in Russian Literature and Andrei Belyi's 'Petersburg'.

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Timeline: European Reception of W. B. Yeats Klaus Peter Jochurn

This Timeline was constructed on the basis of John S. Kelly, A W. B. Yeats Chronology (2003), the individual contributions to this book and the editor's archive. The listing is selective. The entries under Translations include, wherever possible, first translations. The entries under Criticism concentrate on monographs (mostly by Irish and continental European authors); they also list first items of criticism. Russian publications are listed under Russia, regardless of the political situation; Lithuanian, Belorussian and Ukrainian items are identified as such. Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations

Criticism

1865 13 June, born in Dublin 1885 First poems published in Dublin University Review

1886 First book publication

1887

(Mosada); first essay published (on Samuel Ferguson)

1888 Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland', Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland 1889 The Wanderings of Oisin 1891 Representative Irish Tales; John Sherman and Dhoya

Katharine Tynan reviews Mosada

Numerous reviews of The Wanderings, collected by Yeats

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Timeline

Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations

Criticism

Germany: First translation: Selected fairy tales, by Eugenie Jacobi

W. P. Ryan, The Irish Literary Revival

France: Several poems and one tale

France: Henry D. Davray, 'William Butler Yeats' (includes translations) Russia: Zinaida Vengerova, 'Molodaia Angliia' Poland: Jerzy Plonski, 'Z nad Tamizy'

1892 Founding of the

1893

1894

1895 1896

National Literary Society; The Book of the Rhymers' Club; The Countess Cathleen and Various Legend and Lyrics The Works of William Blake, ed. Yeats and Edwin J. Ellis; The Celtic Twilight Failed visit to Mallarme in Paris, attends performance of Axel; First performance and publication of The Land of Heart's Desire A Book of Irish Verse; Poems

1897 Attends performance of 1898

Ubu Roi in Paris; The Secret Rose Involved in the celebrations of the '98 centenary

1899 Founding of Irish Literary

1900

Theatre; row over first performance of The Countess Cathleen; The Wind among the Reeds; Poems (revised) The Shadowy Waters

1901 First performance of Diarmuid and Grania by Yeats and George Moore

France: 'Rosa Alchemica', by Davray Norway: First translation: 'The Celtic Element in Literature'

Frank Hugh O'Donnell, Souls for Gold!

Norway: 'Irish Witch Doctors'

France: Charles Legras, Chez nos contemporains d'Angletene

Timeline 1902 First performance of Cathleen ni Houlihan with Maud Gonne in the title role; preface to Lady Gregory, Cudiulain of Muirthemne 1903 The Irish National Theatre Society founded with Yeats as President; first performances of The Hour-Glass and The King's Threshold', Ideas of Good and Evil 1904 Opening of the Abbey Theatre with On Baile's Strand

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Poland: First translation: 'The Heart of the Spring'

Germany: The Countess Cathleen, by Eduard Engel

Russia: Zinaida Vengerova, 'W. B. Yeats'

Germany: Selected poems, by Irene Forbes-Mosse Poland: The Countess Cathleen, by Jan Kasprowicz

H. S. Krans, William Butler Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival France: Henri Potez, 'W. B. Yeats' Italy: Ulisse Ortensi, 'William Butler Yeats' Italy: Mario Borsa, H teatro

1907 Playboy riots; travels to Italy (Ravenna and other places)

Poland: Selected poems, by Kasprowicz

Netherlands: Taco H. de Beer, Living Authors; Charles de Boissevain, 'lerland's Renaissance'

1908 Performance of Deirdre with Mrs Patrick Campbell in the tide role; The Collected Works in Verse and Prose (8 vols)

Germany: The Hour-Glass, by Marie Freudenthal Serbia: First translation: 'The Stolen Child'

1905 Stories of Red Hanrahan 1906 First performance of Deirdre; Poems 1899-1905

inglese contemporaneo

1910 The Green Helmet and Other Poems 1911 Synge and the Ireland of His Time; Plays for an Irish Theatre 1913 Probable first meeting with Georgie (George) Hyde Lees (born 1892), his future wife; A Selection from the Poetry (Tauchnitz edition) 1914 Polish translation of The Countless Cathleen performed in Warsaw

Germany: The Land of Heart's Desire, by Frieda Weekley and E. L. Stahl

Italy: First translation: Selected plays by Carlo Linati

George Moore, Hail and Farewell (3 vols, 1911-14) Poland: Maria Rakowska, 'Teatr irlandzki'

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Timeline

Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications 1914 (cont.)

1915 1916 First performance of At the Hawk's Well in Lady Cunard's drawing room; Reveries over Childhood and Youth', Responsibilities 1917 Buys Thoor Ballylee; marries George Hyde Lees; The Wild Swans at Coole 1918 Per Arnica Silentia Lunae 1919 Birth of Anne Yeats; first performance of The Player Queen in London; German translation of The Land of Heart's Desire performed in Frankfurt; Two Plays for Dancers', The Cutting of an Agate', The Wild Swans at Coole 1920

1921 Birth of Michael Yeats; Michael Robartes and the Dancer, Four Plays for Dancers

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations

Criticism

Romania: First translation: 'When You Are Old', by Dragos, Protopopescu First Czech translation: J. M. Hone, William Butler Yeats', Forrest Reid, The Secret Rose W. B. Yeats Thomas MacDonagh, Germany: Selected tales and essays, Literature in Ireland Norway: by Friedrich Eckstein Per Hallstrom, 'William Hungary: First translation: Two Butler Yeats' poems

Ernest A. Boyd, The Contemporary Drama of Ireland

Czechoslovakia: Selected essays and poems from The Wind among the Reeds, by B. Reynek Netherlands: First translation, by A. Roland Hoist Czechoslovakia: Rosa Alchemica and other tales; three plays, both by Jaroslav Skalicky Spain (Catalonia and Galicia): First translations of Cathleen ni Houlihan, by Maria Manent and Anton Villar Ponte

Netherlands: Willem van Doom, 'William Butler Yeats' Spain (Galicia): Vicente Risco, 'W. B. Yeats' Yugoslavia (Croatia): Ante Delalle, 'Moderna irska drama i tragedija'

Timeline

xxiii

1922 Speaks in Paris at the Irish Race Congress; appointed to Irish Senate; honorary DLitt degree, Trinity College Dublin; Dutch translation of The Only Jealousy of Emer performed in Amsterdam; The Trembling of the Veil', Later Poems; Plays in Prose and Verse Romania: 1923 Award of the Nobel Prize; Sweden: Dragos, Protopopescu, Plays and Controversies First translations: The 'William Butler Yeats' Countess Cathleen; Selected plays 1924 Essays', The Cat and the Denmark: Moon and Certain Poems First translations: selected poems and plays; Reveries over Childhood and Youth Poland: Tales of Red Hanrahan, by 'Miriam' Sweden: Tales of Red Hanrahan, two plays; The Eand of Heart's Desire Czechoslovakia: 1925 Travels to Sicily, Naples and Rome; Senate speech Per Arnica Silentia Eunae, by Skalicky on divorce; The Bounty Germany: of Sweden; Early Poems The Countess Cathleen, by and Stories Ernst E. Stein Poland: Selected tales, by Jozef Birkenmajer Czechoslovakia: 1926 Defends O'Casey's The Tales of Red Hanrahan, Plough and the Stars against rioters; chairs the by Skalicky Senate Committee on the Irish coinage; first performances of The Cat and the Moon, The Only Jealousy of Emer and King Oedipus; A Vision (first version); Autobiographies Spain (Catalonia): 1927 First production of The Eand of Heart's Desire, Oedipus at Colonus; by Maria Manent Swedish translation of The Eand of Heart's Desire performed in Stockholm

xxiv

Timeline

Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations

1928 Rejects O'Casey's The Silver Tassie', resigns from Irish Senate; The Tower 1929 First performance of Fighting the Waves

Czechoslovakia: Three plays, by Skalicky

1930 First performance of The Words upon the Window-Pane

Hungary: 'He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead', by Mih£y Babits

1931 Honorary DLitt, Oxford; first performance of The Dreaming of the Bones 1932 Founding of the Irish Academy of Letters; Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems 1933 Honorary degree, Cambridge; Slovene translation of The Countess Cathleen performed in Ljubljana; The Winding Stair and Other Poems', The Collected Poems 1934 Award of the Frankfurt Goethe-Plakette occasioned by a performance of the German translation of The Countess Cathleen', attends congress of the Alessandro Volta Foundation; first performances of The King of the Great Clock Tower and The Resurrection; Letters to the New Island; Wheels and Butterflies; The Collected Plays

Germany: Ten plays, by Henry von Heiseler Italy: Selected poems, by F. Gargaro Spain (Basque country): Cathleen ni Houlihan

Criticism

Andrew E. Malone, The Irish Drama Belgium: Franz de Backer, 'William Butler Yeats' Hungary: Two articles by Vernon Duckworth Barker on Yeats (1930-31); article on Yeats by Antal Szerb

Iceland: Skuli Skulason, 'William Butler Yeats'

Timeline 1935 A Full Moon in March; Dramatis Personae; The Hour-Glass, trans. Stein performed in Basel

1936 Dramatis Personae', The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1937 A Vision (revised edition); Essays 1931 to 1936 1938 BBC television shows The Shadowy Waters; first performance of Purgatory; New Poems 1939 Finishes The Death of Cudiulain and several poems; dies in CapMartin (28 January); burial in Roquebrune (30 January); East Poems and Two Plays; On the Boiler, Selected Poems, ed. Roland Hoist (publ. in Amsterdam); The Unicorn from the Stars performed in Basle 1940 Ingmar Bergman produces Swedish translations of The HourGlass and The Pot of Broth in Stockholm; German translation of The Unicorn from the Stars performed in Munich; Last Poems & Plays; Letters on Poetry 1941 1942 1944

1945 First performance of The Death of Cuchulain by Austin Clarke's Lyric Theatre

Italy: More selected poems, by Gargaro Spain (Galicia): Two plays, by Placido R. Castro and the brothers Vilar Ponte Romania: Poems, translated by Ion Pillat Russia: First translation of fourteen poems in an anthology edited by M. Gutner

XXV

John Eglinton, Irish Literary Portraits

Romania: Ion Pillat, 'Sufletul irlandez in poezie'

Maud Gonne, A Servant of the Queen

Italy: The Irish Theatre, ed. Selected poems, by Leone Lennox Robinson Traverse France: Louis Gillet, 'W. B. Yeats'; Anatole Rivoallan, Litterature irlandaise contemporaine Poland: Roman Dyboski, 'Yeats' Yugoslavia (Croatia): First translation of 'The Fiddler of Dooney', by Ivan Goran Kovacic Spain: First translation, by Luis Cernuda (in exile) ('Ephemera')

Scattering Branches, ed. Stephen Gwynn

Czechoslovakia: Selected poems, by Bohdan Chudoba

Louis MacNeice, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats

Joseph Hone, W. B. Yeats Czechoslovakia: John Butler Yeats, Letters selected poems, by to His Son W. B. Yeats Skalicky and Others Spain: First translations, by Juan Ramon Jimenez (in exile)

xxvi

Timeline

Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations

1946 1947 1948 Reburial in Drumcliffe Churchyard 1949 The Poems (2 vols) 1950 First performance of A Full Moon in March (Everyman Theatre, Hampstead); first performance of The Herne's Egg by Austin Clarke's Lyric Theatre; The Collected Poems 1951

Yugoslavia (Croatia): Four poems, by Ivan Goran Kovacic Italy: Translations, by Eugenio Montale Italy: Selected poems, by Leone Traverse

1955 Autobiographies; operatic adaptation of The Countess Cathleen'. Irische Legende by Egk performed at Salzburg Festival 1956

Netherlands: A. N. Jefiares, A Poet and a Theatre

Richard Ellmann, Yeats the Man and the Masks A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: Man and Poet T. R. Henn, The Lonely Tower Sweden: Birgit Bjersby, The Interpretation of the Cuchulain Legend in the Works of W. B. Yeats; Lennox Robinson, Ireland's Abbey Theatre Arland Ussher, Three Great Irishmen

1952 The Collected Plays 1953 Letters to Katharine Tynan', IV. B. Yeats and T. Sturge Moore: Their Correspondence 1954 The Letters (ed. Allan Wade)

Criticism

France: Selected poems, by M. L. Cazamian; selected plays, by Madeleine Gibert Germany (West): Selected poems, by Herberth E. Herlitschka Iceland: First translations of selected poems Netherlands: Yeats number, Irish First substantial selection Writing of poems, translated by A. Roland Hoist France: Selected poems, by Alliette Audra Spain:

Timeline xxvii 1956 (cont.) 1957 The Variorum Edition of the Poems

1958

1959 Mythologies 1960 Inauguration of the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo; The Senate Speeches 1961 Essays and Introductions

1962 Explorations

1963

1964 Letters on Poetry (reissued) 1965 First performance of Calvary in Dublin

First substantial translation of selected works, by Amando Lazaro Ros Spain: Selected poems, by Jaime Ferran Netherlands: Selected poems and The Countess Cathken, by Roland Host

Monk Gibbon, The Masterpiece and the Man Italy: Hungary: Selected poems, by Tamas Gigi Lunari, II movimento drammatico irlandese; Ungvari Giorgio Melchiori, The Whole Mystery of Art Czechoslovakia: Selected poems, by Jiri Valja Italy: Selected poems, by Roberto Sanesi France: Selected plays (Gibert) Yugoslavia (Macedonia): Three poems, by Bogomil Djuzel Germany (West): Italy: Johannes Kleinstiick, Selected plays, by W. B. Yeats Francesco Vizioli Romania: 'After Long Sileno', by Lucian Blaga The Integrity of Yeats, ed. Denis Donoghue The Yeats We Knew, ed. Greece: Translations by Giorgios Francis MacManus; The Dolmen Press Yeats Seferis: 'The Second Coming' (first published Centenary Papers, ed. Liam Miller; An Honoured 1946) and 'Sailing to Guest, ed. Denis Byzantium' Donoghue and J. R. Italy: Mulryne; In Excited Forty poems, by Reverie, ed. A. N. Giorgio Melchiori Romania: Jeffares and K. G. W. Cross (see especially Selected poems, by Conor Cruise O'Brien, Aurel Covaci 'Passion and Cunning', repr. 1988); Corinna Salvador!, Yeats and Castiglione; special issue 'The Theatre of W. B.

xxviii

Timeline

Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations

1965 (cont.)

1966 The Variorum Edition of the Plays

1967

Finland: First translation of selected poems, by Aale Tynni Italy: Selected works, by Giuseppe Sardelli Turkey: First translation (extracts from the essays)

1968 George Yeats dies (23 August)

1969

1970

Italy: Selected works, by Giuseppe Sardelli Lithuania: First translation of five poems France: The Trembling of the Veil, by Pierre Leyris Germany (West): Collected works (6 vols, 1970-73), ed. Werner Vordtriede

Criticism

Yeats, Threshold; 'W. B. Yeats 1865-1939', Irish Times Romania: Special Yeats issue, Secolul 20 Yeats issue, University Review (Dublin)

Germany (West): Theodor Klimek, Symbol und Wirklichkeit bei W. B. Yeats; Jeannette Lander, William Butler Yeats; A. Norman Jeffares, A Commentary on the Collected Poems; Allan Wade, A Bibliography of the Writings of W. B. Yeats, 3rd edn Austria: Susanne Schaup, 'William Butler Yeats in deutscher Sicht' Sweden: Jan Olof Olsson and Margareta Sjogren, Plogen och stjdrnorna

Timeline

1971

France: The Wind among the Reeds, by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues Norway: Purgatory Yugoslavia (Serbia): Selected poems, by Ranka Kuic

1972

W. B. Yeats and the Designing of Ireland's Coinage

1973

French translation of the Cuchulain plays performed in Paris

1974

1975

1976

xxix

Denis Donoghue, Yeats', F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine; New Yeats Papers, ed. Liam Miller (1971-82)

Germany (West): Peter Huhn, Das Verhdltnis von Mann und Frau im Werk von William Butler Yeats; Klaus Peter Jochum, Die dramatisdie Struktur der Spiele von W. B. Yeats Malcolm Brown, The Politics of Irish Literature Germany (West): Wulf Kiinne, Konzeption und Stil von Yeats' 'Autobiographies' Russia: Italy: A. P. Sarukhanian, A Vision Sovremennaia irlandskaia Ukraine: First translations of twenty literatura poems in Vsesvit Italy: France: Giacomo Cosentino, Dramatis Personae, by Studies in Yeats's Later Pierre Leyris Poems Robert Hogan and James France: Selected poems, by Rene Kilroy, The Modern Irish Drama (6 vols, 1975-92); Frechet A. N. Jeffares and A. S. Spain: Knowland, A Ideas of Good and Evil Commentary on the Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats T. R. Henn, Last Essays; Italy: Rosa Akhemica, by Renato W. B. Yeats: Interviews and Recollections, ed. E. Oliva

H. Mikhail

France: Jacqueline Genet, William Butler Yeats Lithuania: Galina Bauzite, 'William Butler Yeats'; Izolda Geniushene, 'William Butler Yeats' Poland: Wanda Krajewska, William Butler Yeats

xxx

Timeline

Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations

Criticism

1977

Spain: Mythologies, by Fernando Robles

1978

Germany (East): Tales of Red Hanrahan Poland: Tales of Red Hanrahan Yugoslavia (Serbia): Selected poems, by Milovan Danojlic France: A Vision

W. B. Yeats: The Critical Heritage, ed. A. N. Jeffares; Liam Miller, The Noble Drama of W. B. Yeats Italy: Franco Buffoni, Yeats e Keats; Gabriella Corradini Favati, L'akhimia del sogno e delta rosa; Fernando Picchi, Esoterismo e magia France: Margaret Stanley, 'W. B. Yeats et la France' Hungary: Peter Szentmihaly Szabo, W. B. Yeats vildga

1979

1980

1981

Hugh Hunt, The Abbey: Ireland's National Theatre', F. S. L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland; George J. Watson, Irish Identity and the Literary Revival Yeats, Sligo and Ireland, Germany (East): Selected essays, ed. ed. A. N. Jeffares; A Needle's Eye, ed. Lyric Wolfgang Wicht Players Theatre, Belfast Lithuania: Germany (West): Cathleen ni Houlihan Yugoslavia (Macedonia): Eitel F. Timm, William Butler Yeats und Friedrich 15 poems, by Zoran Nietzsche Ancevski Grattan Freyer, W. B. France: Yeats and the AntiExplorations, ed. Democratic Tradition; Jacqueline Genet Sean O'Casey, Germany (East): Autobiographies Selected works, (originally in 6 ed. K. H. Berger individually titled vols, 1939-54); Terence Brown, Ireland France: William Butler Yeats, ed. Jacqueline Genet

Timeline 1981 (cont.)

1982 The Cornell Yeats (manuscript series, 1982ff.)

1983

1984

1985

1986 The Collected Letters, vol. Iff. (1986ff)

1987

France: The Celtic Twilight, ed. Jacqueline Genet Netherlands: Thirteen poems, by A. Roland Hoist and Jan Eijkelboom Hungary: Selected fairy tales Yugoslavia (Slovenia): First translation of selected works, by Veno Taufer Spain (Catalan): Thirty-four poems, by M. Villangomez Llobert

xxxi

Italy: Giuseppe Serpillo, Le immagini della vecchiezza nella poesia di Yeats Yeats Annual, vol. Iff

Augustine Martin, W. B. Yeats', Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies (vol. 1—vol. 17, 1999) Switzerland and Germany: Hellmut Salinger, William Butler Yeats Netherlands: Martin Koomen, Het literaire Dublin Sweden: Birgit Bramsback, Folklore and W. B. Yeats

France: The Secret Rose and The Cutting of an Agate, both ed. Jacqueline Genet Germany (East): Autobiographies, ed. Wolfgang Wicht Italy: The Tower, by Ariodante Marianni Spain: Selected poems, by Enrique Caracciolo Trejo Seamus Deane, Celtic France: Revivals; Field Day Essays and Introductions, Theatre Company, ed. Jacqueline Genet Netherlands: Ireland's Field Day, W. J. McCormack, Ascendancy A utobiographies and Tradition in AngloSpain: Irish Literature The Celtic Twilight, by Russia: Javier Marias V. A. Riapolova, U. B. leits Denis Donoghue, We Italy: Irish Per Arnica Silentia Lunae Spain: The Secret Rose Italy: The Celtic Twilight, by Rosita Copioli

xxxii

Timeline

Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications

1988

1989 Abbey Theatre Yeats Festival (annually, 1989-93); The Collected Works, 1989ff

1990

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations Poland: Selected poems, ed. Julius Zulawski; trans. Ludmila Marjanska (another edition) Italy: Anima Mundi, by Rosita Copioli Portugal: First substantial translation of selected poems

Criticism

A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats: A New Biography; Conor Cruise O'Brien, Passion and Cunning and Other Essays (see also above, 1965) Hungary: Csilla Bertha, A drdmairo Yeats Yeats the European, ed. A. Yugoslavia N. Jeffares (Serbia-Kosovo): First Albanian translation Yugoslavia (Croatia): Stipe Grgas, Nietzsche i of four plays Yeats France: France: Uncollected prose, ed. Jacqueline Genet (4 vols, Jacqueline Genet, Ea poetique de W. B. Yeats 1989-91); fifty-one poems, by Jean Briat; Greece: forty-five poems, by Yeats issue, Nea estia Yves Bonnefoy Italy: Italy: The Wild Swans at Cook, Renato Oliva, Hodos chameleontis by Ariodante Marianni Brian Arkins, Builders of Bulgaria: My Soul, Adrian Frazier, First translation of Behind the Scenes; The selected works, by E>ream I Knew, ed. Jim Vladimir Trendafilov McGarry Estonia: Hungary: First translation of Agnes Gergely, Nyugat selected poems Magyarja Italy: Italy: Cuchulain plays, by Luca Gallesi, Esoterismo e Melita Cataldi; The folklore in William Butler Speckled Bird, by Yeats Pietro De Logu Spain: Selected works, by Manuel Soto Ukraine: Selected poems

Timeline xxxiii

1991

Italy: The Secret Rose Spain: Selected poems; Irish folktales; A Vision 1992 Greek translations of four Greece: plays performed in First substantial translation of selected works, by Athens Spyros Iliopoulos Italy: The Wanderings of Oisin Spain: Rosa Alchemica Greece: 1993 The Death of Synge Italy: Rosa Alchemica Russia: Selected poems, by Grigorii Kruzhkov

1994

The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, ed. Seamus Deane and others Greece: Etaireia Theatrou Mnimi, Ouilliam Batler Geits Spain: Francisco Javier Torres Pvibelles, Eternal Shadows Greece: S. J. Iliopoulos, That Other Self Italy: Edoardo Giovanni Carlotti, Le danze dei simboli', Yeats oggi, ed. Carla De Petris Netherlands: Peter Liebregts, Centaurs in the Twilight Poland: Jolanta Dudek, The Poetics of W. B. Yeats and K. Wierzynski Portugal: In After Time, ed. Kathleen Hart and Jacinta Matos Hungary: Yeats issue of Nagyvilag Italy: Anthony L. Johnson, The Verbal Art of W. B. Yeats Russia: N. V. Tishunina, Teatr U. B. leitsa

France: Last Poems, Michael Robartes and the Dancer, both by Jean-Yves Masson; three 'No' plays by Pierre Leyris Greece: Selected poems, ed. Spyros Iliopoulos Italy: Autobiographies', Calvary, The Resurrection, Purgatory, by Massimo Morasso; Fairy and Folk Tales, by Pietro Meneghelli Poland: Selected plays Portugal:

A Vision

Turkey: Cathleen ni Houlihan

xxxiv Timeline Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations

Criticism

1995

Italy: The Secret Rose, by Rosita Copioli Portugal: Selected tales Russia: Selected lyrical and narrative poems, ed. Alia Sarukhanian

1996

Czech Republic: The Celtic Twilight Portugal: Selected poems (augmented edition)

1997

France: Seven plays, by Jacqueline Genet Greece: John Sherman Poland: Selected poems, ed. Wanda Rulewicz Portugal: Rosa Akhemka Belarus: First translations in Krynitsa Germany: Selected poems Russia: The Celtic Twilight and other stories

Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland Croatia: Ljiljana Ina Gjurgjan, Mit, nacija i knjizevnost 'Kraja stoljeca' France: Jacqueline Genet, Le theatre de William Butler Yeats Netherlands: Roselinde Supheert, Yeats in Holland Poland: Joanna Burzynska, Towards a Theory of Poetic Drama Italy: Gino Scatasta, // teatro di Yeats e il nazionalismo irlandese', Yeats e I'autobiografismo, ed. Melita Cataldi Netherlands: Peter Liebregts and Peter van de Kamp, Tumult of Images R F. Foster, W. B. Yeats (1997-2003) Italy: Elena Cotta Ramusino, La produzione giovanile di William Butler Yeats

1998

Michael B. Yeats, Cast a Cold Eye Belarus: Maryna Shoda (ed.) Special Yeats issue of Krynitsa Greece: Yeats issue, Diavazo

Timeline XXXV 1998 (cont.)

1999

2000

2001 Anne Yeats dies (4 July)

Romania: Rodica Albu, Myth and Folk Elements in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats Terence Brown, The Life Hungary: of W. B. Yeats; Nicholas Rosa Akhemica Grene, The Politics of Italy: Selected plays, by Giorgio Irish Drama Manganelli Lithuania: Four poems, by Laurynas Katkus Netherlands: Selected poems, by Jan Eijkelboom Russia: Selected works, ed. Grigorii Kruzhkov Yugoslavia (Serbia): Selected poems, by Milovan Danojlic Roy Connolly, The Greece: Evolution of the Lyric Seventy love poems; Players Theatre, Belfast', selected fairy tales Declan Kiberd, Irish Hungary: Classics; New Voices in Selected poems, ed. Irish Criticism, 2000fE; W. Gyozo Ferencz B. Yeats: Critical Italy: Assessments, ed. David The Winding Stair and Pierce Other Poems, by Croatia: Ariodante Marianni Yeats issue, Knjizevna Netherlands: smotra Selected poems, ed. Koen Stassijns and Ivo van Strijten Portugal: Selected tales Russia: Selected works, ed. N. Bavina and K. Golubovich Turkey: The Celtic Twilight Critical Ireland, ed. Alan Croatia: A. Gillis and Aaron Kelly Selected works, ed. Russia: Ljiljana Ina Gjurgjan Grigorii Kruzhkov, Hungary: Nostal'giia obeliskov Selected poems, by Gabor Erdodi Russia: Selected poems, by Grigorii Kruzhkov; eight plays, by L. Volodarskaia Sweden: Selected poems

xxxvi Timeline Year Yeats's life: first and important performances of plays; principal publications 2002

Translations: first and selected substantial later translations

France: The Collected Letters, ed. John Kelly (electronic The Tower, by Jean-Yves Masson; ten plays, by edition, Internet and Jacqueline Genet CD-ROM) Russia: Selected tales Sweden: Selected tales

Criticism

Michael McAteer, Standish O'Grady, jE and

Yeats; Ann Saddlemyer, Becoming George; Colm Toibin, Lady Gregory's Toothbrush Hungary: Judit Nenyei, Thought Outdanced

2003

2004

2005

Italy: Francesca Gasparini, W. B. Yeats Nicholas Allen, George France: 'The Irish Dramatic Russell (M) and the New Movement' (Nobel Prize Ireland speech); early poems, ed. France: Jacqueline Genet and Jacqueline Genet, William Jean-Yves Masson, 2 vols; Butler Yeats: Biographie last plays, by Genet Hungary: Ten plays, ed. Marton Mesterhazi; The Celtic Twilight, by Gabor Erdodi Spain: The Wild Swans at Coole, by Carlos Jimenez Arribas Croatia: Italy: A Vision, by Marko Grcic Enrico Reggiani, The Italy: 'Complementary Last poems, by Ariodante Dream', Perhaps Marianni Poland: 'Sailing to Byzantium' and 'The Tower', by Czeslaw Milosz Spain: The Tower, by Carlos Jimenez Arribas Germany: Collected poems, ed. Norbert Hummelt

Introduction: The Yeatsian Reception of Europe and the European Reception of Yeats Klaus Peter Jochum

i In May 1987, the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco hosted a conference under the title Yeats the European', its proceedings were edited by A. Norman Jeffares in 1989. The title has a slightly apologetic ring, as if it were necessary to prove that Yeats was indeed a European poet. Not all the speakers addressed the issue; some of those who did, however, had their reservations. Doubts were voiced most explicitly by John Kelly, who maintained that Europe did not originate any of Yeats's ideas; it helped: at certain crucial points in his career, that process of refinement and sophistication which constituted his artistic progress. We look in vain in Yeats for those crosscultural creative shocks that made Eliot's reading of Laforgue, Carlyle's of Goethe, Baudelaire's of Poe [. ..] so rich in their repercussions. What Yeats sought was not confrontation with the new but confirmation of the old [...]. [H]e took pleasure in those European writers who most corroborated his own thinking, and who most gave him confidence to pursue his own aesthetic mode more rigorously — the discovery of the French symbolists, of Balzac, of Nietzsche, of Castiglione, and of Spengler fall into this category. (Jeffares 1989, 160)

Kelly goes on to assess the significance of Yeats's early visits to France; they acted as catalysts to bring together what had been in Yeats's mind before. In February 1894 Yeats saw Villiers de 1'Isle Adam's Axel (which found his approval), in December 1896 he was shocked by Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, in June 1908 he looked at the paintings of Ingres and David. These are all visual, not literary experiences; the latter are more tenuous. In 1894, one of his few attempts to meet a French poet, Mallarme in fact, ended in comical disaster; the master was in England (Yeats 1986, 381). He did manage to see an invalid Verlaine and wrote about the visit, but the talk seems to have been on Verlaine's side only, while Yeats observed 'the joyous serenity and untroubled perception of those who commune with spiritual ideas' (1970a, 399).

2

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

In his introduction Jeffares draws attention to the wide variety of Yeats's reading in world literature (xiii—xv), but one has to bear in mind that Yeats's command of foreign languages was very poor and that he absorbed all foreign literature eclectically, through the medium of English. In the opinion of Helen Vendler, another speaker at the symposium, this led to 'cacophony' in his poetry. The 'lexical, intellectual, and visual cacophonies' (30) of a poem such as 'The Statues' reflect numerous European sources and establish Yeats as a European poet. Nevertheless, the 'rag-and-bone shop of his European mind would exact a style as disharmonious as its long-assembled contents' (23), and Vendler does not overlook what she calls the oddity and stridency of the attempt. Peter Kuch locates Yeats's 'Europeanism' in his study of the occult, his work for the theatre, in his reading and in his literary criticism (116—17), but again the issue is not clear-cut. It is true that many of his occult sources were of European origin and that he advocated the staging of 'European' plays in Ireland. Andrew Parkin, another contributor, draws parallels between Yeats's theatrical work and the little theatre movement in Europe (216—29) and between Yeats's dramatic theories and those of Vsevolod Meyerhold (both ignorant of each other's existence). But Yeats's reading tended to produce unsettling effects, as C. K. Stead shows in an analysis of 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen', where an Irish 'fixation' on England distorts (but does not eliminate) 'the wider European focus' (129—30). Almost all of Yeats's own critical prose is concerned with Irish and English subjects and writers. There are only a few 'European' items; short notes on the performance of Axel (1970a, 320—25) and on the visit to Verlaine, two reviews of plays by Maurice Maeterlinck and a note on Pvichard Wagner (1975, 45—47, 51—54, 485—86), finally the preface to an English translation of Axel (Yeats 1988, 156—58). Two substantial texts stand out. One is 'Swedenborg, Mediums, and the Desolate Places', Yeats's preface to the second volume of Lady Gregory's Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, written in 1914 and reprinted in Explorations (1962, 30—70), in which he absorbs Swedenborg into his syncretic spiritual philosophy. The other is an essay on Balzac's Louis Lambert (written in 1934 and available in Yeats 1961, 438—47), again concerned with 'supernormal experiences' (439) which he discerns in Balzac but not in Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Flaubert and Stendhal. Both essays bear out Kelly's contention that Yeats preferred those European writers who confirmed his own views. Many references to other European writers and thinkers, to cultural and political movements of his time are scattered all over Yeats's writings early and late and his letters (see Foster 2005), but he did not take it upon himself to write separately and comprehensively about them. There are for instance no essays about Dante, Goethe and Nietzsche, all of whom he read. The references are often placed in idiosyncratic, specifically Yeatsian contexts. In 1897 he makes the exorbitant claim that only the Celtic element, not the Slavonic, the Finnish and the Scandinavian traditions, 'has been close to the main river of European literature' (1961, 185). He conveniently forgets to consider classical antiquity, the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the Latin Middle Ages and Romance literature. In a footnote added in 1924 he incorporates the

Introduction

3

Celtic element into his occult system by aligning it with the supernatural as a creator of new myths. In 'A General Introduction for My Work', written in 1937, he adds a peculiarly Yeatsian political twist; standing on O'Connell Bridge in Dublin, looking in disgust at the garish illumination, he hopes to find kindred spirits elsewhere in Europe who condemn the rampant commercialism (526). After his early visits to Paris Yeats does not seem to have been much interested in meeting foreign writers and poets on his European travels or entering into lengthy correspondence with them. Those few contacts that have been documented have had no impact on his writings. Three examples will show this. Yeats corresponded with Henry-D. Davray (1873—1944), his first French translator and critic whom he also met occasionally between 1897 and 1917. In a long letter to Davray (19 March 1896) Yeats did not only provide biographical information (evidentally requested), he also unashamedly pointed out which reviews in English and Irish newspapers had pleased him most and why (Yeats 1997, 13—15). Davray took the hint; his own reviews reproduce the information given by Yeats and are full of lavish praise (44—45). Yeats commented only briefly on the quality of the translations, spotting a mistake and qualifying his praise with an 'as far as I can judge' (letter of 21 November 1898, 305—07). Later, Yeats lost interest in the French reception of his works and would answer Davray's requests for permission to translate by referring him to his publisher (letter of 13 November 1904, Yeats 1994, 669-70); a practice he continued with the Spanish translators Zenobia and Juan Ramon Jimenez whom he fobbed off on his agent A. P. Watt (Young 1980, 114). His usual self-centred reason for not entering into a more sympathetic correspondence with his admirers was that he was in the midst of composing poetry. Yeats's reluctance to interest himself in the productions of his translators contrasts sharply with the willingness shown by some of his contemporaries. In her introduction to the Virginia Woolf volume, published in the same series as the present book on Yeats, Nicola Luckhurst draws attention to Woolf s interaction with her French and Spanish translators and to the impact which this interaction had on her reception in general (Caws and Luckhurst 2002, 5-8). My second example is the German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann. Yeats's library contained at least three Hauptmann plays in translation (O'Shea 1985, 122); he read Hannele and approved of its production at the Abbey Theatre in 1913 (Kelly 2003, 163). But when he met Hauptmann in Rapallo in 1929, he could not and did not discuss literary or theatrical matters with him, because neither mastered enough of the other's language (Saddlemyer 2002, 416). The meetings, actually dinner parties, were so insignificant that Hauptmann's biographers do not even mention them. Pvapallo was also the scene of my third example. As noted in the essay on the Italian reception, the poet Eugenio Montale, who was to translate several Yeats poems, saw the Irish poet, but conversation was impossible because Yeats spoke no Italian. It should also be noted that the treasures of European music were closed to Yeats; unlike his sometime collaborator George Moore, who went there five times between 1894 and 1910 (see Frazier 2000), he did not travel to Bayreuth. Of the greatest importance, however, are Yeats's 'silent' interactions

4

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

with works of art, which speak directly to his artistic inheritance and inclinations and do not require mediation in a foreign language. The relevance of European artworks to his poetry is much more obvious and easier to recognize than that of European literature; it has been the subject of several studies (see e.g. Loizeaux 1986). From his Italian visits of 1907 and 1925 Yeats brought back numerous deep impressions. He saw Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and responded to them in three of his bestknown late poems, 'Long-legged Fly', 'An Acre of Grass' and 'Under Ben Bulben'. Equally conspicuous is the description of Byzantine mosaics in 'Sailing to Byzantium'; Yeats studied them on his visits to Ravenna and Sicily in 1907 and 1925 (Jeffares 1984, 212-13). Yeats's reluctance to enter into personal contact with eminent European writers was, by and large, reciprocated; they did not flock to him and generally those who came were of little consequence. According to John Kelly's Yeats chronology (2003), they included Frederik van Eeden (a Dutch psychiatrist and poet), Karel Musek (a Czech theatre director) and four Italians: Antonio Mancini (the painter), Franco Leoni (a composer who wanted to write operas based on Yeats's plays), Filippo Marinetti (the futurist poet) and the philosopher Mario Manlio Rossi, co-author of a book on Bishop Berkeley, for which Yeats wrote an introduction (Hone and Rossi 1931, see also Fantaccini 2005). With the exception of Rossi none of them published anything substantial on Yeats. More important are two further Dutch visitors, the poet and translator P. N. van Eyck and the artist and designer Hildo Krop. Krop was perhaps the only visitor who directly influenced one of Yeats's works; he designed and made the masks for the Dutch performance of The Only Jealousy of Emer in 1922. The masks impressed Yeats so much that they prompted him to rewrite the play as a ballet with the title Fighting the Waves. Through the good offices of van Eyck, Yeats was able to use the masks in the first Dublin performance in 1929.1 Again, it was a visual, not a literary, experience which stimulated Yeats. II

In terms of time, place, intensity and quality the European record of intellectual and poetic response to Yeats is highly uneven. The reasons defy generalization; they emerge from the essays collected in this volume. Certainly, Yeats has not become a popular or widely known poet in European countries; there is an enormous difference between the reception on the continent and that in Ireland. With the exception of Hungary (Szentmihalyi Szabo 1978, Gergely 1990) and France (Genet 2003), no continental European country has produced a satisfactory Yeats biography. To European readers he is and remains a difficult and recondite poet. His practice of subsuming all outside inspiration and influence in his own idiosyncratic philosophy (in the

1

For details see Supheert 1995, 152—59. Photographs of the masks are printed in Miner 1977, plates XVIII-XXII.

Introduction

5

widest sense) and welding it to his own peculiar Irish background and the wide range of his activities created and still create serious obstacles. Nevertheless, translators continue to be attracted to his work, if only because his poetic forms are mostly traditional and therefore accessible in the context of English literature, an observation made by Yeats himself in 'A General Introduction for My Work', written in 1937, where he explained that he had to write 'in traditional metres that have developed with the language', i.e. the English language (Yeats 1961, 522). But to translate and interpret Yeats tends to serve a minority interest, the business, increasingly, of poet-translators and of academics in their publications and (university) teaching. It is also important to point out that the emergence of European criticism of Yeats has often depended on the foundation and existence of university departments of English and their willingness to offer courses in modern literature, a development that frequently dates only from the end of World War II. Yeats's unpopularity (a term which I use here without its deprecatory connotation) is not merely the result of his unfamiliar subject matter; it is also due to the peculiar character of his literary production. Yeats did not write an opus magnum of immediate appeal and/or notoriety, such as Ulysses, The Waste Land or Waiting for Godot. He did not write novels, a genre that corners the literary market more easily than lyric poetry or enigmatic short plays indebted to an exotic Japanese model. He could not and did not pander to a taste for the sensational like, perhaps, D. H. Lawrence. Yeats excels in poems of medium length and the collections of interrelated poems into books of poetry such as The Wind among the Reeds or The Tower, many of them personal or occasional in nature and hence potentially inaccessible to an uninformed understanding. They are rarely translated in their entirety and original order. Only in recent years have whole books of his poems or the entire collected poems themselves been translated. As the following chapters and the epilogue will show there are examples in Germany, France, Spain and Italy. The proper reception of such a difficult poet depends to a very large extent on suitable personalities, specifically on influential and knowledgeable critics and capable translators (capable in the sense that they can deal with lyric poetry), but also on political circumstances. In this respect Yeats was lucky in some but not in all countries. France provides perhaps the most instructive example of a successful and stable if at first one-sided reception. The first (anonymous) translation appeared as early as 1892 in the respectable Mercure de France, the poem 'Une epitaphe' (originally 'A Dream of Death'). The same journal would continue some years later with translations by Henry-D. Davray and others. In 1896 Davray also wrote the first French appreciation of Yeats. Other journals would follow with a steady supply of translations and some criticism. The first two of many book-length translations came out in 1954; six plays collected in Theatre and a representative selection of poems, including a preface and notes (Yeats 1954a, b). The latter was the work of Madeleine-L. Cazamian, a respected English scholar. Other scholars who translated and wrote about Yeats include Rene Frechet and, more recently and extensively, Jacqueline Genet. Yeats was not, however, left to the scholars only; several well-known poets and writers such as Yves Bonnefoy and Pierre Leyris have translated a large amount of poetry and prose. Unique among the French

6

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

translations are the versions of forty poems produced by Leopold Sedar Senghor, the former president of the Republic of Senegal and a poet in his own right (2001, 23—86). I do not know of any other statesman, in Europe or elsewhere, who has evinced such an interest in Yeats. A striking example of a reception gone wrong, as far as translations are concerned, is provided by Germany, not in terms of quantity but of quality. As outlined in the chapter on the German reception, an inept translator, Herberth E. Herlitschka, is largely responsible for much of this unhappy state of affairs. He owned the translation rights and did not share them with better qualified translators. When he lost the rights in 1967, it was too late for a comprehensive and sensible Yeats reception outside the strictly academic world. The sixvolume German edition, published as Werke (Works) in 1970—73, although an honourable attempt, leaves much to be desired. Besides, German poets and men of letters showed, on the whole, little interest in Yeats, for reasons about which one can only speculate. Many of them knew about him, as the long list of translators recruited for Werke reveals, but they made no large-scale efforts to introduce him to a discerning German readership. It is a matter of infinite regret that such illustrious minds as Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Ernst Robert Curtius and Paul Celan left only stray notes and few translations. As the example of France shows, it is often the poets who responded to Yeats, translated him and projected him into the literary culture of their countries. The Netherlands provide another instance in the persons of A. Roland Hoist, a central figure of Dutch poetry in the early twentieth century, his contemporaries P. N. van Eyck andj. C. Bloem as well as a later poet, Jan Eijkelboom. Some of Roland Hoist's translations were deemed important enough to be republished by Eijkelboom together with his own versions (Yeats 1982); the translation of'A Prayer for My Daughter' has survived in the most recent Dutch collection (Yeats 2000). In the Netherlands and, as will be seen, elsewhere in Europe, the emergence of poet-translators has prompted several comparative studies. Roland Hoist's translations are seen as important steps in, and influences on, his own poetical development and, generally, as significant contributions to the Yeats reception in his home country. Poet-translators and men of letters were also at work in Italy, Catalonia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, parts of former Yugoslavia and Russia, where they often played decisive roles in the reception of Yeats. Much of Yeats's Italian reputation is due to the efforts of two novelists and essayists, Carlo Linati and Giorgio Manganelli; three poets, Eugenio Montale, Roberto Sanesi and Ariodante Marianni; and a scholar/translator, Giorgio Melchiori who wrote one of the basic Yeats studies, The Whole Mystery of Art (1960). In the 1920s, the Catalan poet Maria Manent translated the plays Cathleen ni Houlihan and The Land of Heart's Desire, following the example set by Galician translators. These versions are, however, less relevant because of their poetical qualities, but because of their political implications; subtle textual changes point to nationalist intentions. Twice, in the early and mid-twentieth century, the efforts of poet-translators served to stimulate the Polish Yeats reception. Jan Kasprowicz published his versions of The Countess Cathleen and of eight early poems in 1904 and 1907; some translations of Yeats's prose tales followed. But it took more than fifty years, until 1958, before Czeslaw Milosz

Introduction

7

made his first attempt at the poetry, when he rendered 'Sailing to Byzantium' and 'The Tower' into Polish at the request of Pawel Mayewski. Milosz would continue to revise them until his death in 2004. Other poets followed his example, in particular Jaroslaw Marek Rymkiewicz and Stanislaw Baranczak. The leftist Croatian poet Ivan Goran Kovacic managed to publish an obituary in 1939 and his translation of'The Fiddler of Dooney' in 1940. When three more translations appeared posthumously in 1947, other poets were encouraged to try their hands from the early 1950s onwards: Antun Soljan, Ivan Slamnig, Nikica Petrak and Bozica Jelusic. As outlined in the chapter on Hungary, well-respected poets there found it worth their while to translate their foreign colleagues; the roll-call of Hungarian translatojs of Yeats poems includes Mihaly Babits, Dezso Kosztolanyi, Lorinc Szabo, Agnes Gergely and Gyozo Ferencz. For Hungarian poets, a specific motivation to turn to Yeats lay in the fact that he as well as they belonged to a small nation clamouring for world recognition. Three poet-translators played a decisive role in the Romanian Yeats reception: Ion Pillat, who was also the author of a seminal essay on Yeats (1936), Anatol E. Baconsky and especially Lucian Blaga, who factually and symbolically broke the obstacles to an overdue Yeats reception with the posthumous publication of his version of 'After Long Silence' in 1963. Although Blaga's translations (there were several others) have left few traces in his own poetry, he has been frequently compared to Yeats. As the chapter on Romania reveals, the most poetical translations, however, were those of Aurel Covaci, who wrote no original poetry himself. It is instructive to compare the Timeline in this volume with that in other volumes of the Series. Macpherson's first Ossianic Fragments date from 1760. French translations appeared in the same year; German translations came only two years later. Pinged, published in 1762, immediately attracted a French translator; a German translator followed in 1763 (Gaskill 2004, xxi—xxii). Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage had a similarly quick response on the continent. Published in 1812, it found a Portuguese translator in the same year and a German translator three years later (Cardwell 2004, 1: xxi—xxii). In other words, the Ossian and Byron receptions are virtually concurrent with the original publications. With Yeats this is quite different. It took seven years for a few poems from Yeats's first substantial collection The Wanderings of Oisin (1889) to be translated into French and fifteen years to be included in a mediocre German anthology. From the very beginning of his continental European reputation Yeats was considered a poet for the select and few. For many years only his early poems were translated; readers on the continent received a very one-sided image of the poet as an otherworldly Celtic dreamer. Yeats's European reception evolved in fits and starts. A German selection from Yeats's editions of Irish fairy and folk tales was published in 1894, but attracted no reviews. In a lengthy essay on recent English poetry published in 1897 in Tsarist Russia, Zinaida Vengerova discussed Yeats extensively; she also reviewed his Ideas of Good and Evil in 1903. This did not lead, however, to Russian translations; they came only in 1937. In 1898 and 1900 an unknown Norwegian translator paraphrased Yeats's essays 'The Celtic Element in Literature' and 'Irish Witch Doctors', but no further translations ensued for

8

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

many years to come. Italy was a latecomer. The first play translations date from 1914; the poems had to wait even longer, until 1933. Two world wars put a virtual stop to a possible fruitful Yeats reception in many European countries; but so did adverse political conditions, especially in the aftermath of World War II. Francoist Spain had no use for Yeats; the early Galician and Catalan translators found no successors. The first substantial translations in Castilian Spanish date from 1956. Communist rule in Eastern Europe was similarly averse to allowing an elitist and anti-socialist poet to infiltrate its rigidly narrow cultural standards. The work of Yeats is almost absent in Poland between 1939 and 1956, in Hungary from 1948 until 1958 and in Romania from 1945 until 1963. When communist rule began to lose its grip, a vigorous Yeats reception set in. A more relaxed attitude prevailed in the various parts of Yugoslavia. In Russia and the Soviet Union Yeats was virtually ignored for almost ninety years. After Zinaida Vengerova's essay and review had been published there were only sporadic references to Yeats, mostly negative. Orthodox Soviet opinion consigned him to the despised anti-social Western Decadents. Yeats had no champion, and skilled translators were rare. Still, fourteen poems could be published in translation in 1937, but it took forty years until another selection appeared. The beginning of glasnost effected a change, and after Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985 a small but remarkable Russian Yeats industry established itself, with Grigorii Kruzhkov, another poet, as principal scholar and translator. The case of communist East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) is somewhat different. Yeats was absent right from the foundation of the state and was left to the bourgeois West Germans. This changed only in 1965, perhaps in deference to the beginning Yeats reception in the communist brother countries and to the centenary of his birth. But even then scholars were not at liberty to write what they may have thought; they had to toe the party line. Some of their instructors, strangely enough, were Marxist-oriented imports from West Germany (the Federal Republic). No substantial translations were produced in East Germany under communist rule. Ill

As originally conceived, The Reception of British Authors series was intended as a research project that would examine 'the ways in which selected British authors have been translated, published, distributed, read, reviewed and discussed on the continent of Europe' (undated prospectus). After W. B. Yeats had been added to the list, the project's name was changed to include British and Irish authors. Somewhat earlier, the restriction to continental Europe had been abandoned to include Ireland. The Irish reception of Yeats is a subject that could easily fill several books. The Irish essays in this volume can offer only a glimpse of the vast terrain. On the other hand they provide a valuable foil or even corrective to the continental reception. Yeats's first separate publication Mosada (1886) was reviewed by Katharine Tynan, who was only four years older than her friend Yeats. Writing in the

Introduction

9

Irish Monthly, she welcomed 'a new singer in Erin, one who will take high place among the world's future singers'; clearly a case of log-rolling, none the less a perspicacious prediction (Tynan 1887). But it served its purpose; Yeats's next book, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889) had more than thirty reviews, many of them from Ireland although the book was published in London. Yeats assiduously pasted them in a notebook, now preserved in the National Library of Ireland (MS. 31,087). They cover the whole spectrum of Irish newspaper publishing, from the Clonmel Chronicle to the Freeman's Journal and United Ireland. From then on, Yeats was sure of unflagging attention in Ireland, although he was not always pleased by it. Ultramontane critics would soon snipe at him and question whether he was indeed an Irishman and not a British pensioner, a reproach that would persist until his death in 1939. Beginning in the 1950s, the Irish Yeats reception acquired a new momentum. His presence in Irish cultural and academic life is undeniably great and, again, controversial. Increasingly critical readers began to ask what exactly was or is the role to be assigned to him in Irish cultural and political history; as the chapter on the later Irish reception will show, the answers are anything but unequivocal. Yeats's versatility and multifarious Irish activities defy an easy summarizing. He was perhaps best known as a lyric poet, but also as a dramatist, a storyteller, a literary critic and, in his early years, a prolific reviewer, moreover as a folklorist, an anthologist, a theatre director, an autobiographer, a politician and controversialist, a spiritualist and, as his biographers testify, a fascinating but not always lovable person much in the public eye. He gave numerous interviews to Irish newspapers; his speeches and public appearances were reported widely; his books were extensively reviewed. He made sure that most of his plays were put on the stage, a stage over which he exercised some control. He was embroiled in rows over the performances of (at the time) uncomfortable plays, such as his own Countess Cathleen, Synge's The Playboy of the Western World and O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, and mounted energetic defences. By many (but certainly not by everybody) he was regarded as a national poet; later poets such as Austin Clarke and Patrick Kavanagh rebelled against him, a sure sign of an overpowering presence. Some of his poems achieved textbook honours and were adopted as compulsory reading for the Leaving Certificate Higher Level and Ordinary Level, among them 'No Second Troy', 'September 1913' and 'The Fisherman'.2 Nor should it be forgotten that the Irish tourist industry has found a place for Yeats in its programmes. Tours to the Yeats country (Thoor Ballylee, Sligo, Drumcliffe Churchyard, Ben Bulben) are organized; there is a flourishing Yeats summer school in Sligo. No other contemporary writer in Ireland and Great Britain has had such a response. And no such response can be expected in continental Europe, where a conspectus of all these activities and achievements appears impossible. In

2The first textbook I have seen is dated 1969, the last 1996; for an example see

Murray 1988. In 2000, however, Yeats's poems were eliminated from the canon (Kelleher 2000).

10

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

continental Europe the image of Yeats will of necessity remain very incomplete. There are, for instance, almost no interviews with Yeats outside the English-speaking world, an exception being those conducted by Swedish newspaper reporters when he arrived in Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize (see Anon. 1923). Or take Yeats's dramatic work. Although there are numerous translations, studies and interpretations in continental European countries, actual productions are rare. The Countess Cathleen saw four professional productions in Poland, two in Germany, none elsewhere. Germany and Switzerland are the countries with most productions; as the German chapter will show, however, the plays were sometimes badly staged and, one or two exceptions apart, did not score great successes. There are reports of isolated Swedish, French, Slovene and Greek performances, also of some radio broadcasts of plays (for instance three in Hungary, one in Norway), but on the whole the plays of Yeats's near contemporary Eliot had a more distinguished theatrical career. The initial question whether Yeats was or is a European poet should be connected to the question whether he has a genuine European reception and reputation. In both cases the answers would certainly be yes; at the same time one would have to introduce qualifications, which are remarkably similar in nature. Yeats had widespread knowledge of European literature, but its profundity outside his chosen fields of interest (occultism, for instance) remains a matter of conjecture. In his Yeats chronology (2003), John Kelly lists several attendances at performances of Ibsen plays, the earliest in 1891, the latest in 1924; it comes as a bit of a surprise since Yeats rejected Ibsen's realism and one might as well ask how deep his understanding of Ibsen was. With each new volume of Kelly's ongoing edition of the letters the extent and depth of Yeats's reading may become better known. Nevertheless, Yeats's eclecticism cannot be denied; a similar selectivity can be discerned in his European reputation, although the reasons are different. It appears from the essays collected in this volume that Yeats himself was only moderately interested in ensuring a European reputation. His hunting grounds, so to speak, were Ireland, Great Britain and the United States. In this respect Joyce and Eliot had a more European outlook. Often enough it took some time for European translators to learn Yeats's poetic language, to get acquainted with his Irish background and themes, to understand his peculiar position in the culture and politics of the Ireland of his time, to find a discerning readership. Many of his poet-translators are enthusiasts who are themselves in search of a readership for their own works. Professional translators often prove unequal to the task. The academic reception in continental Europe is a different matter and is quite voluminous, though eccentric at times. Scholars can take their time to study Yeats in all his facets in order to write sensibly and profitably, and many of them have done so. But since they often write in their native language, they have not had the recognition where they might deserve it, in the English-speaking world. And in their home countries they tend to stay among themselves. One of the conclusions to be drawn from the essays in this book is that the European Yeats reception will remain a restricted affair as long as there are no good, popularly acclaimed biographies or comprehensive surveys of his life and

Introduction

11

work. But it is rather late in the day now to work up enough interest, outside academia, about a poet who, during his lifetime and for whatever reasons, did not achieve as much recognition as his contemporaries Joyce and Eliot, who laid the basis for their continental European reputation in the first half of the twentieth century.

1 Low Countries

Yeats in the Dutch-language

Theo D'haen

In his lifetime W. B. Yeats did not figure very large in the Netherlands or Flanders, the northern half of Belgium, at least not in the public eye or in academe.1 Discussion of his work was largely confined to a relatively small, though influential, circle of Dutch poets, with as pivotal figures P. N. van Eyck (1887-1954) and especially Adriaan Roland Hoist (1888-1976). To these poets, and through their work also to the wider Dutch public, Yeats was primarily a late nineteenth-century Symbolist, and a representative of the Irish Renaissance or Celtic Revival. After World War II, Yeats's stature changed to that of a major Modernist, a historical figure and a subject fit for academic study. His influence remained formative only upon the later work of Roland Hoist, and upon that of the contemporary poet Jan Eijkelboom (1926—). Roselinde Supheert's 1995 Utrecht University PhD dissertation Yeats in Holland: The Reception of the Work of W. B. Yeats in the Netherlands before World War Two remains the most thorough survey of the early reception of Yeats in the Netherlands, and provides full bibliographical details, as well as analyses, of most of the texts relative to the Netherlands mentioned in the following paragraphs. For Flanders there is no comparable work, so I had to rely largely on bibliographical entries either listed in K. P. S. Jochum's W. B. Yeats: A Classified Bibliography of Criticism (1990), or relayed to me by Jochum, and on what scant data I could find myself, or which were reported to me by colleagues. It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that English was instituted as an academic discipline at Dutch universities. Interest focused almost exclusively on the philological study of the language. Until 1919, when the periodical English Studies was founded, scholarly work on anything English usually appeared in journals devoted to 'Germanic' studies. Supheert traces

1 The portion of this article relative to Adriaan Roland Hoist is largely based on my

earlier 'W. B. Yeats and A. Roland Hoist: (S)Elective Affinities' (1990). I wish to acknowledge the support of my colleagues Joris Duytschaever, of the University of Antwerp, and Hedwig Schwall, of the Catholic University of Louvain, both of whom provided information on the reception of Yeats in Flanders.

Yeats in the Dutch-language Low Countries

13

only a very few scholarly publications on Yeats in these early days. Willern van Doom (1875—1959) published a survey article on Yeats in 1920, an extensive review of Yeats's Later Poems and Plays in Prose and Verse in 1923 and discussed Yeats in the context of a review of a recent anthology in 1931, all in English Studies. F. T. Wood, again for English Studies, briefly reported on Yeats's Collected Poems in 1935, on A Full Moon in March and Dramatis Personae in 1936, on The Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892-1935, edited by Yeats, in 1937, and on the revised edition of A Vision in 1938. For the rest, Yeats figured, almost invariably, as a Symbolist poet and an Irish Renaissance dramatist, in a number of literary histories such as Swaen (1900), De Beer (1907), Van Kranendonk (1924), Van Maanen (1932) and Kooistra and Schutt (1937), and in anthologies such as Willem van Doom's 1910 Golden Hours with English Poets, and Anton Prins's 1938 A Book of English Verse. For Supheert, De Beer's treatment of Yeats is the most complete, in spite of— or perhaps thanks to — De Beer being the only one of the authors mentioned never to have held a university appointment. In 1933 Yeats figured prominently in Rebecca Brugsma's University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation on The Beginnings of the Irish Revival. University library holdings on contemporary English literature were poor. The best collection on Yeats was housed at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library) in The Hague. The situation changed after World War II, most specifically with the acquisition of a large portion of P. N. van Eyck's extensive Yeats collection by Leyden University, and more in general with the increased attention then given to the study of English-language literature at Dutch universities. In the more general daily and periodical Dutch press Yeats for most of the first half of the twentieth century was not primarily considered within a strictly literary context, but rather in that of Irish nationalism. Such was the case, for instance, in a series of twenty-one newspaper articles, entitled 'lerlands Renaissance' (Ireland's Renaissance), by the journalist Charles de Boissevain (1907) and in a review of Per Arnica Silentia Lunae by Augusta de Wit (1920). Similar views inspire periodical articles by M. P. Rooseboom (1910), A. B.-d. V. (1912), E. van der Ven-ten Bensel (1922), A. G. van Hamel, professor of Celtic at Utrecht University (1924 and 1927), and Annie Salomons (1933). Joseph Panhuysen extensively reviewed A Vision from a philosophical perspective (1937). W. G. C. Bijvanck profiled Yeats in four newspaper articles (1923). Willem van Doom, in a review of Early Poems and Stories (1926), paid attention to Yeats's literary qualities. The same Van Doom, eventually to become a lecturer at Leyden University, also wrote the entry on Yeats for the 1938 (5th) edition of the most widely used Dutch encyclopedia, the Winkler Prins, much upgraded from the earlier, and rather uninformative, 1912 (3rd) and 1922 (4th) edition entries. Anonymous, and undistinguished, entries on Yeats also appeared in the various editions of the rival Oosthoek Encyclopaedie (1923, 1932, 1939). Yeats's 1923 Nobel Prize received rather scant attention in the Dutch press, with many commentators wondering why this honour fell to such a little-known poet. At Yeats's death in 1939 reactions were more prompt, and also more informed. The longest obituary, by Joseph Panhuijsen (1939), ran to more than 2,000 words. In Flanders too Yeats primarily figured in the context of Irish nationalism, which was often likened

14

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

to the struggle for Flemish emancipation then going on in Belgium. This is the case in L. J. Callewaert's lerland en het lersche Volk (Ireland and the Irish People, 1923). Callewaert was a Catholic priest, and he is rather scathing about the Protestant Yeats, whom he accuses of leading astray the Irish with his mysticism. Moreover, as the struggle for Flemish emancipation focused on the rights of the Flemish to use their own language in all domains, Callewaert preferred Irish literature to be in Gaelic (Callewaert 1923, 386-87 and 393). On the contrary, Franz de Backer, Professor of English at Ghent University, praised Yeats in Van&aag in 1929, and wrote a long piece, upwards of twenty pages, in Dietsche Warande en Belfort of April 1939. Many Dutch commentators pointed out that Yeats, since winning the Nobel Prize, had become better known in the Netherlands through the mediation of the then famous Dutch poet Adriaan Roland Hoist. Rather than to scholars or journalists, it is indeed to Dutch poets that we have to turn for any discernable impact of Yeats in the Netherlands during the first half of the twentieth century, and in first instance to Roland Hoist. Obviously, Roland Hoist was not the only Dutch poet to be aware of Yeats. Frederik van Eeden (1860—1932), a near-contemporary of Yeats, and a prominent member of the so-called Tachtigers,2 a movement that rejuvenated Dutch poetry during the final decades of the nineteenth century, mentions meeting Yeats in London in 1900 (Eeden 1971, 487—88), but never wrote about the Irish poet. Someone who not only knew Yeats personally, visiting him in London and Dublin, and corresponding with him, but also wrote about him, though not very extensively, is P. N. van Eyck. Van Eyck, after having studied law at Ley den University, from 1920 to 1935 served as foreign correspondent in London to the major Dutch daily Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. In 1921 Van Eyck wrote a six-part series on 'De lersche Kwestie' (The Irish question) for Onze eeuw (Our century), also published as a book, in which he discusses the Irish revival, and with it Yeats. Van Eyck also informed Yeats about the 1922 Amsterdam performance of one of his plays, The Only Jealousy of Enter, under the title Vrouwe Enters groote strijd. The play, in a translation (no longer extant) by the then well-known Dutch poet Helene Swarth (1859—1941), was directed by Albert van Dalsum, with masks designed by the sculptor Hildo Krop. Vrouwe Enter (as the title was soon abbreviated to) caused a great stir in the Netherlands, and had various reruns during the 1920s.3 Van Eyck's reports to Yeats about the Amsterdam performance eventually caused the latter to rewrite the play as Fighting the Waves. This version premiered in 1929, with new masks by Krop, in Dublin, at the Abbey Theatre, and in 1930 it was put on in London. Van Eyck reviewed both productions for the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant. Finally, Van Eyck translated 'Sailing to Byzantium' as 'Zee-Kiezen naar Byzantium' for the March 1939 issue of Groot Nederland, as a tribute to Yeats upon the latter's death. Van Eyck went to great lengths to conserve Yeats's original rhyme scheme, which occasionally leads him to use somewhat forced and archaic constructions in

2The name Tachtigers is derived from 'tachtig' (eighty). 3

For reviews see Supheert 1995, 134-59.

Yeats in the Dutch-language Low Countries

15

Dutch. In general, though, the translation succeeds very well in conveying the elevated and slightly hypnotic tone of Yeats's original. By then, Van Eyck was no longer a newspaper correspondent in London, but held the prestigious Chair of Dutch Literature at Leyden University. During his London years Van Eyck corresponded about Yeats not only with Roland Hoist. He also did so with J. C. Bloem (1887-1966), again a near-contemporary of himself and Hoist, and the younger Hendrik Marsman (1899—1940). Moreover, all of these corresponded with one another, and also with Edgar du Perron (1899—1940), often within the context of editorial business for various Dutch literary periodicals. Bloem wrote for the literary supplement to the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant on the occasion of Yeats's Nobel Prize in 1923, and reviewed the latter's Senate Speeches in 1962. Bloem also included 'In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz' in his anthology Persoonlijke voorkeur van]. C. Bloem (Personal choice ofJCB, 1958). In 1932 two translations of Yeats's 'A Drinking Song' by Hendrik Marsman and his contemporary Jan Engelman (1900—72) were published in the same issue of De nieuwe eeuw. In 1934 Engelman included this version and a translation of 'Down by the Salley Gardens' as 'Oud lied opnieuw' in a collection of his poetry; he also wrote an 'In Memoriam W. B. Yeats' in 1939. Du Perron pronounced on Yeats, and specifically the latter's standing as a modern poet, in an extended correspondence with Roland Hoist on an article of Du Perron's on yet another Dutch poet, J.J. Slauerhoff (1898-1936), which eventually appeared in 1930. Compared to some of his contemporaries, and most specifically his French counterparts, Du Perron thought Yeats rather oldfashioned. In this opinion, he was undoubtedly influenced by the Yeats that by then had emerged from Roland Hoist's work, both his translations from Yeats and his own original poetry. It was Roland Hoist who had told Van Dalsum about Yeats, and about The Only Jealousy of Enter. Roland Hoist and Van Eyck were friends, and during Van Eyck's London years Roland Hoist pressed Van Eyck regularly for news on Yeats, asked him to send him books by Yeats, and tried to set up a meeting with Yeats which, however, never materialized. Still, Roland Hoist is by far the most significant figure when it comes to the reception of Yeats in the Netherlands before World War II, and actually well into the second half of the twentieth century. In his essay 'Eigen achtergronden: Inleiding tot een voordracht uit eigen werk' (Personal background: Introduction to a reading from my own work),4 written during World War II — when under an assumed name he was living in hiding from the Germans — and published in 1945, Roland Hoist says that: It was in my youth, when I studied, or was a student anyway, in England, that some forlorn afternoon I found, in the Library of the Student's Club, a translation of a

4

All quotations from Roland Hoist are from the standard edition of his Verzameld Werk (Collected works, 1981—83). Subsequent quotations from this edition will parenthetically refer to Poezie (Poetry) I & II, or Proza (Prose) I & II. All translations of Dutch originals are mine, unless otherwise indicated.

16

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe Celtic saga, The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal — Reading those pages it seemed to me as if old memories awoke in me, and when I studied Celtic mythology more closely, this confirmed me in my feeling that I finally had found the road home. [.. .] With the discovery of Celtic mythology I also discovered the literature of the socalled Irish Renaissance. Both discoveries were of decisive importance to me, because this literature too vibrated and sparkled with a mythical and elemental life, a life in which the heart always is in touch with the foreworldly power of the soul. Yeats, its greatest poet, always retained a great influence on me.

The precise relationship between Roland Hoist, Irish literature and particularly Yeats is a vexatious issue in Dutch literary history and criticism. Most commentators acknowledge how, in line with the post-Symbolist tradition to which he is usually assigned, Roland Hoist used Celtic mythology to fashion himself a strictly personal 'myth'.6 This myth, already present in disparate form in his early collections Verzen (Poems, 1911) and De belijdenis van de stilte (The confession of silence, 1913), first fully manifests itself in the 1920 collection Voorbij de wegen (Beyond roads).7 Not by coincidence, it is best summarized in a short essay, 'Het Elysisch verlangen' (Longing for Elysium), prefaced to Roland Hoist's 1918 translation of the Bran saga. Roland Hoist sees man's life on earth as a temporary exile from an otherworld where he can be one again with nature and with himself. As most people, especially in our hurried and mechanized world, are much too caught up in the day-to-day business of'living' to recognize this 'longing for Elysium', it is the task of the poet to express it. That Roland Hoist was well acquainted with Yeats's early work from the very beginning of his own career as a poet is not only borne out by his own discursive remarks to that effect, but also by the early poem 'Klacht van Oisin' (Oisin's plaint), originally published in 1912 in the monthly De Gids, but never reprinted during Roland Hoist's lifetime, not even in the original Verzamelde Werken of 1948—49 (though it is included in the standard 1981—83 edition, published after Hoist's death), and his use of two quotations from Yeats as epigraphs to 'De voorzang' (Opening verses) and 'De tussenzang' (Intermediary verses) of De belijdenis van de stilte. 'De tussenzang' has a note explaining the Celtic mythological background to the poem, and mentions

5

'Het was in mijn jeugd, toen ik studeerde, of althans student was, in Engeland, dat ik op een verloren middag in de Bibliotheek van de studentenclub, een vertaling vond van een Keltische sage, The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal — Die bladzijden lezende werd het mij letterlijk of oude herinneringen in mij ontwaakten, en een mij toen verder verdiepen in de Keltische mythologie bevestigde dit tot een gevoel van eindelijk mijn thuisweg te hebben gevonden. [. ..] Met die ontdekking van de Keltische mythologie kwam ik toen ook tot die van de literatuur der zogenaamde lerse Renaissance. Beide ontdekkingen waren voor mij van beslissende betekenis, want ook die literatuur vibreerde en glansde van een leven dat mythisch en elementair was, een leven dus, waarin het hart voortdurend onderhevig blijft aan de voorpersoonlijke zielskracht. Yeats, de grote dichter ervan, bleef altijd van diepen invloed op mij' (Proza I, 355). 6 See e.g. Soteman 1950; Stenfert Kroese 1979; Bossaert 1972; Vegt 1974. 7 See D'haen 1987, 81-89.

Yeats in the Dutch-language Low Countries

17

Oisin. Roland Hoist's note to 'Klacht van Oisin' shows a strong resemblance to 'De tussenzang'. It reads, moreover, like an amalgam of Yeats's own 'The Wanderings of Oisin' (which also has an explanatory note, by Yeats) and material gleaned from Lady Gregory and Kuno Meyer's Bran translation. Yeats's note also provides a possible source for Roland Hoist's own conception of Paradise and Elysium as being on the same level, or partaking of the same 'second world' (next to our own 'first world' of observable reality), where it says that 'The Gaelic poems do not make Oisin go to more than one island, but a story in Silva Gadelica describes "four paradises", an island to the north, an island to the west, an island to the south, and Adam's paradise in the east' (VP, 793).8 Finally, in the run-up to Voorbij de wegen, the collection in which Roland Hoist first fully voices his self-fashioned personal myth, the Dutch poet also translated Yeats's 'The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart' (VP, 142—43) as 'De minnaar verhaalt van de roos in zijn hart' (1920, Poezie II, 1231). Between 1920 and 1955 Roland Hoist translated fifteen lyrical poems by Yeats, one dramatic poem, and one play. I see Roland Hoist's Yeats translations as of crucial importance. Not only do they bear out Roland Hoist's own repeated comments as to his continuing fascination with Yeats's work, but they also tided him over some troubled times in his career as a poet. The significance of these translations, to my mind, lies in the 'which' and the 'why', that is to say, in their particular selection, rather than in the 'how'. In general, Roland Hoist faithfully renders Yeats's verses into Dutch. Obviously, there is the occasional transposition of elements from one line in the source text to another line in the target text, but this has more to do with requirements of grammar and phrasing in the respective languages than with deliberate shifts. More interesting is Roland Hoist's use of the neologism 'onschoon' for Yeats's 'uncomely' and 'unshapely' in the first lines of both stanzas of'The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart'/'De minnaar verhaalt van de roos in zijn hart'. In none of the later translations are there neologisms, though. Possibly, in this first translation Roland Hoist was still labouring under the diction of the Tachtigers, who stressed highly wrought and 'expressive' language, including the coining of neologisms. In fact, Roland Hoist's vocabulary and diction in his Yeats translations are markedly more simple than much of what he uses in his own — especially earlier — poetry. There is also the occasional omission, such as 11. 16—18 of'The People' from its Dutch equivalent 'Het volk'. Or there is the occasional interpretative reformulation. Lines 10—11 from 'The Scholars': 'All think what other people think;/All know the man their neighbour knows' (VP, 337) in Roland Hoist's 'Geleerden' become: '[...] Zonde—? een vreemd soort vriend—?/Geen mens kon er ooit lucht van krijgen'. In 'De vedelaar van Dooney' the last lines of the second stanza read 'ik las mijn liedjes, gekocht toen/ik over de kermis liep'. 'The Fiddler of Dooney' has 'I read in my book of songs/I bought at the Sligo fair' (VP, 178; my italics). However, all other place names of the original have been preserved in translation, so perhaps we should not make too much of this

8

All references to the poetry are taken from Yeats 1957, abbreviated VP.

18

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

isolated instance. Finally, Simon Vestdijk, a leading novelist, poet and critic in Holland in the period 1930—70 and a personal friend of Roland Hoist's, calls attention to the latter's translation of'till all the years have gone by' from 1. 5 of the third stanza of'The Withering of the Boughs' (VP, 204) by 'tot er de tijd ophoudt' (till time stops) in 'Hoe de takken verdorden' (Vestdijk 1960, 9—17). He sees this translation as marking a shift from a routine reference to the physical death of the protagonists of this stanza — 'A king and a queen' — to emphasizing their becoming mythical immortals. It is clear that the specific shift Vestdijk here notes also serves to realign Yeats's poem in translation with Roland Hoist's personal myth. Vestdijk sees all of Roland Hoist's Yeats translations as being in this direction, but the example from 'The Withering of the Boughs' is the only one he adduces to detail his case. All in all, then, little of what we could deem 're-writing' of Yeats in the direction of Roland Hoist takes place in these translations. The true significance of Roland Hoist's Yeats translations lies in their selection and their timing. Of the fifteen lyrical Yeats poems Roland Hoist translated, three are from The Wind among the Reeds (1899): the already mentioned 'The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart', 'He Hears the Cry of the Sedge' (VP, 165), rendered as 'De roep in het rietgras' and 'The Fiddler of Dooney', rendered as 'De vedelaar van Dooney'. One poem is from In the Seven Woods (1904): 'The Withering of the Boughs', rendered as 'Hoe de takken verdorden'; three poems are from The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910): 'No Second Troy' (VP, 256-57), rendered as 'Geen tweede Troje', 'Reconciliation' (VP, 257), rendered as 'Verzoening', and 'These Are the Clouds' (VP, 265), rendered as 'Dit is 't gewolkte'. One poem is from Responsibilities (1914): 'Fallen Majesty' (VP, 314-15), which became 'Gevallen majesteit'; three poems are from The Wild Swans at Coole (1919): 'The Scholars', 'The People' and 'A Deep-sworn Vow' (VP, 357), rendered respectively as 'Geleerden', 'Het volk' and 'Een dure eed'; three again from Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921): 'The Leaders of the Crowd' (VP, 398), 'The Second Coming' (VP, 401-02) and 'A Prayer for My Daughter' (VP, 403—06), rendered respectively as 'Volksleiders', 'De tweede komst' and 'Een bede voor mijn dochter' and finally one poem from The Tower (1928): 'Leda and the Swan' (VP, 441), translated as 'Leda en de zwaan'.9 The dramatic poem Roland Hoist translated is 'The Old Age of Queen Maeve' (VP, 18087), rendered in Dutch as 'De ouderdom van Koningin Meve' (Poezie II, 1248—53). Finally, he translated The Countess Cathleen (1892) as De Gravin Catelene (Proza II, 1143-93). If, together with most authorities on Yeats, we situate the major break in the Irish poet's work in 1910—14, between The Green Helmet and Other Poems and Responsibilities, we notice an almost even split in Roland Hoist's translations, at least as far as the lyrical poetry is concerned, between work from the early Yeats and work from the later Yeats. There is nothing from the earliest collections, nor from beyond The Tower. Also taking into consideration the translations of The Countess Cathleen and 'The Old Age of Queen Maeve',

' All translations are in Poezie II, 1231-47 and 1254.

Yeats in the Dutch-language Low Countries

19

though, we have to conclude that Roland Hoist was particularly interested in the early to middle Yeats. If, moreover, we take Roland Hoist's fashioning of his own personal myth to stretch until 1920, with the publication of Voorbij de wegen, or even until 1923, the date of first publication of'De afspraak' (The promise), a prose story that has often been taken to encapsulate the definitive 'poetic credo' of Roland Hoist, and if we then notice that only one ('Leda and the Swan') of the Yeats poems he translated post-dates 1923, we have to conclude that Roland Hoist's active creative/translational interest in Yeats is limited to that part of Yeats's work that Hoist could have been — and probably was, given his interest in English literature and in things Irish — acquainted with during his formative years as a poet. The Yeats he thus envisaged he undoubtedly saw under the sign of the Celtic Twilight and of the Irish Renaissance. This is a Yeats who is very different from the now familiar Modernist poet of Last Poems and related publications. However, it is a Yeats close to Roland Hoist's personal myth. Beyond the use of Yeats to buttress his personal myth, though, I think Roland Hoist also turned to Yeats, and particularly to translating Yeats, at particular moments in his career. If we look at the dates of publication of his various Yeats translations, we notice that, apart from the early 'De minnaar verhaalt van de roos in zijn hart' of 1920, they date from 1929—33 (by far the majority), 1941—42 ('A Prayer for My Daughter', 'The Withering of the Boughs', 'Reconciliation'), and 1954—55 ('The Old Age of Queen Maeve'). In 1955 there appeared an edition of Roland Hoist's Yeats translations, with a complete edition following in 1958. If we compare these dates to those of Roland Hoist's own collections of 'original' verse, we notice that they fall in between De wilde kim (The wild horizon, 1925) and Een winter aan zee (A winter at the sea-side, 1937), between the latter collection and Tegen de wereld (Against the world, 1947), and between that collection and In gevaar (In danger, 1958). As has most cogently been argued by Van der Vegt (1974), but most other commentators implicitly or explicitly concur, the collections mentioned mark the various stages of Roland Hoist's career. If Voorbij de wegen in verse, and 'De afspraak' in prose mark the definitive fashioning of Roland Hoist's personal myth, De wilde kim — and particularly the final poems of that collection — is usually taken as marking a crisis in Roland Hoist's belief in his own myth. Particularly revealing is 'De nederlaag' (Defeat), the second to last poem of the collection. In this poem the lyrical I meets his otherworldly double in the dunes near the sea, and has to admit to himself that he has failed to live up to the promise from 'De afspraak'. The next to last poem, 'Einde' (End or Finish when literally translated, but Roland Hoist himself rendered it as 'Day of Reckoning' in his own 1955 translation) describes the sea as the theatre at the end of the world, a place where the harp of the apocalypse sounds from the western regions, the battle positions of the dead. In its phrasing — 'Eenzaam en wild, koud en hartstochtelijk', 'koud en hartstochtelijk en wild en eenzaam' (Lonely and wild and cold and passionate; cold and impassioned and wild and lonely) beginning and ending the poem, with another 'hartstochtelijk en eenzaam, wild en koud' in the middle, this poem clearly marks a turn toward the middle Yeats. Roland Hoist himself drew attention to his having borrowed the phrase 'cold and passionate' from

20

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

Yeats when in his introduction to his translation of seven poems from Dutch into English — six his own, the seventh by J. C. Bloem — he remarked that while working on these translations he had 'met' Yeats: Because when translating the introductory passages from 'Helen of Troy' I once again realized how much I owe him: this fragment I could dedicate to him and Maud Gonne. At variance, whereas in the very first line of'Day of Reckoning' [i.e. 'Einde'] I have borrowed the words 'cold and passionate' from his poem 'The Fisherman' the rest of my poem nowhere calls Yeats to mind. 10 Roland Hoist started work on Een winter aan zee, usually reckoned to be his finest collection and one of the high points of Dutch interbellum poetry, in 1932, after having finished the majority of the Yeats translations, including The Countess Cathleen, and after a period of some seven years in which he had published little original work. It is the record of a crisis in Roland Hoist's personal myth, and of how he vanquished it. He did so, partly, by opening up toward the world, by forsaking the extreme solitude advocated in the earliest stages of the elaboration of the myth. Helen of Troy plays an important role in this collection, and virtually replaces the Deirdre of the earlier collections. As with Yeats, with Roland Hoist Helen of Troy comes to stand for the loss, the foundering of a whole culture. Een winter aan zee, then, reaffirms Roland Hoist's personal myth by partly reorientating it. My contention is that this reaffirmation and reorientation are brought about, or if not brought about then at least greatly facilitated, by Roland Hoist's intense engagement with the work of Yeats. This would seem to be borne out by Roland Hoist's own remark that the rhyme scheme of Een winter aan zee, an extremely carefully structured sequence of eight-line abacbdcd poems, was suggested to him by Yeats's 'The Withering of the Boughs', a poem Roland Hoist later translated into Dutch.11 Finally, it seems to me that the diction of Een winter aan zee, which is much more sober than that of earlier Roland Hoist collections, also owes something to the middle and later Yeats. In the period between Een winter aan zee and Tegen de wereld Roland Hoist's involvement with Yeats does not diminish. In 1939 he edits a Selected Poems of W. B. Yeats, in a limited edition of 200 copies, for the Amsterdam publisher A. A. Balkema (Yeats 1939a). It reflects both his own early preference for the Romantic and Celtic Yeats, and his new-found appreciation of the more public Yeats. The few Yeats translations he publishes during these years are all 'occasional poems', on a par with the kind Roland Hoist himself increasingly came to write during these years, and went on writing until the mid 1950s.

10

'\vant bij de vertaling van den aanhef van 'Helena's inkeer' besefte ik weer, hoe veel ik aan hem dank: dit fragment zou ik op kunnen dragen aan hem en Maud Gonne. Daar staat dan weer tegenover, dat, waar al in de eerste regel van 'Day of Reckoning' de woorden 'cold and passionate' over zijn genomen uit zijn gedicht 'The Fisherman' de rest van mijn gedicht nergens aan hem herinnert' (Proza II,

11

Verbal communication of Roland Hoist to Margaretha H. Schenkeveld; see Schenkeveld 1970, 29n3.

675).

Yeats in the Dutch-language Low Countries

21

Such occasional poems, together with previously written but hitherto unpublished or uncollected material, make up the bulk of the various editions of the collections Onderweg (Travelling, 1940, and, in a heavily revised 4th edition, 1947) and Tegen de wereld (1947).The latter volume again testifies to the continuing influence of Yeats, as it contains the poem 'Helena's inkeer', a poem which had already been published separately in 1944. This is the poem that Roland Hoist would later render into English as 'Helen of Troy', and with regard to which he would himself point to what he owed to Yeats. Occasional verse, though of a somewhat special kind, is also the collection Swordplay — Wordplay (1950) in which Roland Hoist and Vestdijk alternated quatrains, each responding to the other. The first really major collection, then, after Een winter aan zee is In gevaar. The years preceding In gevaar are once again years of crisis for Roland Hoist, and once again he turns to Yeats. 1954—55 sees him busy translating six of his own poems, including 'Helena's inkeer'/'Helen of Troy', into an English heavily marked by Yeatsian idioms and atmosphere. 1955 is also the year in which he issues a first collection of his Yeats translations, reissued in an enlarged edition in 1958. Moreover, 1955 also brings a new Yeats translation: 'De ouderdom van Koningin Meve' ('The Old Age of Queen Maeve'). That Roland Hoist turned to a poem of Yeats's dealing with old age is not a coincidence. Supheert sees Roland Hoist in his late poems as picking up on Yeats's themes, also in his later poems, of bodily decay, mutability, and the passing of all things. Van der Vegt (1974) too finds that the collections following In gevaar (and eventually up to Roland Hoist's death in 1976) reformulated the personal myth of'the poet' Roland Hoist once again making use of the old symbols, but also adding some new ones. And Van der Vegt hears in a late Roland Hoist poem such as 'Gefaald' (Failed, 1960), collected in Onder koude wolken (Under cold clouds, 1962), echoes from Yeats's 'The Gyres' from the latter's Last Poems (1936—39), just as he had heard echoes from Yeats's 'To a Friend' (1914) in Roland Hoist's 'Optimistische kunstenaars' (Optimistic artists, 1921), and from the 'The Tower' (1928) in 'Van den droom' (Of a dream, 1931). Roland Hoist's poetry and career thus developed in continuous intertextual dialogue with that of Yeats, even though the Yeats he took as his example, both in his work and as 'persona' or 'mask', is not the historical Yeats, but rather a 'Yeats' he shaped in his own image via selection, translation, adaptation, and interpretation. This strategic decision he mythologized in 'De afspraak' and discursive writings such as 'Eigen achtergronden'. Roland Hoist discursively remythologized Yeats in his own image for the last time in his 1964 tribute 'William Butler Yeats herdacht' (William Butler Yeats remembered, Proza II, 767—78), in which he calls the Irishman the poet of the 'foreworld', and credits him with the same kind of constancy, the same kind of truth to this myth as Roland Hoist himself. With the later publications of Roland Hoist on Yeats we have moved well beyond World War II. From the 1950s onward, and particularly from the 1970s, Dutch and Flemish academe became increasingly internationalized, which also affected the study of English literature. Noteworthy in this respect is A. Norman Jeffares's 1946 inaugural lecture at Groningen University, where

22

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

he was Professor of English Literature, on A Poet and a Theatre, and dealing with Yeats. Dutch and Flemish scholars of English literature increasingly started to publish in English, and in scholarly journals abroad as well as in their home countries. At the same time, Yeats himself was quickly enshrined as a major Modernist icon, and as such became a legitimate subject for academic study and teaching. This resulted in a fair number of MA theses on Yeats, or involving Yeats, at most major Dutch and Flemish universities. It also led to a sprinkling of PhD dissertations: Abraham Verhoeff in 1966 defended his The Practice of Criticism: A Comparative Analysis of W. B. Yeats's 'Among School Children' at Utrecht University, Peter Liebregts in 1993 presented Centaurs in the Twilight: W. B. Yeats's Use of the Classical Tradition at Leyden University, and in 1995 Roselinde Supheert defended, at Utrecht University again, Yeats in Holland: The Reception of the Work of W. B. Yeats in the Netherlands before World War Two. In Flanders, Hedwig Schwall in 1992 defended her (unpublished) PhD dissertation 'Theatricality in W. B. Yeats' at the K. U. Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven). Yeats regularly features in scholarly volumes produced or edited in the Netherlands. The most significant of these is A Tumult of Images: Essays on W. B. Yeats and Politics, a volume of proceedings from the 1991 Leyden IASAIL Congress, edited by Peter Liebregts and Peter van de Kamp. C. C. Barfoot (1990) and Gees Koster (1993) have published on Yeats, in English. In Flanders too, some scholars publish or have published on Yeats, though mostly in Dutch, for instance Nicolas Wijngaards (1963), Freddy Sorensen (1964), Willem Schrickx (1965), Herman Servotte (1965) and Henri Bossaert (1972 and 1973). Servotte reprinted his 1965 essay as a chapter of his 1966 book Literatuur als levenskunst: Essays over hedendaagse engelse literatuur (Literature as an art of living: Essays on contemporary English literature). He also devoted a chapter to Yeats in his English Literature: Poetry in the Twentieth Century (1980). Hugo Roeffaers did the same in his Van Yeats tot Heaney: Een eeuw poezie (Yeats to Heaney: A century of poetry, 1997). Hedwig Schwall wrote on The Player Queen in a volume edited by Servotte in 1988, and on 'Convers(at)ion in W. B. Yeats' in a volume in honour of Servotte (1994). As to Yeats and the more general Dutch public, in the periodical press there were essays, often brief, on Yeats, or reviews of publications relative to Yeats, by Max de Jong (1946), F. W. van Heerikhuizen (1946, 1947, 1952), W. H. Stenfert Kroese (1951, 1952), Max Schuchart (1951), Cornelis Buddingh', himself a noted post-war poet (1953), G. H. M. van Huet (1956), Maxim Krojer (1959), Jan van der Vegt (1966 and 1986), Louis Houet (1998), Martin Koomen (1999) and Roselinde Supheert (2000). Yeats is the subject of Godfried van Ommering's Arend en slang: Over William Butler Yeats, hetgeweld in de wereld en de macht van de poezie (Eagle and snake: On WBY, violence in the world and the power of poetry, 1996). He also figures more or less prominently in a number of longer publications on Ireland, such as Jan van der Vegt's Naar lerland varen (Travelling to Ireland, 1976) and Martin Koomen's Het literaire Dublin (Literary Dublin, 1984). Of course, Yeats also continues to figure in books and articles about Roland Hoist, most prominently in Van der Vegt's 2000 biography. Still, as was the case with Roland Hoist in the first half of the twentieth century, so too in the second half of that century it is poets that have done

Yeats in the Dutch-language Low Countries

23

most to keep Yeats alive within the Dutch cultural context. Outstanding in this respect is Jan Eijkelboom. Eijkelboom's Yeats is completely different from that of Roland Hoist, though. Eijkelboom started translating poetry in the 1950s, and by the end of the 1990s had published translations, often booklength, of classics such as those of John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Lord Byron, John Clare, Edward Thomas and the War Poets. He has been particularly active, however, in translating contemporary poets such as Laurie Lee, James Fenton, Craig Raine, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney and Richard Wilbur. Not surprisingly, rather than in a Dutch poetical tradition, he is usually seen as working in an Anglo-American tradition comprising the Movement in England, particularly Philip Larkin, and the confessional poets in the United States, particularly Robert Lowell. Eijkelboom has translated both Larkin and Lowell. Theirs is a poetry that is starkly autobiographical, and that looks for the everyday and the common, even if it sometimes highlights their surprising effects. This, then, is also the Yeats Eijkelboom is in search of in his translations. In 1982 Eijkelboom published Geef nooit het hele hart (Never give all the heart), a volume of Yeats translations by himself and Roland Hoist (Yeats 1982a). Over the following years he also published other translations from Yeats, often with annotations, for instance in De tweede ronde, a journal wholly devoted to translation (Yeats 1982b), and in De revisor in 1983. These were collected in 1999 in Al keert het grote zingen niet terug (Though the great song return no more), a bilingual volume, with Eijkelboom's Dutch translations facing Yeats's originals. In a brief preface Eijkelboom situates Yeats in his times. He concludes by saying that 'in this volume there are poems from all periods of Yeats's career, but the emphasis of course lies on his later work',12 thereby cementing both Yeats's transition in the Dutch perception from post-Symbolist to Modernist, and the Irish poet's position as a precursor to Eijkelboom's own poetry. Eijkelboom's selection runs as follows: 'The Sad Shepherd', 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree', 'The Pity of Love', 'The Sorrow of Love', 'When You Are Old', 'The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland', 'The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner', 'The Song of the Old Mother', 'Never Give All the Heart', 'The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water', 'Words', 'No Second Troy', 'The Fascination of What's Difficult', 'The Coming of Wisdom with Time', 'At Galway Races', 'All Things Can Tempt Me', 'To a Wealthy Man Who Promised a Second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery If It Were Proved the People Wanted Pictures', 'To a Child Dancing in the Wind', 'Two Years Later', "The Cold Heaven', 'The Wild Swans at Coole', 'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death', 'Men Improve with the Years', 'The Scholars', 'Lines Written in Dejection', 'The Fisherman', 'Two Songs of a Fool', 'Easter 1916', 'Sixteen Dead Men', 'On a Political Prisoner', 'The Second Coming', 'Sailing to Byzantium', 'The Tower' (I, III), 'Meditations in Time of Civil War' (II, III, V, VI, VII), 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen' (I, II, V), 'The Wheel', 'Leda and the Swan', 'Among School Children', 'Death', 'Symbols',

12

'In dit boek zijn gedichten bijeengebracht uit alle periodes van Yeats' dichterschap, maar de nadruk ligt natuurlijk op zijn latere werk' (Yeats 1999, 6).

24

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

'The Nineteenth Century and After', 'Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931', 'The Choice', 'A Prayer for Old Age', 'What Then?', 'The Man and the Echo' and 'Polities'. Not only is Eijkelboom's selection from Yeats much larger than Roland Hoist's, there is also relatively little overlap: only four poems figure in both selections. Eijkelboom's translations, like those of Roland Hoist, in general faithfully adhere to their originals. Here again, the significance resides not in the 'how' of these translations, but in the very selection itself. Eijkelboom also translated the poems and poetry passages for the Dutch version of Yeats's Autobiographies, published as Autobiografieeh (1985) in a translation by Sjaak Commandeur and Rien Verhoef. Eijkelboom is not alone in having translated Yeats in recent times. In 2000 the Flemish publisher Lannoo, in collaboration with its Dutch counterpart Adas, published De mooiste van Yeats (Yeats's finest), compiled by Koen Stassijns and Ivo van Strijtem, with an introduction by Hedwig Schwall. Along with a very few translations by Roland Hoist and Eijkelboom, this bilingual edition mostly contains translations by the volume's compilers themselves, often in collaboration with Geert van Istendael, a noted Flemish poet. For the others, the original translator, and the original place of publication, are duly listed. There are the by now 'perennial standards': 'Down by the Salley Gardens', 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' (in a translation by the Flemish poet Ben Cami), 'No Second Troy', 'The Scholars', 'The Second Coming', 'Sailing to Byzantium', 'Leda and the Swan' (translated by Paul Claes, a well-known Flemish poet, novelist and translator) and 'Among School Children' (in an Eijkelboom translation). But we also find translations of 'To an Isle in the Water', 'Fergus and the Druid', 'When You Are Old', 'The Song of Wandering Aengus', 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven', 'Never Give All the Heart', 'The Withering of the Boughs', 'O Do Not Love Too Long', 'Reconciliation', 'The Mask', 'All Things Can Tempt Me', 'Brown Penny', 'The Cold Heaven' (in a translation by Eijkelboom), 'A Coat', 'The Wild Swans at Coole', 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death', 'Memory', 'Two Songs of a Fool' (translated by Eijkelboom), 'Easter 1916', 'The Rose Tree', 'A Prayer for My Daughter' (translated by Roland Hoist), 'The Tower' (I), 'The Wheel' (translation by Eijkelboom), 'For Anne Gregory', 'Crazy Jane on God', 'Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop', 'Father and Child', 'Before the World Was Made', 'A Last Confession', 'The Four Ages of Man', 'Lapis Lazuli', 'The Lady's First Song', 'The Lady's Second Song', 'What Then?', 'A Crazed Girl', 'Long-legged Fly', 'Crazy Jane on the Mountain', 'Polities' (translated by Eijkelboom), 'The Man and the Echo' and 'Under Ben Bulben'. Altogether, this makes for a pretty representative selection, almost an authoritative anthology, from Yeats's entire oeuvre, most of it in recent translations. This also comes down to saying that with this volume, for his Dutch-language audience, Yeats has been fully transformed into a historical figure.

2

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in France Carle Bonafous-Murat

I

Introduction Much has already been written about [Yeats] — in England, the United States, Ireland itself, Africa and Asia, but less in France. Studies have been devoted to his thought, themes, symbols, the successive phases of his career and his identity. Maybe the reason why he has been comparatively less studied in France is because French is a language of the mind, fond of clear ideas and logical systems of thought, those very things which were anathema to Yeats. His work lends itself less easily to analyses in prose - unlike that of T. S. Eliot for instance. His poetry is essentially Irish in that it is a tribute to the power of words. It may be that Arabs and Africans, for whom words are the very substance of life, have more immediate access to his work than

us.1

Far-fetched as this statement may seem, Rene Frechet was perhaps right in believing that in 1975 there still existed a huge gap between the amount of translation and commentary devoted to the work of the Irish poet and its actual reception in France. Thirty years later, it is tempting to start this essay with a similar statement — to the effect that William Butler Yeats's work has never been properly received in France. Or to offer an unfair, belittling comparison. Why have Joyce and Beckett been, and still are, much better received in France than Yeats, so well in fact that the former has recently gained official recognition through the publication of his oeuvre in the prestigious Pleiade edition, while the latter 1 'On a deja beaucoup ecrit sur [Yeats]: en Angleterre, en Amerique, en Irlande

meme, en Afrique et en Asie: nioins en France. On a etudie sa pensee, ses themes, ses symboles, ses phases successives, son identite. Peut-etre la raison pour laquelle on 1'a relativernent peu etudie en France est que le Francais est volontiers intellectuel, qu'il airne les idees claires, les systemes logiques de pensee, et que precisement Yeats n'aime pas cela, et se prete moins facilement que T. S. Eliot, par exemple, a 1'exploitation de sa pensee par la prose. Sa poesie - et combien irlandaise elle est en cela encore — est avant tout une parole, un monument de parole. Peutetre les Arabes, les Africains, pour qui la parole est essentielle, accedent-ils plus facilement a Yeats que nous' (Rene Frechet in Yeats 1975, 13).

26

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

received the unflinching support of one of the most inventive and protective French publishers, Jerome Lindon, owner of the Editions de Minuit? By comparison, Yeats has benefited from the expertise of well-known French academics like Jacqueline Genet and Rene Frechet who, by combining detailed research with unflagging translation work, have made his poetry and drama known to a larger audience. Over the last twenty years, translators such as Jean Briat, Francois Xavier Jaujard or Jean-Yves Masson, following Yves Bonnefoy's translation of Quarante-cinq poemes (1989), have initiated new developments in the field of Yeats studies, with the result that in a 1991 article published by Le Monde Christine Jordis could claim that the work of Yeats had been rescued from oblivion. In that enterprise, the translators were backed up by small publishing houses with a true poetic agenda, such as Blake and Co., Verdier or La Delirante. It is through the combined efforts of those scholars, translators and publishing houses that interest in the work of Yeats has been boosted, but there is as yet little reason to suspect that the work of Yeats will arouse the same enthusiasm and interest as that of Joyce and Beckett. Joyce and Yeats died within two years of each other. But after World War II, two significant events happened, which speak volumes about the difference of treatment that the two Irish writers have so far received in France. In 1948, Yeats's remains were shipped back from Roquebrune to Drumcliff Churchyard, Sligo. A year later, La Hune, one of the avant-garde bookshops in Paris, set up an exhibition and issued a catalogue of Joyce's manuscripts (Gheerbrant 1949). In the introduction, Joyce was hailed as 'the great Irishman' ('le grand Irlandais') and a writer of international renown. Yeats had his share of the catalogue, with four items numbered 547 to 550. Item 549, a copy of the 1937 edition of A Vision, stands out among the others, since it appears with the following, laudatory remark by Gheerbrant: 'Contient des pages sur Joyce par son eminent compatriote' ('Contains pages on Joyce by his eminent fellowcountryman'). Item 550 is a copy of the 1934 edition of Yeats's The Collected Poems, which contains a dedication written in the hand of the author: 'Inscribed for James Joyce by W. B. Yeats, October 29, 1935'. Louis Gillet in his tribute to James Joyce, Stele pour James Joyce, written in the year of the writer's death but published only in 1946, had been no less chary in his comparison of the two writers. A renowned art historian and a member of the Academie Franfaise, Gillet had also written Yeats's obituary in the Revue des deux mondes (1939), to which he was a regular contributor. Although it was a fine piece of writing, evincing substantial and precise knowledge of the work of Yeats in all its diversity, it had none of the warmth of feeling and enthusiasm that Gillet was to infuse into his elegy to Joyce. In the final chapter, Gillet recalled a visit that he had paid Yeats at the twilight of the poet's life, describing him as a 'blind Apollo' (TApollon aveugle') surrounded by a group of beautiful young women who were like so many votaries of the (now) declining god. On that occasion, Yeats told him about his 1902 encounter with Joyce, the creation of the Abbey Theatre and the hopes that the second Boer War (1899— 1902) had aroused in the minds and hearts of all cultural nationalists like himself, though not in Joyce's: 'Already Joyce found it hard to suppress his contempt for such timorous enterprise, born in the salon of some lady of fashion — that kind of fireside nationalism prompted sarcastic remarks on his

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in France

27

part'.2 For Gillet, Joyce's own foray into the world of literary experimentation was a revolution on a much grander scale, which had none of the pettiness of Ireland's fight for Home Rule: Besides, no one could possibly deny that the daring young man proved much more perspicacious than his friends of the Irish Revival during this bold encounter. That Home Rule business is but a trifle in the affairs of the world. Seen from the vantagepoint of literature, it is of no more consequence than the Felibrige and the Museo Arlaten?

The Felibrige was a nineteenth-century movement for the restoration of Provencal as a living language and for the renaissance of a Provencal literature. That Gillet should have compared the Irish Revival to a movement of such minor import comes as no surprise, since his outlook on world affairs was that of a cosmopolitan homme de lettres, for whom history and literature were poles apart. If Gillet's remarks on Yeats deserve more than a passing mention at the outset, however, it is because they seem quite representative of a broader trend which similarly characterizes most of the pre-World War II reviews of and comments on Yeats's work. Full of admiration as they may (or may not) be for his work, Yeats's commentators and translators all seem to have had very little regard for the historical context in which his poems, plays and essays were composed. As will be seen below, Yeats often got enthusiastic reviews of his work in France, but the complexity of his relationship to Irish history, as well as his Protestant inheritance, which became so prominent in his later work, did not attract much attention. Although this probably owed much to the lingering influence of Symbolism in the French world of letters, the Yeats figure that emerges from a study of the reception of his work in France before World War II is a very de-historicized one. II

French Celticism

The history of the reception of William Butler Yeats in France begins as the story of a failed reception by a French poet. In March 1894, Yeats paid a longplanned visit to Stephane Mallarme at the poet's apartment in the rue de Rome. On arriving there, instead of being met by the high priest of French Symbolism, Yeats was politely welcomed by his wife and their daughter, Genevieve. They had to explain to him that Mallarme had himself embarked on a journey to Cambridge and Oxford, where he was expected to deliver his 2 'Mais deja Joyce ne cachait pas son dedain pour une entreprise timoree, eclose dans

le salon d'une femme du monde; ce chauvinisme de coin du feu excitait ses sarcasmes' (104). 3 'On conviendra du reste que dans ce duel presomptueux, le jeune temeraire se montrait plus perspicace que ses amis de I'Irish Revival. L'afiaire du Home Rule est un mince detail dans 1'ensemble des affaires du monde; sur le plan litteraire, c'est une petite chose sans plus de consequence que le felibrige et le Museo Arlaten (106).

28

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

celebrated lecture on 'La Musique et les Lettres' (Music and letters). Since neither of the two women spoke English, they had to mime the reason for Mallarme's absence to that 'espece d'Anglais' who did not know a word of French either and who eventually retired, feeling baffled. In an essay published in 1954, Eileen Souffrin-Le Breton ascribed the failure of the meeting to Paul Verlaine and W. E. Henley, who had planned to introduce Yeats to Mallarme (759). Henley was at once 'a self-confessed political jingo' and a man gifted with an extreme sensitiveness to 'developments in continental literature' (Chaudry 2001, 137). Even before Arthur Symons launched his short-lived Savoy experiment, Henley was among the first to champion for an English-reading audience the work of cosmopolitan writers or artists such as Ibsen, Rodin, Verlaine, Mallarme, Conrad or Yeats. A letter sent by Yeats to Mallarme at the start of 1894, in which he states that 'Mr Henley is a friend of mine and that I [like yourself] am a contributor to the National Observer (Yeats 1986, 381), lends credibility to the assumption that it was through the Scotsman's influence that Yeats was hoping to be given entry into Mallarme's circle. More recently, Roy Foster has argued that the meeting between the two poets had probably been arranged by York Powell (Foster 1997, 139), but since it was also through his agency that Mallarme received the invitation extended to him by Charles Bonnier, a French professor then teaching in Oxford (Mallarme 1945, 1608), the assumption seems very unlikely. In any case, this highly farcical scene has gone down in history as 'one of the greatest non-meetings of the late nineteenth century' (Kelly 1989, 162), but it is also exemplary of the way in which questions of reception always work both ways, and how the recipient of a fellow-artist's homage needs to be there. What Yeats was expecting from Mallarme, some sign of recognition rather than a presence, the latter could not possibly give him because even by then the two poets had gone headlong into totally different poetic courses. An Irish poet like Yeats, who at the time had only a few poems and one or two plays as claims to fame, would not have received much attention from a Symbolist poet of Mallarme's stature. Without going so far as to assume that in 1894 Yeats was already far more advanced than Mallarme in poetic experimentation, as de Man argued in his 1960 dissertation, 'Mallarme, Yeats, and the Post-Romantic Predicament', a portion of which was published in 1984 as 'Image and Emblem in Yeats' in The Rhetoric of Romanticism, one has to bear in mind that the meeting required the textual mediation of a far more reliable person than York Powell. It was Arthur Symons who played that role as mediator between two traditions and two languages. Yeats had known Symons since 1890, and was later to give him due praise for his translations of Mallarme, 'the most accomplished metrical translations of our time', which, Yeats added, 'may have given elaborate form to my verses of those years, to the latter poems of the Wind among the Reeds, to the Shadowy Waters (Yeats 1961, 320). Symons, however, did more than initiate Yeats to the arcana of French Symbolism. It was through him that Yeats was approached in 1896 by HenriD. Davray, a widely read man with a thorough knowledge of the most abstruse works in contemporary English and Irish literature, who had been for

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in France

29

that reason entrusted with an 'English literature' ('Lettres anglaises') column in the Mercure de France, at the time the most prestigious literary periodical in France. Davray was not only an excellent connoisseur of English literature, he was also a close friend of many of the writers about whom he wrote his monthly reviews. This accounts for the mixture of rigour and intimacy which emanates from his elegantly penned analyses, in which it is not unusual for him to quote a passage from a letter which he has just received from this or that writer. Thus it was that in his first essay devoted to Yeats, which truly marked the beginning of the Irish poet's career in France, Davray was able to hint briefly at two letters which Lionel Johnson and Arthur Symons had sent him a few years earlier. In the latter, also quoted by Foster in his biography (Foster 1997, 567, n87), Symons expressed his belief that Yeats was 'much the best of our younger poets' ('de beaucoup le meilleur de nos jeunes poetes'), while Lionel Johnson praised the 'wonderful beauty of his poetry' ('poete d'une prodigieuse beaute', Davray 1896, 96). Unlike his following contributions, Davray's essay did not appear in the Mercure de France, but in I'Ermitage. Judging from the tables of contents, I'Ermitage mainly published works by contemporary French writers, most of whom have now fallen into oblivion, but also translations (mostly from English) of the works of living or dead writers, as well as assessments of the state of contemporary literary production in neighbouring European countries. In the issue for August 1896, where Davray's essay on Yeats was published, one can thus find side by side translations from Bulwer Lytton's or Nathaniel Hawthorne's works, with poems by George Bidache and a survey of Portuguese literature. Besides his contribution on Yeats, Davray himself also had two other essays published, one on the new trends in English literature and one on an exhibition of 'The Arts and Crafts Society'. In this issue, however, no foreign writer received as much attention as Yeats did. Together with his nine-page essay, Davray included a few translations of his poems and tales — 'La tristesse du berger' ('The Sad Shepherd') and 'Trois legendes populaires d'Irlande', extracted from Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), which thus came close to being the first of Yeats's works ever to be brought to the attention of a French audience, having been preceded only by a sample of poems from Crossways and The Rose translated by Rene Philippon and Laurence Jerrold for the Magazine international (May 1896). The I'Ermitage issue marked the beginning of a long, fruitful collaboration between the Irish poet and his French translator. So knowledgeable about Yeats's production, including works not yet published, did Davray soon become that one might wonder whether the poet did not engineer his own reception in France through his translator. At the end of his essay on Yeats, one could thus read the following announcement: A collection of tales will soon appear, some of which, already published, are of unparalleled beauty and originality - The Secret Rose will be the tide of those sundry attempts at catching the Ideal. New poems, with the title The Wind among the Reeds, are to be published as well, bearing the promise of rare and exquisite sensations of delight — such as a breath of wind among the reeds, the strange whispers of things of

30

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe the past, or the sighs of human beings alternately suffering or rejoicing. As to drama, a new verse play, The Shadowy Waters, will probably be staged next year.4

Over a period of more than thirty years, Davray would thus keep updating the French reading public on the progress of Yeats's oeuvre. His reviews punctuate the evolution of Yeats's career, while his first translations evince all the subtlety and empathy of someone who felt entirely at one with the dreamy symbolism of Yeats's early production, but who, in later years, found it increasingly difficult to cope with the new, Modernist impetus of his post-World War I poetry. That Davray should have felt greater affinity with the early Yeats comes as no surprise, since his own sensibility had been nurtured by his growing familiarity with the greatest writers of the Symbolist movement in Europe. Already in his 1896 review, one can sense how much of the French Symbolists' tenets Davray had imbibed. Although he is careful to set Yeats apart from mainstream English Symbolism, his style reads very much like applied Mallarme: Now, when one comes to his poetic art, one is bound to admit that he has mastered at once the idea and the form. The reason is that he started from this basic tenet that art should express 'moods' through incidents and symbols. The transient, not to say illusory character of all things accounts for his choice of the word moods, because a mood somehow transfixes, albeit for a brief while, an event which has no sooner taken place than it is forgotten. The function of the symbol is to establish connections between accidental facts, and thus to endow them with the power of moods.

In spite of Davray's carefully chosen phrasing, Yeats's 'moods', the title of a 1895 essay, cannot be accurately rendered as 'modes' ('etat d'esprit' or 'sentiment diffus' would be a more appropriate translation). Rather, 'modes' seems to reveal the influence of Mallarme who, it must be remembered, had launched a magazine entitled La Derniere mode in 1874, in which he extolled the beauty of transience and impermanence, of the phenomenon at the expense of the essence.

4

'Prochainement encore paraitront de lui un recueil de recks dont quelques-uns parus deja sont d'une originalite et d'une beaute extraordinaires; The Secret Rose sera le titre de ces divers "efforts vers 1'Ideal"; de nouveaux poemes, prometteurs d'exquises et rares felicites — chant du vent dans les roseaux, mysterieux murmures des choses qui se souviennent, soupirs des etres, leurs douleurs et leurs joies — le titre: The Wind Among the Reeds. A la prochaine saison, sans doute, au theatre une piece en vers: The Shadowy Waters' (Davray 1896, 96). 5 'Si maintenant nous le considerons comme poete, nous serons obliges de convenir qu'il a maitrise 1'idee et conquis la forme, etant parti de cette primordiale donnee: un art exprimant des "modes" par 1'incident et le symbole. Et s'il dit des modes, c'est parce que tout est transitoire, sinon completement illusoire, et le mode est comme une fixation, quelque peu plus temporaire, de 1'accident immediatement produit et immediatement disparu; c'est le symbole qui, — rapport entre les faits accidentels, - les eleve a la puissance de modes' (Davray 1896, 93).

The Reception ofW. B. Yeats in France

31

Interestingly, Davray's essay was soon to be echoed by Yeats's own prose. In Rosa Alchemica, one of three stories published by Yeats in 1897, one year after Davray's review, the narrator asks Robartes to explain to him the meaning of the antique dance he has to perform in order to complete his initiation: 'before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three times in a magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on which alone the transient and the accidental could be broken, and the spirit set free' (Yeats 1962c, 286). Robartes's explanation echoes Davray's own words so closely that it is tempting to wonder whether the reception of Yeats in France was not a kind of two-way traffic, in other words whether the translator did not help Yeats clarify and shape his own thoughts on the subject of alchemical symbolism. Not surprisingly therefore, a translation of 'Rosa Alchemica' by Henri-D. Davray appeared in Le Mercure de France the following year (1898). The tone of the story, and the void left by the death of Mallarme that same year, may in part explain how Yeats's story managed to hit the pages of one of the most influential literary and cultural productions of the time. Under the editorship of Louis Vialatte, and with the help of many writers of great renown, Le Mercure de France, which had been launched only in 1890, had rapidly developed into a respected and prestigious periodical, a fame which was to last well into the twentieth century. The reputation of seriousness the journal had gained was also due to a small array of less well-known yet no less competent contributors, most of whom were translators. Davray was of course one of them, and his credit with Vialatte certainly did much to ensure that Yeats had access to the pages of the journal. By then, Yeats's reputation among French Symbolist circles had been consolidated, but the publication of 'Rosa Alchemica' in Le Mercure de France probably did more than a meeting with Mallarme would have done. Between July 1899 and October 1936 (by which time the periodical had become a bi-monthly), six of Davray's reviews appearing in Le Mercure de France were devoted to new publications by Yeats. Each, however, seems to mark a further stage in a gradual process of disenchantment. In 1899, while reviewing the recently released The Wind among the Reeds, Davray could still claim that 'it is impossible to express in a few lines of critical prose all the mystical beauty of Yeats's poems',6 while in 1916 a faint trace of disappointment could already be felt: Obviously Mr Yeats has deeply altered his style. Before, he used to seek his inspiration in legends and esoteric creeds, thanks to which he could give expression to a symbolism full of wonderful imagery. Now, he has cast offhis old embroidered clothes, because, as he puts it, 'there's more enterprise in walking naked'. Even though some of his admirers may regret the indefinite appeal of what used to be called 'the Celtic glamour', it is true that the new vigour evinced in his style is more attuned to the present age.

6

'il est impossible d'exprimer, en quelques lignes d'appreciation, toute la mystique beaute des poemes de Yeats' (Davray 1899, 267). 7 'II est evident que Mr Yeats a profondement modifie sa maniere; jadis, il cherchait son inspiration dans les legendes et dans les croyances esoteriques, grace auxquelles

32

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

By comparison, Davray's final reviews about the Yeatsian oeuvre are little more than passing comments. In a 1930 issue of Le Mercure de France, for instance, he did not hesitate to give full vent to his admiration for the early Yeats: There is little doubt that many of W. B. Yeats's best poems date from the now remote period of the 'Celtic Twilight'. This brings us back to the last century, and one could find in many an issue of the Mercure, which was a monthly at the time, translations from the poetry and prose of the great Irish poet. Recently, Mr Yeats himself has gathered some of his poems into a selection published in one volume by Macmillan. The poems have been arranged in chronological order, and it is those from his early period which remind us of his Rosicrucian period, when he used to sing of Erin's myths and of the mysteries of necromancy in his wonderful poems.

Writing as he did in the early 1930s, at a time when French Symbolism was already very much on the wane, Davray, who had also translated works by Oscar Wilde and H. G. Wells, displayed some of the misgivings of someone unable to accept any departure from his own critical standards. Even more striking than his hostility to Modernism, however, is his total disregard for the historical evolution in Ireland. Although his early reviews repeatedly allude to the history of Ireland since before Christianity — his 1896 essay even contains a brief assessment of the effects of Danish invasions and the Reformation on the Irish mindset — none of those he wrote after 1900 registers the stir caused by the Home Rule crisis and the Easter Rising. In that, Davray was not untypical of his age, in France at least. Again and again, post-1900 essays on Yeats all evince a similar pattern — that is, a keen awareness of the specificity of Irish as compared with English literature, but no concern whatsoever for the cultural and historical facts underpinning the Literary Renaissance. In 1901 for instance, OllendorfF issued a book by Charles Legras, Chez nos contemporains d'Angleterre, one of the very first histories of English literature to appear in France. The book was divided into five sections — 'Romanciers', 'Auteurs dramatiques', 'Poetes', 'Critiques, Essayistes', and 'Historiens, Economistes' — followed by an appendix entitled 'How history is written in England' ('Comment on ecrit 1'histoire en

cont.

il s'exprimait dans un symbolisme aux somptueuses images. A present, il a rejete ses oripeaux et ses defroques, car, dit-il, "il y a plus de courage a marcher devetu". Certes, quelques-uns de ses admirateurs pourront regretter le charme de ce que 1'on appela autrefois "the Celtic glamour", mais vraiment la vigueur nouvelle dont il temoigne s'accorde davantage au diapason de 1'heure presente' (Davray 1916, 719). 8 'II est indeniable que bon nombre des meilleurs poemes de W. B. Yeats datent de 1'epoque deja si lointaine du "Celtic Twilight". Cela nous reporte au siecle dernier, et 1'on trouverait dans plus d'un numero du Mercure, mensuel a cette epoque, des traductions des poemes et des proses du grand poete irlandais. Recemment, Mr Yeats a reuni lui-meme un choix de ses poemes que les editeurs Macmillan publient en un volume. Us sont disposes dans 1'ordre chronologique, et ce sont ceux de la premiere periode qui nous rememorent la periode rosicrucienne du poete, quand il celebrait en des vers merveilleux les mythes d'Erin et les mysteres des necromants' (Davray 1930, 227).

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Angleterre'). Together with the part devoted to historians and economists, one of whom was Irish historian Walter Lecky, this appendix was evidence enough that Legras was aware of the possible connections between history and literature. For all that, the chapter devoted to Yeats remains on the surface of things, Legras being content to note that the Celts have always been more democratic-minded than the Anglo-Saxons. The rest is couched in a style that has none of the certainty of a historian's, being full of vague metaphors. Legras had found his inspiration and information in Elizabeth and William Sharp's anthology Lyra Celtica (1896), obviously a book of reference in France at the time since Davray also drew from it extensively. Legras excerpted two Yeats poems from it, 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' and 'The Cloak, the Boat and the Shoes', translated respectively as 'Le lac d'Innisfree' and 'Le vetement, la barque et les souliers'. The former deserves to be quoted in full, as it manages to capture very well the easy-going, conversational tone so characteristic of Yeats's style at the time: Le lac d'Innisfree Je vais me lever et j'irai, oui, j'irai a Innisfree, Et je me batirai une petite chaumiere fake d'argile et de branches d'arbres J'aurai neuf sillons de pois de terre, une ruche pour mes abeilles, Et je vivrai seul dans la clairiere toute pleine de murmures ailes. La-bas je gouterai quelque paix, car la paix tombe goutte a goutte, Goutte a goutte des voiles du matin sur la terre ou chante le grillon, La-bas minuit sera brillant comme une lueur et le midi sera de feu, Et le soir tout bruissant par les vols des linois. Oui, je vais me lever et j'irai, car, sans cesse, nuit et jour, J'entends 1'eau du lac battre de ses coups sourds le rivage; Et sur les grandes routes ou les boulevards gris Je 1'entends battre au plus profond de mon cceur. (Legras 1901, 210—11)

Although no one would reckon 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' among the most obscure poems Yeats ever wrote, on that occasion Legras proved to be a very good judge of the rhythmic subtleties of the English language. His most felicitous finding is probably his choice of'oui' to translate the modal 'shall' in the first line and at the start of the final stanza, a choice which perfectly conveys the obsessive though pusillanimous character of the speaker. In choosing such poems, Legras's aim was precisely to set off the 'harmonious, dream-like quality of Irish poetry' ('cette poesie harmonieuse, ce reve leger et delicat', 213) against the sharp diction of Anglo-Saxon poetry, full of 'powerful, tormented lines' or else of 'cold arrogance' ('les vers puissants, rudes et tourmentes ou bien froids et hautains des poetes anglosaxons', 213), a distinction bearing faint echoes of the opposition drawn by Matthew Arnold in 'On the Study of Celtic Literature' between the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon temperaments. References to Matthew Arnold abound in early twentieth-century French criticism of Yeats, and this may partly account for the de-historicized vision of

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The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe

the Irish writer that prevailed at the time. While acknowledging the much needed influence of the Celtic spirit on the English, Arnold had famously castigated the Irish for their chronic 'reaction against the despotism of fact' (1962, 347). Ireland for Arnold was outside history, an idea which was later echoed by Ernest Renan in his study of nationalism. That French critics had difficulties shaking off Arnold's essentialism can be illustrated by referring to a stimulating essay 'W. B. Yeats et la renaissance poetique en Irlande' (W. B. Yeats and the poetic revival in Ireland) by Henri Potez, which appeared in two successive issues of the Revue de Paris in 1904. The author of a published thesis on L'Elegie en France avant le Romantisme (De Pargny a Lamartine 1778—1820) as well as numerous articles on French and English or American literature, Potez was an eclectic scholar, who was regarded by some as a leading authority on the subject of Celticism in France. In the essay, this is exemplified through a lengthy comparison between Arnold's and Renan's views on Ireland and Yeats's own essay on 'The Celtic Element in Literature' (1902), a comparison to which the final pages are devoted. Here, Potez begins by stating his disagreement with Yeats: 'In a very curious essay, which I believe to be questionable in some places, Mr Yeats objects to Ernest Renan's and Matthew Arnold's views on "the Celtic element in literature" '.9 Potez then goes on to argue that the definition of the Celtic temperament given by Yeats, most notably his insistence on the 'unbounded emotions' and 'wild melancholy' of the Irish ties in pretty well with that of the two essayists. As regards melancholy in particular, Potez believes that it is of a kind different from that which primitive men used to experience: 'I very much doubt that Celtic melancholy is no different from that of primitive people'.10 In order to support his own contentions, Potez took great pains to quote whole passages from Yeats's essays which he himself had translated. He was also able to quote from Beltaine and Samhain, the two periodicals which had been launched in 1899 and 1901 to back up the Irish Literary Theatre. Thanks to Potez, Yeats's essays thus became part of the reception of Yeats in France. Unlike the poems or plays, however, the essays do not seem to have attracted much attention on the part of editors, reviewers or translators, at least up to World War II. Notable exceptions are the publication of 'L'Irlande et J. M. Synge' and 'Oscar Wilde', which appeared in two issues of the Revue europeenne in 1923 and 1926, as well as a fragment of The Trembling of the Veil which was published in Le Navire d'argent on 1 November 1925. Le Navire d'argent was the name of the periodical which Adrienne Monnier, the owner of the famed Maison des amis du livre, had launched in 1925, and which, thanks to the collaboration of Sylvia Beach, was a regular purveyor of American or English Modernist poems and novels to the French reading public (Murat 2005, 107-15).

9

10

'Dans un article tres curieux, que je pense discutable par certains endroits, M. Yeats conteste les vues qui ont ete presentees par Ernest Renan et Matthew Arnold sur "1'element celtique en litterature"' (Potez 1904, 863). 'La melancolie celtique ne serait autre que la melancolie primitive. J'en doute fort' (864).

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The publication of those three essays was occasioned by the award of the Nobel Prize for literature to Yeats in 1923. All three had been culled from the recently issued Trembling of the Veil, and, more importantly, all three had been translated by the same person, Jeanne Lichnerowicz. In the fairly confined world of Yeats scholars and translators, her name had become something of a byword, and could be found in almost any publication on Yeats around 1920. Unlike Davray for instance, who seems to have remained faithful to one or two periodicals until the end of his life, Lichnerowicz contributed to a multiplicity of journals ranging across the whole political and social spectrum. Comoedia,' Revue beige,