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Archiver > IRELAND-BOOK-DISCUSSION > 2004-01 > 1074961721


From: Pat Connors <>
Subject: [IrishBooks] W.B. Yeats: A Life Vol. II The Arch-Poet by R. F. Foster
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 08:28:41 -0800


(Hardback; 40.00 Euro / 46.00 USD / 32.00 UK; 798 pages)

The acclaimed first volume of this definitive biography of William
Butler Yeats (now available in paperback) left him in his fiftieth year,
at a crossroads in his life. The subsequent quarter-century surveyed in
this book takes in his rediscovery of advanced nationalism and his
struggle for an independent Irish culture, his continued pursuit of
supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary
marriage, and a series of tumultuous love affairs. Throughout he was
writing his greatest poems: 'The Fisherman', and 'The Wild Swans at
Coole' in their stark simplicity; the magnificently complex sequences on
the Troubles and Civil War; the Byzantium poems; and the radically
compressed last work - some of it literally written on his death bed.

The drama of his life is mapped against the history of the Irish
revolution and the new Irish State founded in 1922. Yeats's many
political roles and his controversial involvement in a right-wing
movement during the early 1930s are covered more closely than ever
before, and his complex and passionate relationship with the developing
history of his country remains a central theme. Throughout this book,
the genesis, alteration, and presentation of his work (memoirs and
polemic as well as poetry) are explored through his private and public
life. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats's friends, lovers,
family, collaborators and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal
world of astounding energy, artistic commitment, and verve. Yeats
constantly re-created himself and his work, believing that art was 'not
the chief end of life but an accident in one's search for reality': a
search which brought him again and again back to his governing
preoccupations, sex and death. He also held that 'all knowledg e is
biography', a belief reflected in this study of one of the greatest
lives of modern times.


--
Pat Connors, Sacramento CA
http://www.connorsgenealogy.com
Professional Genealogy Research
All outgoing mail virus free, scanned by Norton 2002





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