Yeats’s spiritual intuitions

Press, 14 November 1981, Page 17

Yeats’s spiritual intuitions

A Vision. By W. B. Yeats. Macmillan, 1981. 305 pp. $13.95 (paperback).

The Yeats that most of us know best is the young romantic who, in the 1890 s. wrote charming lyrics like “The Lake Isle of Innesfree.” tramped the roads in search of Irish folk-lore, and craved the attentions of the beautiful Maud Gonne.

Like many other young romantics before and since, this Yeats had a strong mystical streak. He indulged this under the tutelage of the charismatic medium Madame Blavatsky (“a great passionate nature, a sort of female Dr Johnson”). Unlike many other young romantics, however. Yeats did not cast his mysticism aside as he grew older. Instead he codified his spiritual intuitions into an elaborate system based on the phases of the moon. “A Vision" is his account of this system. Actually he would have us believe that it is not really his account, but that of certain “communicators” from the spirit world who used the "automatic writing” of his wife as a medium. ' The first version of “A Vision” was published in 1926. In the last years of his lite Yeats prepared a revised and expanded edition which appeared in 1937. Now that second edition appears for the first time in paperback. The book is essential reading for anybody who wants a full understanding

of the austere and difficult, but rewarding poet who developed out of that romantic young man of the 1890 s. Unfortunately “A Vision” itself is by no means an easy read, and it is regrettable that Macmillans did not take the opportunity to commission a critical introduction and/or notes from some competent Yeats scholar.—Richard Corballis.