I am now studying the work of William Butler Yeats. I began to read his plays and a book on his work as a dramatist before my trip to Dublin. Currently I am reading the first volume of his biography by Robert Fitzroy Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914. This book has 704 pages and that is only the first volume so it is going to take me a long time to read. It is a treasure trove of information on forgotten Victorian novelists. For example, I read about Florence Farr and her novel The Dancing Faun. Sometimes it is interesting to read obscure old novels that were written in the distant past. I remember that my grandmother gave me some books to read so I was reading quaint old novels in elementary school which must have surprised my teachers.
Although Yeats is primarily known as a poet, he wrote a lot of plays too and was one of the founders of the Abbey Theater. I have now read 27 of his plays. I am also reading his poetry which I add to my notes with whatever analysis I can scrounge up on the Internet. At the very least, I can add notes on the Irish mythology he uses. Yeats also seemed fond of the Italian Renaissance. I know nothing about that so I need to look up all his references to the Renaissance art patrons and Italian towns.
Yeats is an interesting artist because he was also an occultist. While I am very skeptical about the occult, I do appreciate that spirituality is a part of human nature. Poets were once regarded as visionaries or a sort of spiritual genius, individuals with a special gift of inspiration. Poets were considered to give voice to the gods. This spiritual dimension to literary work has been lost according to the academics, but of course spiritually gifted people still exist. Yeats seemed to be more of a seeker than a true mystic.
I have bought a small collection of books on Yeats:
W. B. Yeats: The Apprentice Mage
Roy F. Foster
ISBN: 9780192117359
W. B. Yeats: The Arch-Poet
Roy F. Foster
ISBN: 9780198184652
The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: The Poems
Richard J. Finneran
ISBN: 9780684839356
The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: The Plays
David. R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark
ISBN: 9781451656442
The Tower
William Butler Yeats
ISBN: 9780743247283
Call of the Sidhe
Jeremy Berg, Soren Hauge
ISBN: 9781939790361
The Mystery Religion of W. B. Yeats
Graham Hough
ISBN: 0389204641
The Plays of W. B. Yeats
Sylvia C. Ellis
ISBN: 9780333748787
Yeats
Harold Bloom
ISBN: 0195016033
Fairy & Folk Tales of Ireland
edited by W. B. Yeats
ISBN: 9781784289126
Cuchulain of Muirthemne
Lady Gregory
ISBN: 9780486417172
Yeats
Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets
ISBN: 9781857157116
89 poemas
(Antología poética 1883-1939)
José Francisco Ruix Casanova
ISBN: 9788437642222
William Butler Yeats: World Dramatists
Anthony Bradley
ISBN: 0804420688
The Major Poems of William Butler Yeats
Sandra Gilbert
Yeats: The Man and the Masks
Richard Ellmann
ISBN: 9780393008593
Poetry Ireland Review
A WB Yeats Special Issue
edited by Vona Groarke
ISBN: 9781902121550
W.B. Yeats And The Tribes of Danu
Peter Alderson Smith
ISBN: 0389206962
The Life of W. B. Yeats
Terence Brown
ISBN: 9780631228516
Here is a photo I took of some of these books:
I even bought a Spanish edition of his poems to help me to learn Spanish.
