Index
Poems: page numbers refer to the Variorum Edition of the poems (VP)
‘Acre of Grass, An’ (VP 575–76) 20, 67
‘Adam’s Curse’ (VP 204-06) 10, 123–124, 157, 159–160, 168, 175
‘After Long Silence’ (VP 523) 195
‘Against Unworthy Praise’ (VP 259–60) 127, 172
‘Among School Children’ (VP 443–46) 9, 22, 54, 76, 79–81, 86, 93, 98, 107, 111, 114, 137, 149, 177–178, 191, 193, 199, 219
‘Ancestral Houses’ (VP 417–18) 70
‘Arrow, The’ (VP 199) 139, 153–154, 159, 166
‘Baile and Aillinn’ (VP 188–97) 157
‘Beautiful Lofty Things’ (VP 577–78) 137, 186
‘Before the World Was Made’ (VP 531–32) 87
‘Black Tower, The’ (VP 635–36) 97
‘Broken Dreams’ (VP 355–57) 181, 186–187
‘Bronze Head, A’ (VP 618–19) 20, 124, 130, 137, 149, 156, 177–178, 182, 189, 191–194, 198, 200, 206, 219
‘Brown Penny’ (VP 268) 174
‘Byzantium’ (VP 497–98) 5, 32, 39, 42, 48, 51–54, 74, 91, 169
‘Cap and Bells, The’ (VP 159–61) 137, 140–142, 160
‘Choice, The’ (VP 495) 98
‘Chosen’ (VP 534–35) 9, 69, 88–90
‘Circus Animals’ Desertion, The’ (VP 629–30) 20, 93, 137, 159, 171, 201–202, 204, 209–210, 223
‘Coat, A’ (VP 320) 153
‘Cold Heaven, The’ (VP 316) 137, 176–178, 180, 223
‘Consolation’ (VP 534) 89
‘Coole and Ballylee, 1931’ (VP 490–92) 115
‘Coole Park, 1929’ (VP 488–89) 97, 206
‘Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman’ (VP 511) 26, 80, 83
‘Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgment’ (VP 510) 82
‘Crazy Jane’, sequence’ (VP 507–15) 23, 71, 76, 80, 82, 87, 111, 136, 163
‘Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop’ (VP 513) 84
‘Cuchulain Comforted’ (VP 634–35) 16, 18, 20, 76, 93, 95–97, 214
‘Dawn, The’ (VP 344) 6
‘Death of the Hare, The’ (VP 453) 198, 200, 212
‘Deep-sworn Vow, A’ (VP 357) 128, 173, 186, 188–189, 191
‘Delphic Oracle upon Plotinus, The’ (VP 530–31) 91
‘Dialogue of Self and Soul, A’ (VP 477–79) 4, 23, 26, 41, 68–71, 75–77, 79, 89, 93, 98, 107, 113, 137, 146, 187, 191, 200, 202–203, 218, 223–224
‘Double Vision of Michael Robartes, The’ (VP 382–84) 5
‘Drinking Song, A’ (VP 261) 172–173
‘Easter 1916’ (VP 391–94) 134–135
‘Ego Dominus Tuus’ (VP 367–71) 124, 160
‘Fallen Majesty’ (VP 315–16) 176
‘Father and Child’ (VP 531) 87, 109
‘Fish, The’ (VP 146) 138
‘Folly of Being Comforted, The’ (VP 199–200) 154, 172
‘For Anne Gregory’ (VP 492) 9, 179
‘Fragments’ (VP 439) 35, 62–64, 66–67
‘Friends’ (VP 315–16) 74, 81, 142, 145–146, 176, 223
‘From Oedipus at Colonus’ (VP 459) 3
‘From the Antigone’ (VP 540) 200
‘Gift of Harun Al-Rashid, The’ (VP 460–70) 196–197
‘Hawk, The’ (VP 349) 206
‘Her Praise’ (VP 170–71) 181, 185
‘Her Triumph’ (VP 533–34) 176, 189
‘He thinks of those who have Spoken Evil of his Beloved’ (VP 166) 131
‘He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ (VP 176) 141–142, 160, 166
‘He wishes his Beloved were Dead’ (VP 175–76) 142, 145, 184
‘His Memories’ (VP 454–55) 81, 198–199
‘His Phoenix’ (VP 353–54) 181, 185
‘Image from a Past Life, An’ (VP 389–90) 191, 196
‘In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz’ (VP 475–76) 149
‘In Memory of Major Robert Gregory’ (VP 323–28) 147, 158
‘Irish Airman Foresees his Death, An’ (VP 328) 37
‘King and No King’ (VP 258) 171, 186
‘Lapis Lazuli’ (VP 565–67) 20, 31, 93–95, 189
‘Last Confession, A’ (VP 538) 162–163, 253
‘Leda and the Swan’ (VP 441) 61–62, 177, 187
‘Living Beauty, The’ (VP 333–34) 180
‘Lover pleads with his Friend for Old Friends, The’ (VP 172–73) 142
‘Magi, The’ (VP 318) 61
‘Man and the Echo’ (VP 632–33) 16, 20, 93, 96–97, 137, 198, 201, 204–207, 209–214, 221
‘Man who Dreamed of Faeryland, The’ (VP 126–28) 46–47, 51, 55, 99
‘Mask, The’ (VP 263) 169, 172–173
‘Memory of Youth, A’ (VP 313–14) 175
‘Memory’ (VP 350) 173, 186, 188, 198
‘Michael Robartes and the Dancer’ (VP 385–87) 6, 10, 12, 90, 124
‘Mohini Chatterjee’ (VP 495–96) 32, 52
‘Mother of God, The’ (VP 499) 62
‘Municipal Gallery Revisited, The’ (VP 601–04) 20, 74, 192, 205
‘Never give all the Heart’ (VP 202) 157, 223
‘News for the Delphic Oracle’ (VP 611–12) 20, 91
‘No Second Troy’ (VP 256–57) 116, 137, 166, 168–171, 173, 177, 200, 225
‘O Do Not Love Too Long’ (VP 211–12) 157
‘Old Memory’ (VP 201) 125, 155–156
‘On a Political Prisoner’ (VP 397) 149
‘On being asked for a War Poem’ (VP 359) 215
‘On Woman’ (VP 345–46) 76, 79, 121, 181, 186–188
‘Peace’ (VP 258–59) 172
‘People, The’ (VP 351–53) 117–118, 181, 184–185, 212, 224–225
‘Phases of the Moon, The’ (VP 372–77) 4–5, 95
‘Politics’ (VP 631) 11, 20, 93, 137, 207, 209–210, 214–215, 217–221, 223
‘Prayer for my Daughter, A’ (VP 403–06) 6, 75, 107–108, 118, 137, 147, 149, 191, 201
‘Quarrel in Old Age’ (VP 503–04) 187
‘Reconciliation’ (VP 257) 171, 177
‘Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland’ (VP 206–08) 160
‘Road at My Door, The’ (VP 423–24) 217
Rose, The [became a separate volume in 1895] 43–44, 46, 150–151
‘Sailing to Byzantium’ (VP 407–08) 9, 17–19, 42, 51–54, 91, 96
‘Scholars, The’ (VP 337) 12
‘Second Coming, The’ (VP 401–02) 34, 49, 51, 56, 58–62, 64, 147, 181, 219
‘Secret Rose, The’ (VP 169–70) 26, 43, 46–47, 49, 51, 55–59, 61
Seeker, The (VP 681–85) 37–38, 41, 43, 46–47, 51
‘Solomon and the Witch’ (VP 387–89) 187, 195
‘Stare’s Nest by my Window, The’ (VP 424–25) 217
‘Stick of Incense, A’ (VP 619) 90
‘Supernatural Songs’, sequence (VP 554–63) 20, 87
‘That the Night Come’ (VP 317) 176
‘Those Dancing Days Are Gone’ (VP 324–25) 20
‘Thought from Propertius, A’ (VP 355) 181, 185
‘Three Bushes, The’, sequence (VP 409–16) 87
‘To a Young Girl’ (VP 336) 81, 145, 198
‘Tom O’Roughley’ (VP 337–38) 207
‘To the Rose upon the Rood of Time’ (VP 100–01) 41, 43–45, 51, 68, 98
Tower, The [volume] 18–19, 62, 111, 197–198
‘Tower, The’ (VP 409–16) 18, 21, 41, 105, 107, 113, 115–118, 120, 135, 137, 180, 200, 223
‘Two Songs from a Play’ (VP 437–38) 46, 62, 202
‘Two Trees, The’ (VP 134–36) 124
‘Under Ben Bulben’ (VP 636–40) 20, 209, 211, 221
‘Under Saturn’ (VP 390–91) 191, 196
‘Vacillation’ (VP 499–503) 1, 16, 23, 41–43, 45–46, 68, 79, 99, 169, 172
‘What Then?’ (VP 576–77) 20, 26, 40, 46, 67–68, 74, 93, 97–100
‘When You Are Old’ (VP 120–21) 151
‘White Birds, The’ (VP 121–22) 150, 152–153
‘Who Goes with Fergus?’ (VP 125–26) 46–47, 49, 51–52, 142, 150–151
‘Wild Swans at Coole, The’ (322–23) 180–181
Wild Swans at Coole, The [volume] 5–6, 128, 145, 150, 175, 180–181, 191, 206
‘Withering of the Boughs, The’ (VP 203) 157
‘Woman Homer Sung, A’ (VP 254–55) 166
‘Woman’s Beauty, A’—curtain-opening song to The Only Jealousy of Emer (VP 784–85) 197
‘Woman Young and Old, A’ sequence (VP 531–40) 69, 71, 76, 82, 87, 109, 111, 162, 176, 189, 198, 200, 219
‘Words’ (VP 255–56) 12, 166–169, 225
Index of Names and Terms
anti-biographical critic 201
goes against grain to identify Oisin’s Niamh with Maud Gonne 201
antithetical-primary distinction 4–5, 15, 21–22, 27, 32, 41, 46, 53, 59, 68, 91–92, 100, 103
Apollonian-Dionysian polarity 119–120
Virgil’s goddess compared by Yeats to Maud Gonne 186
Auden, W. H. 3, 13–15, 28, 135, 205–206, 211–212
as speaker in Paul Muldoon’s ‘7, Middagh Street’ 206
estimate of Yeats as great despite being ‘silly’ 28
Augustine, St. 44–45, 84, 89–90
Confessions as influence on Yeats’s ‘To the Rose upon the Rood of Time’ 44–45
in connection with Yeats’s ‘Consolation’ 89
obsession with original sin 89–90
youthful sexuality of 90
impact on Yeats of this influential French play of the ‘nineties’ 144
amazed by emotion in Yeats’s ‘Friends’ 146
author of 2021 biography of Maud Gonne 135, 161
his philosophic Idealism as influence on Yeats 25
and Yeats’s ‘What Then?’ 98–99
Blackmur, R. P. 188
on Yeats’s ‘A Deep-sworn Vow’ 188
Blake, William 4, 10, 16–18, 20–21, 23, 26–27, 29, 43, 47, 51, 56–58, 63, 66–68, 71, 73, 75–77, 82–84, 86–87, 89, 91, 100, 102–103, 124, 126, 141, 144, 157, 162–163, 173, 206, 223, 253–254
as influence on Yeats’s
‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 71, 73, 75–77, 224
‘An Acre of Grass’ 67
‘The Second Coming’ 56
as precursor of Yeats, who, with Edwin Ellis, produced a three-volume edition of Blake (1893) 17, 57, 162, 253
his illustrations to Robert Blair’s The Grave 162, 253
repeatedly allied by Yeats with Nietzsche 10, 67, 71, 73, 75–76, 87, 100, 223
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 23, 51, 57, 73
Vision of the Last Judgment 86
Visions of the Daughters of Albion 71, 75
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 14, 29–33, 64, 68, 163
and the occult movement in London 29–30, 163
as the source of Yeats’s Golden Dawn pseudonym 29
Isis Unveiled 30
Yeats’s first meeting with 30
Bloom, Harold xi –xii, 11, 16, 18–20, 23, 35, 96, 100–101, 103, 122, 227–230
book dedicated to 100
citation of a passage from the Gnostic Valentinus as a ‘motto’ for Yeats’s ‘Cuchulain Comforted’ 96
contrast between Blake and Yeats 16, 20, 100
resistance to Yeats’s emphasis on the ‘wisdom of the body’ 20, 103
body
the significance of the body, of sexuality, and of ‘embodied thought’ in Yeats 5–10, 15–17, 20–23, 26, 82, 85–86, 90, 103, 197, 220
Body (Self)-Soul debate tradition iv, 4–5, 11, 23, 26, 41, 55, 68–69, 71–72, 75–77, 79, 89, 93, 98, 107, 111, 113, 137, 144, 146, 162, 187, 191, 200, 202–203, 218, 223–224, 229, 253–254
Browning, Robert 11, 70–71, 158, 196
influence of his ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’ on Yeats’s ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 71
‘My Last Duchess’ in connection with Yeats’s ‘Adam’s Curse’ and ‘Ancestral Houses’ 70, 158
Bush, Douglas 63
on Romantics and Newton, in connection with Yeats’s ‘Fragments’ 63
Cardozo, Nancy 34, 134–135, 139, 165
author of 1978 biography of Maud Gonne 135
Castiglione, Baldassare 158, 181
and the courtly love tradition 158
Castiglione’s Platonist, Pietro Bembo, in connection with ‘Yeats’s ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’ 203
his concept of sprezzatura in connection with Yeats’s ‘Adam’s Curse’ 158
influence of his The Courtier on Yeats’s ‘The People’ 181
Chatterjee, Mohini 14, 31–32, 52, 101
his ideas synopsized many years later in Yeats’s poem ‘Mohini Chatterjee’ 32
influence of his concepts of reincarnation and of ‘ecstasy’ on Yeats 31–32
Christ, Jesus 8, 22, 43, 46, 56, 62, 68, 73–74, 84, 87, 91–92, 215
a primary figure in Yeats’s dialectic 59, 68, 92, 100
contrasted by Yeats (following Nietzsche) to Dionysus 46
contrasted by Yeats to Oedipus 92
in Yeats’s ‘Two Songs from a Play,’ the play being The Resurrection 46, 62
opposed to Yeats’s antithetical Homer 68, 100
Parousia of, reversed in Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ 56
Cicero 69, 71, 89, 113, 180, 218
his Moral Obligations in connection with Yeats’s ‘The Cold Heaven’ 180
his Somnium Scipionis altered by Yeats in ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 69, 89, 113, 218
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 10, 27, 63, 67, 75, 91, 114–115, 140, 201, 204, 207, 213, 255
Coleridge’s ‘Dejection: An Ode’ in connection with Yeats’s ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’ 201
his ‘The Pains of Sleep’ in connection with Yeats’s ‘Man and the Echo’ 204
‘Kubla Khan’ and the image of the vatic poet 114–115, 140
the topography of Xanadu echoed in Yeats’s ‘Coole and Ballylee, 1931’ 115
his concept of ‘an improved infancy’ in connection with the Blakean-Nietzschean conclusion of ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 75
Hebrew apocalyptic visionary and ‘The Second Coming’ 59–60
Dante 7, 16, 42, 89, 95, 113, 121, 123–124, 140, 158, 160, 191
his Beatrice in La Vita Nuovo as one model for Yeats’s own obsessive and unrequited love of Maud Gonne 121–123
in Yeats’s ‘Ego Dominus Tuus’ 123, 160
Dickinson, Mabel 122, 128, 165, 174
sexually involved with Yeats between 1908–13 122, 165, 174
a source for Yeats’s concept of ‘the thinking of the body’ 9–10
in connection with Yeats’s ‘Before the World was Made’ 88
in connection with Yeats’s ‘Chosen’ 88, 90
in connection with Yeats’s ‘Michael Robartes and the Dancer’ 8, 10, 90
Donoghue, Denis xi, 16, 52, 177
on Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ 52
on Yeats’s ‘The Cold Heaven’ 177
Eastern thought 14, 25–26, 30–33, 68, 93–94, 96, 98, 101, 179
as early and late influence on Yeats’s poetry, from the ‘Indian’ poems in his first collection, through the ‘hermit’ poems in Responsibilities, to ‘Lapis Lazuli’ and ‘Meru’ 30–31, 68, 94, 101
Yeats’s attraction and resistance to 14, 31
Eliot, T. S. 3, 15–16, 18–20, 22, 24, 28, 33, 42, 144, 168, 212
Eliot’s denigration of Yeats’s spiritual beliefs as obstacles to be overcome in his achievement of greatness 33
Eliot’s encounter with Yeats’s ghost in ‘Little Gidding’ 16, 42
memorial lecture on Yeats 3
Yeats’s independence-retaining roots in occult tradition compared with Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ 33
Yeats’s rejection of Eliot’s own austere spirituality 22
Yeats’s co-author on 1893 edition of Blake 17, 57, 162, 253
Ellmann, Richard xi, 20, 92, 112, 161, 170, 202, 224
comments on ‘No Second Troy’ in The Identity of Yeats 170
Yeats: The Man and the Masks 112, 161
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 27, 40, 74–75, 228
and ‘intuitive reason’ 27
Emersonian self-reliance and Yeats’s ‘A Prayer for my Daughter’ 75
his Divinity School Address in connection with ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 74
Enlightenment, the 62–63, 65–67, 100
attacked in Yeats’s prose and in the gnomic poem, ‘Fragments’ 62–63, 65–67
Eternal Recurrence 4, 76, 187, 191
Nietzsche’s vision of in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra 187
nightmare to Blake, but embraced by Yeats in ‘On Woman’ and ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 76, 187
displaced by ‘spinning jenny’ in ‘Fragments’, only to return at end as the city named for her, Ninevah 62–64, 66
Farr, Florence 58, 82, 129, 194
gifted actress, musician, and adept of the Golden Dawn 58, 82
participant with Yeats in symbolic card experiment that provided image in ‘The Second Coming’ 58
Ferguson, Trish 135
author of 2019 biography of Maud Gonne 135
Frazier, Adrian 135
author of 2016 biography of Maud Gonne 135
free will and determinism, or Fate 33, 203
as played out in ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 41, 191
a tension central to Yeats’s thought 33
on Blake’s ‘gnomic’ poetry 63
Gnosticism 25–27, 32–33, 35, 43, 57–58, 66, 69, 71, 73–75, 77, 79, 82–83, 85–87, 95–96, 98, 100–103
the concept of gnosis in Yeats’s thought 32, 37, 41, 58, 60–62, 66, 74, 82–83, 93, 95, 101–102
the concept of the ‘void’ 24, 101–103
Yeats’s rejection of Gnostic and Neoplatonic body-soul dualism in favor of Unity of Being 9, 26, 76–77
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 40
possible influence of his elf-king ballad on ‘The Stolen Child,’ n. 40
Golden Dawn, the Hermetic Order of the 14, 27–29, 33, 45, 51, 58, 82, 129, 163, 169
Maud Gonne’s brief membership in 163, 169
Yeats’s sustained membership in 14, 27, 29, 51
Goldoni, Carlo 173
his ‘drinking song’ adapted by Yeats 173
Gonne, Iseult 6–7, 33, 81, 128, 130–132, 139, 145, 180, 194–195, 197
addressed in ‘Michael Robartes and the Dancer’ 6–7
her strange conception 130–131, 145
in ‘The Living Beauty’ 180
in the untitled [‘A woman’s beauty’] curtain-opening song to The Only Jealousy of Emer 197
Maud’s daughter by Lucien Millevoye 6, 33, 130–131, 139, 145, 198
proposed to by Yeats 33
Gonne, Maud 3, 6, 10–12, 17, 23–24, 33–34, 38, 46, 55–56, 79–81, 93, 104–105, 107–108, 111, 115–118, 121–163, 165–189, 191–207, 212–213, 215–225, 253–254
as Cathleen ni Houlihan in Yeats’s play of that title 38, 160, 193–194, 201, 204
as political activist 118, 121, 135, 174, 176, 182, 185
as type of the Morrigu 156, 193
as Yeats’s composite beloved and Muse 3, 11–12, 79, 81, 107, 116, 121–122, 124, 128–129, 132, 135, 142–145, 152–153, 155–156, 159–160, 166, 170, 174–175, 182, 191–192, 201–202, 212–213, 220–221, 224–225
her marriage to John MacBride 125–126, 132, 134, 148, 156, 171–172, 182, 184, 189, 198, 212
her qualified charge of Yeats’s cowardice 117–118, 183–184
her spontaneity contrasted to Yeats’s analytic mind 117
in Yeats’s poetry 3, passim
the sexual consummation of their relationship 79, 145, 168
Yeats’s obsessive and unrequited love for 10, 12, 23, 117, 121, 123, 126, 128, 156, 171, 201–202, 223
Yeats’s repeated proposals to 33, 134, 153, 157, 181, 222
Yeats’s sublimation of that love into poetry in the Petrarchan tradition 11, 23, 113, 117, 121, 123, 158
Gould, Warwick xii, 14, 85, 139, 219
rondural comment on Yeats’s ‘Politics’ 219
Graves, Robert 11, 119–120, 207
compared and contrasted with Yeats as Muse-poets 11, 119
Gregory, Augusta 95, 121, 132, 136, 145, 154, 158, 165, 173, 179, 189, 204–205
and the writing of Cathleen ni Houlihan 205
in connection with ‘The Folly of Being Comforted’ 154
in Yeats’s poem ‘Friends’ 145
sees Maud as ‘death’s-head’ 189, 191
as the original of the fighter-pilot in ‘An Irish Airman Foresees his Death’ 37
as the potential heir to Coole Park 158
Griffith, Arthur 128, 205, 216
claims to have contributed ‘propagandistic’ ending of Cathleen ni Houlihan 205
fascination with Maud Gonne 128, 205
fictional character created by Yeats 115, 160
in Red Hanrahan’s Stories 116
Harper, George Mills xi, 14, 37
scholarship on Yeats and the occult 14, 34
Harper, Margaret Mills 14
on Yeats, his wife George, and their collaboration on A Vision 14
Heaney, Seamus 10, 15, 67, 95–96, 120, 176, 202, 207, 210–212, 217, 220–221
comments on Yeats 15, 67, 120, 221
contrasts ending of ‘Under Ben Bulben’ with that of ‘Politics’ 221
on greatness of ‘Cuchulain Comforted’ 95
on ‘Man and the Echo’ 207, 210–211
on Yeats’s occultism 15, 67, 120
Helen of Troy 6, 61, 125, 129, 165–166
Yeatsian prototype for Maud Gonne 6, 125, 129, 165–166
Homer 1, 6, 10, 43, 46, 53, 68, 92, 98–100, 116, 118, 165–166, 169–170, 176, 189, 200, 205
as embodiment of Nietzschean ‘master morality’ as opposed to slave morality in Yeats’s ‘Ancestral Houses’ 70
contrasted by Yeats to primary Socrates and Christ 43, 68, 92
his ‘unchristened heart’ as Yeats’s antithetical ‘example’ 43, 68, 92
read by Yeats in the light of Nietzsche, who contrasted Homer and Plato 43, 68
Hyde, Douglas 128
dazzled by Maud Gonne’s charismatic beauty 128
the simplifying spiritual ‘coal’ that purified the prophet’s lips rejected by Yeats in ‘Vacillation’ 45
Joyce, James 21, 48, 58, 102, 144, 151, 168, 201–202, 205, 219, 221–222
ending of Ulysses compared to final lines of Yeats’s ‘Politics’ 222
his ‘antinomies’ allied by Yeats with Blake’s ‘Contraries’ 23, 46
Keats, John xi, 8, 11, 38, 44, 52–53, 91, 94–95, 144, 180, 189, 213, 229
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ compared with Yeats’s ‘Lapis Lazuli’ 94–95, 189
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ compared with Yeats’s ‘News for the Delphic Oracle’ 91
‘Ode to a Nightingale’, echoed in Yeats’s ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ 180
‘Ode to a Nightingale’, echoed in Yeats’s ‘To the Rose upon the Rood of Time’ 44
‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ compared with Yeats’s ‘Her Triumph’ and ‘A Deep-sworn Vow’ 189
‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,’ echoed in Yeats’s ‘Her Triumph’ 189
as swooning substitute for Adam in in Yeats’s ‘Fragments’ 62–63
his empiricism rejected by Yeats 25, 58, 62–63
MacBride, John 125–126, 132, 134, 148, 156, 171–172, 182, 184, 189, 198, 212
alluded to in ‘A Prayer for my Daughter’ 148
‘drunken, vainglorious lout’ of ‘Easter 1916’ 126, 132, 135
married to and separated from Maud Gonne 125–126, 132, 134, 148, 156, 171–172, 182, 184, 189, 198, 212
molests Iseult 132
as the ‘learned astrologer’ in Yeats’s ‘Chosen’ 69, 89
Commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipioni as major influence on the debate in ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 69, 72
contrast repeated in Yeats’s ‘Politics’ 218–219
Mannin, Ethel 19–20, 34, 103, 162, 194, 219, 254
one of Yeats’s late Muses 19, 194, 254
Markiewicz, Countess Constance 149, 204
in ‘Easter 1916’ 149
in ‘On a Political Prisoner’ 149
physical force activist considered a sister by Maud Gonne 149
1890 symbolic card experiment as one source of ‘The Second Coming’ 58–59
in Yeats’s ‘All Soul’s Night’ 45
mechanical-organic distinction 64, 148
in ‘A Prayer for My Daughter’ 148
in ‘Fragments’ 64
Milton, John 11, 48, 71, 86, 91–92, 141–142, 192, 228–229
his ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ as altered in Yeats’s ‘News for the Delphic Oracle’ 91
Nabokov, Vladimir 213
momentary comparison of Yeats to Humbert Humbert in Lolita, n. 213
Neoplatonism 26–27, 32, 35, 46, 69, 70–72, 77, 83, 88–89, 92, 154. See also Macrobius; See also Plato; See also Plotinus; See also Porphyry
Idealist philosophy that both attracted Yeats and induced resistance, usually under the auspices of Nietzsche 70–71, 77
Nietzsche, Friedrich 4, 8, 10, 27, 34–35, 43, 46, 59, 67–71, 73, 75–77, 87, 92–95, 98–102, 119–120, 173, 183, 187, 191, 216, 223–224, 228, 255
as Yeats’s principal antithetical counterweight to the primary 27, 59, 68, 99, 103
influence on ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 4, 68–71, 75–77, 187, 191
Nietzsche’s concept or thought-experiment of Eternal Recurrence 3–4, 76, 187, 191
On the Genealogy of Morals 68, 95, 98, 224
the Nietzchean concept of conflict—contradiction as life-affirming—in Yeats’s ‘What Then?’ 99
Thus Spoke Zarathustra 76, 95, 99, 183
Yeats adopts Nietzsche’s emphasis on the body, that all must ‘come to sight and touch’ 8
Yeats ‘excited’ by the Nietzschean ‘curious astringent joy’ he associates with Blake 34, 100
Yeats’s career-shaping diagram drawn in a margin of the Nietzsche anthology given him by John Quinn 68, 102
Zarathustrian tragic joy in ‘Lapis Lazuli’ 95
as city of myth and imagination in Yeats’s ‘Fragments’ 64–66
occultism 3–5, 9, 11, 13–15, 18, 20, 23–24, 29, 31, 33, 35, 42, 53, 56, 58–60, 64–67, 69, 79, 82, 87, 119, 121, 127, 129, 131, 139, 163, 165, 179, 194–196
and mediumship and séances 30, 32, 35, 64–65, 82
as altered and eroticized in Yeats’s poetry 3, 15, 23, 66, 82, 87, 195, 253
Yeats’s immersion in 3–4, 13–15, 18, 24, 27–28, 31, 33, 35, 42, 66, 79, 82, 87, 119, 121, 139, 165, 195
Yeats’s mixture of credulity and skepticism 28, 30
as Yeats’s antithesis to Christ 92
Yeats’s translations of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus 3, 92, 221
O’Leary, John 27, 64, 66, 126, 131
expedites Maud Gonne’s meeting with Yeats 126
venerable old Fenian who writes to Yeats about his father’s displeasure with his son’s occult pursuits 27
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) 3, 11, 23, 61, 105, 113, 117–118, 120–124, 151, 154–155, 158–160, 176–177, 195, 213
creator of first enduring (and endlessly imitated) collection of spiritual-erotic love poems in European literature 23, 113
Yeats as a poet consciously writing in the Petrarchan tradition of obsessive and unrequited love 10–11, 23, 113, 117, 121, 123, 158
Plato 18, 21, 26–27, 30, 41, 43, 46, 52, 68, 80–81, 83–84, 89, 91, 97–100, 102, 114, 118, 120, 122, 154, 188, 191, 199, 203
an agon Yeats inherited from Nietzsche 43, 99
as the primary figure in Yeats’s debate with antithetical Homer 41, 68, 100, 103
as the supreme idealist in ‘Among School Children,’ the philosopher who ‘thought nature but a spume that plays/ Upon a ghostly paradigm of things 98
‘Plato’s ghost’ as the spiritual spokesman and antagonist in Yeats’s ‘What Then?’ 98
Yeats’s defiance of in ‘The Tower’ 21, 41
Plotinus 9, 18, 21, 27, 41, 52, 70–71, 86–87, 89, 91–92, 186–187, 228
‘Plotinus’ thought’ mocked in ‘The Tower’ 21, 41
sexualized in ‘News for the Delphic Oracle’ 91
the principal Neoplatonist, both revered and resisted by Yeats 21, 27, 41, 86, 89, 186
Yeats influenced throughout his work and thought by Plotinus’ vision 27, 70–71, 86, 91, 186
Pope, Alexander 8, 49, 64–65, 142, 203–204
contrasted by Yeats to Wordsworth 64
in connection with Yeats’s ‘Fragments’ 65
intended epitaph for Isaac Newton 65
Pope’s heavens bespangled with ‘disheveled’ light at the end of The Rape of the Lock a source for Yeats’s ‘all disheveled wandering stars’ at the end of ‘Who Goes with Fergus? 48–49, 142
The Rape’s ‘toyshop-of-the-heart’ image altered by Yeats in ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion,’ becoming the ‘foul rag and bone shop of the heart’ 203
report on Plotinus altered by Yeats in ‘The Delphic Oracle upon Plotinus’ and ‘News for the Delphic Oracle’ 91
Pound, Ezra 16, 28, 139, 146, 170, 176, 200
helps Yeats revise ‘From the Antigone’ 200
his description, in Canto II, of Helen of Troy (adapted from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon) 176, 200
on Yeats’s shift from the ‘sweet’ to the ‘grand style’ in ‘No Second Troy’ 170
primary. See antithetical-primary distinction
primary-secondary distinction. See Locke, John
Quinn, John 68, 95, 134, 157, 215, 217
as attorney 134
major patron of modernist artists 68, 95, 157
his sonnet 151
on Yeats’s ‘The People’ 225
Russell, George (AE) 28, 30, 77, 131
a ‘saint’ to Yeats’s ‘poet,’ according to Mrs. Yeats 77
his response to Yeats’s ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’ 77
repeated to Maud Gonne the myth that a dead child might be reborn 131
Shakespeare, William 53, 56, 61, 93–94, 114, 124, 154, 158–159, 191, 210, 213, 228–229
echoes of Sonnet 53, and of Hamlet and Lear in Yeats’s ‘A Bronze Head’ 191–192
echoes of Sonnet 116 in ‘The Folly of Being Comforted’ 154
Shakespear, Olivia 3–4, 43, 86, 89, 129, 145, 194–196
addressed in Yeats’s ‘After Long Silence’ 195
Yeats’s first sexual partner and lifelong friend, recipient of many of his most intimate letters 3, 43, 86, 89, 129, 145, 194–195
attracted to Florence Farr 129
on Maud Gonne’s beauty 129
Shelley, Percy Bysshe 16, 19–20, 26, 37, 67, 83, 96, 100, 189
influence of Alastor on Yeats’s quest-poems 37
influence of Shelley’s final fragmentary masterpiece, The Triumph of Life, on both Yeats and T. S. Eliot 16, 19–20
Sidney, Sir Philip 124, 158–160
model for Robert Gregory in Yeats’s Gregory elegy 158
opening poem of his sonnet-sequence Astrophil and Stella in connection with Yeats’s ‘Adam’s Curse’ 124, 159–160
contrasted by Yeats to Homer 68
‘From Oedipus at Colonus’ and ‘From the Antigone,’ final poems, respectively, to ‘A Man Young and Old’ and ‘A Woman Young and Old’ 109, 200, 221
Oedipus plays translated by Yeats 3, 92, 221
Sturm, Frank Pearce 69
introduces Yeats to Macrobius’ Commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio 69
Swedenborg, Emanuel 17, 69, 87, 92, 171, 186–187, 253
and the incandescent sexual intercourse of angels, an image that haunts Blake and Yeats 17, 87, 92, 171, 187, 253
Swift, Jonathan 16, 65, 84, 202
as ghost in Yeats’s séance-play, The Words upon the Window-pane 16, 65
imagery from his ‘A Description of a City Shower’ echoed in Yeats’s ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’ 202
Synge, John Millington 161
death of 161
Szymborska, Wislawa 60
1996 Nobel Laureate on a poet’s need to admit ‘I don’t know’ 60
connection with the questionable finale of ‘The Second Coming’ 60
Teeling, Charles MacCarthy 131–132
morally attacks Maud Gonne 131
physically attacks John O’Leary 131
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 37, 156
Yeats influenced by his ‘Ulysses’ and the Romantic quest-tradition 37
Unity of Being 4, 7, 9, 22, 26, 76, 81, 199
Yeats’s conception of body and spirit in a state of ultimate union 26, 69, 82
Vendler, Helen xi–xii, 54, 56, 148, 167–168
on Yeats’s ‘A Prayer for my Daughter’ 148
on Yeats’s ‘Byzantium’ 54
on Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ 56
on Yeats’s ‘Words’ 167
von Hügel, Baron Friedrich 42–43
Catholic mystical philosopher who plays a role in Yeats’s ‘Vacillation,’ and in T. S. Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ 42–43
on politics in art 216
Winters, Yvor 146
critical of supposed excess emotion in Yeats’s ‘Friends’ 146
Wordsworth, William 7–8, 27, 45, 64, 67, 125, 180, 213–214, 216, 229
contrasted by Yeats to Pope 64
on ‘spontaneous wisdom’ as opposed to book-knowledge 7–8
the Intimations ode and The Excursion in connection with ‘Man and the Echo’ 213–214
Yeats, Anne 107–109, 147–148, 150
in ‘A Prayer for my Daughter’ 107–108
Yeats, George, Mrs. W. B. 4, 6, 13–15, 33, 77, 81, 92, 97, 108, 121–122, 149, 161, 181, 187, 194–197, 207
and Yeats’s ‘Under Saturn’ and ‘An Image from a Past Life’ 196
as the ‘gift’ in Yeats’s long narrative poem, ‘The Gift of Harun al-Rashid’ 196
automatic writing and her collaboration on Yeats’s A Vision 4, 13–14, 33–34, 197
Yeats, John Butler 25, 27, 126, 129, 177, 181, 183
1889 visit to whom by Maud Gonne was really an excuse to meet his son 121, 126, 129, 181
his agnostic skepticism resisted by Yeats 25, 27
Yeats, William Butler xi–xii, 1, 3–20, 22–35, 37–47, 51–77, 79–84, 86–101, 103, 105, 107–109, 111–132, 134–137, 139–157, 159–163, 165–168, 170–185, 187–189, 191–204, 206–207, 209–226, 228, 253–255
plays
The Player Queen 174