Thursday, January 29, 2009

William Butler Yeats


Yesterday was the seventieth anniversary of the death of W.B. Yeats at Roquebrune on the French Riveria and the event was marked by commemorations and newspaper articles.

The Irish times today has an article on a commemoration in Sligo which included the launch by Seamus Heaney of a Yeats' Tourist Trail.

In yesterday's Irish Times Eileen Battersby wrote a comprehensive article on Yeats' position in the literature of the twentieth century entitled The road to immortality. "In life he was famous. In death he has become immortal, a national poet, an eccentric seer, whose love of country never deflected his rise as an international artist."

In the same newspaper An Irishman's Diary deal with the reporting of his death, the political situation in Europe at the time and the rumours that his body was buried in a paupers' plot
in France and that the wrong body was taken to Sligo after the war.

An article in the Guardian some time ago dealt with the same rumours.

Many of the articles quote from W H Auden's poem In Memory of W. B. Yeats. Read the full poem on the Poets.org website here.

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