Blood Kindred: W.B. Yeats: The Life, the Death, the Politics
In June 1934, W. B. Yeats gratefully received the award of a Goethe-Plakette from Oberburgermeister Krebs, four months after his early play The Countess Cathleen had been produced in Frankfurt by SS Untersturmfuhrer Bethge. Four years later, the poet publicly commended Nazi legislation before leaving Dublin to die in southern France. These hitherto neglected, isolated and scandalous details stand at the heart of this reflective study of Yeats's life, his attitudes towards death, and his politics.
Blood Kindred identifies an obsession with family as the link connecting Yeats's late engagement with fascism to his Irish Victorian origins in suburban Dublin and industrializing Ulster. It carefully documents and analyses his involvement with both Maud Gonne and her daughter Iseult, his secretive consultations with Irish army officers during his Senate years, his incidental anti-Semitism, and his approval of the right-wing royalist group L'Action Fran aise in the 1920s. The familiar peaks and troughs of Irish history, such as the 1916 Rising and the death of Parnell, are re-oriented within a radical new interpretation of Yeats's life and thought, his poetry and plays. As far as possible Bill McCormack lets Yeats speak for himself through generous quotation from his newly accessible correspondence. The result is a combative, entertaining biography which allows Ireland's greatest literary figure to be seen in the round for the first time.Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0712665145
ISBN13:9780712665148
Release Date:February 2007
Publisher:Pimlico
Length:482 Pages
Weight:0.55 lbs.
Dimensions:1.0" x 6.0" x 9.2"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
The a-linkening
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
The product of many years of detailed, analytical and painstaking research. Brimming with references and details of the people and events of Yeats life and times. As such it is a great opening for further study into modern Ireland and modern literature. I do think that there are many incidences of repetation and there is definately some scholastic axe grinding going on. On the whole it is a good read and highly recommended. Conflicts raised are necessary and a good reflection on the life of a poet who lived for more than 40 years on the edge of a wave of turbulent changes.
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