The Spectator, October 4th, 2003
Slogging to Byzantium Clive James W. B. YEATS: A LIFE: THE ARCH-POET, 1915-1939 by R. F. Foster Oxford University Press, L30, pp. 832, ISBN 0198184654
Yeats was a great poet who was also the industrious adept of a batso mystical philosophy. Do we have to absorb the philosophy before we can appreciate the poetry? If we are lucky enough to be in a state of ignorance, the question won't come up. The poetry will get to us first. Suppose you've heard this much: that Yeats's best stuff came late. So you pick up the 1950 edition of the Collected Poems and start from the back. The last few lines in t...
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