Yeats and Politics

Abstract

‘W. B. Yeats is known as a literary enthusiast, more or less of a revolutionary, and an associate of Dr Mark Ryan.’ So reads a police report in Dublin Castle dated October 1899.¹ (Dr Ryan was the main organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which could be seen as a continuation of the Fenians of the 1850s and Clan na Gael of the 1880s, and something of a precursor of Sinn Fein, set up in 1905, and the later Irish Republican Army.) In 1936, in a letter to Dorothy Wellesley, Yeats writes: ‘Besides, why should I trouble about communism, fascism, liberalism, radicalism, when all, though some bow first and some stern first but all at the same pace, all are going down stream with the artificial unity which ends every civilization? Only dead sticks can be tied into convenient bundles.’ Is there any consistency in his political stance over the years? Was the police report accurate? Was Yeats in 1936 reliable? After all, most affectionate letters are written with the sentiments of the addressee in mind.