In the 1940s, Albert Einstein would write… Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. And it was a cold, grey place with little room for the human soul. For just like Blake before him, Yeats saw clearly the ultimate destination of scientific progress without spiritual guidance. More than a century after the birth of Yeats, the words of a song would declare “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot”, echoing a sentiment woven into the fabric of much of the poet’s work. The march of rationalism, for all its many wonders, left them both lamenting the willingness of humanity to trample upon The Sacred in the name of progress. What the two visionaries did share, however, was a deep unease about the profane nature of the world being built around them. And there’s little doubt that much of Yeats’ Greek and Biblical allusions arrived through a Blakean filter. But it is telling that one of Yeats’ early projects was the compilation of the first ever edition of the Complete Works of Blake. Not that one should spend too long seeking similarities between the work of the two men, for their styles are quite different.
Steeped in mythological symbolism - mostly Celtic, but drawing also on the mythpoetry of Greece, Rome and beyond - the spellbinding blend of mysticism, contemporary commentary and Romanticism provided Ireland, and the wider world, with a truly illuminating voice (as well as revealing the debt this Irish poet owed to his English inspiration, William Blake). A man of rare wisdom and questionable judgment, his Nobel Prize-winning poetry graces us with some of the 20th century’s most enduring imagery. Poet and politician, mystic and modernist, revolutionary and traditionalist, WB Yeats lived a life filled with glorious contradiction. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the death and celebrate the life of William Butler Yeats.
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