LIFE AND WORKS:

He wass born from a family of English origin, son of a painter close to the pre-Raphaelitism (John Butler Yeats) and from a mother who was coming from a family of protestant and unionist shipowners and traders. He spends his childhood between the origin country (He is approached to poetry during the calm summers spent in Sligo, at home of his maternal grandfather, thanks to the readings of a stableman) and London. In 1883 he enters the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin where meets George Russel with which he has in common interest for occultism and mysticism from which he will continue to get deep suggestions for all his life.
When he's only 24 he publishes his first poetry collection, The wonderings of Oisin, 1889, typical example of his first mythicizing and dreaming on topics of Ireland's region. In 1889 begins to work, with the collaboration of Ellis, to a critical edition of Blake's works.
In 1892 founds in Dublin the Irish Literary Society. In England brings himself up to date on decadentism and symbolism, while in Ireland he gets in contact with his own roots. The unrequited and never extinguished love for the actress and Irish patriot Maud Skirts breaks out. In poetry the results are splendid but with few chances to evolve: In The Wind among the reeds, 1899 some lyrics are so delightful but don't preview the extraordinary highness of mature poems.

Thanks to the encounter with the brilliant comedian J.M. Synge and Lady Gregory, Yeats dedicate himself to that Irish popular theatre that preannounce liberation and autonomy for his country. In 1899 He founds the Irish Theatre Company that bring in 1906 to the opening of the Abbey Theatre for which he will be director with Lady Gregory and Synge. Among the dramas worth a mention The Countess Cathleen, 1892, The Land of Heart' s Desire, 1894, Deirdre, 1907. Yeats isn't actively devoted to Irish politics as he was enemy of any kind of violence. The Green Helmet, 1910, Responsabilities, 1914 - turning point from a "private" phase to a "public" one, in which he doesn't refuse the politics anymore - The Wild Swans at Coole, 1919 and Michael Robartes and the dancer, 1921, published in the decade that see his wedding with George Hyde Lees, show the separation from the crepuscular poetry and his evolution towards a marvellous concreteness of language, where he was carried also by the lesson of Ezra Pound, and visionary ability maybe taken from the great example of William Blake.

Between 1915 and 1922 evoke the times of his youth, the summers spent in Sligo, in s series of works then collected in the book Autobiographies, 1926. Inspired by the abilities of his wife's automatic writing, he tries to theorise his personal philosophical thought about the various man's personalities and the masks that he wear in the book A vision, 1925.
Weak in health, he moves to Rapallo (Italy) in 1928. He publishes The tower, 1928 and later The winding stair, 1933, A full moon in March, 1935 and Last poems, 1936-39 where you can find some of his most breathtaking works like the famous "Sailing to Bysanthium". Especially in The Tower's poems, considered the highest point of his production, his ideas are incarnated in images and are carried out in unforgettable rhythms, that let him to be considered as the greatest English lyrist of this century.
Become symbol of Ireland he receives the Nobel prize in 1923 and in 1922 is appointed member of Senate of the new-born Irish Free State.
For his weak constitution he spends his last years in warm countries and dies in the south of France.
The Irish Republic will send a warship to resume the body that now lies, as a will of the poet, in the cemetery of Drumcliff, Sligo, under the Ben Bulben to which he has dedicated one of his last poems and from which are taken the words of his epitaph ("Cast a cold eye, on death on life, horseman passes by").

SUGGESTED WORKS:

Yeats is one of the most important writers of the Emerald Island and is the one more connected to me because thanks to his lyric, to his stories, I have begun to know this wonderful land. Therefore I don't feel myself to advise or not some particular works, even because his production is so varied (poems, autobiography, philosophical essays, plays, has cured the publication of some fairy tales and he has written some) that I think you must look at him in his wholeness. Take a glance to his Bibliography or try to read something in English until finding what fascinates you more.
In Italy there is an album by Angelo Branduardi who has arranged some Yeats' lyrics translated in Italian, worth a deep listening.

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