Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The 2024 syllabus can be found here. This lecture is about the life and work of W. B. Yeats. I discuss Yeats’s biography as his art goes from late Romanticism to a high modernism amid the turbulence of Ireland’s liberation and under the influence of spiritual forces. Yeats’s controversial political views and his occult philosophies are considered. Then we turn to some of the finest English-language poems of the 20th century. We investigate the pastoral Romantic nationalism of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” the epic-tragic anti-colonialism of the ambivalently elegiac “Easter, 1916,” the mythic and occult significance of the apocalyptic “The Second Coming” and “Leda and the Swan,” the ambiguous spiritual escapism of “Sailing to Byzantium,” the Nietzschean aristocratic tragic heroism of “Lapis Lazuli,” and the earthy farewell to poetry and spiritual transcendence of “The Circus Animals’ Desertion.” Please like, share, comment, subscribe—and please enjoy. The slideshow corresponding to the lecture is below the paywall.
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