威廉·巴特勒·叶芝传记

诗人的传记

威廉·巴特勒·叶芝(1865-1939)，爱尔兰诗人、剧作家和散文作家，20世纪最伟大的英语诗人之一。叶芝于1923年获得诺贝尔文学奖。威廉·巴特勒·叶芝1865年6月13日出生在都柏林。他的父亲是一名律师，后来成为拉斐尔前派画家。1867年，全家随他来到伦敦，在贝德福德公园定居下来。1881年，他们回到都柏林，叶芝在那里的大都会艺术学院学习。转世、与死者的交流、灵媒、超自然系统和东方神秘主义贯穿了叶芝的一生。1886年，叶芝成立了赫尔墨斯协会的都柏林分会。1885年，叶芝在《都柏林大学评论》(The Dublin University Review)上发表了他的第一首诗，开始了他的作家生涯。1887年，叶芝一家回到贝德福德公园，叶芝全身心地投入到写作中。 He visited Mme Blavatsky, the famous occultist, and joined the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society, but was later asked to resign. In 1889 Yeats met his great love, Maud Gonne (1866-1953), an actress and Irish revolutionary who became a major landmark in his life and imagination. However, she married in 1903 Major John MacBride, and this episode inspired Yeats's poem "No Second Troy". Yeats was interested in folktales as a part of an exploration of national heritage and for the revival of Celtic identity. His study with George Russell and Douglas Hyde of Irish legends and tales was published in 1888 under the title Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. Yeats assembled for children a less detailed version, Irish Fairy Tales, which appeared in 1892. The Wanderings Of Oisin And Other Poems (1889), took its subject from Irish mythology. In 1896 Yeats returned to live permanently in his home country. He reformed the Irish Literary Society, and then the National Literary Society in Dublin, which aimed to promote the New Irish Library. In 1897 he met Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, with whom he founded the Irish Literary Theatre. Yeats worked as a director of the theatre to the end of his life, writing several plays for it. His most famous dramas were Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902) and The Land Of Heart's Desire (1894). In early 1917 Yeats bought Thoor Ballyle, a derelict Norman stone tower near Coole Park. After restoring it, the tower became his summer home and a central symbol in his later poetry. In 1917 he married Georgie Hyde-Lee. During their honeymoon Yeats's wife demonstrated her gift for automatic writing. Their collaborative notebooks formed the basis of A Vision (1925), a book of marriage therapy spiced with occultism. In 1932 Yeats founded the Irish Academy of Letters and in 1933 he was briefly involved with the fascist Blueshirts in Dublin. In his final years Yeats worked on the last version of A Vision, which attempted to present a theory of the variation of human personality, and published The Oxford Book Of Verse (1936) and New Poems (1938). Yeats died on January 28, 1939 at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France.