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Irish Poets of Today And Blake

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Grace Jameson
Grace Jameson*
Affiliation:
Tarkio College
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Extract

There is a belief current among Irish people but not accepted by critics that William Blake was of immediate Irish descent. This belief may explain the special appeal of Blake to Irishmen. A more probable explanation of Blake's appeal to the Irish lies in the interest of Irish people in symbolic and philosophical writing. In any event both George William Russell, or A E as he was known, and William Butler Yeats discovered in Blake a kindred spirit.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 1938, pp. 575 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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References

1 Unpublished letter from A E to Grace Jameson.

2 The Interpreters (New York, 1923), p. 128. The Blake quotation occurs in Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. by Geoffrey Keynes (Bloomsbury, 1927, one volume edition), p. 77. Unless otherwise stated I shall use this edition of Blake's works.

3 The Irish Statesman, xi (November 10, 1928), 198.

4 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 73.

5 The Irish Statesman, xi (March 2, 1929), 516.

6 The National Being (New York, 1930), p. 129. The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 203.

7 The Irish Statesmen, ix (January 21, 1928), 465.

8 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 192.

9 The Irish Statesman, ix (October 22, 1927), 161.

10 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, pp. 200–201.

11 The Irish Statesman, ix (December 31, 1927), 400–401.

12 The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 199.

13 The Irish Statesman, xi (December 15, 1928), 298.

14 Imaginations and Reveries (Dublin, 1915), p. 98.

15 The Candle of Vision (London, 1919), p. 172.

16 The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 842.

17 The Irish Statesman, xiii (October 5, 1929), 96.

18 Ibid., p. 96.

19 Ibid., v (October 10, 1925), 150.

20 Ibid., xi (February 2, 1929), 439.

21 Ibid., v (January 9, 1926), 564.

22 Ibid., ii (May 17, 1924), 310.

23 The Interpreters, pp. 19–20, also p. 6.

24 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 551, see also p. 198.

25 The Candle of Vision, p. 56; see also pp. 56–65, 75, 103.

26 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 578.

27 W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies (New York, 1927), p. 141.

28 Ibid., p. 199.

29 Yeats, Collected Works in Verse and Prose (Stratford-on-Avon, 1908), i, 92.

30 Ibid., p. 108.

31 Ibid., pp. 103–104.

32 Ibid., v, 151.

33 Autobiographies, p. 194.

34 Poems of William Blake, edited by Yeats, “Modern Library” p. 87 and p. 267, n. Editors and biographers usually speak of Blake's notebook as the MS. book.

35 The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical, Ed. by E. J. Ellis and W. B. Yeats (London, 1893), ii, 224.

36 Ibid., p. 225.

37 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, v, 243. These lines first appeared in “The Vision of O'Sullivan the Red,” The New Review (April, 1896).

38 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 799. See also pp. 780, 783, 792, 802, 807, 837.

39 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, vi, 145.

40 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 100. See p. 99.

41 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, ii, 91–92.

42 Later Poems (New York, 1924), pp. 325–326.

43 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 618. See also p. 765.

44 Dramatis Personae (New York, 1936), pp. 140, 141.

45 Ellis and Yeats's edition of The Works of William Blake, iii, Milton, p. 2.

46 Ibid., ii, 263. The symbolism of the arrows appears also in the Visions of the Daughters of Albion, p. 5.

47 Autobiographies, pp. 457–460.

48 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, i, 66.

49 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 274.

50 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, v, 193.

51 Ellis and Yeats's edition of The Works of William Blake, iii, 72. The explanation of “The Golden Net” offered in ii [Meaning] 29 is brief.

52 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, iii, 209.

53 North American Review, 170 (May, 1900), 726.

54 Ellis and Yeats's edition of The Works of William Blake, ii, 296.

55 Autobiographies, p. 304.

56 Ibid., pp. 304–305.

57 A Vision (London, 1925), pp. 28–29.

58 Elis and Yeats's edition of The Works of William Blake, iii, Vala, p. 1.

59 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 551. In Ellis and Yeats's edition of The Works of William Blake, iii, Jerusalem, p. 3.

60 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, vi, 39. The quotation from Blake may be found in Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 198.

61 Essays (New York, 1924), p. 518. See also p. 532 and Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 58.

62 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, vi, 248. “The Return of Ulysses,” 1896.

63 Ibid., ii, 182.

64 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 765.

65 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, viii, 194.—Original appearance in The Speaker, April 14, 1900 as “The Way of Wisdom.”

66 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, v, 192.—Original appearance in An Claideamh Soluis, July 13, 1901.

67 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 578.

68 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, vi, 46–47.

69 Poetry and Prose of William Blake, p. 550. See also p. 666. For references in Milton see pp. 482, 541; in The Ghost of Abel, p. 771.

70 Collected Works in Verse and Prose, iii, 87.

71 Ibid., vi, 207 (February, 1900.)

72 Ibid., iii, 209.