Yeats and Gonne: The Emotional Defeat

Abstract

William Butler Yeats had love relationships with many women throughout his career; however, few significantly influenced his work. Maud Gonne and her predecessor, Laura Armstrong, played the roles of actress and Muse simultaneously. Armstrong influenced Yeats's drama, while Gonne influenced his drama and poetry. Both women were promoted as "myth" and "symbol," but Gonne, seen as the last symbol of a woman, simply overwhelmed his mythology and symbolism. As a nationalist figure, Gonne was more appropriate as someone who would represent comprehensive symbols of a Goddess, Ireland, and the female stereotype of "Eternal Beauty." Some of Yeats's poetry suggests a notion of political defeat influenced by the long history of tragedies in Ireland, and this sad taint seems to have linked to his relationship with Gonne to become a kind of emotional defeat. This paper explores this theme in Yeats' poetry, especially that found in certain of his unpublished poems, namely "To a Sister of the Cross and the Rose," "A Dream of a Life Before This One," and certain published poems: "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," "He Wished His Beloved were Dead," "A Dream of Death," "The Secret Rose," "The Withering of the Boughs," "The Lover Mourns for the Loss of Love," "He Remembers Forgotten Beauty," and "The Rose of Battle."