William Butler Yeats – författare

Flamman och Skuggan innehåller många av Yeats mest trollbindande och förtätade berättelser, fångade i ett visionärt språk med rötter i den irländska berättartraditionen. Berättelserna pendlar mellan mörka skildringar av den stundande apokalypsen och drömska sagor som strömmar ur hjärtat av den keltiska folktron. ”Sann konst är flammorna från den yttersta dagen som för varje människa börjar när hon för första gången blir berörd av skönheten, och flammorna kommer att bränna alla ting till dess att de blir oändliga och heliga.” – W B Yeats Flamman och Skuggan är ett fylligt urval av Yeats prosa, där förordet, kronologin och den omfattande notapparaten åskådliggör hur grunderna till Yeats tankevärld tonar fram.

Jägardockan och harpspelaren stirrade med tomma ögon och fäktade runt med sina små händer. En hemsk, knarrande stämma: "Dumma stackare, enfaldiga varelser! Föraktade oss -- nu kan ni sitta där utan leksaker!" Förskräckta rusade barnen därifrån under regnet som strömmade ner, åskknallarna och stormen. Men knappt hade de kommit till den stora dammen, förrän flickans docka reste sig ur vassen och kväkte med förfärlig stämma: ?Dumma stackare, enfaldiga varelser -- nu kan ni sitta där utan leksaker! Vänta bara, vi är magister Tintes lydiga tjänare!? Felix stod inte ut med de förfärliga spökerierna, och arma Christlieb var halvdöd. Då summade och brusade det bakom dem. "Magister Tinte kommer!" skrek Felix Nio fantasifulla, mörka och bitterljuva noveller från gränslandet mellan konstsaga och fantasy. "Som helhet är Främmande folk och förtrollade skogar en njutbart fascinerande läsning som dessutom presenterar och ger utrymme åt den litteratur som genremässigt varken är saga, fantasy eller skräckberättelse utan befinner sig någonstans däremellan." -- Albin Eklund Djurberg i BTJ:s häfte 14106278.

It is harsh exercise to put into cold print and to bare all the faults of such subjective things as letters written ‘in great haste’ in the middle of a busy active life, and it requires the kindness and tolerance of the reader. Nuances in the handwriting, or insertion of omitted words and afterthoughts, or positioning of postscripts, are all lost in printing; while irregularities in spelling, punctuation, abbreviations and repetitious phrases are exaggerated. The few of Yeat’s letters to Maud Gonne that have survived were scattered through old bundles of correspondence. The only two kept particularly safe were together in an envelope, one marked ‘last letter from W. B. Y.’ which was written on 16 June 1938 from Steyning, Sussex, and the other a letter concerning the death of William Sharp which he had asked her to keep safely and which she must have put in a separate place, and so it survived. The letters he received from her before her marriage of 10 and 24 February 1903, had been very crumpled as if carried around in his pocket and reread many times, then smoothed out to be put away with the others.

"Criticism" includes twenty-four interpretive essays by T. S. Eliot, Daniel Albright, Douglas Archibald, Harold Bloom, George Bornstein, Elizabeth Cullingford, Paul de Man, Richard Ellman, R. F. Foster, Stephen Gwynn, Seamus Heaney, Marjorie Howes, John Kelly, Declan Kiberd, Lucy McDiarmid, Michael North, Thomas Parkinson, Marjorie Perloff, James Pethica, Jahan Ramazani, Ronald Schuchard, Michael J. Sidnell, Anita Sokolsky, and Helen Vendler.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are included.

"Even a newspaper man, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for every one is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celts is a visionary without scratching." — from the Introduction In this charming collection, readers will find themselves transported to the shadowy, twilit world of Celtic myth and legend — where the deenee shee (fairy people) work their mischief, where priests and the devil wage an endless struggle for the souls of humankind, where clever wives outwit murderous giants and druids cast geise (spells). The majority of the tales presented here were collected in the nineteenth century by such folklorists as William Allingham, T. Crofton Croker, Douglas Hyde, and Lady Wilde (Oscar Wilde's mother). From this rich legacy, William Butler Yeats, who drew upon Irish fairy lore for his own poetry and plays, chose an especially interesting and representative selection: "The White Trout; A Legend of Cong," "The Brewery of Egg-shells," "The Soul Cages," "The Kildare Pooka," "The Black Lamb," "The Horned Women," "The Phantom Isle," "King O'Toole and his Goose," "The Demon Cat," "The Giant's Stairs," "The Twelve Wild Geese," and many more — 64 in all. Now lovers of myth and legend can immerse themselves in this treasury of time-honored tales brimming with the warmth, charm, and age-old peasant lore of rural Ireland. An Introduction and Notes by W. B. Yeats help elucidate the background of the stories and their meaning and role in Irish life and culture. Reprint of the Walter Scott, London, 1888 edition.

Sword Against the Sea is an adaptation of William Butler Yeats' six one-act plays and some of his most stirring poems about the Celtic hero Cuchulain. Arranged in the chronological order of Cuchulain's life and drawing exclusively on Yeats' own magnificent poetry this two-act play presents the hero's failed attempt as a young man to achieve eternal life at the Hawk's Well; his tragic slaying of his own son and the realization that drives him in despair to fight the sea; his wife Emer's noble sacrifice to save his life by renouncing her love; and Cuchulain's death and spiritual transcendence as an aged warrior. Like the original Yeats' Cuchulain plays themselves this adaptation calls for collaborations among different kinds of artists in the creation of masks the use of dance and the possibility of including instrumental and sung music. These Cuchulain plays and poems are compressed simplified and reshaped for a rich uplifting evening of theater.