Nobel Prize winner

Yeats’ Day

Yeats country – Benbulben and Classiebawn Castle (above). Finola took this fine view seven years ago, when we set out to visit the haunts of William Butler Yeats. We have to turn to Yeats now, as it’s exactly one hundred years since he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature – in December, 1923. I have carried a place in my heart for Yeats, ever since I was at Primary School on the Hampshire/Surrey borders, not far from Thomas Hardy’s Wessex. Yeats and Hardy were rivals for the coveted award – the final vote in 1923 was between the two of them: in the end, only two Nobel committee members voted for Hardy, and Yeats achieved the prize. The Guardian newspaper said that “…Mr Yeats is to be congratulated, almost without reserve, on lifting this substantial stake. He is a poet of real greatness; prose, too, he can write like an angel…”, however then arguing that Thomas Hardy would have been a worthier recipient of the award!

The Irish press congratulates Yeats on his achievement (above – Irish Independent 29.11.1923). My schoolboy encounter with the poet must have been when I was around ten years old and we were tasked to learn The Lake Isle of Inisfree. I can still recite it, word for word, to this day, sixty seven years later. But it was far more than mere words for me, then. Our teacher – Mr Sharpe – was careful to explain that this man was cooped up in the city of London – on its “pavements grey” and was yearning for the countryside he loved:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Inisfree serves the poet’s romantic dreams of a remote idyllic landscape far away from the noisy metropolis. It does exist as a place – on Lough Gill in Co Sligo: Yeats spent childhood summers nearby. Interestingly, I searched the internet for pics of the island, and the above came up. It’s from a Roaringwater Journal Post which I wrote in 2016. And it’s not Inisfree, but another ‘lake island’ – just outside Skibbereen, in West Cork – Cloghan Castle Island on Lough Hyne: there’s a holy well nearby, and an 8th century church dedicated to St Brigid – but all that is another story. The diversion just serves to warn against trusting what you find online!

Thoor Ballylee Tower, Co Galway (above) – this 14th century tower house was described by Seamus Heaney, another Irish Nobel Literature prize winner, as The most important building in Ireland, because of its associations with Yeats, who spent many summers there with his family.

Here is the finely crafted cover of The Tower: a book of poems by W B Yeats, published in 1928 (courtesy Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society). The Tower was Yeats’s first major collection as Nobel Laureate after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1923. It is considered to be one of the poet’s most influential volumes and was well received by the public. (Below) a 1917 drawing by Robert Gregory – son of Isabella Augusta (Lady) Gregory and Sir William Gregory of Coole Park, Co Galway – of The Tower (courtesy Yeats Thoor Ballylee Society).

Going back to my early school years: I was an incurable romantic, and a daydreamer. I paid enough attention to lessons to get by, but my heart lay outside the school gates. Just minutes away were hop-fields and, beyond those, pastures, woodlands, streams – idyllic places where I loved to wander. I could completely relate to Yeat’s desire to be far away from the city, and that’s why his poem appealed to me. I knew very little about Ireland, and had no idea that was where I would one day make my home. I am here now, sitting at my desk, with the hills and oceans of Yeats’ own country beyond.

W B Yeats and his wife George Hyde-Lees heard the news that the Nobel Prize had been awarded to him on 14 November, 1923. The photograph above (courtesy Irish Independent) is said to be taken on that day. It’s also said that they celebrated by cooking sausages! The Irish Independent records: “Irish poet and senator, William Butler Yeats created history when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Irish citizen to achieve such an accolade. The prize was awarded to Yeats ‘for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation’.”

Somewhat surprised by the award, Yeats would later write in his (unpublished) autobiography: “Early in November (1923) a journalist called to show me a printed paragraph saying that the Nobel Prize would probably be conferred upon Herr Mann, the distinguished novelist, or upon myself, I did not know that the Swedish Academy had ever heard my name.” The news of the award was widely praised in Ireland with members of Dáil Éireann proudly announcing that it had placed Ireland on the international stage. It was a sentiment reiterated by the laureate himself, who at the awards ceremony claimed that the Nobel Prize was less for himself than for his country and called it Europe’s welcome to the Free State. In his presentation speech, Per Hallstrom, then chairman of the academy’s Nobel Committee, praised the poet’s ability to ‘follow the spirit that early appointed him the interpreter of his country, a country that had long waited for someone to bestow on it a voice’.

A portrait of Yeats painted by Augustus John OM RA in 1930 (courtesy Sothebys – private collection). Before Yeats passed away he requested that his final resting place be in Sligo. He died in Menton, France in 1939 aged 73 and was buried there. His wish was fulfilled in 1948 when his body was exhumed and buried in St Columba’s Church, Drumcliff. His headstone reads:

On the Passing of Poets

Ireland: ‘land of Saints and Scholars’ – and poetry, as we found on our travels. In just a few days we have discovered how three pre-eminent Irish poets – whose passing has spanned a century – are being celebrated and commemorated in their own townlands.

Bellaghy, County Londonderry, in Northern Ireland was the childhood home of Seamus Heaney  who was born at nearby Mossbawn on 13 April 1939, the eldest of nine children. Heaney passed away on 30 August 2013 and, in accordance with his own wishes, he is buried in the Cemetery of St Mary’s Church, Bellaghy. A Book of Remembrance is kept in the church, and on his headstone is a line: Walk on air against your better judgement, from one of his poems – The Gravel Walks.

Exactly a year ago – October 2016 – a new building was opened to commemorate Heaney, the Nobel Prize winner, who has been described as ‘…the most important Irish poet since Yeats…’, ‘…the greatest poet of our age…’ and ‘…probably the best-known poet in the world…’ The quality of the HomePlace centre reflects this reputation and provides excellent facilities for the sheer exploration of words as well as performance, lectures and research.

This year sees the 50th anniversary of the death of another of Ireland’s country-born poets: Patrick Kavanagh. We visited Inniskeen, County Monaghan, to search out the old St Mary’s Church, which has been transformed to a Centre – open to the public – which displays information on the poet born and raised on a nearby farm in 1904, the fourth of ten children. The Centre also carries out research into the poet’s life and work, and organises an annual event to celebrate him. I am grateful to the staff of the Centre for allowing me to photograph the interior of the former church.

Appropriately, the grave of the poet can be found in the churchyard. Strangely, an elegant memorial to the poet and his wife (below left) vanished in 1989 and was replaced with a simple wooden cross (below right), said to have been carved by his brother, Peter. I could not get to the bottom of this matter: there are various reports to be found on the internet, including this one from RTE.

Like Heaney, Kavanagh’s strong influences came from his rural background. Some of his best-loved works portray country life, but without sentimentality. He remained on the farm in Monaghan until 1931, when he walked the 80 kilometres to Dublin. At first rejected by the literary establishment, his work eventually received appreciation. Seamus Heaney acknowledged that he had been influenced by Kavanagh.

When Kavanagh died on 30 November 1967, at the age of 62, he was recognised as …Ireland’s leading poet in English…

For our third commemoration we travelled to Slane, County Meath, to find the Francis Ledwidge Museum. This poet died exactly a hundred years ago, a victim of the Great War.

The Museum has been created in the cottage where Francis was born on 19 August 1887, the eighth of nine children. Again, he came from a rural background. His father died when he was only five, and he spent much of his life as farm hand, road builder, and copper miner. He was an active campaigner for better working conditions, became an early Trade Unionist, and attempted to organise strikes.

The Ledwidge cottage in Janeville, Slane, around the end of the nineteenth century (top), and the cottage – now the Francis Ledwidge Museum – today (lower)

Francis had written poetry all his life, and some was published in local newspapers when he was 14 years old. He attracted the patronage of Lord Dunsany, who introduced him to W B Yeats. Like many other artists, writers and poets, Ledwidge’s life was tragically cut short by the war. In the Third Battle of Ypres he and five companions were hit by an exploding shell. Father Devas, a Chaplain who was a family friend, recorded ‘…Ledwidge killed, blown to bits…’ A memorial was raised to him on the place of his death in Belgium, and a replica of this memorial can be found in the garden of the Janeville cottage.

Seamus Heaney also acknowledged Ledwidge as one of his influences

During our travels we have seen that poets in Ireland have respected the work of their compatriots. Wordsmithing is a time-honoured profession: there’s a common thread running from the Bards of old, who carried traditions, myths and genealogies through generations and over centuries.

Below – a portrait of Seamus Heaney by the Welsh artist Jeffrey Morgan hangs in the HomePlace Centre, Bellaghy