Ideas of Good and EvilYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
Philosophy
Ideas of Good and Evil
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
Essays
If our craftsmen were to choose their subjects under what we may call, if
we understand faith to mean that belief in a spiritual life which is not
confined to one Church, the persuasion of their faith and their country,
they would soon discover that although their choice seemed arbitrary at
first, it had obeyed what was deepest in them. I could not now write of
any other country but Ireland, for my style has been shaped by the
subjects I have worked on, but there was a time when my imagination seemed
unwilling, when I found myself writing of some Irish event in words that
would have better fitted some Italian or Eastern event, for my style had
been shaped in that general stream of European literature which has come
from so many watersheds, and it was slowly, very slowly, that I made a new
style. It was years before I could rid myself of Shelley's Italian light,
but now I think my style is myself. I might have found more of Ireland if
I had written in Irish, but I have found a little, and I have found all
myself. I am persuaded that if the Irishmen who are painting conventional
pictures or writing conventional books on alien subjects, which have been
worn away like pebbles on the shore, would do the same, they, too, might
find themselves. Even the landscape-painter, who paints a place that he
loves, and that no other man has painted, soon discovers that no style
learned in the studios is wholly fitted to his purpose. And I cannot but
believe that if our painters of Highland cattle and moss-covered barns
were to care enough for their country to care for what makes it different
from other countries, they would discover, when struggling, it may be, to
paint the exact grey of the bare Burren Hills, and of a sudden it may be,
a new style, their very selves. And I admit, though in this I am moved by
some touch of fanaticism, that even when I see an old subject written of
or painted in a new way, I am yet jealous for Cuchulain, and for Baile,
and Aillinn, and for those grey mountains that still are lacking their
celebration. I sometimes reproach myself because I cannot admire Mr.
Hughes' beautiful, piteous _Orpheus and Eurydice_ with an unquestioning
mind. I say with my lips, 'The Spirit made it, for it is beautiful, and
the Spirit bloweth where it listeth,' but I say in my heart, 'Aengus and
Etain would have served his turn;' but one cannot, perhaps, love or
believe at all if one does not love or believe a little too much.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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