The Poet As Politician - new biography of W.B. Yeats examines broader context of poet's life - Critical Essay

Reason, Feb, 2001 by Michael Valdez Moses

For Brown, Yeats' poetic imagination was fueled by two countervailing psychic forces: a passion for drama, conflict, and heroic resistance on the one hand, and a profound fear of disorder and the breakdown of civility and custom on the other. Brown thus characterizes Yeats' peculiar crisscrossing of the political terrain of the '20s and '30s as an instance of his "instinctive libertarianism" at war with his "rage for order."

But it's also possible that Yeats' growing interest in fascist politics and eugenics in the 1930s stemmed not so much from an internal division in his character as from the external political developments of the day. Yeats seems to have become disillusioned by what he understood to be the increasing divergence of liberal and democratic principles in Irish political life.

While Brown suggests that Yeats was relatively untroubled by Eamon de Valera's election as prime minister in 1932, I would argue that the poet interpreted de Valera's victory as a sign that Ireland was on the road to an illiberal, albeit democratic, future. Offering a populist and nationalist vision of a rural, Catholic, and Gaelic Ireland, de Valera pursued a policy of cultural and economic protectionism that deepened the Irish economic malaise of the 1930s. As government interference with markets and morals increased, and economic and personal freedoms came under assault, emigration rose at an alarming rate. Though he never expatriated himself, as did such other writers as Joyce, Beckett, and O'Casey, Yeats in his later years spent much of his time nursing body and spirit beyond the confines of his native land.

Even in the late '20s, well before de Valera's election, there were unmistakable signs that a resurgent Catholic majority was prepared to curtail liberties that had been long granted to the Irish population. In 1923 the Irish Parliament passed the Censorship of Films Act, which stipulated that no film could be shown in Ireland without first having obtained a certificate of approval from an official government film censor. Five years later, just as Yeats was retiring from the Senate, a critical and far-reaching Censorship of Publications Act was brought before the Irish Parliament. The bill, which became law in 1929, empowered the Irish government to examine and approve all books and periodicals published or sold in Ireland.

The law granted the government explicit authority to censor materials deemed to be "indecent," which was construed as "calculated to excite sexual passions or to suggest or incite to sexual immorality or in any other way to corrupt or deprave." Even if a work was not judged indecent, it could be banned if it were found to "be injurious or detrimental to or subversive of public morality." Provisions of the act effectively outlawed the advertisement of all forms of birth control. Assisted by the efforts of zealous customs officials, the Censorship Board banned or censored some 1,200 books and 140 periodicals in the 1930s alone. Those in violation of the law were subject to severe penalties, including fines, seizure of property, and imprisonment.