Original scientific paper
Yeats's Marching Songs
Stipe Grgas
Abstract
The immediate occasion for the present article is Richard Finneran`s exclusion of "Three Songs to the Same Tune" from Yeats's 1935 collection A Full Moon in March in his edition of The Poems of W.B. Yeats (1983). Assuming that this decision was not dictated only by
aesthetic considerations but by a certain political bias, the author briefly delineates Yeats's authoritarian political stance culminating in his short-lived association with the Fascist-inspired Irish Blueshirt party. His reading of the two versions of the "matching songs" pur-
ports to show that the poet's revision of the earlier song does not amount to a disclaimer of an authoritarian vision of man and society but registers the Yeats's disappointment with political activism as such. In conclusion the author voices his disagreement with Finneran's elimination of the earlier, more politically-charged text and warns that totalitarian practice may lurk in unexpected quarters.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
120259
URI
Publication date:
12.5.1998.
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