W. B. Yeats Views on the Language Question

W. B. Yeats: Boston Pilot (1890)
‘Whenever an Irish writer has strayed away from Irish themes and Irish feelings, in almost all cases he has done no more than make alms for oblivion. There is no great literature without nationality, and no great nationality without literature.’

(Remarks from ‘Browning’ [a review], in Boston Pilot, 22 Feb. 1890; rep. in Letters to the New Island, NY 1934, pp.103-04; also in John Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose, 1970, Vol. I, p.104.)

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W. B. Yeats, Letter to United Ireland (1892)
‘Can we not build up a national tradition, a national literature, which shall be none the less Irish for in spirit for being English in Language? Can we not keep the continuity of the nation’s life not be doing what Dr. Hyde has practically pronounced impossible [i.e., reviving the Irish language] but by translating or re-telling in English, which shall have an indefinable Irish quality of rhythm and style, all that is best of the ancient literature.’

(Letter to United Ireland, 17 Dec. 1892; rep. in John P. Frayne, Uncollected Prose, Vol. I, 1970, p.57; in answer to Douglas Hyde’s call for the ‘de-anglicisation of Ireland’ - i.e., the full revival of the Irish language.)

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W. B. Yeats, ‘Hopes and Fears for Irish Literature’ (1892)
‘[L]iterature must be the expression of a conviction, and be the garment of noble emotion, and not an end in itself.’ (‘Hopes and Fears for Irish Literature’, in United Irishman, 15 Oct. 1892; rep. in John Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose, 1970, Vol. I.)

‘Here in Ireland [...w]e are living in a young age, full of hope and promise - a young age which has only just begun to make its literature. [...] We have the limitations of dawn. They [the English and French] have the limitations of sunset [...] Can we but learn a little of their skill, and a little of their devotion to form, a little of their hatred of the commonplace and banal, we may make all these restless energies of ours alike the inspiration and the theme of a new and wonderful literature.’ (‘Hopes and Fears for Irish Literature’, [1892], in Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose, 1970, Vol. I.)

[Cf., ‘England is old and her poets must scrape up the crumbs of an almost finished banquet, but Ireland has still full tables.’ (Boston Pilot, 23 April 1892; Frayne, op. cit.)]

‘I well remembered the irritated silence that fell upon a noted gathering of the younger English imaginative writers once, when I tried to explain a philosophy of poetry in which I was profoundly interested, and to show the dependence, as I conceived it, of all great art and literature upon conviction and upon heroic life.’ (‘Hopes and Fears for Irish Literature’, [1892], in Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose, 1970, Vol. I.)

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W. B. Yeats, ‘Nationality and Literature’ (1893)
‘There is a distinct school of Irish literature, which we must foster and protect, and its foundation is sunk in the legend lore of the people and in the National history. The literature of Greece and India [273] had just such a foundation, and as we, like the Greeks and the Indians, are an idealistic people, this foundation is fixed in legend rather than in history.

We must not imitate the writers of any other country, we must study them constantly and learn from them the secret of their greatness. Only by the study of great models can we acquire style, and this, St. Beuf [sic] says, is the only thing in literature which is immortal. [...]’

(‘Nationality and Literature’, a lecture of 19 May; reported in United Ireland, 27 May, 1893; rep. in Frayne, ed., Uncollected Prose, 1970, Vol. I.)

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W. B. Yeats: General Introduction for My Work (1937)
‘[...] I am no Nationalist, except in Ireland for passing reasons; State and Nation are the work of the intellect, and when you consider what comes before and after them they are, as Victor Hugo said of something or other, not worth the blade of grass God gives for the nest of the linnet.’

(Unpubl.; rep. in Essays and Introductions, p.526 [end]; quoted by Herbert Read, in ‘What Yeats Believed’, review of Essays and Introductions, Listener, 9 March, 1961.)