Yeats's Vision Papers and the Problem of Automatic Writing: A Review Essay

George Yeats Automatic Script 5 November 1917 Yeats's Vision Papers and the Problem of Automatic Writing: A Review Essay K. P. S. JOCHUM Universität Bamberg Yeats's "Vision" Papers University of Iowa Press, 1992. George Mills Harper, General Editor. Volume 1. The Automatic Script: 5 November 1917-18 June 1918 xiv + 565pp. $49.00 Volume 2. The Automatic Script: 25 June 1918-29 March 1920 xiii + 596pp. $49.00 Steve L. Adams, Barbara J. Frieling Sandra L. Sprayberry, eds. Volume 3. Sleep and Dream Notebooks, "Vision" Notebooks 1 and 2, Card File xiii + 444pp. $49.00 Robert Anthony Martinich Margaret Mills Harper, eds. IT IS A WELL-DOCUMENTED fact of Yeats's biography that a few days after his marriage on 20 October 1917 he and his wife began a series of sessions of automatic writing. Yeats himself revealed this in the introduction to the second edition of A Vision (1937): On the afternoon of October 24th 1917, four days after my marriage, my wife surprised me by attempting automatic writing. What came in disjointed sentences, in almost illegible writing, was so exciting, sometimes so profound, that I persuaded her to give an hour or two day after day to the unknown writer, and after some half-dozen such hours offered to spend what remained of life explaining and piecing together those scattered sentences. 323 ELT 36:3 1993 He goes on to say that a "system of symbolism, strange to my wife and to myself, certainly awaited expression."1 Later, automatic writing changed to automatic speech which Mrs. Yeats delivered while asleep. The records of these sessions and "sleeps" were preserved in copy-books and are now transcribed and published for the first time in their entirety in the three volumes under review (henceforth referred to as Vision Papers). It is not quite clear why and under which conditions Mrs. Yeats started automatic writing; it is useful, however, to look into this matter in more detail to establish a proper perspective for the Vision Papers. A. N. Jeffares was perhaps the first to suggest in 1949 that she did it to divert her husband, who was apparently under great emotional strain because of his frustrating love affairs with Maud and Iseult Gonne.2 This is borne out in a letter which Yeats wrote to Lady Gregory on 29 October 1917: The last two days Géorgie and I have been very happy.... There has been something very like a miraculous intervention. Two days ago I was in great gloom (of which I hope, and believe, George knew nothing). I was saying to myself "I have betrayed three people;" then I thought "I have lived all through this before." Then George spoke of the sensation of having lived through something before (she knew nothing of my thought). Then she said she felt that something was to be written through her.3 The letter continues to say that Mrs. Yeats began to write words "which she did not understand" and which commented obliquely on Yeats's relationship to Iseult Gonne. It is important to know that Yeats was quite wrong about his wife's supposed ignorance. In a letter to Olivia Shakespear, written on 9 July 1928 and published in part in 1954, Mrs. Yeats admitted that she made "an attempt to fake automatic writing" but afterwards found her hand "seized by a superior power." This letter is cited by Margaret Mills Harper; her source is Virginia Moore's The Unicorn.4 Moore goes on to summarize the letter: The loosely held pencil scribbled out fragments of sentences on a subject of which she was ignorant. Thomas of Odessa' claimed to be writing; then others." Neither Harper nor Moore are trustworthy; the former gets the date wrong and omits the curious summary, and this summary is nonsense. Mrs. Yeats knew very well what she was doing; the name of the control (or of Mrs. Yeats's invention) was Thomas of Dorlowicz. It would be important to have Mrs. Yeats's letter in its entirety, but it has not surfaced again. It is neither referred to in John Harwood's mono324 JOCHUM : YEATS graph on Olivia Shakespear and W. B...