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Mr. Yeats in Cork1 It was rather piteous that Mr. Yeats should have as his audience here last Thursday night the members of the Literary and Scientific Society.2 I am sure he would have spoken more warmly, more vividly, if he had an audience of younger people – younger, of our own time, and hence more likely to be interested in the things dear to the lecturer’s heart. I was sorry that it was not to the Gaelic League he was talking – not that the Gaelic League might be edified, but that the speaker might have felt more at home. Mr. Yeats is very hard on the ‘printed book’; the ‘spoken word’ alone is capable of mixing up literature and life. well, Mr. Yeats talking to the Literary and Scientific Society was dealing with ‘printed books’; talking to the Gaelic League, young, enthusiastic, agog for ideas, he would have found himself breathing the electric, nervous atmosphere of the ‘spoken word’. Such, at any rate, has been the experience of other lecturers. Mr. Yeats himself must have felt this during his lecture. If he did not, he came, without doubt, to know the fact at its close, when one of the leading members of the society stood up and asked the lecturer how he intended to bring his ideals of a National Theatre about. Now, imagine that! There is a society in Cork founded on the same principles as the National Theatre in Dublin;3 it has produced some of the plays connected with the Dublin society; it has two plays written by Mr. Yeats himself. I can guarantee that the number of the members of the Literary and Scientific Society that was present at these performances was a most insignificant number; I am informed that it might reckon up to a half-dozen, but personally I would not put it so high. and I am just as sure that the coming Christmastide performances of the society will receive from these ‘intellectuals’ the selfsame support. In russia, at the present day, the ‘intellectuals’are credited by many with having a good deal to do with the revolution; there is no fear that our local ‘intellectuals’ here will ever come to handling dynamite; no, not even the dynamite of living ideas. There is no necessity to follow the lecture. we all now pretty well know the ideas of the National Theatre (too big a name, we are afraid, for the abbey Street Theatre, but handy as a label). Mr. Yeats told the story of the rise of the Norwegian Theatre,4 incidentally referring to the struggle it had with the ‘intellectuals’, the cosmopolitans, native to the soil. He referred to the spirit that was at that time capturing the mind of man, the spirit of realism – itself an outcome of the rapid progress of physical science. Now, realism was shrinking, and taking its place was the spirit of religion, spirituality, in a word. Literature was again looking into the mind of man, 103 into his heart and dreams, instead of peering at his actions and revolving their motives. Ireland being an essentially religious country was likely to fall in with this movement of the mind of Europe in such a way as few other countries could. Evidently Mr. Yeats is not at one with those thinkers who believe that Ireland is bound to go through an experience of scepticism for the same reasons as drove most other European countries through the ordeal. He went on to explain how every art-movement is a ‘going back’ at the beginning; we would prefer to say that these art-movements to which he referred were struggles to get on to rails which had been left in more or less vicious moments. and then he said some nice things about folk-literature and folk-art – very nice things, but to our mind things that must, alas! be said with a sigh, always with a sigh, and never with a hope. of course, he spoke of the art of the dramatist as he conceived it.There was much talk of being true to the internal rather than to the accidentals of the external – most of which tallied with our own beliefs, but there is not much use in discussing it – this kind of talk meaning so many various things in various mouths. He concluded by asking for questions from those who didn’t understand, with the result we have stated. Yes, but a young man not...

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