Two Yeats Collections

Book Reviews Fogle's account of the differences between the 1878-79 version of "Daisy MiUer," which he prefers, and the 1909 revision for the New York Edition, is sketchy, but he does show convincingly that the later version is much the richer in symboUsm and that James's reference to his heroine, in his New York preface, as "pure poetry" applies much better to the later version than to the first. Edward Wagenknecht Professor Emeritus, Boston University Two Yeats Collections WUHam Butler Yeats. The Collected Works. Volume 1: The Poems. Revised. Richard J. Finneran, ed. New York: Macmillan, 1989. 751 pp. $32.50 Richard J. Finneran, ed. Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies. Vol. 6. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989. 330 pp. $37.50 IN HIS PREFACE, Richard Finneran explains that the principal reason for this revised edition of Yeats's poems (the first in a fourteenvolume series of Yeats's coUected writings) was the recent discovery by John Kelly of three previously uncoUected poems. These poems are "Song of Spanish Insurgents," perhaps commemorating an 1886 Spanish uprising , originaUy included in the 5 March 1887 issue of North & South; The Protestants' Leap," a poem set during the Rebellion of 1641, pubHshed in the Gael, 19 November 1887; and an untitled poem whose first fine reads "How beautiful thy colors are, oh marvelous morn of May," pubHshed in the Gael, 27 April 1887. Finneran has also included "Reprisals," a poem dedicated to Major Robert Gregory, which had been withdrawn from publication in 1920 at Lady Gregory's request. Incorporation of these poems into the body of Yeats's work prompted, according to Finneran, "a reconsideration of certain readings in the first edition." This in turn resulted in further textual corrections and removal of any existing errors in annotation (with a full quarter of the book comprising the appendix: Yeats's notes for his 1933 collection, Finneran's explanatory and textual notes, and indexes to titles and first lines). The primary purpose of this revised volume, however, is not at aU different from that of the 1983 edition, Finneran once more intending "to provide accurate texts of aU poems," either those published by Yeats during his lifetime or those scheduled for publication (and thus author125 ELT: VOLUME 34:1, 1991 ized by the poet himself) just prior to his death in 1939. Nor is the "textual poUcy" changed, with emendation "held to a minimum" (the most obvious example being the editor's refusal to regularize Yeats's often erratic speUing and punctuation). Part One arranges the poems chronologically , according to the collections in which they first appeared, and divides them into the categories "Lyrical" and "Narrative and Dramatic." Part Two includes a total of 129 additional poems, most of them having either originally appeared in Yeats's essays and plays or, as in the case of the three discoveries, in newspaper submissions. The result is a volume that can only enhance the reputation of its editor and further justify the recognition it holds as the definitive text of Yeats's verse. Textual considerations are but one of the topics in Yeats Annual, also edited by Richard Finneran. Contained in this edition are ten articles, three review essays, and eleven reviews covering a wide and diverse range of Yeats scholarship. Among the articles are essays that regard Yeats within the context of twentieth-century literature and thought; that explore Yeats's treatment of Irish folklore; that evaluate George Yeats's contribution to her husband's creative efforts; and that analyze a newly discovered essay on Yeats by the Italian novelist Lampedusa. Also included is a Yeats bibliography for 1986-1987, and a compüation of dissertation abstracts for 1987. Two longer articles deserve special note. One is Ralph Harding Earle's "Questions of Syntax, Syntax of Questions: Yeats and the Topology of Passion," an absorbing study of the poet's rhetorical strategies , choices that were, according to Earle, "unique and specific to individual poems" while also part of "certain fixed strategies." Earle quotes Yeats as desiring to discover words that create "a powerful and passionate syntax"; so he makes the focus of his essay the "objective surface" of the...