On June 13, 1865, a literary genius was born in Dublin,
Ireland. His name was William Butler Yeats. William was born to Susan Mary
Pollexfen and John Butler Yeats, who was deep in the process of becoming an
accomplished lawyer when he married Susan. John quickly gave up this endeavor
for his true passion, art. Susan was the daughter of a wealthy family from the
county Sligo; she was the first to introduce William and his sisters to the
native Irish folktales that he would later thrive upon.
When young
William reached the age of two his family moved from Ireland to London,
England. In London, he attended the Godolphin school. After a few years in
London the Yeats family moved back to Dublin. At a young age, he was strongly
encouraged by his father to read the influencing works of Dante Alighieri,
William Shakespeare, John Donne and William Blake, who later became Yeats’
literary heroes. He attended Erasmus Smith High School and later spent time in
his father’s art studio. There his love for art grew and drove him to join the
Metropolitan School of Art in 1884.
During his
life William Yeats moved between his home in Dublin and London where he often
attended lectures or meetings. He also took the time to visit the British
Museum of Natural History. In 1903, Yeats joined his first lecture tour in the
United States which would be followed by several other tours of the like. With
the help of his sisters, Yeats started the Cuala Press which printed authors
such as Ezra Pound, Elizabeth Bowen, and his brothers Jack and John Yeats. At
the age of forty-six, he met and married Georgie Lees who bore him two
children.
William
Yeats had a profound writing style which was influenced by many people, places,
and things. Two of the most influential people were James O’Grady and Sir
William Ferguson who inspired his writing. “Yeats’ works drew heavily on Irish
mythology and history[1].” Also, many of his early dramatic
works showed his respect for the Irish legends.
Yeats was not only influenced by Irish culture, but by Japanese Noh
plays and modernism as well. Many of his writings covered topics of “life in
contrast to art and beauty in mundane.[2]”
The era of
modernism in which Yeats lived was an era concentrating on life, art, and the
sciences. Life was a popular topic, of the philosophical studies being
preformed near the beginning of the eighteenth century and through the mid
nineteenth century. Life has been and will continue to be an unfathomable
mystery. Another aspect of philosophical study was art. Art has taken many different
forms like paintings, sculptures, music and several other types or
interpretations of art. Mainly, art is birthed by a person’s strong
emotion. Science has seemed to be a modernist answer to the unanswered
questions of the world. The people living in the modernist era did not go back
to the old religions, which had guided them through the ages, but now they
second guessed or eliminated the old. Another great mind who was also living
during this interesting period in history was E.E. Cummings.
On October
14, 1894, in Cambridge, Massachusetts a profound literary scholar named E.E.
Cummings was born. In his later years, he attended Cambridge Public School
which marked the beginning of his beneficial years of learning. Once he reached
college age, Cummings attended Harvard to study Greek along with other
languages. When he was in college he was introduced to the works of Ezra Pound,
who was a significant influence in his works. Because of his love for the childhood
he left behind one of his most famous poems, “In Just” came into existence. He
used his father’s pastoral background to preach through his poems. After
college he volunteered for the Norton-Harris Ambulance Corps where he met
William Brown who became a close friend. In 1917, William Brown and E.E.
Cummings were imprisoned for their pacifist beliefs. When he was released he
married his first wife and worked on painting and writing for six years, before
he and his wife were divorced. After that his father died and his mother was
injured. Cummings then married Anne
Barton. The marriage unfortunately came to an abrupt ending, and Cummings
divorced her as well. Cummings then traveled the world but his mother’s
unfortunate death brought him back home where, fifteen years later, he
collapsed a from cerebral hemorrhage on September 3, 1962 he died.
E.E.
Cummings’ phenomenal writing style has changed poetry forever. In my opinion,
the way he plays with the language is a trade mark of his work. He is also well
known for his ability to “describe the chaotic immediacy of sensuous experience[3].” He was influenced by Gertrude
Stein’s syntactical and Amy Lowell’s imagistic experiments. He has modernistic
artistic innovations and many of his poems take a gleeful and precocious tone.
William
Butler Yeats and E.E. Cummings were brilliant, knowledgeable writers as well as
modernist painters, who were both influenced by numerous people, places, and
things. All of this influence and emotion seeped into the beautiful poems we
now hold so dear. They do, although, have their differences. For example, E.E.
Cummings was, in my opinion, a risk taker while Yeats went more along the
classical lines. Both of these poets intertwine the lines of their poetry so
differently but creatively which cause them to complete one another.
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