Madam, - Seamus Deane's celebratory review of R.F. Foster's second volume of W.B. Yeats's biography (Books, September 27th) makes compelling reading.
Of course, Foster as the authorised biographer was carefully chosen and has well rewarded that choice, with two volumes of staggering detail about his subject.
Most readers will not have the breadth of knowledge to assess all of the detail accurately . Much of it has to be taken on faith. Individuals may well be able to make judgments on particular areas of the work. But who would even dare tread such a course, with a man so well regarded, and at a time Deane describes as "a moment of cultural rearticulation in Ireland"?
Deane adverts to the "alarming rate of industrial production in Yeats studies", and hopes that this work might "give pause to the prolific". I doubt it, for Yeats has become such an icon for so many adulators, and raw material for so many academics, that the industry might well grow geometrically.
Deane, to his credit, is quite content to list Yeats's negative attributes: anti-Catholic, racist, a cultural snob, a panic-stricken member of the sectarian elite described by Deane as "a vile ascendancy", a dabbler with fascism in the face of democracy. Deane asks pertinently if there can be some ideal form of detachment from the subject in the biographer.
Whether or not the author is ideally detached from his subject, he treats many negative aspects of Yeats in a non-judgmental way - such as his betrayals of Lady Gregory, his shocking treatment of Lollie Yeats, his Machiavellian actions at the Abbey. Foster's sympathies seem to this reader to be with WBY all the way. As Deane notes, "Foster has great fun with the Catholic Bulletin, but too little with Yeats".
The reviewer writes of "a routine understanding of a poem such as 'Easter 1916' ", concerning the image of the stone being understood as a representation of a republican fanaticism, but finds this work "reveals a more complex situation". That is indeed so.
Foster's interpretation of Yeats's inclusion of the name of his bitter enemy, John MacBride, in the same poem, together with MacDonagh, Connolly and Pearse, is, for me, untenable.
Foster reads it as Yeats taking "penance". Hardly so! As Deane has noted, "Yeats never wholly abandoned any previously held position", and he certainly did not assign penance for himself. Rather is "Easter 1916" another opportunity for Yeats to express his undying hatred of MacBride, for his temerity in capturing his muse and for her conversion to Catholicism.
As Deane notes, Yeats always had an eye on the future, and was setting MacBride up for unfair ridicule by posterity. Maud Gonne understood what Yeats was at, and though unspoken, it may have been her main reason for detesting this canonical poem. She had mellowed towards her husband and had a son to think of.
Yeats wrote, "My glory was that I had such friends". Seamus Deane adds, his glory and luck in having such a biographer. Roy Foster too, can be congratulated in the glory and luck of his friends and admirers. - Yours, etc.,
TONY JORDAN, Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4.