Luky
Less generally known than many celebrities, though familiar to students of English literature, is a character whose story is one of great interest.
She is the beautiful and fascinating Maud Gonne, a colourful Irish patriot and political activist of the nineteenth and twentieth century.
She was immortalised in the work of a Nobel prizewinning poet, who not only yielded to her political convictions and made them his own, but who loved her unavailingly and hopelessly throughout his life.
Since William Butler Yeats celebrated her beauty in impassioned lines in which he likens her to Helen of Troy, students of literature have thrilled to his unreciprocated worship.
Was it also Maud Gonne he was addressing in “A Deep-Sworn Vow”?
She is the beautiful and fascinating Maud Gonne, a colourful Irish patriot and political activist of the nineteenth and twentieth century.
She was immortalised in the work of a Nobel prizewinning poet, who not only yielded to her political convictions and made them his own, but who loved her unavailingly and hopelessly throughout his life.
Since William Butler Yeats celebrated her beauty in impassioned lines in which he likens her to Helen of Troy, students of literature have thrilled to his unreciprocated worship.
Was it also Maud Gonne he was addressing in “A Deep-Sworn Vow”?
Others, because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow, have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.
Nowhere else is an indication given of any deep-sworn vow between herself and the poet.
Though she sat with Yeats on political and cultural committees and took the lead in his patriotic play Cathleen ni Houlihan, she turned down his repeated marriage proposals.
Even after she married a military man to become Maud Gonne McBride, this was not the end of the doomed one-sided love affair, for when she was widowed, the poet again proposed in vain.
Though she sat with Yeats on political and cultural committees and took the lead in his patriotic play Cathleen ni Houlihan, she turned down his repeated marriage proposals.
Even after she married a military man to become Maud Gonne McBride, this was not the end of the doomed one-sided love affair, for when she was widowed, the poet again proposed in vain.
The power of her fascination over others, not excluding himself, is thus described in Yeats’s autobiography: “Some portion of (her) power (over crowds) came because she could still, even when pushing an abstract principle …, keep her own mind free, and so, when men and women did her bidding they did it not only because she was beautiful, but because that beauty suggested joy and freedom … Her beauty, backed by her great stature, could instantly affect an assembly … for it was incredibly distinguished, and if …her face, like the face of some Greek statue, showed little thought, her whole body seemed a master-work of long, labouring thought.”
Yet, “while she but rose partially and for a moment out of raging abstraction; … she hated her own beauty.”
Yet, “while she but rose partially and for a moment out of raging abstraction; … she hated her own beauty.”
So what became of this fascinating and captivating woman?
As fate would have it, the one to tell me this was my husband, whose parents entertained her in their home on the Irish east coast when he was small.
When I showed him in a book of Yeats’s poetry and in a biography that she had been a celebrated beauty, he was very surprised indeed.
So what did he remember about her?
“Very little. Just a face, hands and a voice. An old lady, dressed all in black, head covered with a veil, seated on a wicker chair, a massive black and white dog at her feet.”
As fate would have it, the one to tell me this was my husband, whose parents entertained her in their home on the Irish east coast when he was small.
When I showed him in a book of Yeats’s poetry and in a biography that she had been a celebrated beauty, he was very surprised indeed.
So what did he remember about her?
“Very little. Just a face, hands and a voice. An old lady, dressed all in black, head covered with a veil, seated on a wicker chair, a massive black and white dog at her feet.”
This elderly lady had inspired the most tender feeling in a great Irish poet by her beauty of mind and soul.
A welcome visitor in the Whittle household, she was then nearing the end of her life's journey - still as lovely within as ever she had been in the days when Yeats' deep love for her inspired the proposals of marriage which she had declined, but which must have remained in her mind as the greatest compliment he could have paid her.
A welcome visitor in the Whittle household, she was then nearing the end of her life's journey - still as lovely within as ever she had been in the days when Yeats' deep love for her inspired the proposals of marriage which she had declined, but which must have remained in her mind as the greatest compliment he could have paid her.
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