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Volume 3: A blow of destiny, the king appears Chapter 60: The soul of the nation, the poet

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    One of the Demon Guardians - Ye Ci

    Yeats (1865©¤1939), also translated as Yeats and Yates, was an Irish poet, playwright, and mystic.  Yeats was a leader of the Irish Celtic Revival and one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre.

    Yeats's early creations still had the gorgeous style of romanticism and were good at creating a dreamlike atmosphere. For example, his collection "Celtic Twilight" published in 1893 fell into this style.

    However, after entering his forties, under the influence of the modernist poet Ezra Pound and others, especially his personal experience in participating in the Irish nationalist political movement, Yeats's creative style underwent a relatively intense change.  Changes, closer to modernism.

    Yeats was not only one of the decision makers of the Abbey Theatre, he also served as a Senator in the Irish Parliament.  He took these social duties very seriously and was known as a hard worker in the Irish Senate.

    Yeats won the Nobel Prize in 1923. The reason for the award was that his highly artistic and inspired poems expressed the soul of the entire nation.  In 1934, he shared the Gothenburg Poetry Prize with Rudyard Kipling.

    Yeats was born in Sandymount, not far from Dublin, the capital of Ireland.  His father, John Butler Yeats, was a descendant of linen merchant Jervis Yeats.  The merchant died in 1712, and his grandson Benjamin married Mary Butler, a daughter of a prominent family in County Kildare.

    John Yeats was studying law when he married, but soon dropped out to study portraiture.  John's mother (William Butler Yeats's grandmother) Susan Mary Porekesfen came from an Anglo-Irish family in County Sligo.

    Soon after Yeats was born, he moved to the large family in Sligo. Others have always believed that Sligo County gave birth to his real childhood years.

    The Butler-Yeats family is a very artistic family.  Yeats's brother Jack later became a well-known painter, while his two sisters, Elizabeth and Susan, both participated in the famous Arts and Crafts Movement.

    For Ye Ci¡¯s father¡¯s painting career.  Yeats' family later moved to London.  Initially, Yeats and his siblings were educated at home.

    Because Ye Ci¡¯s mother missed her hometown Sligo very much, she often told her children stories and folklore about her hometown.

    In 1877, William Yeats entered Godolphin Primary School and studied there for four years.  However, William did not seem to like his experience at Godolphin, and his results were not outstanding.  Due to financial difficulties, the Yeats family moved back to Dublin at the end of 1880.  At first he lived in the city center, then moved to Haos in the suburbs.

    The time at Haos was an important stage of development for Yeats.  Haos is surrounded by hills and woods and is said to be haunted by elves.  The Yeats family hired a maid.  She was a fisherman's wife. She was familiar with all kinds of rural legends. All the mysterious adventures she recounted were collected in the later published "Celtic Dawn".

    In 1881, Yeats continued his studies at Erasmus Smith School in Dublin.  His father's studio was near the school, so Yeats often spent time there.  And got to know many artists and writers in Dublin.

    During this period, Yeats read a lot of works by British writers such as Shakespeare, and discussed with scholars and artists who were much older than him.  He graduated from this high school in December 1883, and then he began to write poetry.

    In 1885, Yeats published his first poem in the Dublin University Review, as well as an essay entitled "The Poems of Sir Samuel Ferguson".

    From 1884 to 1886 he attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Kildare Street.  It is the predecessor of today's National College of Art and Design in Ireland.

    Before he started writing poetry, Yeats had already tried to combine poetry with religious concepts and emotions.  Later, when describing his childhood life, he said: I think that if a strong and compassionate spirit constitutes the destiny of this world, then we can use those who integrate the desire of the human heart for this world.  Words to better understand this fate.

    Yeats's early poetry often drew inspiration from Irish mythology and folklore.  Its language style is influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites.  During this period, Shelley's poems had a great influence on Yeats.

    In a later chapter on Shelley, Yeats wrote: I reread Prometheus Unchained.  Among all the great books in the world, its place in my heart is much higher than I expected.

    Yeats was also influenced by John Oriare, the famous Fenian leader in Ireland at that time.  In his later years, the poet once said that Oriale was the most elegant old man he had ever seen.  From Oriare's conversations and the Irish books he lent me or gave me?, achieved my lifelong ambition.  Under the introduction of Oriare.  Yeats met Douglas Hyde and John Taylor.  The former founded the Gaelic League in 1893, dedicated to preserving and increasing the use of the Irish language.

    Yeats's first important poem was "The Sculpted Island," a dreamlike piece modeled after the poetry of Edmund Spenser.  The poem was published in the University College Dublin Review and has not been reprinted since.

    Yeats's first published work was the pamphlet Mosada: A Dramatic Poetry.  This article was also published in the University College Dublin Review, and only 100 copies were printed at his father's expense.

    After that, he completed the long narrative poem "Usin's Wanderings" and published a collection of poems "Usin's Wanderings and Other Poems" in 1889.  This was the first work that remained undeniable even after Yeats's style matured, and was based on the legends and myths of ancient Irish warriors.

    It took the poet two full years to complete this poem, and its style clearly reflects the influence of Ferguson and the Pre-Raphaelites on the poet.  To a certain extent, this poem established the theme style of Yeats's subsequent poems: pursuing a life of contemplation or a life of action.

    The themes of the first eight lyric poems and ballads in this collection are derived from Yeats's imagination of India and Arcadia in his youth - gods and goddesses, princes and princesses, palaces, peacocks and mysterious lotuses, etc.  .  There are obvious traces of Romanticism and Pre-Raphaelite in the poetry.

    After "The Wanderings of Usin", Yeats never wrote another long poem.  Most of his other early works are lyric poems with themes of love or mystery.  As the readership of Yeats's works continued to expand, he met many famous scholars in Ireland and Britain at that time, including Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.

    Yeats' family moved back to London in 1887.  In 1890, Yeats and Ernest Leith co-founded the Poets Society.  This is a scholarly group composed of a group of like-minded poets. The members met regularly and published their own selected poems in 1892 and 1894 respectively.

    Yeats's early works also include the poetry collections "Collected Poems", "The Mysterious Rose" and "The Wind among the Reeds".  In fact, the academic achievements of the Poets Society were not high, and Yeats was almost the only poet who achieved significant achievements.

    In 1889, Ye Ci met Miss Pleiades Gangang.  She was a woman passionate about the Irish nationalist movement.  Miss Gang Ang greatly admired Yeats's early poem "The Island of Sculpture" and took the initiative to get acquainted with Yeats.

    Ye Ci was deeply infatuated with this young lady, and this woman also greatly influenced Ye Ci's future creation and life.  After two years of close contact, Ye Ci proposed to Miss Gangang, but was rejected.  Afterwards, he proposed to her three times in total, in 1889, 1900 and 1901, but was rejected each time.
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