Reviews of A Vision B

MR. W. B. YEATS�S LATEST BOOK

�The Shoemaker Should Stick to his Last�

A Vision. By W. B. Yeats. (Macmillan & Co., tLd. [sic]; 15s net.)

    Mr W. B. Yeats is deservedly highly esteemed as a poet and a dramatist but his latest publication is a definite exposition of the old saying that �The shoemaker should stick to his last.�

    He has had a revelation. One can safely predict that it cannot upset the progress of the world. Thus it came about. His wife some years ago discovered that she had the gift of �automatic writing.�

    This was discovered when the whole matter was being treated as a �joke.� Perhaps adventurous young people may take warning from what followed. The automatic writing began to take shape as a series of messages from disembodied spirits whom the poet now calls his instructors. A different prefix might be less poetic but more true.

    The poet and his wife began to build up out of these messages a nebulous system which seemed to promise a surprising revelation. Soon Mrs. Yeats began to go into subconscious states during which she amplified the automatic writing by spoken messages from the �instructors.�

    And out of these messages the poet has compiled a system of philosophy (if you dare call it that) which is a strange mixture of astrology, transmigration, fatalism, spiritism, and every other will-o�-the-wisp that men, blind to the light of divine revelation, have ever followed to their destruction.

    One has neither time nor patience to analyse this wonderful �system.� It is so wonderful that it even explains the rise of great men of the ages.

    But a book of this kind coming from the hand of a man of Mr W. B. Yeats�s position in the world of letters is dangerous, because the foolish may think that eminence in poetry and drama is a sign of eminence in philosophy and metaphysics. Moreover its obvious sincerity is an added danger.

    None but a fool would attempt to impugn the good faith of Mr. Yeats in the matter. Let it be confessed that this book moves the reader to a profound pity for the writer. The significance of the whole thing becomes apparent from the poet�s own description.

    In addition to his �instructors� there were other beings whom he calls �frustrators.� These interfered with the continuity of the revelation and made it unintelligible. Let me quote a significant passage.

    �For the same reason they asked me not to read philosophy until their exposition was complete. Apart from two or three of the principal Platonic Dialogues, I knew no philosophy . . .

    �Because they must, as they explained, soon finish, others whom [sic] the Frustrators attempted to confuse us or waste time. Who these Frustrators were or why they acted so was never adequately explained, nor will be unless I can finish �The Soul in Judgment� (Book III. of this work), but they were always ingenious and sometimes cruel. The automatic script would deteriorate, grow sentimental or confused, and when I pointed this out the communicator would say �From such and such an hour, on such and such a day, all it frustration� . . . but had I not divined frustration he would have said nothing . . . and a Frustrator doubtless played upon my weakness when he described a geometrical model of the soul�s state after death which could be turned upon a lathe . . . One said, as though it rested with me to decide what part I should play in their dream, �Remember, we will deceive you if we can.�� (The italics are the reviewers� [sic].)

    There were other signs and wonders—flashes of light, strange perfumes etc., etc. Out of a conglomeration of rubbish arises the conviction that there is more in the poet�s vision than its intrinsic nonsense, and a memory of R. H. Benson�s cats on the roof came to me — a vivid impression of a personal feeling as urgent as their instinct to fly from something which, though understood not, was for that reason all the more repulsive.

C. E.