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Eddie
Head Librarian
Gender:  Number of posts: 2308
Registration date: 2008-07-30
 |  Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats  Mon Sep 14, 2009 12:56 pm | |
| Reproduced in a couple of Yeats biographies I read many years ago were photographs captioned "A 'Spirit Photograph' of WBY". These photos showed the poet with an ectoplasmic face leering over his shoulder. They looked no different from other so-called "Spirit Photographs" of the late 19th-early 20th c era in which era Spiritualism, table-tapping and the like were very much in vogue. Yeats was duped, but no great surprise there. The comparatively new technology of Photography must have lent these images a spurious sheen of scientific credibility. After all, they even fooled the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Harry Houdini- a man who knew something about trickery- exposed many so-called mediums and spirit-photographers as charlatans preying cruelly on the sensibilities of bereaved relatives.
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The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas
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Eddie
Head Librarian
Gender: Number of posts: 2308
Registration date: 2008-07-30
| | Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats Mon Sep 14, 2009 1:12 pm | |
| | John McLaughlin wrote: | | I mean, if the "notions" inspire great poetry, are they so idiotic? |
This brings us neatly to the vexed question of the "gyres" referenced in dharma's opening post.
Yeats viewed History as a series of repeating cycles, although "Cycle" suggests circularity, so it's really the wrong term. He preferred the image- perhaps derived from falconry and the bird's flight- of a kind of spinning conical vortex, shaped rather like a shuttlecock.
I like to think of his idea of History as a kind of cosmic loom: the warp and woof of Time, as it were.
As both John and dharma imply, it really doesn't matter whether you believe this stuff or not: it's the poetry that resulted from playing with these ideas that matters.
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The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas
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John McLaughlin
Head Wankee
Gender: Number of posts: 1569
Registration date: 2008-06-09
| | Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats Mon Sep 14, 2009 4:28 pm | |
| There's also the possibiulity of someone's not being duped, isn't there, but of actually being in touch with something non-scientific. |
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Eddie
Head Librarian
Gender: Number of posts: 2308
Registration date: 2008-07-30
| | Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats Tue Sep 15, 2009 1:19 pm | |
| 'Possibility', by all means. I just don't know.
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The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas
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John McLaughlin
Head Wankee
Gender: Number of posts: 1569
Registration date: 2008-06-09
| | Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats Tue Sep 15, 2009 1:28 pm | |
| Me neither. I have to watch that my mind isn't so open my brains fall out.... |
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Eddie
Head Librarian
Gender: Number of posts: 2308
Registration date: 2008-07-30
| | Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats Sat Sep 19, 2009 12:32 pm | |
|  Yeats' tombstone, with inscription. But whose grave is it, really?
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The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas
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John McLaughlin
Head Wankee
Gender: Number of posts: 1569
Registration date: 2008-06-09
| | Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats Sat Sep 19, 2009 3:09 pm | |
| Who paid for it to be inscribed? It belongs to them - and possibly to an anonymous French soldier, right? |
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Eddie
Head Librarian
Gender: Number of posts: 2308
Registration date: 2008-07-30
| | Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats Mon Oct 19, 2009 10:29 am | |
|  W.B. Yeats- Portrait by Augustus John.
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The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas
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John McLaughlin
Head Wankee
Gender: Number of posts: 1569
Registration date: 2008-06-09
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Eddie
Head Librarian
Gender: Number of posts: 2308
Registration date: 2008-07-30
| | Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats Thu Oct 29, 2009 9:44 pm | |
|  The monkey-gland therapy WBY underwent to enhance his virility: cause or effect, do you think?
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The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas
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John McLaughlin
Head Wankee
Gender: Number of posts: 1569
Registration date: 2008-06-09
| | Subject: Re: W. B. Yeats Mon Nov 02, 2009 12:14 am | |
| That insecurity about virility has led to an explosion of offers for Viagra in recent years. Maybe in future it will be ridiculed as much - it if hasn't already been. |
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