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Ideas of Good and Evil

W. B. Yeats

This work explores a variety of themes, including poetry, symbolism, and the nature of popular literature, reflecting Yeats's engagement with Irish culture and literature as he grapples with the intersection of art and society.

"Ideas of Good and Evil" by W. B. Yeats is a collection of essays. This work explores a variety of themes, including poetry, symbolism, and the nature of popular literature, reflecting Yeats's engagement with Irish culture and literature as he grapples with the intersection of art and society.

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Read a passage

Then we began to wander through the wood of error; we tried speaking through music in the ordinary way under I know not whose evil influence, until we got to hate the two competing tunes and rhythms that were so often at discord with one another, the tune and rhythm of the verse and the tune and rhythm of the music. Then we tried, persuaded by somebody who thought quarter-tones and less intervals the especial mark of speech as distinct from singing, to write out what we did in wavy lines. On finding something like these lines in Tibetan music, we became so confident that we covered a large piece of pasteboard, which now blows up my fire in the morning, with a notation in wavy lines as a demonstration for a lecture; but at last Mr. Dolmetsch put us back to our first thought. He made us a beautiful instrument half psaltery half lyre which contains, I understand, all the chromatic intervals within the range of the speaking voice; and he taught us to regulate our speech by the ordinary musical notes.

Some of the notations he taught us—those in which there is no lilt, no recurring pattern of sounds—are like this notation for a song out of the first Act of The Countess Cathleen.

Contents

  1. 01What Is ‘Popular Poetry’?
  2. 02Speaking to the Psaltery
  3. 03I
  4. 04II
  5. 05III
  6. 06Magic
  7. 07I
  8. 08II
  9. 09III
  10. 10IV
  11. 11V
  12. 12VI
  13. 13VII
  14. 14VIII
  15. 15The Happiest of the Poets
  16. 16I
  17. 17II
  18. 18III
  19. 19IV
  20. 20V
  21. 21The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry
  22. 22I. His Ruling Ideas
  23. 23II. His Ruling Symbols
  24. 24At Stratford-on-Avon
  25. 25I
  26. 26II
  27. 27III
  28. 28IV
  29. 29V
  30. 30VI
  31. 31William Blake and the Imagination
  32. 32William Blake and His Illustrations to the Divine Comedy
  33. 33I. His Opinions Upon Art
  34. 34II. His Opinions on Dante
  35. 35III. The Illustrations of Dante
  36. 36Symbolism in Painting
  37. 37The Symbolism of Poetry
  38. 38I
  39. 39II
  40. 40III
  41. 41IV
  42. 42V
  43. 43The Theatre
  44. 44I
  45. 45II
  46. 46The Celtic Element in Literature
  47. 47I
  48. 48II
  49. 49III
  50. 50IV
  51. 51The Autumn of the Body
  52. 52The Moods
  53. 53The Body of the Father Christian Rosencrux
  54. 54The Return of Ulysses
  55. 55I
  56. 56II
  57. 57Ireland and the Arts
  58. 58The Galway Plains
  59. 59Emotion of Multitude

About this edition

Author
W. B. Yeats
Language
English
Era
Modern (c. 1800–1945)
Reading level
Advanced: for close, demanding reading
Formats
EPUB, PDF
Length
183 pages
This edition
Modern Philosophers

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