|
|
Article: KNOW YOUR LITERATURE
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- March 15, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1996 Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
|
One mark of a real Irish bar is the inevitable shrine of portraits of
Ireland's greatest writers. Some are easy to identify - George
Bernard Shaw with his big beard, Eugene O'Neill with his cadaverous
cheeks (he started writing plays in a tuberculosis asylum). But some
are a puzzlement to the average Chicago bar crawler of today. Here
is a quick guide:
William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
"Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry," W. H. Auden said of Yeats,
the towering figure of Irish literature. Yeats seems ...