Yeats, William Butler - Times Literary Supplement (review date 1919)
Times Literary Supplement (review date 1919)
SOURCE: "Tunes Old and New," a review of The Wild Swans at Coole, in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 896, March 20, 1919, p. 149.
[In the following review, the critic praises Yeats's masterful use of sound and suggests that Yeats emphasizes both ephemeral and malignant themes in The Wild Swans at Coole.]
Mr. Yeats is like a fiddler taking down his old dust-covered violin and lazily playing an old tune on it; or it seems an old tune at first that he is taking liberties with. How often one has heard it; and yet, suddenly, it is as new as the sunrise—or the moonlight. Go on, go on, we cry. No one can play like that; and then he ceases carelessly, and puts the fiddle away, and talks of other things. All through this book he has the effect of remembering old tunes and playing them over again and making them new. There are some players who possess you with the sense of their...
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