Yeats, Crowley, Chesterton, Thursday

[Steve Hayes]

Reading RF Foster on WB Yeats, I was struck by the overtones of
Chesterton's "Thursday"-- most obviously in that Yeats grew up in
Bedford Park (where 'Thursday' opens), but then even more with RFF's
account of the 1900 power-battle within the Order of the Golden Dawn (a
magical society WBY took very seriously) between Yeats and Aleister
Crowley, climaxing in a totally Thursday-like scene with Crowley in a
kilt and Egyptian mask, wielding a dagger, trying to break into the OGD
headquarters...
But then a few years on (1903), Chesterton himself pops up (in RFF) with
WBY and Maud Gonne, getting an early reading by Synge of "Riders to the
Sea'.
And now I'm trying to remember Martin Gardner's annotations-- does he
identify the anarchist poet-villain 'Lucian Gregory' as WBY?
Yeats in 1897 also wrote two magical stories that Joyce was nuts for,
c1901. It's interesting to think GKC was simultaneously picturing Yeats
as an allegorical figure of evil...
more gossip: http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/gossip.html
Yeats&co: http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/yeats.html

Just replying to an old message to show the kind of discussions we
used to have here.

[bertietaylor]

Interesting period, conflict of Christianity with alternatives.
venality following wars solved such issues.