Whatever “silly” beliefs he may have held, he managed to, more so than any other poet writing in English, to make that language sing as gracefully as the Latin languages. As a composer who has set many of his poems to music, he made that task easy! His poems sing themselves.

"The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write." - W.B YEATS

6:46 Blavatsky was NOT "head of the Hermetic Order". She was the founder of Theosophy. The founders of the "Hermetic order..." were Woodman, Westcott, Mathers.

Any sceptic with respect for logic must, of course, remain sceptical about scepticism itself which automatically opens one up to mystical speculation. Yeats always followed his mystical intuitions without ever abandoning scepticism completely. That always seemed to me the best route to any dealing or confrontation with that potential which we call 'spiritual'.

This guy's knowledge is all over the place.

There's a translation issue here involving Irish-English. The native Irish speakers explained to Yeats about the "Síoga" of folklore. This word has been translated as 'fairies' which has connotations of 'tooth fairies' and wispy airy creatures which is not what the 'Síoga' were perceived to be in Irish lore. The 'fairies'/síoga were human sized who lived in an underworld and emerged on Oíche Shamhna/November 1st to visit the living. Their shoemakers were the 'Leath-Chorpáin' (half-body) - rendered in English as Leprechaun. This was, among the rural folk of Yeat's time, a separate and co-existing religion to and with Catholicism. The Catholic priests diplomatically ignored the 'fairies' when they did their rounds.

An enjoyable talk, thank you. Two small points: "gyre" is pronounced "jire", as in gyroscope; and "phenomenon" is the singular of "phenomena".

Wonderful commentary by Dr Cheeke - thank you for sharing so many insights to this life of WB Yeats.😎

A poet for the ages and glorious imperfect human being.

Misleading description of Maud Gonne. She was an Anglo-Irish women who was born in England and was a Catholic convert. She didn't hate the English she hated the English establishment and its treatment of Ireland and the Irish.

Interesting talk. A small point re what is arguably Yeats' most famous poem - The Second Coming. Some of the words are different in a version of the poem I memorized about 20 years back - it is still my favorite poem in the English Language - see around 26 minutes into clip. For example at Poetry Foundation, it is "twenty centuries of stony sleep", rather than thirty centuries. This makes much more sense if we are talking of the Second Coming of Christ. Further the exact words about the "indignant desert birds" are somewhat different. As noted below in one of the comments. "A poet for the ages"; The Second Coming seems even more relevant today - it that is possible -, than it did a hundred years ago.

Very interesting lecture thanks. You can hear details of Yeats’ life and perhaps see him as batty and easily dismissed. Then you see of the chosen poetry and it’s awe-inspiring.

Yeats simply leaves me breathless and yes, the release from hte the greatest freedom of all.

Thank you for giving such an insightful lecture! Your comments on 'The second coming' makes it easier for me to understand the poem.

I thought it was a wonderful lecture and my University obviously obtained their Yeats details from this lecture because it is _exactly_ what I have been taught about him studying "Irish Literature", to the letter.

Excellent lecture

so glad to watch this lecture! so impressed! thanks a lot.

A wonderful explanation Dr. Cheeke.

Gold For you, Why Yeats Because he loved nature and Ireland , and we have to dream.

This is an entertaining lecture, but some of the content is sloppily researched or wrong (I am only 7 mins in). In the context of Auden, who really knew his etymology and plays with it meaningfully in his elegy for WBY, it is disappointing for a literary critic to discuss 'you were silly like us' at length without commenting on the fact that 'silly' used to mean something quite different (its root being the German 'selig', meaning 'blessed' or 'blissful'). There's a famous essay (sth 'semantics') from I think '87 discussing this...Moreover, it's plainly wrong to credit Madame Blavatsky with being the head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (see eg George Mills Harper's excellent book on Yeats and the GD for a more nuanced, research-based assessment of his and his wife's roles). Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society in NY and later lived in London, and of course the Order was influenced by her teachings and assimilation of Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, the Kabbalah, and so forth ... But the same is true for, say, Renaissance Neoplatonists, Swedenborg, and, indeed, the Society for Psychical Research...

Brilliant exposition...thank you so much...as a Vedantin with your help, I could understand the total brilliance of his poetical expression. Every rendering blew me away. Auden was spot on in the first quote...but Auden's clever but crass use of the word 'silly' is also exposed by your analysis of Yeats thoughts on the word belief. You portrayed a spiritual giant in a fallible body. Thank you.

Well done!

Wonderful lecture! For those interested on knowing more about W.B Yeats and the occult there is an amazing book by Susan Johnston Graf titled "W.B Yeats- 21th century magus"

Great lecture, thank you!

A nosegay of gardenia, jasmine, and pansy for Prof Cheeke. The silhouettes of the listeners suggest rapt engagement in Yeatsiana. To have been able to condense the quintessential aroma of a protean genius in less than 40 minutes is no mean achievement. It is worth noting that Prof Cheeke delivers the exquisite package in a very sparse, limpid style. I can descry the lineaments of gratified recognition on the countenance of Maud, Iseult, Georgie. and for-ever-young Willie. More of Dr Cheeke please !

This is a wonderful talk, thank you. I do believe Yeats foretold of the coming New World Order, and what a wonderful description he gives in The Second Coming.

I studied Yeats in England in the 60s His mystical and occult beliefs were not emphasized Later I got into the Occult myself What joy to find Yeats had been there too My fave poet

Actually, Madam Blavatsky was head of the theosophical society. There were 3 heads of the golden Dawn.McGreggor Mathers, William Wynn Wescott, /another fellow, whose name I forget. Mathers pretty much took over, eventually. Theosophy is occult but discourages actual magic, for a variety of reasons. How could this lecturer not know this?!?;?!

If nothing else listen to the recital at 36:00... Hate is that which prevents one from tasting or sensing in any broader spectrum, this or that for which one may be unprepared to appreciate in a greater sens3. One only need be willing to see something in a different light to cease hating. One does not need to feel any differently about it's palatability to see it it with wonder, rather than hate, which seeks complete abolishment...and it is perhaps little more, ultimately, than a cry of help from fear. Have to listen again to decide if the speaker also thought Yeats "silly"...as did Auden...

Brilliant, witty and informative.

Brilliant

❤ I find this an amazing insight in the great poet, lots of intrigue surrounded this great man. This gent explained his life in a way everyone can understand, many thanks.

Lots of incorrect history about Yeats magical interests but nevertheless entertaining. Blavatsky was head of the Theosophical Society - not the Golden Dawn 🤣 Yeats was initiated in London, not Dublin. These are just a few inaccuracies. Sad he didn’t check these.

Excuse me, but 'Irish peasants' (2:50)? Really? This is the language we are using to describe rural Irish people is it? And you wonder why the Irish still dislike/pity the Brits. You just don't get it, do you.

there is nothing wrong with believing in fairies. What makes me shiver and fear is those who only believe in money and in their ego. A little bit of weirdness and diversity would do the world good.

just came across this...other than the couple of factual errors pointed out by many, it was a brilliant and incisive analysis...was wondering where it was going for the longest time...loved the last few quotes that brought it to a close...

Where did you find the reference to M. Blavatsky as the head of the Golden Dawn?

Fabulous. Not perfect. I love Yeats but you kept me guessing right until the end. You have something of a better understanding of whom I am.

Can't find this poem with " a waste of sand": or "thirty centuries of stony sleep"; mine reads "somewhere n sands of the desert", and, it's "twenty centuries" that is, since Christ.

Well, this was a real joy, erudite, I learned a lot (although I thought I already knew everything about WBY - just kidding!)..

Sounds like I should read W.B. Yeats

Starts off with two glaring mistakes. Names HPB as the head of GD yet features a picture of one of the actual founders but fails to identify this.

4.48 Dissecting genius.

WB Yeat's appears to be Carl Jung's kindred spirit brother...

Chekes's question "Is this silly" can always be answered by, "Yes, very much so!" The confluence of Theosophy (and stuff like it) and Psychonanalysis is not at all strange or unexpected: nonsense joining up with nonsense.

W.H. Auden on W.B. Yeats: "You were silly, like us". On the greatness of poetic foolishness and on W.B. Yeats´ fascination with the Occult.

Magic ¡

One cannot understand Yeats without understanding The Golden Dawn -not by simply reading about it but practicing it's system to understand the experiences Astral Travel to Path Working.

# Nice nice 👍 nice beautiful speech,sir Jai ho! 🌍 🇮🇳 jai hind🙏 ☺

all great artists are drawn to magick........

In 25:08 and in 25:56 the presenter said /ˈgaɪər/and ALL dictionaries and people I knew said /ˈdʒaɪər/. Can someone please explain what is his reason for that?

And AP Sinnett was helped to set up Blavatsky in Theosophical society in London... by the very real Mahatmas in Shrinigar, the "Tibetan Masters." And the interpenetrating gyres of a Vision are very clear to understand in the 2nd edition of A Vision.

Auden was half the poet yeats was.

The etymology of the word silly is played upon here.

Auden sounds like a common British cultural snob of the time.

The word"Silly" has an older meaning of being blessed or perhaps happy. Perhaps Auden knew this and used "silly" to this intent. I refer to the line in a Christmas Carol "Behold a silly tender child..." It is surprising that Dr. Cheeke does not seem aware of this. In Hiberno-English to refer to a deceased person as silly would be regarded as at least disrespectful, or even insulting. I'm not so sure it would not hold the same significance in English English. Nor do I think Auden would have wished to be insulting. So, I am not convinced by the manner of the Doctor's dealing with this issue.

Surely Yeats was merely remaining loyal to Keats's strictures with regard to 'negative capability'. (Which I prefer to call creative ambivalence.) It is actually very dangerous for poets to entertain anything so rigid as a firm belief. It dries up the fountains of inspiration almost immediately. Yeats knew this. So did Rilke. Eliot alas didn't.

"The nonsense of India"? I love Yeats, Doctor Cheeke, but that is some 'cheek' on the part of Auden-dismissing an entire civilisation in four words! How much did he know about the country? It's a shame! All criticism in literature should be an endeavour towards understanding, and avoid demeaning inferences!

The stolen child 🧚‍♂️for it is written " you must become like a child to enter the kingdom ".

This man seems to have befriended Ignorance, unfortunately Yeats could not, Yeats explored anything and everything that he thought could answer the questions that troubled him.

Well, first of all, the first picture is not merely of "a member of the order," but of S.L.M. Mathers, its chief, whereas Blavatsky was the head of the Theosophical Society, and had nothing to do with the Golden Dawn! Rectification is not relating past traumas to the horoscope as such, although it certainly includes that, but is rather the process of correcting the birthtime using this and other methods. I do not think anyone who knows the book *A Vision,* especially the associated poltergeist phenomena, can possibly believe that it is a fabrication. Surprisingly you don't mention Aleister Crowley, who Yeats hated, but with whom he shared so much.

26:50 ... surely that's "twenty centuries of stony sleep", not thirty.

4:00 or thereabouts: So Yeats was silly because he believed in fairies (No, I do not); and then Hindu-inspired Theosophy? Well, what about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who not only believed in fairies but fell for faked photographs of them? And what about Auden himself who clung to the moribund Church of England, which along with its political arm, the British state, condemned, hunted down and persecuted homosexuals like Auden himself? (Look up the life of Alan Turing, one of the heroes of World War II.) I call that beyond silly.

Good Grief! These Lecturers love the sound of their incorrect descriptions and analytical anomalies! You can see why there are no more great Poets because of such ranters! ( Was Yeats Mad? No-one knows)

Inaccurate and absurd. Looking through the window without entering the house.

You DO know that "silly" doesn't mean silly, right?

Yeats may have been silly, but he understood the future. Science and technology would destroy poetry...look at it now... MISHEGOSS !

Please get your facts right in relation to Blavatsky , founder of the Theosophical movement ( which is very much alive today) It’s very easy to make trite observations about people when your knowledge of them is clearly lacking.

نعم ...العقلانية والنزعة الإمبريالية والموضوعية المدرسية ....أسماء مختلفة الخطيئة الأصلية لعصر النهضة والانوار

"THIRTY centuries of stony sleep????" How could the presenter get it so wrong? The whole point of the poem (written in the first years of the twentieth century) seems to me to be to reflect on how "things fall apart" after almost TWO thousand years (the actual line reads "TWENTY centuries") of Christianity. The "rough beast" of the closing lines can be seen as the 'rough beast' of SECULARISM.

This is riddled with misinformation and should be taken down.

Twilight -- end of day/era, as in Twilight of the Gods. twilight = before night. Bran was Welsh.

Blavatsky was not the head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn but of Theosophical Society.

11:16 still one that knows nothing about astrology and tries to explain what he does not know to others who don't know either, those are not called "rectifications" - rectification is the art of rectifying your birth chart to find the correct time of your birth by taking specific dates of past meaningful events ... but you are not reliving them and you have to know the dates of them and what they were... going back to look at horoscopes from the past it's called "solar revolutions" that can be made to look at the future or to look at the past ones from past years. liked the end thank you.

I do not understand poetry Why because I do not understand sultry I feel like a hen raised for laying egg in the poetic poultry

I believe in fairies. Many people do. Don’t try to suppress cultures and defend yourself as superior to them. Typical Englishman.

obviously everyone knows madam blavatsky was the president of the farm bureau not the golden dawn😂😂

Why's no one laughing 🤣🤣🤣

Why do people read poetry aloud as if it were prose? It ruins the unique aspects of the poetic form in favor of habitual reading habits. Why even read poetry if one is going to read like that!

WB Yeats wouldn't have appreciated clapping much, although he, surely, have indulged them as testimonies of human flaws, confusing respect with clapping, namely, among so many others, like retiring derivations of the Thorn Tree, Cloths of Heavan, his songs of drinking, No Second Troy, etc, etc. Respect to folklore, mythology is the label or navel of all great thinkers. India is undervalued by UK superficial thinkers, although greater members like Richard Francis Burton never dismissed a language or a creed for being little or dismissed. Blake, William and better half, & engravings, a little bit of exageration, maybe? Ectoplasm and gullible minds are preferable to the closed ones. Buddhism and Hinduhism, sects of Islam, sects of Christianity, which one would name here, show that we are on the side of hope and knowledge and others on the side og socual control, normalization (not physics renotmalization problem ), strict rationalism, social engineering, strict atheism etc. Anima Mundi, Gaia so many names for Earth, Humanity, Mars, if as we were the portal of the possible, that We Are. Thank you so much ✨.

This is like a member of the tory Party trying to analyse the depths of a gaelic soul..... its like asking a plumber to psychoanalse you... same result. He'd be better suited to writing treatsies on the Oxford boat race.

An embarrassing lecture, marred by blunders. Mme Blavatsky, glittering eyes notwithstanding was not head of the Golden Dawn, with which she had no official connection. She founded the Theosophical Society, so the heavy sarcasm and playing for cheap laughs (mostly met with silence from the audience) was wasted. Dr. Cheeke suggested that when James Joyce in Ulysses talked of the ‘snot-green sea’ and ‘scrotum-tightening sea’, he was ‘possibly parodying Yeats’, who was fond of ‘hyphenated adjectives’ like ‘the rook-delighting heaven,’ ‘the mackerel-crowded seas,’ and ‘dolphin-torn, gong-tormented sea.’ The title of Joyce’s novel surely gives the clue to where the finger of parody was pointing. The adjectival-phrases are usually called ‘epithets’, and abound in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as in the two corresponding Sanskrit epics the Mahabharata and the Ramyana. In each case one epic is about a huge war with heroic warriors on both sides, and the other is about a long, wandering, perilous journey in which monsters are encountered and must be overcome. In Homer’s Greek we find epithets like ‘wine-dark-sea οἶνοψ πόντος,’ ‘rosy-fingered-dawn ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς,’ ‘fleet-footed Achilles πόδας ὠκύς Ἀχιλλεύς ,’ ‘ox-eyed Hera βοῶπις Ἥρη’ etc. And the Sanskrit epics similarly speak of the sea as ‘blue lotus-like नीलोत्पल,’ and has ‘vishalakshi विशालाक्षी - huge-eyed’ and mṛganayanī मृगनयनी ‘deer-eyed’ for beauties like Draupadi and Sita. These portmanteau descriptors must have been used bards who had to memorise thousands of lines and needed to fill-in gaps or invent whole lines when memory failed. Yeats, recalling Irish poetry was experimenting, it was certainly not a case of logorrhea. The talk also suffered from over-reliance on the sneers and spite of W. H. Auden, who might with justice have been called ‘urine-scented Auden’ or perhaps ‘old-pissy-tweeds’ and who wrote a quatrain which has been called the worst in English poetry. Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. The audience occasionally tittered or laughed nervously when cued to do so, the lecturer at one point saying, ‘that was a joke.’ What a waste of a good subject. Sorry Dr Cheeke, you’re a disgrace to our alma mater.

He wanted to be Blake so badly.

I don't like all this making fun of Yeats. The occult is somehow a "fact" resulting from divine (creative) imagination, just as science, whose rational "truth" is changing all the time anyway, is also a creative "fact". Because someone believed in flying machines and drew some in the 1500s we have airplanes now. Yeats asks from us, a cognitive shift of expansion... including the rational its possible to expand towards a deeper way of cognition... deeply connected with an imaginal that is ... alive!

A half-assed lecture with a poor reading. W.B.Yeats composed six equals five and seven four initiations, and added all the other initiations, and added a lot of poetry that exists in the Stella Matutina. In the 1898 1899 Celtic explorations insisted that it be not founded in Egypt or Greece for they must make the land in which they live a Holy Land (Ireland). The Speckled Bird is an autobiographical novel, by the Irish poet, writer, mystic and Nobel laureate in literature in 1923. "A living ladder of souls with God himself..." Neo Druidism from a Gemini, lolz the oldest of the heroic race and represent keter and hokma, the crown of wisdom...In the kaballah, the Thaumiel qliphoth is the opposite of the Keter sepiroth. It means "Twin of God" and is the place where Satan is (for Keter is where God enters the universe). In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man or woman, or sometimes as a helpful beast.

This is the most addled, ill-informed rubbish, even by KZfaq's standards, that I've seen in a very long time. If this nit can't even distinguish between Blavatsky's Theosophy and the Golden Dawn, Dr Cheeke (well named) would do well to find a new subject.

Excellent lecture

He wanted to be Blake so badly.

He wanted to be Blake so badly.