Leave off looking to men to find out what you are no t ?seek within yourselves to find out what you ar e As conditions are at present constituted?you have the choice
between Parasitism, & Prostitution ?or Negation
Men & women are enemies, with the enmity of the exploited for the parasite, the parasite for the exploited?at present they are at the mercy of the advantage that each can take of the others sexual dependence?. The only point at which the interests of the sexes merge?is the sexual embrace.
The first illusion it is to your interest to demolish is the division of women into two classes the mistress, & the mother every well-balanced & developed woman knows that is not true, Nature has endowed the complete woman with a faculty for expressing herself through all her functions?there are HO restrictions the woman who is so incompletely evolved as to be un-self-conscious in sex, will prove a restrictive influence on the temperamental expansion of the next generation; the woman who is a poor mistress will be an incompetent mother?an inferior mentality?& will
enjoy an inadequate apprehension of Life.
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201 8 / MODERNIST MANIFESTOS
To obtain results you must make sacrifices & the first & greatest sacrifice you have to make is of your 'virtue' The fictitious value of woman as identified with her physical purity?-is too easy a stand-by rendering her lethargic in the acquisition of intrinsic merits of character by which she could obtain a concrete value? therefore, the first self- enforced law for the female sex, as a protection against the man made bogey of virtue?which is the principle instrument of her subjection, would be the unconditional surgical destruction of virginity through-out the female population at puberty?.
The value of man is assessed entirely according to his use or interest to the community, the value of woman, depends entirely on chance, her success or insuccess in manoeuvering a man into taking the life-long responsibility of her? The advantages of marriage of too ridiculously ample? compared to all other trades?for under modern conditions a woman can accept preposterously luxurious support from a man (with-out return of any sort?even offspring)?as a thank offering for her virginity The woman who has not succeeded in striking that advantageous bargain?is prohibited from any but surreptitious re-action to Life-stimuli?& entirel y
debarred maternity.
Every woman has a right to maternity? Every woman of superior intelligence should realize her race- responsibility, in producing children in adequate proportion to the unfit or degenerate members of her sex?
Each child of a superior woman should be the result of a definite period of psychic development in her life?& not necessardy of a possibly irksome & outworn continuance of an alliance?spontaneously adapted for vital creation in the beginning but not necessardy harmoniously balanced as the parties to it?follow their individual lines of personal evolution?
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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS / 201 9
For the harmony of the race, each individual should be the expression of an easy & ample interpenetration of the male & female temperaments?free of stress Woman must become more responsible for the child than
man? Women must destroy in themselves, the desire to be loved?
The feeling that it is a personal insult when a man transfers his attentions from her to another woman The desire for comfortable protection instead of an intelligent curiosity & courage in meeting & resisting the pressure of life sex or so called love must be reduced to its initial element, honour, grief, sentimentality, pride & consequently jealousy must be detached from it. Woman for her happiness must retain her deceptive fragility of appearance, combined with indomitable will, irreducible courage, & abundant health the outcome of sound nerves? Another great illusion that woman must use all her introspective clear-sightedness & unbiassed bravery to destroy?for the sake of her self respect is the impurity of sex the realisation in defiance of superstition that there is nothing impure in sex?except in the mental attitude to it?will constitute an incalculable & wider social regeneration than it is possible for our generation to imagine.
1914 1982
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 1865-1939
William Butler Yeats was born to an Anglo-Irish family in Dublin. His father, J. B. Yeats, had abandoned law to take up painting, at which he made a somewhat precarious living. His mother came from the Pollexfen family that lived near Sligo, in the west of Ireland, where Yeats spent much of his childhood. The Yeatses moved to London in 1874, then returned to Dublin in 1880. Yeats attended first high school and then art school, which he soon left to concentrate on poetry.
Yeats's father was a religious skeptic, but he believed in the 'religion of art.' Yeats, religious by temperament but unable to believe in Christian orthodoxy, sought all his life to compensate for his lost religion. This search led him to various kinds of mysticism, to folklore, theosophy, spiritualism, and neoplatonism. He said he 'made a new religion, almost an infallible church of poetic tradition.'
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202 0 / WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Yeats's childhood and young manhood were spent between Dublin, London, and Sligo, and each of these places contributed something to his poetic development. In London in the 1890s he met the important poets of the day, founded the Irish Literary Society, and acquired late-Romantic, Pre-Raphaelite ideas of poetry: he believed, in this early stage of his career, that a poet's language should be dreamy, evocative, and ethereal. From the countryside around Sligo he gained a knowledge of the life of the peasantry and of their folklore. In Dublin, where he founded the National Literary Society, he was influenced by Irish nationalism and, although often disagreeing with those who wished to use literature for political ends, he nevertheless came to see his poetry as contributing to the rejuvenation of Irish culture.
Yeats's poetry began in the tradition of self-conscious Romanticism, strongly influenced by the English poets Edmund Spenser, Percy Shelley, and, a little later, William Blake, whose works he edited. About the same time he was writing poems (e.g., 'The Stolen Child') deriving from his Sligo experience, with quietly precise nature imagery, Irish place-names, and themes from Irish folklore. A little later he drew on the great stories of the heroic age of Irish history and translations of Gaelic poetry into 'that dialect which gets from Gaelic its syntax and keeps its still
