(Yeats drawn by John Singer Sargent)
"In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, then a 23-year-old heiress and ardent Nationalist. Gonne was eighteen months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a "paint-stained art student." Gonne had admired "The Isle of Statues" and sought out his acquaintance. Yeats developed an obsessive infatuation with her beauty and outspoken manner, and she was to have a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life thereafter."
"W.B. Yeats, in later years, admitted "it seems to me that she [Gonne] brought into my life those days—for as yet I saw only what lay upon the surface—the middle of the tint, a sound as of a Burmese gong, an over-powering tumult that had yet many pleasant secondary notes." Yeats' love initially remained unrequited, in part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activism.
"In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, then a 23-year-old heiress and ardent Nationalist. Gonne was eighteen months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a "paint-stained art student." Gonne had admired "The Isle of Statues" and sought out his acquaintance. Yeats developed an obsessive infatuation with her beauty and outspoken manner, and she was to have a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life thereafter."
"W.B. Yeats, in later years, admitted "it seems to me that she [Gonne] brought into my life those days—for as yet I saw only what lay upon the surface—the middle of the tint, a sound as of a Burmese gong, an over-powering tumult that had yet many pleasant secondary notes." Yeats' love initially remained unrequited, in part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activism.
"Yeats proposed to Gonne three more times: in 1899, 1900 and 1901. She refused each proposal, and in 1903, to his horror, married the Irish nationalist Major John MacBride
.
......Yeats proposed in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and he both expected and hoped she would turn him down. According to Foster "when he duly asked Maud to marry him, and was duly refused, his thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter." Iseult Gonne was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old. She had lived a sad life to this point; conceived as an attempt to reincarnate her short-lived brother, for the first few years of her life, she was presented as her mother's adopted niece. When Maud told her that she was going to marry, Iseult cried and told her mother that she hated MacBride. At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats. A few months after the poet's approach to Maud, he proposed to Iseult, but was rejected."
Yeats, perhaps, thought to take the Help of Rabindranath Tagore to influence Iseult Gonne to marry him. Moreover, he was, young age, attracted it the Indian mysticism and the activities of Theosophical Society of India. He had come in close contact with Mohini Mohan Chattopadhyaya, son-in-law of Dwijendranath. He became interested after knowing that Rabindranath was also interested in "Planchet" as he was practicing such knowledge.He wrote in that letter to Rabindranarh'
" My medium writes that she is out of town. If you let me know when you return to London in the autumn I will arrange for this . I have written to find out about Mrs. Wreidt the American medium."
Anyway, Yeats arranged meeting of Rabindranth with Iseult.She tried to learn Bengali from Debebrata Mukhopadhyay, so-in-law of Mohini Mohan Chattopadhyay, a student of Oxford and translator of Dakghar. and within two years she translated severall poems of "The Gardener" from Bengali to French . Yeats asked some time from Rabindranath to judge the merits of those poems for publication and wrote;
"I would be greatly obliged however if you would give those rights to no one else for a time."
Yeats, perhaps, thought to take the Help of Rabindranath Tagore to influence Iseult Gonne to marry him. Moreover, he was, young age, attracted it the Indian mysticism and the activities of Theosophical Society of India. He had come in close contact with Mohini Mohan Chattopadhyaya, son-in-law of Dwijendranath. He became interested after knowing that Rabindranath was also interested in "Planchet" as he was practicing such knowledge.He wrote in that letter to Rabindranarh'
" My medium writes that she is out of town. If you let me know when you return to London in the autumn I will arrange for this . I have written to find out about Mrs. Wreidt the American medium."
Anyway, Yeats arranged meeting of Rabindranth with Iseult.She tried to learn Bengali from Debebrata Mukhopadhyay, so-in-law of Mohini Mohan Chattopadhyay, a student of Oxford and translator of Dakghar. and within two years she translated severall poems of "The Gardener" from Bengali to French . Yeats asked some time from Rabindranath to judge the merits of those poems for publication and wrote;
"I would be greatly obliged however if you would give those rights to no one else for a time."
