"The last time I saw W. B. Yeats was in June 1938, in his house outside Dublin. He came into the room with his well-remembered, eager step, speaking in his well-remembered, eager voice. But he was changed. Old age that had left him so long untouched was making inroads on his physique. The old energy now came only in flashes. One of his eyes was covered with a black patch; it was blind, and he could use only one eye. ‘We are both changed,’ he said, examining me with his one eye. ‘You were once my ideal of a youthful nihilist.’ ... This was what he used to say to me in my student days when I was so delighted to be Yeats’s ideal of anything that I didn’t care what the word meant. Nihilism was the romantic form of revolt in Yeats’s early days; his friend, Oscar Wilde, had made a first play about Vera, the girl-nihilist. ... I think, vaguely, in his mind it represented a youthful fighting spirit that went with reading Russian novels, , and Nietzsche. To attribute to anyone a fighting spirit was Yeats’s most heartfelt compliment."
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Literary criticsColumbia University facultyBiographers from IrelandWomen authors from IrelandWomen journalists from Ireland
Original Language: English
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mary_Colum
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Mary Colum
(n̩e Maguire; 13 June 1884 Р22 October 1957), who emigrated in 1914 from Ireland to the United States with her husband Padraic Colum, was a journalist, literary critic, memoirist, biographer, feminist, and political activist. She was awarded a in 1930 and again in 1938.
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