Yeats, William Butler, Irish poet and Nobel laureate (1865-1939). Autograph letter signed ("WB Yeats").

€ 3.500,00

To Florence Emery (née Farr), sending a book of Tagore's poetry, mentioning a play at The Court, and reporting on his experiences with automatic writing and his own literary activities.

Yeats mentions sending a copy of "Gitanjali" as well as a new book by Tagore containing "love poems & poems of nature". The letter dwells mainly on a recent "wonderful experience" concerning the "automatic writing of a girl of 27" who has correctly written in a variety of languages, including "Latin, Greek, Chinese, Welsh, German, Hebrew, and old Egyptian symbols [...] there is no explanation but the spiritistic. Her controls seem to be mainly Greek Mystics of perhaps the second or third century B.C. [...] she is a charming & rather saintly person". He adds that he has been writing lyrics and will have a new book ready soon, "when it is out I shall go back to plays", and compliments Farr on her letters, which make him long for a similar life, "perhaps I too in a few years may drift into Asia".

Farr, a muse and former mistress of Yeats, was a member of his circle of friends in Bedford Park; Yeats wrote his "Land of Heart’s Desire" for her. They were both members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a society devoted to the study and practice of occult Hermeticism and metaphysics.