THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

Fresno, California, U.S.A.

23 May 1954

(Books, page 8)

Gyres, Cones and Strata.

The Unicorn: William Butler Yeats’ Search for Reality, by Virginia Moore, 519 pages. Macmillan. $6.50.

So much has been written about Yeats [W. B. Yeats] and his poetry and yet, as the publishers claim, Virginia Moore’s big book is the first attempt in detail to search out the sources of Yeats’ philosophy. It is safe to say that any future criticism of Yeats will find “The Unicorn” indispensable’ it contains a great deal of new material, it sets forth both new and old into proportionate perspective, and despite Dr. Moore’s penchant for sentimental prose her book represents an awesome research and a generally intelligent ordering of it.

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She investigates from his youth to his old age: from his knowledge of Druidic lore and his interpretations of William Blake to his late-on appropriations of many philosophies. His “Vision” is the major statement in the field and Dr. Moore shows that behind it is a stupefying mixture of Tarot cards, Berkeley, Vico, Croce, Boehme, communication with the dead, Hermetic beliefs, Christian doctrine and an amazing amount of mediaeval nonsense. Sometimes Yeats was convinced he heard voices, had visions, endured adventures out of his body. He ate fungus. He wore ropes and chains and indulged in high-flown rhetoric of a secret order, mystical and banal. That his ventures involved him at one time or another with such characters as Aleister Crowley and the medium Mrs. Crandon seems not to have dimmed his esoteric convictions.

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