背景知识：

　　William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, dramatist and prose writer, one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. Yeats received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

　　William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865 in Dublin. His father was a lawyer turned Pre-Raphaelite painter. In 1867 the family followed him to London and settled in Bedford Park. In 1881 they returned to Dublin, where Yeats studied at the Metropolitan School of Art. Reincarnation, communication with the dead, mediums, supernatural systems and Oriental mysticism fascinated Yeats through his life. In 1886 Yeats formed the Dublin Lodge of the Hermetic Society.

　　As a writer Yeats made his debut in 1885, when he published his first poems in The Dublin University Review. In 1887 the family returned to Bedford Park, and Yeats devoted himself to writing. He visited Mme Blavatsky, the famous occultist, and joined the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society, but was later asked to resign. In 1889 Yeats met his great love, Maud Gonne (1866-1953), an actress and Irish revolutionary who became a major landmark in his life and imagination. However, she married in 1903 Major John MacBride, and this episode inspired Yeats's poem "No Second Troy".Yeats was interested in folktales as a part of an exploration of national heritage and for the revival of Celtic identity. His study with George Russell and Douglas Hyde of Irish legends and tales was published in 1888 under the title Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. Yeats assembled for children a less detailed version, Irish Fairy Tales, which appeared in 1892. The Wanderings Of Oisin And Other Poems (1889), took its subject from Irish mythology.

　　In 1932 Yeats founded the Irish Academy of Letters and in 1933 he was briefly involved with the fascist Blueshirts in Dublin. In his final years Yeats worked on the last version of A Vision, which attempted to present a theory of the variation of human personality, and published The Oxford Book Of Verse (1936) and New Poems (1938).

　　爱尔兰诗人、剧作家。出生于都柏林一个画师家庭。他的创作可分为三个阶段，每个阶段都有好作品，而且内容和风格都有不同的特点。19世纪90年代，他受当时的诗人和画家的影响，倾向浪漫主义。1891年他与一些诗人组织了“诗人俱乐部”，主张诗的语言要有梦境的朦胧、含蓄和超俗。他厌恶商业文明所造成的不协调的生活，希望远离现代世界。因此，这一时期的作品表现出脱离现实的唯美主义倾向，带有浪漫主义色彩，富于音乐美。这方面他深受斯宾塞、雪莱的影响，后来又接受了布莱克以幻景表达诗思的艺术手法，因而他被认为属于“先拉斐尔派”风格。著名的作品有诗剧《心愿之乡》(1894)，诗歌《十字路口》(1889)，抒情诗《茵尼斯弗利岛》(1890)、《白鸟》（象征灵魂）《世界的玫瑰》（象征爱情）等。

　　90年代以后，爱尔兰在新芬党领导下开展了要求民族自治的运动。叶芝支持这一运动，并和剧作家格雷戈里夫人、约翰·辛格一同创办“阿贝戏院”。叶芝根据爱尔兰民间丰富多彩的神话、民歌，创作了一些反映爱尔兰农民生活的戏剧。他这个时期的作品充分表现了爱尔兰民族特有的热情和想象。由于接近现实生活，他的诗风从早期的虚幻朦胧走向坚实明朗。诗剧《胡里痕的凯瑟琳》（1902）采用爱尔兰神话中关于女王凯瑟琳的传说，表达了爱尔兰要求独立的愿望。《1916年的复活节》（1921）为纪念工人起义而作，歌颂烈士们为民族独立的事业所作的英勇牺牲，“产生了壮丽的美”。其他作品还有《谁与弗格斯同去》、《梦见仙境的人》、《秘密的玫瑰》、《云霄中的群仙》、《流浪者安格斯之歌》等。

　　后期是叶芝创作的成熟阶段。由于接近人民的生活，吸取了创作素材和人民的语言；而对玄学派诗歌的研究，又增添了诗作中的哲理性；他特殊的想象力使他又继续发展了象征主义。这个时期叶芝的作品具有现实主义、象征主义、哲理诗三种因素，特别是抒情诗，以洗练的口语和含义丰富的象征手法,达到了较高的艺术成就,突出的诗作有《钟楼》(1928)、《盘旋的楼梯》(1929)以及《驶向拜占廷》、《拜占廷》、《丽达及天鹅》等。

　　在对待政治和文化的态度上，叶芝属于贵族主义者。他认为贵族阶级拥有财富，深明礼义，只能在他们之中产生伟大的统治者和廉洁的政府，只有他们才能保护艺术，使艺术家有暇来创造艺术。同时，他又受到东方神秘教义的影响。在哲学和历史观上，他认为人类的历史和个人的一生都象一架盘旋而上的楼梯，一切都在重复中提高和前进；他把善恶、生死、美丑、忧乐、灵肉都看成矛盾的统一。这一思想在他后期的作品中都有明显的表现。

　　叶芝于1923年获得诺贝尔文学奖金。