The Gonne-Yeats Letters: 1893-1938:
Shannon, Elizabeth
ther professes to know nor, in his fiction, addict, deftly conveys both the sharpen- us the correspondence with clear end notes desires to sort out those meanings; it is this ing effects...
...Although always legislation that allowed her son Sean to filled with details of her current cause, hu- frustrated by Gonne's refusals of marriage, be imprisoned without trial...
...Other than South Africa, the Paulist Press, $12.95 (paper), 245 pp...
...As he brings his narrator "Beloved," Gonne wrote to Yeats in ing both disturbing and consoling...
...Times have changed...
...This respondence was their lifeline...
...She Because of Yeats's towering reputation had become a Catholic upon her marriage and genius, Maud Gonne's reputation has to MacBride, and she often accused Yeats been marginalized in history...
...More than six love of justice is not a sometime thing...
...35, 456 pp...
...Gonne passionately in love with Gonne...
...passive hopefulness that makes the writ- tude they produce...
...many interests, not only the cause of Irish W.W...
...State, Yeats and Gonne drifted apart...
...They she was a woman, she never attained of- were on opposite sides politically, he beficial positions for the many functions she coming more and more conservative and help, advice, and support for her many performed leading up to and during the finding her extreme Republicanism and causes, and he generously gave it, whether war of Irish independence...
...Mary E. had listened to his sound advice, she would CIE MAKING Giles, California State University, have saved herself from a marriage made Sacramento violent and ugly by alcoholism which F 272 pp • $16.95 pb • ISBN 0-7914-1412-2 ended in divorce and greatly damaged Gonne's reputation...
...His compan- William Blake famously said that Milton Maud Gonne was born in Aldershot, ion Jack Hotel dies of an overdose in one was of the devil's party without knowing England, in 1866...
...ther professes to know nor, in his fiction, addict, deftly conveys both the sharpen- us the correspondence with clear end notes desires to sort out those meanings...
...cal point of view...
...VISA, MasterCard, men and women whose lives shed In 1903, Yeats wrote a long and im- American Express accepted...
...The book makes a powerful case for a ORGANIZED LABOR AND THE CHURCH In a chapter titled "Practicing What We major overhaul of U.S...
...the slight alter- selfish...
...She is my William Butler Yeats...
...Since they the Irish patriot and stunning- for fear of reprisals since they contained seldom lived in the same city, their corly beautiful Maud Gonne and material about her political activities...
...Will you please get .._documents all together in an envelope and have them ready...
...Their volume, edited and with introductions by innocence, and I her wisdom," Yeats often-stormy relationship provided Yeats Anna MacBride White, Gonne's grand- wrote...
...She is also thought own opinions, and he always had diffiwas detained with Countess Markiewicz of as a cold and unfeeling woman who culty in adjusting to the idea of a woman during the Troubles, or unstinting and un- led poor William Butler Yeats by the holding opinions of her own...
...hoping to NEW FROM SUNY PRESS hear from you soon" (1900...
...Domestic throughout the English-speaking world...
...wings...
...Tell me Fin fine...
...This book is different...
...ters-were fighting for their most basic U.S.A., as well as a mandatory text in every One can't applaud the split infinitive, rights...
...Millions are earnfor labor and labor's concern for justice ing nothing, unemployed...
...He Despite the stress, tensions, and frustra- was not always pining after Gonne, but tions of their relationship, Gonne also had had several love affairs before he finally Yeats's best interests at heart, encouraging met and married Georgie Hyde Lees, him, giving him valuable criticism when with whom he had a long, loving, and stashe felt he needed it, and expressing grat- ble marriage and two children: "My wife itude for the role she played in his life: "I is a perfect wife, kind, wise, and unlike the poems so much...
...triot, statesman, and tireless worker for so- with Toni Perior Gross Commonweal 13 August 1993: 25 for you at 4....1 have wanted to see you "The world will thank me for not mar- two-pronged appeal to put our own house for a long time but...
...ly to live in Ireland when his regiment was both offset and sharpened by precise and With Jesus' Son, Johnson gives us a nar- posted there...
...Seldom is any State University of "I like the authors' clear inpersonal emotion expressed...
...a danger of my growing very vain when I After his marriage, and during the years think of these beautiful things created for of the establishment of the Irish Free me-thank you...
...worst offenders, are run by orders of reli- the adversarial attitude of the unions, but gious women independent of the bishops the unions' adversarial attitude, if any, is John C. Cort in whose jurisdiction they are located...
...believed that its only purpose was for the movie Wings of Desire, who limits his con- Johnson brilliantly combines the narrator's creation of children...
...She was and the temporality of his narrative is erful because Johnson is true to the nar- also intuitive enough to know that Yeats fluid...
...She knew that she was sciousness in order to alleviate the pain of peeping Tom pleasure watching her un- too strong-willed and independent and absolute perception...
...Thus the writing ination into her good causes rather than handling...
...neither want- who brought them forth in suffering and break away from the anti-union hospital ed to see the other, but at the last we had in the highest beauty, and our children had association and sign a separate agreement come together...
...into a shaky recovery, Johnson suggests 1908...
...I don't like New York Press sights into Teresa from a psychologic% CUP Services to talk about myself," she told him once...
...The rich the factory or the office, on the street or grow richer, the poor and middle class the picket line...
...that sobriety renders the world less spec- ure of your love and that it is strong Gifted at seeing into the future, the narra- tacular (the narrator no longer sees angels enough and high enough to accept the spirtor can do nothing to change what he sees or hears cotton balls talk) and more ac- itual love and union I offer...
...A Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 raided Gonne's deep and abiding friendship developed beIr his is the complete surviv- home, took many of Yeats's letters, and later tween them, damaged by opposing politing correspondence between burned them...
...employers to destroy the labor William Bole versities, and hospitals to prevent the movement...
...is the only industrial country whose fide unions, in carefree disregard of a hun- employers, in the main, have not abandoned THE CID'S LEFT-LED UNIONS dred years of the church's support of the the dream of operating in a totally nonSteve Rosswurm, editor right to organize...
...Higgins notes that the average is Catholic social teaching plus personal CEO income in 1988 was $2,023,285, memoir of a man who for fifty years has some ninety-two times the average factobeen at the center of the church's concern ry worker's earnings...
...and the pleasures of fame and success...
...Her services support of violence in the cause of freeit was advice about her daughter Iseult's to the cause of social justice are often given dom annoying and finally boring...
...upon the examples of other spiritual tionships...
...Yeats wrote to Gonne: "I want you...
...After his untimely "Talk into my bullet hole...
...Sean MacBride won the Nobel and later his role as a senator in the new Prize for Peace in 1974, fifty-one years Irish Free State, brought him accolades after Yeats received it for literature...
...morless, and frantically rushed...
...were your poems of which I was the fa- Higgins pays tribute to Cardinal John Several years after his death, Gonne ther sowing the unrest and storm which O'Connor of New York, who not only orwrote to a friend: "Politics had separated made them possible and you the mother dered the Catholic hospitals in that city to us for quite a long while...
...He was writ- one of his many proposals...
...light on Teresa's...
...Others Gonne did not keep ical views but lasting a lifetime...
...Although Edited with introductions by Anna found in Yeats her best friend, supporter, she did not return his passion, they shared MacBride White and A. Norman Jeffares defender, and her "spiritual husband...
...with the union, but was outspoken in public testimony in favor of legislation to outlaw the permanent replacement of strikers...
...afternoon...
...Our children about the sins of others...
...Norton...
...They complain about Rutgers University Press, S17 (paper), 250 pp...
...Although coming...
...there is full of order...
...Both these the new Irish Free State and voting for Her early letters to him are often urgent, perceptions are wrong...
...dressing her feet with his deep awe for this too committed to her many political and Time is the medium of grace for Johnson revelation of love...
...carding him when she didn't...
...of sisters: "You're asking for leadership and clerical, found the labor movement an Monsignor Higgins has given in the church...
...us why...
...gives Gonne was dependent on Yeats for 24: 13 August 1993 Commonweal cial justice...
...The authors not PO Box 6525 "Don't try to make me...
...Today, AnCatholic college course in social ethics or but any friend of justice and a larger role drew Greeley notes, Catholics are the moral theology...
...organization of their employees into bona U.S...
...with the great passion of his life and the daughter, and A. Norman Jeffares...
...I am Yeats's work steadily gained in stature In 1938, five months before his death, more busy than I can tell you...
...Higgins writes, "I would argue that the cardinal is the best friend organized labor has had in the American Catholic hierarchy in recent years...
...Their familiarity passioned letter to Gonne trying to dissuade with psychology translates into emiher from marrying John MacBride...
...voted the rest of her life to that cause...
...piness and frustrated desire...
...This shift to- it is likely that they consummated their love symptomatic of his inability to care, at other ward grasping the magnificence of the during a very brief period, Gonne was altimes the necessary antidote to the pain ordinary comes in the final story, "Beverly ways certain that she could never marry caused by his perception...
...The only good thing MYSTIC to come of the marriage was her beloved SEASONS IN THE LIFE OF TERESA OF AVILA son, Sean, who later became an Irish pa- Francis L. Gross, Jr...
...her adored father, an story and appears alive, smoking heroin, it, novelist John Hawkes repeated the English Army officer, brought the famiin the next...
...He switched his allegiance weirdly comic descriptions and dialogues, rator who is of God's party without know- to the cause of Home Rule for Ireland and as when the narrator's hospital roommate, ing it...
...Because of being strongly anti-Catholic...
...At times his addiction seems commodating to reflection...
...26: 13 August 1993 Commonweal...
...Her conunhappy marriage, helping arrange her the status of "do-gooding," rather than se- victions didn't, after all, coincide with his freedom from Hollaway Prison where she rious accomplishments...
...I am glad and proud beyond measJohnson's narrator reflects his stance...
...This is a hot issue right now on the labor APOSTLE FOR JUSTICE front in the halls of Congress...
...She had a deep Ithaca, NY 14851 only know about Teresa but, more unwillingness to face her inner life, and 1-800-666-2211 significantly, 'know' her in an preferred pouring her energies and imag- Please add $3 shipping and empathetic mode...
...ing poetry up until the time he died...
...NY State residents, is smooth, never strained, as they call in establishing intimate personal rela- please add 8% sales tax...
...If she nently readable prose...
...she has made my life serene and ations are improvements I think...
...Johnson won't Home," when the narrator, standing out- "dearest Willie...
...plus labor history plus profiles of major Blacks, Hispanics, Asians are even labor leaders plus a no-holds-barred ac- worse off than the whites...
...labor laws that are Reflections of a "Labor Priest" Preach," Higgins documents some outra- contributing to a partly successful effort Msgr...
...One of the many tragedies of the Irish nationalism...
...Here's a chance to re- the glory days, when the workers-many and should be required read- ally step forward and show us how to do of them our fathers, mothers, brothers, sising in every Catholic seminary in the something better...
...He was twenty-three, poor, ambitious, and soon THE GONNE-YEATS LETTERS: 1893-1938 inspiration for much of his poetry...
...it is this ing effects of drugs and the dreamy lassi- and valuable commentary throughout...
...The "Maniac Drifter" whizzes by imbued Maud with his love of the counshot in the face by his wife, instructs him: O'Connor's Milledgeville, Georgia, with try and the Irish people...
...Yeats and Gonne met in London in 1889...
...He is both...
...This hallucinatory quality is charge to an outraged Flannery O'Connor...
...The troubling of my life began," Yeats wrote after their meeting...
...Those were ever written on the subject doing much with it...
...She had two children durlet us decide whether this narrator is a bru- side the window of a Mennonite woman ing a love affair in France with Lucien tal drifter and indifferent chronicler of the he has been peeping at for weeks, witnesses Millevoye, and another son during a brief violence he keeps surviving-car crash- the extraordinary but unspectacular act of and stormy marriage to an Irish patriot, es, knifings, shootings, and overdoses- tier husband's remorse and her forgiveness John MacBride, but she disliked sex and or whether he is an angel, like those in the expressed in the washing of her feet...
...a motor will call unteer returns, etc., etc...
...She acted on two lessons she had learned from her father: "Never be afraid," and "will is a force that can achieve anyHIS POEMS WERE THEIR CHILDREN thing...
...But Of making many books on Catholic so- look again...
...Yeats was fascinated by the Civil War was the destruction of most of occult and mysticism, and he and Gonne Elizabeth Shannon Yeats's letters to Gonne before 1923...
...workers' side against the heads of Catholic million five hundred kilowatts were used this Higgins has done a noble service in telling schools and hospitals...
...to worries, Irish delegation, Transvaal vol- his poetry, his theater accomplishments, come here to tea at 4:30...
...It is time once count of the major strikes and disputes in again that Christians looked to the labor which the church and Father Higgins have movement for a place to prove that their been involved, sometimes with him on the "What kind of day did I have...
...Few of them brothers, and sisters are once again fightreveal a sense of what really happens in ing for their most basic rights...
...Irish shared an attachment to place, a feeling Free State soldiers who supported the of spirituality emanating from the land...
...The narrator feels a car crash before rator's multiple desires, his lust as well as made beautiful poems out of his unhapit happens, feels the holy water years later...
...his thirst for meaning and for love...
...Many of our fathers, mothers, cial teaching there is no end...
...love-and-kisses compared with their own...
...a spiritual longing and narrative power death when :Mud was nineteen, she deJohnson, a former heroin and alcohol born of hope and doubt...
...Well, you've got the lead- exciting place to demonstrate their Chrisus a book that is the best thing ership in the hospital field, and you're not tian commitment to justice...
...It poorer...
...for women in the church must applaud this most affluent gentile group in the U.S...
...Higgins climaxes this section by quot- There was a time-in the thirties and ing a talk he sometimes gives to groups forties, mainly-when many Catholics, lay Let us beat about no bushes...
...He never tells a linear tale...
...She never critical sympathy during the days of her nose, using him when she needed him, dis- forgave him for serving in the senate of divorce...
...Most of the hospitals, the union environment...
...That's the kind of day l had...
...She went, and it rying you," Gonne once told Yeats after in order before we get too self-righteous was the last time she saw him...
...These stories are pow- social causes to be a good wife...
...George G. Higgins with geous campaigns by Catholic schools, uni- by U.S...
Vol. 120 • August 1993 • No. 14
