Giorgio Melchiori - The Whole Mystery of Art: Pattern into Poetry in the Work of W.B. Yeats

PARTS of this book, generally in a very different and shorter form, appeared as articles or were delivered as lectures. I wish to thank the following for granting me permission to use such material: English Miscellany ( Rome) and its Editor, Professor Mario Praz; Lo Spettatore Italiano ( Rome) and its Editor, Signora Elena Croce; The Durham University Journal and its Editor, Mr. J. C. Maxwell; The International Association of University Professors of English for a paper I read at their second Conference, and the B.B.C. Third Programme, for which I broadcast a shortened version of the same paper.

My greatest debt is perhaps to the books of a large host of Yeats scholars; since a list would run practically to the same length as the bibliography appended at the end of this book, I must refer the reader to it, expressing my gratitude to the different authors, and apologizing to them if, at times, I may inadvertently have appropriated their thought or used their findings without direct acknowledgement in the notes.

Generous permission to quote extended passages from copyrighted works has been granted in the first place by Mrs. W. B. Yeats, to whose kindness I am particularly grateful, and by the publishers of Yeats's works or their successors: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., London; The Cuala Press, Dublin; A. H. Bullen; Routledge & Kegan Paul; T. Fisher Unwin; Werner Laurie;

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Rupert Hart-Davis; Quaritch; Jarrolds; T. O. & E. C. Jack, Edinburgh. Mrs. Yeats and authors and publishers have also allowed me to reproduce passages they had printed for the first time from Yeats's manuscripts: acknowledgements are due for this to Messrs. Macmillan & Co. and Professor R. Ellmann for Yeats: the Man and the Masks and The Identity of Yeats; to the same publishers and the heirs of the late J. M. Hone for W. B. Yeats, 1865- 1939; and to the Cornell University Press and Professor H. Adams for Blake and Yeats: the Contrary Vision.

My thanks are extended to the following for permission to quote from their works: The Princeton University Press and Professor E. Baldwin Smith for The Dome; Faber & Faber Ltd. and Sir Herbert Read for Icon and Idea; Methuen & Co. Ltd. and Mr. T. R. Henn for The Lonely Tower; John Lane Ltd. and Mr. E. Pound for Gaudier-Brzeska, A Memoir; The Cuala Press and the copyright holders for An Offering of Swans, by St. O. John Gogarty; The Oxford University Press and the copyright holders for Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley; Rider Ltd. and Mr. Israel Regardie for The Tree of Life; Macmillan & Co. Ltd. and the heirs of G. W. Russell for Song and Its Fountains, by A. E.; The Medici Society and the copyright holders for S. MacKenna translation of The Enneads of Plotinus; The Theosophical Publishing Soc. and the copyright holders for The Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky. Full details of the sources of all quotations are to be found in the footnotes. Acknowledgements for the pictures here reproduced are recorded in the list of illustrations.

My work has been helped at all stages by the suggestions, discussions and criticism of scholars and friends. I owe a very special debt to Professor A. N. Jeffares, who read and criticized the typescript and helped with the loan of books and with personal encouragement; I enjoyed the advantage of the kind interest of Mr. Alan Bowness, Mr. Ian Fletcher, Professor D. J. Gordon, Sir Herbert Read, Professor Leo Spitzer, Professor Rudolf Stamm, Mr. Peter Ure, Mr. F. A. C. Wilson, who assisted my work in different ways. It is a

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pleasure to recall the generous support I received from my Italian friends, Professors Nemi D'Agostino, Vittorio Gabrieli, Claudio Gorlier, Carlo Izzo, Agostino Lombardo, Giorgio Manganelli, Mario Prazand Elmire Zolla, all of whom went to the trouble of finding and securing for me books, articles and illustrations which I needed; for the most friendly hospitality I repeatedly received in London from the Italian Cultural Institute I am very grateful to its Directors Count Umberto Morra di Lavriano and Professor Gabriele Baldini, and to all their staff. But without the help of my wife, who endlessly copied and re-copied my manuscript and made my life happy and comfortable in these years, I could never have completed this book.

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