Peoples Republic of South Devon

The Yeats connection

May 12th, 2008

posted by Cptn

We all know that Devon is a steaming pot of cultural magma, but it’s nice to get the recognition. So it’s thrilling that the cultural heavy weights from ‘one of the most prestigious literary societies in the world’ are to pay a visit. We caught up with Stella Mew, director of the Yeats Society, to ask about Devon’s Yeats connection, cultural tourism and why the Classics are classics

Q What inspired this visit?
A Janet Sawyer, founder-director of the Farringdon Society of Arts, contacted me in 2006 to tell me that one of their members had been married to an artist, Kenneth Butler Evans, whose family believed that KBE’s father was a cousin of WB and Jack Yeats. She invited me to go to Farringdon to give a lecture on the Yeats family. I did so, and was hosted by Janet and her husband and the Farringdon Society, who showed me many of the places connected with the Yeats family. Janet and her husband attended the Yeats Summer School last summer, and the idea grew from these contacts.

Q What is the Yeats Society?
A The Yeats Society was founded in Sligo in 1960 to honour the name of WB Yeats and his family members, and we are about to hold the 49th successive Yeats International Summer School. As BBC Radio 4 described us (when they did a ‘Poetry Please’ programme about us) ‘The Yeats Society is one of the oldest and most prestigious literary societies in the world’. We have Yeats Societies in New York, Australia, Korea, Japan etc. but we are the founding and central body. Our annual International Summer Schools are noted for their high academic standards. (See our website.) We are NOT noted for our modesty!

Q How did you get involved?

A I visited Sligo as a 14 year old and fell in love with it and the poetry of Yeats! I did a degree in Trinity College Dublin (in English) and had the privilege of studying under Dr Thomas Rice Henn, from Cambridge, when he spent six months in Trinity to celebrate the centenary of the birth of WB Yeats. I then attended many years of summer schools, and always pursued an interest in Yeats, and when I retired from many years as a school principal, I was asked to become CEO of the Yeats Society.

Q How many people are coming from Ireland, broadly who are they and what will you do?

A Some 17 of us are flying from Dublin to Exeter, and meeting up with 10 of our English members, (some of whom are Irish, and some just happening to be in England at this time). Mostly they are professional people, mainly retired. We have a full programme of visiting beautiful and famous places, Bishops’ Court, Exeter Cathedral, Dartington Hall, etc, and places connected with Yeats – Kitley House Hotel, seat of the Pollexfen family, (Yeats’s grandfather was William Pollexfen), Brandscomb, where the Yeats family spent a holiday, Strete, where Jack lived with his wife for 12 years etc. We also hope to enjoy the lovely Devon landscapes – and Devonshire cream teas!

Q How important are the arts in promoting regeneration?

A I believe the arts are essential in raising people’s cultural awareness and adding a spiritual dimension to life, teaching that beauty comes in many forms, and raising people to a higher level. As people become more affluent and have time available, cultural tourism is the fastest-growing sector (estimated 15 per cent per annum). The banal and merely functional is boring on cannot satisfy people’s desire for something more.

Q What are the key ingredients to a successful arts organisation?
A Vision, enthusiasm and determination! Also, of course, leadership and organisational skills, an ability to interest and galvanise others to action, and the courage to take calculated risks. If these are in place, the money needed will follow.

Q Is culture the measure of a healthy society or a middle class affectation?
A Culture is an essential ingredient of a healthy, balanced society, and the means of lifting every stratum to a higher plane.’Middle-class’ tends to describe a certain economic as well as social class – culture transcends these divisions. Many of the most cultured lack, or are disinterested in, material goods, whereas those who appreciate the finer things of life have the reward in such things themselves, and they are not related to money or its lack.

Q Some might say that a Greek play isn’t accessible, but how ‘accessible’ do the arts need to be? And what are your views on financial support for the arts?
A Education used to be centred on the classics, and great empires were built by those versed in the languages of Greece and Rome. This is no longer the case, which is a pity, but though the languages are no longer commonplace, the great works are widely available in translations, some of which are very good. Those who read them will find that the great themes explored are, like the works of Shakespeare, ‘not for an age, but for all time’.
The educated and thoughtful person who reads or attends a Greek play will be aware of the parallels with modern society, as history repeats itself, and human nature remains uncannily the same.

When Seamus Heaney was asked to translate Sophocles’s Antigone he was at once struck by the parallels with the situation in Belfast, at the height of ‘the troubles’ when a hunger-striker died, and the authorities refused to hand the body over to the familty and republican friends and supporters, insisting on delivering it themselves to the burial. The question, ‘Whose body is it, anyway?’ came ringing down the centuries.

The arts are accessible to those who take the trouble to confront them on stage or page. There is no need for them to lower their values for any except the very young.

I think scarce money can hardly be better-spent than attempting to refine society and provide better values.

• The Yeats delegation arrive on Sunday, May 18

• To get some behind the scenes news of the Burial at Thebes performance, listen to the podcast on King Creon and the Coconuts, on the PRSD

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Entry Filed under: Arts