YEATS WILLIAM BUTLER Autograph Letter Signed W B Yeats to Ha

Sale 2058 - Lot 317

Price Realized: $ 5,760

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000

"I AM ON MORE INTIMATE TERMS WITH GULLIVER THAN EVER BEFORE" YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER. Autograph Letter Signed, "W. B. Yeats," to Harold Williams, praising his new work on Jonathan Swift, discussing the discovery of a locket which confirmed the relationship between Swift and Stella, comparing Swift and Edmund Burke and commenting on Swift's passion for political justice in Ireland. 2 pages, single 4to sheet, Riversdale stationery; minor smudging to the last few lines on the first page. Dublin, 7 July [1935?]

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"Your magnificent work will be my companion for a long time to come, though I have but had it a few days. I am on more intimate terms with Gulliver than ever before . . . I have been rereading the account of Laputa & thinking how much Swift's passion for political justice resembles that of Burke. The un-completed conquest & completed suffering of Ireland seems to have created this passion. Swift had not got it in the same way before 'The Drapier's Letters.' 'The Tale of a Tub' is an attack upon unjust men rather than upon unjust states, is it not? 'The Drapier's Letters' celebrate the birth of a passion for him & others. He was certainly thinking of Ireland (Burke would have thought of America or India) when he makes the Flying Island destroy the enemies of its government by crushing them with its adamantine bottom -- not an active tyranny but a tyranny of insensibility or indifference."