Year

1994

Text

Type

Publication

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Chronology Entries (9)

#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1919	Yeats, W.F. If I were four-and-twenty. In : Irish Statesman ; 23 August (1919). "I have no doubt that the idleness, let us say, of a man devoted to his collection of Chinese paintings affects the mind even of men who do physical labour without spoken or written word, and all the more because physical labour increases mental pursuits."	Person: Yeats, William Butler
2	1919-1920	Yeats, W.B. Appendix 2 (typescript, 1919-1920 ?) "It may be even that certain abundant soul, souls whom the most exact Chinese system of competitive examination could never discover, need leisure from all, even from all self imposed work, because as a certain seventeenth-century Latin author says of the Unicorn, they cannot serve."	Person: Yeats, William Butler
3	1920	Yeats, W.B. Visions and beliefs in the West of Ireland. Coll. and arranged by Lady [Isabella Augusta] Gregory. (New York, N.Y. ; London : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920). Note 39. "There are two books which describe with considerable detail a like experience in China and Japan respectively : Demon Possession and Allied Themes by Rev. John L. Nevius, D.D. (Fleming H. Revell & Co., 1894) ; Occult Japan, by Percival Lowell (Houghton, Mifflin, 1895). In both countries, however, the dualism of body and soul is recognized, and the theory is therefore identical with that of spiritism. Dr Nevius is a missionary who gradually became convinced, after much doubt and perplexity, of the reality of possession by what he believes to be evil spirits precisely similar to that described in the New Testament. These spirits take possession of some Chinese man or woman who falls suddenly into a trance, and announce through their medium's mouth, that when they lived on earth they had such and such a name, sometimes if they think a false name will make them more pleasing they will give a false name and history. They demand certain offerings and explain that they are seeking a home ; and if the offerings are refused, and the medium seeks to drive them from body and house they turn persecutors ; the house may catch fire suddenly ; but if they have their way, they are ready to be useful, especially to heal the sick. The missionaries expel them in the name of Christ, but the Chinese exorcists adopt a method familiar to the west of Ireland tortures or threats of torture…"	Person: Gregory, Isabella Augusta Lady Person: Yeats, William Butler
4	1932	Yeats, W.B. Introduction. Purohit, Swami. An Indian monk : his life and adventures. (London : Macmillan, 1932). "There are only three eternal nations”, he said, “India, Persia, China ; Greece organized and Greece is dead.”.. This care for the spontaneity of the soul seems to me Asia at its finest and where it is most different from Europe…" "Certain Indian, Chinese, and Japanese representations of the Buddha, and of other Divine beings, have a little round lump on the centre of the forehead…"	Person: Yeats, William Butler
5	1934	Yeats, W.B. Introduction. Hamsa, Bhagwan Shri. The holy mountain : being the story of a pilgrimage to lake Manas and of initiation on mount Kailas in Tibet. (London : Faber and Faber, 1934). "It is that whenever I have been tempted to go to Japan, China or India for my philosophy, Balzac has brought me back, reminded me of my preoccupation with national, social, personal problems, convinced me that I cannot escape from our Comédie humaine…" "Much Chinese and Japanese painting is a celebration of mountains, and so sacred were those mountains that Japanese artists, down to the invention of the colour print, constantly recomposed the characters of Chinese mountain scenery, as though they were the letters of an alphabet, into great masterpieces, traditional and spontaneous. I think of the face of the Virgin in Siennese painting, preserving, after the supporting saints had lost it, a Byzantine character. To Indians, Chinese and Mongols, mountains from the earliest time have been the dwelling places of the Gods. Their kings, before any great decision have climbed some mountain, and of all these mountains Kailas, or Mount Meru, as it is called in the Mahabharata, was the most famous. Sven Hedin calls it the most famous of all mountains, pointing out that Mont Blanc is unknown to the crowded nations of the East. Thousands of Hindu, Tibetan and Chinese pilgrims, Vedantin, or Buddhist, or of some older faith have encircled it, some bowing at every step, some falling prostrate, measuring the ground with their bodies ; an outer ring for all, an inner and more perilous for those called by the priests to its greater penance."	Person: Yeats, William Butler
6	1936	Yeats, W.B. The Oxford book of modern verse. (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1936). "Edith Sitwell with her Russian Ballet, Turner with his Mare tranquillum, Dorothy Wellesley with her ancient names - 'Heraclitus added fire ' – her moths, horses and serpents, Pound with his descent into Hades, his Chinese classics, are too romantic to seem modern."	Person: Yeats, William Butler
7	1937	Yeats, W.B. Essays. (Dublin : Cuala Press, 1937). "A table of values, heroic joy always, intellectual curiosity and so on – and a public theme : in Japan the mountain scenery of China, in Greece its cyclic tales, in Europe the Christian mythology, this or that national theme."	Person: Yeats, William Butler
8	1938	Yeats, W.B. Introduction. Patanjali, Bhagwân Shree. Aphorisms of Yôga (London: Faber & Faber, 1938). V "That experience, accessible to all who adopt a traditional technique and habit of life, has become the central experience of Indian civilization, perhaps of all Far-Eastern civilization, that wherein all thoughts and all emotions expect their satisfaction and rest. The technique in China and Japan is different, but not that experience. In the Upanishads and in Pantanjali the Self and the One are reality. There are other books, Indian or Chinese, where the Self or the Not-Self, the One and the Many, are alike illusion. Whatever is known to the logical intellect is this and not that, here and not there, before and not after, or confined to one wing or another of some antinomy. It became no longer possible to identify the One and the Self with reality, the method of meditation had to be changed. Some years ago, that I might understand its influence upon Chinese and Japanese landscape painting, I sought that method in vain through encyclopedias and histories ; it certainly prepared an escape from all that the intellect holds true, and that escape, as described in the Scriptures and the legends of Zen Buddhism, is precipitated by a shock, often produced artificially by the teacher".	Person: Yeats, William Butler
9	1938	Yeats, W.B. On the boiler. (Dublin : Cuala Press, 1938). "But if I would escape from patter I must touch upon things too deep for my intellect and my knowledge, and besides I want to make my readers understand that explanations of the world lie one inside another, each complete in itself, like those perforated Chinese ivory balls."	Person: Yeats, William Butler

Cited by (1)

#	Year	Bibliographical Data	Type / Abbreviation	Linked Data
1		Zentralbibliothek Zürich	Organisation / ZB