Read "Synge and the Ireland of his Time" by W.B. Yeats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Not that Synge brought out of the struggle with himself any definite / philosophy, for philosophy in the common meaning of the word is created / out of an anxiety for sympathy or obedience, and he was that rare, that / distinguished, that most noble thing, which of all things still of the / world is nearest to being sufficient to itself, the pure artist. Sir / Philip Sidney complains of those who could hear 'sweet tunes' (by which / he understands could look upon his lady) and not be stirred to / 'ravishing delight.'
/ 'Or if they do delight therein, yet are so closed with wit, / As with sententious lips to set a title vain on it; / Oh let them hear these sacred tunes, and learn in Wonder's schools / To be, in things past bonds of wit, fools if they be not fools!'
Ireland for three generations has been like those churlish logicians. / Everything is argued over, everything has to take its trial before the / dull sense and the hasty judgment, and the character of the nation has / so changed that it hardly keeps but among country people, or where some / family tradition is still stubborn, those lineaments that made Borrow / cry out as he came from among the Irish monks, his friends and / entertainers for all his Spanish Bible scattering, 'Oh, Ireland, mother / of the bravest soldiers and of the most beautiful women! ' It was as I / believe, to seek that old Ireland which took its mould from the / duellists and scholars of the 18th century and from generations older / still, that Synge returned again and again to Aran, to Kerry, and to / the wild Blaskets.