The Celtic Element in Literature by W.B. Yeats

I.

Ernest Renan described what he held to be Celtic characteristics in _The / Poetry of the Celtic Races_. I must repeat the well-known sentences: 'No / race communed so intimately as the Celtic race with the lower creation, or / believed it to have so big a share of moral life. ' The Celtic race had 'a / realistic naturalism,' 'a love of nature for herself, a vivid feeling for / her magic, commingled with the melancholy a man knows when he is face to / face with her, and thinks he hears her communing with him about his origin / and his destiny. ' 'It has worn itself out in mistaking dreams for / realities,' and 'compared with the classical imagination the Celtic / imagination is indeed the infinite contrasted with the finite. ' 'Its / history is one long lament, it still recalls its exiles, its flights / across the seas. ' 'If at times it seems to be cheerful, its tear is not / slow to glisten behind the smile. Its songs of joy end as elegies; there / is nothing to equal the delightful sadness of its national melodies. ' / Matthew Arnold, in _The Study of Celtic Literature_, has accepted this / passion for nature, this imaginativeness, this melancholy, as Celtic / characteristics, but has described them more elaborately. The Celtic / passion for nature comes almost more from a sense of her 'mystery' than of / her 'beauty,' and it adds 'charm and magic' to nature, and the Celtic / imaginativeness and melancholy are alike 'a passionate, turbulent, / indomitable reaction against the despotism of fact. ' The Celt is not / melancholy, as Faust or Werther are melancholy, from 'a perfectly definite / motive,' but because of something about him 'unaccountable, defiant and / titanic.'