William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and initiate, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, and later served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.
Considered one of the key English-language poets, Yates was a Symbolist, using allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. He chose words and assembled them so that, in addition to a particular meaning, they suggest abstract thoughts that may seem more significant and resonant. His use of symbols is usually something physical that is both itself and a suggestion of other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities.
The Yeats’ short essay
Our Need for Religious Sincerity, which today we propose to our readers, was published in 1926 in the magazine
The Criterion. Of it Yeats wrote:
«The Irish periodical, which has hitherto published my occasional comments on Irish events, explained that this essay would endanger its existence. I have therefore sought publication elsewhere». It is, in fact, a ruthless and biting criticism of the hypocrisy and false moralism of Irish society of that time and an exhortation to sincerity and religious freedom.
According to Yeats,
«Christianity must meet to-day not the criticism as its ecclesiastics seem to imagine of the School of Voltaire, but of that out of which Christianity itself in part arose, the School of Plato, and there is less occasion for passion».