WB Yeats papers relating to the occult and the spirit world donated to the National Library of Ireland.
The collection has been donated to the National Library of Ireland by the poet's son, Michael and his daughter-in-law, Graínne.
This is the third major gift to the National Library from the Yeats estate since the poet died in 1939. The new collection has 100 notebooks and 130 files of papers relating to spiritualism, the occult, horoscopes, and a process known as automatic writing.
WB Yeats believed his wife, George, had the ability to be able to communicate with a contact in the spirit world and write down what he or she was saying.
Dr Noel Kissane of the National Library of Ireland explains how this process of automatic writing works. A person sitting with paper and pen has their hand controlled as they write. Sometimes, what is written down can be unintelligible, and at other times it can be transcribed.
It's a whole alternative universe.
Interest in the occult became fashionable at the turn of the last century and WB Yeats and his wife became involved in a number of societies. This interest in the occult inspired many of his later poems. His work, 'A Vision', published in 1925, was based on his wife's automatic writing from a contact she had called Thomas. Many of the notes made by the couple on occult ceremonies are included in the documents which have been donated.
Professor Terence Brown of Trinity College Dublin describes the work of WB Yeats and his wife as
One of the most extraordinary pieces of collaboration in literary history between a man and woman.
The papers will now be catalogued by the National Library of Ireland before being made available to the public.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 7 September 2000. The reporter is Orla O'Donnell.
