W. B. Yeats has often been accused of espousing the ideal of l'art pour l'art. For example in 1898 in an essay entitled “What Should be the Subjects of a National Drama” John Eglinton expressed fears that Yeats' interest in developing ideals of literary experience in Ireland would be corrupted by his association with the aesthetic movement. A.E., though he had defended Yeats earlier, soon found himself in agreement with Eglinton. Yeats, of course, publicly renounced any intimate intercourse with the principle of art for art's sake. On the other hand, he agreed with aesthetes such as Hallam, Wilde, and Pater when they cautioned the artist against contamination by the mores and concerns of society. He also knew that the artist's ideal of beauty affected his life in a very profound way and was therefore capable of having a similar effect upon the lives of other human be-beings. I should like, in this paper, to look at Yeats' ideas about the relationship between the artist and other human beings.
To Yeats the artist and his art bore a crucial relationship to society. Certainly, Yeats did feel that society was a corrupting influence. It was certainly necessary for the artist to be in society but not of it, and to fly by the nets of family, race, and religion. Nevertheless, Yeats felt that such a separation was not ideal, neither was it the fault of the true artist. Ideally, the artist and his society should share a unity of culture and a unity of being. Even during the early years of his career, he thought that art should arise spontaneously out of society as the expression of soul, just has it had in the Renaissance, in the fifth century B.C., in the Byzantine civilization, and around the turf fires in the west of Ireland.