Upanishad: nella versione di W.B. Yeats

by W.B. Yeats

Nel 1931 William Butler Yeats, già Nobel per la letteratura, poeta più autorevole del proprio tempo, icona d’identità irlandese, incontra il maestro indiano Shri Purohit Swami. Ne è affascinato e ne fa, per così dire, il proprio guru personale, chiedendogli di istruirlo sui recessi dell’antica spiritualità dell’India. Il lavoro compiuto insieme è Yeats firma un’introduzione a The Autobiography of an Indian Monk (1932), il libro dell’amico, e allo Yogasutra di Patañjali. L’affinità intellettuale culmina nell’autunno del 1935 quando il poeta e il mistico si ritirano a Maiorca per tradurre The Ten Principal Upanishads. Il testo – fondamentale per comprendere il pensiero induista – è al cuore dell’opera dell’ultimo Yeats, che dalla sapienza indiana trae linfa per le ultime, abissali poesie. A Yeats, soprattutto – culmine di un immaginario fatato e fatale coltivato fin da ragazzo – attrae l’idea del poeta-mago, della parola-sortilegio capace di agire sulla struttura illusoria della realtà. Il canto, come dire, è continuo incantesimo. Per la prima volta in italiano, i testi più importanti della spiritualità indiana nella versione del più importante poeta inglese del Novecento

97 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 16, 2023

About the author

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia