This poem offers very little in the way of specific information about its addressee. While the poem's speaker clearly thinks of his lover as entirely unique, with her "pilgrim soul" and "soft look," she is sketched, to an extent, in vague generalities—more an emotional force than a concrete individual. However, scholars agree that this poem was addressed to, and written about, a real-life historical figure: the Irish radical and actress Maud Gonne. Gonne, with whom W.B. Yeats had an ongoing and tortuous relationship, is the subject of a great deal of his work. Here, we'll discuss Gonne's life, her relationship to Yeats, and her depictions within the poet's work.
Gonne, born Maud Gonne Macbride, was a successful actress in her own right. She in fact inspired Yeats's play Cathleen ni Houlihan, starring in a Dublin production. It is through her revolutionary politics as a feminist and Irish nationalist, however, that Gonne perhaps made the greatest historical impact. Radicalized in the 1860s following a rash of evictions in Ireland, Gonne became a major player in Dublin's nationalist circles. As a woman, she was refused membership in a number of nationalist organizations, but was a prolific writer of pro-independence texts and a founder of the nationalist women's organization Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) as well as the pro–home rule Financial Freedom Federation. Gonne was also a founding member of the Sinn Féin party, which remains an important force in Irish politics today. At the same time, Gonne's politics were complicated and sometimes contradictory. She was influenced by the right-wing French Boulangist movement, and held a number of conspiracist and antisemitic beliefs.
Yeats met Gonne in 1889 after an introduction by the Irish nationalist John O'Leary (the subject of Yeats's poem "September 1913"). They formed a strong connection on the basis of shared interests in the arts, Irish radicalism, and spiritualism. A year later, Gonne gave birth to the first of two children with the right-wing French journalist Lucien Millevoye. After her son George died of meningitis in 1891, Yeats offered her comfort, and the two may have even been engaged for a period. However, they never married or remained romantically involved for an extended period. Gonne refused Yeats's repeated offers of marriage, which spanned from the 1890s through the 1910s—partly because she considered his politics unacceptably moderate. Gonne, for her part, married Major John MacBride, a fellow nationalist, in 1903. The marriage ended with a 1905 separation, and Gonne accused MacBride of abusive behavior towards herself and her daughter Iseult. MacBride, meanwhile, was executed in retaliation for helping to organize the Easter Uprising of 1916. Following her husband's execution, Yeats again proposed to Gonne and was again rejected—after which he instead proposed to Gonne's daughter Iseult, who also rejected him. In spite of this, Gonne and Yeats maintained a correspondence and a friendship punctuated by occasional periods of mutual sexual and romantic interest.
Yeats's largely unrequited love for Gonne spurred most of his love poetry. At least fifty of his poems are specifically written to or about Gonne. "When You Are Old" is perhaps the most famous of these. In its depiction of nostalgia for lost love, Yeats alludes to the tormented, unresolved feelings between himself and Gonne. Among Yeats's other works written about Gonne are "He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead" and "Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven." Yet this relationship spurred even non-romantic works. Much of Yeats's poetry focuses on Irish politics or on the occult—two realms in which he was heavily influenced by Gonne.
Gonne was a complicated figure, and her relationship with Yeats was no less complicated. Yeats referred to Gonne as "the troubling of my life," alluding to the fact that their friendship and romance were marked simultaneously by artistic inspiration and by romantic heartbreak. Both Yeats and Gonne, alluding to their shared interest in the spiritual realm and to the unconventional nature of their relationship, dubbed it a "mystical marriage." Meanwhile, independently of her impact on Yeats's poetic works, Gonne's life and writings offer a fascinating glimpse at the tensions and changing beliefs of Irish radicals and feminists during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
