Maud Gonne MacBride ( eng. Maud Nic Ghoinn Bean Mac Giolla Bhríghde , 1866-1953) is an Anglo-Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, muse of the poet William Butler Yeats .
| Maud Gonn | |
|---|---|
| English Maud gonne | |
 Mod Gonn (c. 1900) | |
| Birth name | Edith Mod Gonn |
| Date of Birth | December 21, 1866 |
| Place of Birth | |
| Date of death | April 27, 1953 (86 years old) |
| A place of death | |
| Nationality |  United Kingdom →  Ireland |
| Occupation | public figure |
| Spouse | John McBride |
| Children | Sean McBride Isolde Gonn |
Content
- 1 Youth and the beginning of political activity
- 2 Marriage
- 3 Muse Yeats
- 4 Recent years
- 5 notes
- 6 References
Youth and the beginning of political activity
Maud was born in Tangham near Farnham , Surrey, in the family of Thomas Gonn, captain of the 17th Lancers. Her mother died when Maud was still small, and her father sent her to France to a boarding school for girls.
In 1882, Thomas Gonn was assigned to Dublin and took Maud with him to a new duty station. After the death of her father in 1886, Maud lived periodically in Ireland, then returning to France. In France, she had an affair with right-wing journalist Lucien Millvois, who was 16 years older than Maud. Maud and Lucien agreed that they would continue to fight for the independence of Ireland from Great Britain and the return of France to Alsace and Lorraine lost as a result of the Franco-Prussian war . Two children were born to Maud from Millvois - Georges-Silver (1890-1891), who died in infancy from meningitis, and Isolde (1894-1954) [1] . Maud, influenced by Millvoy, launched a propaganda campaign for the independence of Ireland in France and edited the newspaper “Free Ireland” ( French: L'Irlande Libre ), which commemorated the centenary of the Irish uprising of 1798 . In addition, in the 1890s, Maud regularly traveled to England, Wales, Scotland and the United States and conducted activities there in support of the independence of Ireland. In 1900, Maud broke off relations with Millvoy and finally moved to Ireland with her daughter.
In 1889, in Ireland, Maud Gonn met the poet William Butler Yeats , who fell in love with her and retained this feeling for many years. In 1891, Yates introduced Maud into the occult organization the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn , which he himself had been in since 1890 [2] . However, at the meetings of the Order, Maud did not appear too often and soon decided to leave the Order, as she considered that the Order was related to Freemasonry , and Freemasonry, in her opinion, was a purely British organization, which politicians always used to strengthen the British Empire [3 ] .
In 1897, Maud adopted Catholicism . In the same year, together with Yates, James Connolly and Arthur Griffith, she organized protests against the diamond anniversary of the reign of Queen Victoria . In 1900, Maud founded the organization “Daughters of Ireland” ( Irl. Inghinidhe na hÉireann ), uniting Irish nationalist women, who (like herself) were ignored by Irish nationalist organizations dominated by men. Together with other volunteers, Maud Gonne fought to preserve Irish culture during British rule in Ireland. Subsequently, Gonn wrote in her autobiography: “I always hated war, being by its nature and pacifist philosophy, but when the British impose war on us, the first principle of war is to kill the enemy.” [4] .
In April 1902, Maud Gonn played a major role in Yates' play "Kathleen, the daughter of Holian," dedicated to the Irish uprising of 1798.
Marriage
Gonn thrice rejected Yates’s marriage proposal from 1891 to 1901 because he considered his nationalist views not radical enough, and also tried to instill in Yeats sexual restraint, which, in her opinion, Yates as a creative person should have received significant energy for his work [3] . When Yates told her that he was not happy without her, Maud replied: “You make beautiful verses from what you call unhappiness, and you are happy about it. Marriage would be such a boring task. Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you. ” [5]
In 1903, in Paris, Maud met with Major John McBride and in the same year married him. The next year, the son of Sean was born to the couple, but the marriage was unsuccessful, already in January 1905, Gonn and McBride began to live separately. As Yates noted in a letter to his close friend Lady Gregory, he heard that McBride was molesting his 10-year-old stepdaughter Isolde [6] . Gonn and McBride had been negotiating for an unofficial divorce for a long time, but could not agree on the issue of raising Sean: Gonn claimed the right to raise her son on her own, McBride was categorically against it. After that, the official divorce proceedings began, which took place in Paris; the spouses were refused a divorce, but McBride received the right to visit his son twice a week in his wife’s house. McBride visited his son for some time, after which he left for Ireland and never saw him again. In Ireland, John McBride took part in the Easter uprising of 1916 and was executed along with his other leaders. Gonn with children all this time lived in Paris, and returned for permanent residence in Ireland in 1917 [7] .
After the execution of John McBride, Yates made Gonn a fourth proposal to marry him, but was again refused.
In 1918, Gonn was arrested by the British authorities in Dublin and spent 6 months in custody. During the War of Independence of Ireland, she worked in the Irish White Cross - an organization that provided assistance to victims of the war. In 1921, she condemned the Anglo-Irish Treaty , taking the position of supporters of the complete independence of Ireland. Since 1922, Gonn constantly lived in Dublin.
Muse Yeats
Maud Gonn was mostly female in Yates' poems. Many of his poems directly or indirectly mention Maude or are written by the poet under the influence of feelings experienced by Maude. The plays Countess Kathleen and Kathleen, the daughter of Holian were written specifically for Gonn.
Few poets sang the beauty of a woman to the extent that Yeats did in his verses on Gonn. In his collection “The Last Poems” ( last Poems ), he deduced Gonn in the images of Rosa from The Novel of the Rose , Elena the Beautiful (“There is no second Troy”), Leda , Kathleen (“Kathleen, the daughter of Holian”), Athena Pallas and deirdre .
Why should I blame her for filling my days
Grief, or recently
Taught ignorant people the most cruel ways
Or threw small streets in front of a great one.- (W.B. Yates, “There Is No Second Troy,” 1916)
Recent years
In 1938, Maud Gonn published an autobiography entitled “Servant of the Queen”, which, on the one hand, is a hint at the heroine of Yates’s play “Kathleen, the daughter of Holian,” Kathleen - a kind of mythical symbol of independent Ireland , and on the other, a stinging attack on the British monarchy .
The son of Maud Gonn, Sean McBride , became a well-known politician, served as Irish Foreign Minister in 1948-1951, and was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1974) and the Lenin International Prize for Strengthening Peace between Peoples (1976).
Maud Gonn died in Dublin at the age of 86 and is buried in the Glasnevin cemetery .
Notes
- ↑ Maud Gonne MacBride 1865-1953 Revolutionary . Irelandseye.com. Date of treatment November 27, 2012.
- ↑ Lewis, page 140
- ↑ 1 2 William Butler Yates
- ↑ Gonne, Maud. The autobiography of Maud Gonne: a servant of the queen . - Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. - P. 115. - ISBN 978-0-226-30252-2 .
- ↑ Jeffares, A. Norman. WB Yeats, a new biography. - London and New York: Continuum, 1988 .-- P. 102.
- ↑ p. 286, Foster, RF (1997). WB Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. New York: Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-288085-3
- ↑ Jordan, Anthony J. The Yeats-Gonne-MacBride triangle . - Westport, 2000. - P.?. - ISBN 978-0-9524447-4-9 .