Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jun 23, 2008, at 3:39 PM, Thomas Seay wrote:
>
> > Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
> > Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
> > The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
> > The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
> > The best lack all conviction, while the worst
> > Are full of passionate intensity.
> >
> > -WB Yeats
>
> As I think I've pointed out before when this was quoted, according to
> Harold Bloom, Yeats meant this in a reactionary, proto-fascist way.
>
I think it has been pointed out by many others as well. I don't think one can read Yeats, any more than Pound or Eliot, without allowing for that rage for community that in many intellectuals found expression in sympathy with if not full adherence to one fascist movement or another. W.C. Williams may have been the only one of the 'great moderns' to be wholly free of this tendency. The "worst" of course referred to the mob.
Carrol