Abstract
Should Ireland have paid more attention to the 20th century as it emerged ? Should the poets and writers of the time have shown more curiosity ? The critic John Eglinton thinks so, and Yeats, who cannot bring himself to love the present, disagrees with him. Drawing from a 1898 controversy involving the two men, the article examines whether literature should echo the modern world or not, especially in circumstances when literature is supposed to change that world. Can today's experience be the stuff of poetry, or is poetry only content with « aristocratic » subjects ? If the twentieth century has produced a definite answer, there was a time in Ireland when it seemed that poetic elevation could only be achieved through nature, the peasant folk or the Celtic legends. Disapproving of this fondness for the archaic, Eglinton also wonders about the effect of symbolism on the writings of Yeats and his followers. Is their romantic quest not turning into barren aestheticism ?
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