W. B. Yeats’s Evocation of Dream Visions
While working on the section in my book about the use of in dreams for inspiring art and invention, I decided to fact check some of the more common claims about people who were inspired in their dreams. Not surprisingly, many of the scientists who it’s been claimed dreamt up their famous theories—such as Einstein’s dream of relativity or Niels Bohr’s of the structure of the atom—have no actual basis, perhaps suggesting the cultural desire to romanticize more inductive scientific processes. This was less so the case with the artists. And I was very delighted to find that one of my favorite authors, who it is claimed wrote some of his poems and plays from dreams, was actually very indebted to dreams as part of his creative process, and in particular magically-induced dreams. This is W. B. Yeats, renowned Irish poet and member of the Order of the Golden Dawn. I knew from his autobiographical essay, The Trembling of the Veil , that during his time with the GD, Yeats and his fellow occultis...
