Yeats and the Steinach Operation

… But writing verse is so difficult, Enderby, so so difficult. The only people who can write verse after the age of thirty are the people who do the competitions, you know, in the week-end papers. You can add to that, of course, the monkey-gland boys, of whom Yeats was one, but that's not playing the game, by God. The greatest senile poet of the age, by God, by grace of this bloody man Steinach.

Rawcliffe to Enderby in Anthony Burgess's Enderby

Perhaps the greatest enigma of Yeats's last years is posed by his decision to have the Steinach operation. Was Yeats the victim of a fraud, his decision the excursion of an intellectually sophisticated man into absurdity? Or, as Rawcliffe implies, was there an essential relationship between the nearly unparalleled extension of the “lyric urge” in Yeats and the rejuvenation operation? If the latter is the case, the splendid poetry of Yeats's final years might be declared a cheat, the product of a chemical “high,” be diminished in humaneness, become more the late, monstrous bloom of an impersonal technology than a remarkable personal achievement.

In this article, I try to do four things: first, to examine those aspects of Yeats's personality and those convictions which predisposed him to a decision to have the Steinach operation; second, to review the origin and nature of the Steinach operation; third, to assess the likely effects of the operation from the perspective of modern medicine; and finally, to interpret anew Yeats's experiences with the operation, and in the process, respond to the challenge presented by Rawcliffe's assertions and seek to resolve the enigma of Yeats's decision.

Throughout his life, Yeats attached the highest value to the intellect and the emotions. But he also rejoiced in the flesh and glorified it. His paragon is a “foolish, passiona