June 5, 1939
The death of William Butler Yeats [who died Jan. 28, 1939] closes the great era of the Irish literary revival. That death will doubtless have been duly recorded in Japan. Someone in Tokyo may also know of Yeats¡¯ Japanese interlude or flirtation. He, at one time, thought he would be called to a Japanese professorship and did, I think, receive some sort of invitation. You have a ¡°link¡± with Dublin in those plays of Yeats which were directly stimulated by Fenollosa¡¯s reports and translations of Noh. Having worked with Yeats during the three or four years of his intensest interest in the Noh, I know how much it meant to him.
¡°The form I have been searching for all my life¡± was one of his comments. (That would have been about 1917.)
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