Anna was in love. Unlike her sisters who were utter disasters where men were concerned, she was in love with the perfect man, a man of intelligence, who was spiritual and intellectual and had a rare knowledge of a woman’s psyche. With his dark curling hair and long face and full lips and wise eyes she suspected he could all but see into her soul.
She had fallen in love with him when she was sixteen years old and that love had never faltered or wavered over the succeeding years. He was constant and true, unlike other men, and had the ability to move her like no other person had. She had been overwhelmed by him when she had first read his poem about spreading the cloths of heaven under the feet of his beloved. The genius and brilliance of his poetry lifted her up in a whirlwind of words as she read and studied his poetry and plays. William Butler Yeats was the perfect man and no living, breathing human could come in any way close to matching the depths of emotion he stirred in her. Her passion and obsession for his work had driven her to study English first at UCD and then to undertake a Ph.D. at Trinity.
This love of W. B. Yeats possessed her and she could not help comparing the mere mortals she met at parties and dances and pubs with the poet. Her friends and sisters told her she was crazy but Anna persisted in choosing the life of an academic where she had the opportunity to immerse herself in the life and times of Ireland’s most famous poet and his fellow writers.
‘For God’s sake, he was an old man and he loved Maud Gonne and he was on our Leaving Certificate exam papers,’ her sister Sarah had teased her. ‘How can you possibly compare him to the guys we meet when we go out?’
‘Exactly!’ Anna had shouted triumphantly.
Her sisters and friends constantly fell for the Heathcliffs and Darcys, the Rhett Butlers and Gatsbys of the world and then wondered why they were left vulnerable and heartbroken. Anyone who had studied literature could have told them that such romances were doomed. She herself had no intention of following that route and if she did ever decide to settle and marry would choose an intellectual companion like Philip Flynn who at least understood her passion for literature. She had shown him the latest drafts of her paper on ‘The Role of Women in W. B. Yeats’s Life’ and Philip had been most encouraging and supportive. However, the quest to find an interesting man with a spark of genius was proving more difficult than she imagined.
As she walked across the cobbled square of Trinity College and made her way to the library she phoned Grace, agreeing to meet for lunch in Luigi’s, one of the nicer Italian restaurants in Temple Bar. She was banning all talk of Shane O’Sullivan and their break-up during the meal and had got two tickets for the opening of a new play in the Project tomorrow night, which Grace should enjoy. At eleven o’clock she had a tutorial with a group of fresh first years who were still labouring under the impression that college life was a doddle and there was no need to make any effort to study or research until a few weeks before the end-of-year exams, a belief she was doing her best to shatter. She contemplated doing a small handout for them and then reminded herself that it was up to them to do the work and discover the gems hidden in the realms of language and literature they were studying.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are explorers. Miners digging for treasure!’ she reminded them as she glanced around the crowded lecture theatre at the faces of her eighteen- and nineteen-year-old students. She recalled crusty old Louis Redmond, one of the university’s finest English professors, who had steered her through the rough and tumble of an English degree. She had almost swooned as he read from ‘The Rose’ from his copy of Yeats’s Collected Poems in her first year in Belfield and had signed up for all his classes the very next day. At eighteen years old she was ready to have her mind opened and her spirit untethered from the usual pursuits of UCD’s student life.
That had been almost ten years ago and she could never have imagined how vast was the realm of words and poetry that would enchant her, hold her, and to which she now dedicated her life. A Masters and a Ph.D. and nine months at Harvard were all stepping stones on the route to the Holy Grail: a professorship.
She was not anti-men; in fact she liked most of them and had even enjoyed a few romances along the way with students and other academics, but nothing touched her heart the way Yeats did. A passionate fling with fellow student Brad Lewis while at Harvard; a disastrous few months dating Tom Kinsella, who lectured in Economics here at Trinity, which had ended badly. At times she did miss male companionship, sex and the giddy ease that the first days of a relationship brought, but she consoled herself with the fact that she was betrothed to the love of a genius who, with his words and insights and wisdom, had woken her to something much stronger and important than simple romance.