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January 28, 1939

 

William Butler Yeats died on January 28, 1939. The end of an era, though not the end of the era of silly poetry. Yeats corresponded with the philosopher T. Sturges Moore and by way of some example, Yeat brought up the instance of John Ruskin, a Victorian art critic, throwing a cat out the window. Yeats wanted to know how exactly Ruskin determined this was a demon cat, how Ruskin could distinguish the cat he ejected, from an ordinary house cat. Yeats proves that there is beauty without truth.

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