In the pantheon of Irish literature, few figures cast as long a shadow as John Millington Synge, a man who compressed into his brief thirty-seven years a literary output that would reshape the very notion of Irish dramatic art. Born on April 16, 1871, into the comfortable Protestant Anglo-Irish gentry of County Dublin, Synge would grow to become one of Ireland's most celebrated and controversial playwrights, creating…
“A play that has the same atmosphere as a poem, and yet is full of life and movement, is what I am trying to write.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Irish Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow
Arthur Symons was born on 28 February 1865 at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales, into a household shaped by religious discipline, frequent movement, and intellectual aspiration. He was the son of the Reverend Arthur Symons, a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and Mary Ann Symons. His father’s ministry required the family to move from place to place, and the boy’s childhood was therefore less rooted in one local communit…
“The secret of Rimbaud, I think, is that his mind was not the mind of the artist, but of the man of action. He was a dreamer, but all his dreams were discoveries.”
Neighbourhood:
Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
