On December 10, 1923, Irish Poet William Butler Yeats was Honored at a Banquet by the Nobel Committee in Stockholm, Sweden

On December 10, 1923, Irish poet William Butler Yeats was honored for  winning the Nobel Prize for Literature at a banquet held in his honor at the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Nobel committee had announced the award on November 14, 1923, in recognition of Yeats' accomplished and influential poetry, as well as his efforts with others to amplify Ireland’s literary theater while cultivating a cultural nationalism that supported political goals of independence.

Yeats said at the banquet, "I have been all my working life indebted to the Scandinavian nations. When I was a very young man, I spent several years writing in collaboration with a friend the first interpretation of the philosophy of the English poet Blake. Blake was first a disciple of your great Swedenborg and then in violent revolt and then half in revolt, half in discipleship. My friend and I were constantly driven to Swedenborg for an interpretation of some obscure passage, for Blake is always in his mystical writings extravagant, paradoxical, obscure.

Referring to Sweden's influence on Ireland's own literature, Yeats said, "Nor do I think that our Irish theatre could have ever come into existence but for the theatre of Ibsen and Bjørnson."

Later in the week, on December 15, 1923, Yeats delivered his acceptance lecture before the Swedish Academy. The title of his lecture was The Irish Dramatist Movement, in which he gave a fascinating recap of the modern literature of Ireland, starting with Douglas Hyde’s founding of the Gaelic League, to Lady Gregory and her work with the Gaelic Revival and to the plays of John M. Synge, whom he compared to Scottish poet Robert Burns.

Yeats also recounted the criticism of and opposition to the literary movement from the Church, the British government, Unionists and often from the Irish people themselves.

Referring to the Irish War of Independence, Yeats ended his acceptance speech by saying, “It is too soon yet to say what will come to us from the melodrama and tragedy of the last four years, but if can pay our players and keep our theatre open, something we come. We are burdened with debt, for we have come through war and civil war and audiences grow thin when there is firing in the streets. We have, however, survived so much that I believe in our luck, and think that I have a right to say I end my lecture in the middle or even perhaps at the beginning of the story.”

The Boston Public Library has a collection of Yeats correspondence and writings. The John J. Burns Library at Boston College has a Collection of Yeats Family Papers for scholars and researchers. The Houghton Library at Harvard University has Yeats Collection that includes letters and manuscripts.