Participants in next month’s Dublin marathon are due to receive a medal engraved with a quote attributed to WB Yeats, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Irish poet receiving the Nobel prize in literature. However, there is no record of the quote in question having been written by Yeats.
“There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t met yet” is written along the bottom of the medals, below a portrait of the poet. However, there is “no evidence of any kind” that Yeats wrote those words “either in his numerous articles, essays or book reviews, or in his almost 400 poems and 23 plays”, Yeats Society Sligo director Susan O’Keeffe told the Guardian.
Event organisers said they “noted that while this quote is widely attributed to Yeats it has never definitively been proven to be his quote”, but that the quote nevertheless “reflects the values of the Dublin marathon”, which is known as “the friendly marathon”. The race will be held on Sunday 29 October and has a capacity of 22,500 entries.
O’Keeffe said that the Yeats Society understands that the decision to feature the quote was made “in good faith” and that she is “really delighted” that the “national poet will be shared with over 20,000 people doing something they’re passionate about”.
“I understand exactly why the attribution was made,” said O’Keeffe. “It’s been made by so many people before this, along with several other quotes. It’s a sign of Yeats’s global importance – only the great writers, songwriters, poets, philosophers are misquoted”.
“We must always remember that not every word he wrote, or indeed word he said, was recorded,” she added. “And some records have, of course, been lost, during his lifetime or afterwards. But, as we are here in 2023, there is no evidence for what indeed is the perfect quote for a marathon where strangers do indeed make friends”.
O’Keeffe suggested that the organisers could have used an alternative quote, such as “Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams” from the poem He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven. “It would have made people smile.”
Yeats, known for his poems such as The Second Coming, Adam’s Curse and Sailing to Byzantium, is considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. He played a key part in the Irish literary revival movement and received the Nobel prize in 1923, becoming the first Irish person to win the award. He later served two terms as a senator of the Irish Free State.
