One of the little ironies of twentieth-century 'British' literature is that most of the best of it was written by people who were born outside of Britain, in places like Bombay, Dublin, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Ogidi, Abeokuta, Berdychiv, and even (in the case of adopted Brit T.S. Eliot) St. Louis Missouri. And the first harbinger of this shift from the purported center of Anglophone writing was, without doubt, the 'Irish Literary Renaissance' that had its origins in Dublin in the 1880's and 1890's. Ironically, the first wave of this movement sought to restore Irish Gaelic language and culture; its leaders, such as Douglas Hyde and his Gaelic League, scorned English as the tongue of the oppressor. At the same time, however, a small and loosely affiliated group of writers in Dublin were starting to establish a national literature and theatre in English; among their numbers were the poet George William Russell (known as Æ), the playwright John Millington Synge, along with James Stephens, Ella Young, Lady Gregory, and George Moore.
Yeats, a brash young poet, was among the first to gain wider recognition, and in fact after a relatively brief period when he was active in Dublin's Abbey Theatre, spent most of the rest of his life in London. His early poems were steeped in the old Irish tradition, beginning in 1889 with The Wanderings of Oisin (a sort of Irish 'Ancient Mariner') and evocations of traditional ballads ("The Song of the Wandering Aengus") In his middle years, he dabbled in occultism, joining the somewhat infamous Order of the Golden Dawn (which counted Aleister Crowley and S.L. MacGregor Mathers among its members) and becoming enamored of Wyndam Lewis and the "Vorticist" movement. He captured the spirit of Irish resentment ("An Irish Airman Foresees his Death") and memorialized the Irish rebellion with "Easter 1916." His poetry continued to evolve throughout his career, culminating in the rich, dark, ironic modernism of "Sailing to Byzantium," "The Second Coming," and "The Circus Animals' Desertion." By the end of his life, Yeats could be seen to represent a new efflorescence of lyricism, something not known in English since the Romantics, and not -- alas -- heard much since.
I read "The Second Coming" in my Reading Globally class earlier this semester. We had just completed reading "Things Fall Apart" (I can't italicize in here, sorry!) and reading Yeats' poem after the fact was intriguing. Chinua Achebe supposedly took inspiration specifically from the first stanza of this poem.
ReplyDelete"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned..."
This is my favorite section of the poem. The way that things are coming apart, loose pieces everywhere, innocence being broken, war beginning-- the imagery is astounding to me. I can see each and every piece of this poem coming to life, especially after reading "Things Fall Apart." Okonkwo's life falls apart around him, and he can do nothing but watch the pieces fall away, even as he fights to keep them together.
The second stanza makes me think of the sphinx. Th "shape with lion body and the head of a man," asserts the power and intelligence of the creature as it "slouches towards Bethlehem" before being born again. The difference between the loss of control in the first stanza to the strength and regathering in the second stanza leaves me with a feeling of hope, even in times of desperation. The creature is still crawling forward, however forward, to get where it needs to go. Yeats writes with a sense of darkness and such beautiful imagery that the entire poem, rich with meaning, plays over and over again in my head and in other literature.
Great comment, Fiona -- and yes it is indeed the Sphinx, which evokes the classical "Riddle of the Sphinx" as well as the setting the scene in the Middle East, whence the "rough beast" is "slouching toward Bethlehem."
DeleteThe expression of beauty and unity in William Butler Yeats’ “The Song of Wandering Aengus” is told through Aengus’ journey through the woods as he meets a mysterious girl whom he falls for. It starts with Aengus entering the woods to clear his head by fishing in the stream. He then catches “a little silver trout” (line 8) but when he tried to prepare a fire to cook it, he heard “someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl” (line 13). Aengus is the Celtic god of love and beauty which compliments Yeats’ choice of words when Aengus first sees the girl. “With apple blossom in her hair” (14), “And faded through the brightening air” (16) a vibrant path she leaves for Aengus to follow. As his feelings are love-at-first-sight and though throughout his day he had become tired, he still makes an effort to find her as “Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass” (lines 18-21). Yeats ends his poem with the plucking of “The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun” (lines 23-24) that represent the romantic duality between the sun and the moon. I interpret that Aengus is the sun as he enters the forest to fish and “catch” the sight of the girl (the moon) calling his name. He falls in love with her and answers her call trying to find her in the forest so they can be together, just like in a way the sun “follows” the moon.
ReplyDeleteAgustin Custer
A thoughtful response, Gus! You may be interested in the lovely musical setting of this poem by Judy Collins.
DeleteThe poem, “Sailing to Byzantium,” by W.B. Yeats reflects on the difficulty of keeping one’s soul alive in a fragile, failing human body. The speaker, an old man, leaves behind the country of the young for a visionary quest to Byzantium, the ancient city that was a major seat of early Christianity. There, he hopes to learn how to move past his mortality and become something more like an immortal work of art.
ReplyDeleteThe poem by Yeats that I selected was “An Irish Airman foresees his Death.” The title captured my eye first as I think most Americans have a generally jolly perception of Irish culture—such as the recent St. Patrick’s Day. I think Yeats here is almost reminiscent of some James Joyce work that I have read, where the speaker of the narrative is purely human. Here, there is no glamor about the fate of the airman. There is no joy or loud music or pub songs. Instead, there is a concise consciousness to the character. He knows his fate and that there is no alternative. This feels more akin to the rainy and dark Ireland that Joyce mentions in his work, along with the themes of Ireland as an inescapable fate.
ReplyDeleteGood thoughts, Rachel -- indeed there is nothing lighthearted about this Irishman, who goes to fight in a war, World War I, for the very country that has oppressed his homeland for centuries. There's a definite kinship with Joyce in the language, although the two writers differed in so many other respects.
DeleteWhile reading Yeats’s The Wanderings of Oisin, I can see the connection between them and 1800s Ireland. Of course, the context you provided helped me look for these similarities. The names were a dead give-away, including not only the warriors but all the places mentioned as well. The language is almost Victorian English with a perfect couplet rhyming scheme. Close to the English but not quite.
ReplyDeleteOne couplet of Yeats’s The Wandering of Oisin that sealed the idea of Ireland for me was: “Her hair was of a citron tincture/ And gathered in a silver cincture”(lines 45-46). I cannot think of another place besides Ireland where the heroine in a story during the 1800s is a redhead. Everywhere else, redheads were not common and therefore looked down upon, being labeled as witches and devil’s children. I also like the rhyme for this couplet as I had never really heard of the words “tincture” and “cincture,” but they make sense to me in the context anyway. They are also fun to say.
Most of Yeats’s descriptions remind me of J. R. R. Tolkien’s description of the Shire.. They both pay special attention to nature, Yeats especially to bees, green fields, and trees. There is also something almost magical and pure about the land as the warriors travel with their horses.
- Spock Nardone
A great response, Spock. Oisin is indeed an evocative narrative poem, and the Irish "Tír na nÓg" (Land of Youth) shares many aspects with Tolkien's conception of "Faërie" in his works.
DeleteThe Circus Animals
ReplyDelete"And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
The Countess Cathleen’ was the name I gave it,
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love".
This stanza revolves around a play which was titled, ‘The Countess Cathleen. Yeats fell in love with this character that he made up and was infatuated with this women. This was his ideal women and he had to return back to real life after this story. This is so interesting and actually a little funny. I enjoyed this play a lot.
Yes, Yeats is poking gentle fun at his younger self, to be sure. The Countess Cathleen was dedicated by Yeats to Maud Gonne, the unrequited love of his life.
DeleteThe poem I chose is, ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’
ReplyDeleteHad I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
From reading this poem, what I got is Yeat is explaining that if he was rich he would give that person he is referring to everything he could. If he was God he would make the sky a blanket, but since he is poor he can only dream of these things and that is the only worth that he has. I really loved this poem, because it is highly romantic. The language used, is beautiful, and it is heartwarming thinking what this man would give to his woman if he could find a way to make it possible.
"The Second Coming," Yeats
ReplyDeleteI chose this poem because I remember feeling struck by it since I first read it in Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I hated it at first because it reminded me of the long Sundays when my parents would obligate me to go to church and sit through long sermons. I read it several times and felt nothing but as time went on, I kept going back to it. "The turning and turning in the widening gyre" ringing in my head. What made this poem make sense for me were the political times we found ourselves in, especially during the pandemic. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" illustrates perfectly the manichaeistic rhetoric some politicians use to justify their lobbied agendas.
This poem's meaning also grew after I lost one of the most important people in my life. It spoke to me, as Didion described it, of the "atomization" of life and meaning. Even though it suspects a new best slounching "towards Bethlehem to be born," I think it can also be a promise of something positive. Sometimes things need to be destroyed so new ones can be born. I think this poem can be a thorough metaphor about the unpredictability of life, for better or worse.
ps: Matheus Moraes
ReplyDelete“Sailing to Byzantium” by W.B. Yeats resonated very deeply with me, and I interpreted it as - to put it simply - the struggle of becoming older. This particularly resonated with me because I think of my own grandfather. He is getting older - mid 80s - and although still able to live independently and physically and mentally capable of basic tasks, he does express this same sentiment. Yeats describes life only as a place for young people, and we youngins “all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect” and “An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick” (Yeats). These are not very positive sentiments but are something I noticed in my grandfather as well. My grandfather also feels as though nobody takes advantage of elders' wisdom and experience, and are kind of disregarded. I imagine him “sailing to Byzantium” as a representation of his passing away, as he states that “Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing” (Yeats). It’s a very melancholic poem all around, but it really makes you feel the very deeply for the narrator.
ReplyDelete- Jessica Panichas
"Though I am old with wandering
ReplyDeleteThrough hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun"
I enjoyed the ending to this poem because I feel as it reflects what impact the women had on him only by a glimpse. It filled him with desire and wishful thinking although all she said was him name. "though I'm old with wandering" gives me the impression that he hadn't had any interest for finding love for a while until he stumbled upon her.