Discuss with reference to at least three poems, Yeats' treatment of Irish Concerns
Yeats changes his treatment of Irish concerns throughout his life and these changes are reflected in his poetry. Three poems that reflect these changes are 'September 1913', 'Easter 1916' and 'Under Ben Bulben'. These poems show a transpositions in political thought. In 'September 1913' Yeats shows his aversion to democracy and capitalism, and expresses his belief in an aristocratic society preferably governed by elite Protestants, as they had supremacy over Catholics in his view (Chaudhry, 33). The events of the Rising initiated a metamorphosis in Yeats. 'Easter 1916' shows how Yeats (usually not supportive of violence as a political movement) credited it with achieving something (Macrae 77). This poem enables us to see that Yeats' strong belief in politics is beginning to diminish. The last poem 'Under Ben Bulben' was written in Yeats' later stage of life. It shows how Yeats has transposed his treatment of Irish concerns over time, as now, in this poem he places the responsibility not upon the politician or the martyr, but on academia and literature to invoke the new Ireland.
'September 1913' is anti-Catholic in nature. Yeats centers the poem around the need for the new Catholic middle class to come to their senses "What need you, being come to sense" and to stop exiling Protestants "wild geese" to the Continent. In this poem Yeats tries to rekindle the passion for Nationalism that existed whilst John O'Leary was alive. He does this by installing a sense of guilt. "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone / Its with O'Leary in the grave", these lines repeated throughout the poem point out that the Nationalist cause is being forgotten because the leader is no longer there to enforce it. By doing this Yeats attempts to regain the impetus for Nationalism that once existed by making out that the cause O'Leary spent his life working for was fading away and would therefore make his efforts futile. The third stanza further reflects the idea that people need to rally behind the cause of literary nationalism as it discusses the Irish rebels who fought for Catholic emancipation. "For this that all that blood was shed / For this Edward Fitzgerald died / And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone / All that delirium of the brave?" These lines show how Yeats was ...
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...and fruitless. In 'Easter 1916' Yeats' treatment varies slightly. He is thrown into a state of turmoil as he tries to find a balance between the achievement of the Easter martyrs and the pacifist views he had previously upheld. He then accepts that death is sometimes advantageous but combats this with the argument that very little is worth sacrificing human life for. 'Under Ben Bulben' shows a mature, understanding Yeats. He believes in this poem that the power lies within the mind and turns to art to recruit nationalists. He makes a plea for artists to keep up past traditions as he views them as the means of remembrance. It is evident in these three poems that a transgression in Yeats' thought process and his treatment towards Irish concerns has taken place, and it reveals the road to self-discovery Yeats endured in his lifetime.
Works Cited
Chaudhry, Yug M. Yeats, the Irish Literary Revival and the Politics of Print. Cork: Cork University Press, 2001.
Macrae, Alasdair D. F. W. B. Yeats: A Literary Life. New York: St Martin's Press, 1995.
Malins, Edward. Yeats and the Easter Rising. Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1965.
Yeats, William B. W. B. Yeats: Selected Poems. Ed. Timothy Webb.
Yeats, William Butler. The De-Anglicizing of Ireland” in Yeats’s Poetry, Drama, and Prose. ed. Pethica, James. W.W. Norton & Company, USA, 2000.
The tales were rediscovered around 1880 inspiring the Irish literary revival in romantic fiction by writers such as Lady Augusta Gregory and the poetry and dramatic works of W.B. Yeats. These works wer...
Yeats' early work was not especially Irish. Soon, however, he began to look to the ancient rituals and pagan beliefs of the land for his artistic inspiration. He tried to merge this interest with his aristocratic tastes to create an original Irish poetry and to establish his own identity.
Wilberg, Jonah. "Keats to Autumn Analysis." Humanities 360. N.p., 8 Jan. 2011. Web. 18 Dec. 2013.
In regard to the Nationalists, he incorporates traditional Irish characters, such as Fergus and the Druids, to create an Irish mythology and thereby foster a national Irish identity. After the division of the Cultural Nationalists, Yeats feels left behind by the movement and disillusioned with their violent, "foolish" methods. He is also repeatedly rejected by Gonne. These efforts to instigate change through poetry both fail, bringing the function of the poet and his poetry into question. If these unfruitful poems tempt him from his ?craft of verse,?
William Yeats is deliberated to be among the best bards in the 20th era. He was an Anglo-Irish protestant, the group that had control over the every life aspect of Ireland for almost the whole of the seventeenth era. Associates of this group deliberated themselves to be the English menfolk but sired in Ireland. However, Yeats was a loyal affirmer of his Irish ethnicity, and in all his deeds, he had to respect it. Even after living in America for almost fourteen years, he still had a home back in Ireland, and most of his poems maintained an Irish culture, legends and heroes. Therefore, Yeats gained a significant praise for writing some of the most exemplary poetry in modern history
Yeats, William, Butler. "The Second Coming." The Longman Anthology British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. Longman. New York. 2000. 2329.
The poet Keats wrote that “the only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s own mind about nothing – to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thought, not a select body”. That this may be an admirable aim for a poet, and especially so for one writing against a background of ethnic violence, is not in doubt. It is, however, extremely difficult to remain neutral when one identifies oneself with an ethnic party involved in conflict. It is my intention, then, in this essay, to document how Seamus Heaney’s reaction to violence in his homeland has affected his writings, with particular reference to the volume of poetry entitled “North”. This volume first appeared in 1975, a year after the collapse of the so-called Sunningdale Agreement, a power-sharing executive which came into being at the start of 1974 and had brought for many and certainly for Catholic nationalists a certain hope. However, shortly after its introduction, the IRA declared that “the war goes on” and a 15 day strike by loyalist workers brought the Faulkner-led government to disbandment. Thus, 1974 and 1975 saw some of the darkest days of the northern “troubles”. Heaney then is forced to react to the maelstrom in which he finds himself, much like Yeats after the 1916 rising, and like Yeats, he finds himself unsure of his position. Unlike Yeats, however, he is not a well-established, mature poet and upon being presented with an era which will shape the future of Ireland, he is often found wanting.
In William Butler Yeats' poem, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," he focuses on man's inner nature. He touches on the many jumbled thoughts that must race through one's mind at the point when they realize that their death is inevitable. In this poem, these thoughts include the airman's believed destination after leaving Earth, his feelings about his enemies and his supporters, his memories of home, his personal reasons for being in the war and, finally, his view of how he has spent his life. Through telling the airman's possible final thoughts, Yeats shows that there is a great deal more to war than the political disputes between two opposing forces and that it causes men to question everything they have ever known and believed.
This opposition shows Keats highlighting the delicate correspondence between happiness, death and melancholy having humanistic traits. In order to experience true sorrow, one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions.
...at "more than their rhyming tell" ("To Ireland", 20). Yeats investment in the mystical Order of the Golden Dawn deepens his symbolic resources, extending his fascination with Celtic mythology into a syncretic spirituality which stresses the Jewish mystical doctrine known as the Kaballah. Through a combination of highly accessible rhyming and metrical poetry with such esoteric systems Yeats is able to construct a dual-level poetics in which readily traceable meanings are amplified by an acquaintance with the symbolic systems Yeats spent a great deal of his life mastering. His investment in these symbolic systems, and their ability to invoke unseen spiritual forces instantiates the poet's resistance to certain developments of modernity - such as the stress on reason, urbanity and individuality - and makes his poetic work a central aspect of his magico-religious Work.
...tember 1913, there were only a few people that made huge sacrifices for independence in their country while others had contradicted their efforts and only focused on themselves. It was seen as if the heroes died in vain. In Easter 1916, the reader is able to notice a change in the people’s views and see that they are now the ones who are fighting for Ireland’s independence in honor of their previous leaders. The change Yeats talks about is that the result of the 1916 rising and the execution of some of its leaders. In turn the country revolted into the War of Independence. The Free State resulted in dividing the country both geographically and passionately along with those who had accepted the Free State and those who didn’t.
This refrain enforces his disgust at the type of money hungry people that the Irish have become. In the third and fourth stanza, however, Yeats completely changes the tone of his poetry. He praises the romantics of Irish history, such as Rob...
Keats, John. “Letters: To George and Thomas Keats.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 967-968. Print.
Yeats and Eliot are two chief modernist poet of the English Language. Both were Nobel Laureates. Both were critics of Literature and Culture expressing similar disquietude with Western civilization. Both, prompted by the Russian revolution perhaps, or the violence and horror of the First World War, pictured a Europe that was ailing, that was literally falling apart, devoid of the ontological sense of rational purpose that fuelled post-Enlightenment Europe and America(1). All these similar experience makes their poetry more valuable to compare and to contrast since their thoughts were similar yet one called himself Classicist(Eliot) who wrote objectively and the other considered himself "the last Romantic" because of his subjective writing and his interest in mysticism and the spiritual. For better understanding of these two poets it is necessary to mention some facts and backgrounds on them which influenced them to incorporate similar (to some extent) historical motif in their poetry.