W.B. Yeats and the trish Theatre in a painting by Edmund Dulac. William Butler Yeats (1865-1935) Life and Works ‘B. Yeats was born in Dublin but moved to London when he was two, although he continued to spend time with his mother’s family ia County Sligo, Ireland. His father, John Butler Yeats, was a painter He was educated in London and later, in 1880-83, in Dublin, He soon became interested in the occult and in the cause of Irish independence, Inte London ofthe late 1880s and early 1890s he met William Mortis, Oscar Wie and other luminaries of the day. Later he became a member of the Rhymers Club, the notorious group of dissolute nineties’ poets (Emest Dowson, 1867, 1900, Lionel Johnson, 1867-1902). His sentimental attachment to Maud Gonne, a passionate fighter for Irish independence who always refused to marry him, despite several proposals over the years, began in 1889, the same year as his first book of poems, The Wanderings of Oisin, came out. Other early works were a verse play, The Countess Cathleen, written for Maud, and a group of essays called The Celtic Twilight. A trp to Paris in 1894 led to a friendship with Arthur Symons, the poet and critic largely responsible for publicising the works of the French symbols in England. In 1896, he also met two key figures in his life: J. M Synge, the playwright who wrote The Playboy of the Western World and who was to collaborate with Yeats at the Abbey Theatre i n,, Which opened in 1904, and Lady Gregory, deeply involved with the nationalist cause. In 1899 another col lection of lyrics, The Wind Among the Reeds came out. During the early years of the century, Yeats was much involved in the practical side of the theatrical business, especially because of the stormy reception given some of the plays at the Abbey Theatre. Yeats gradually cast off his early vagueness and honed his art into a direct and flexible tool, as can be seen in such vol yas as The Green Helmet (1910) and Responsibilities (1914) Yeats was profoundly moved by the American poet Ezra Pound’s call for concrete images and for poetry with the same integrity as good prose. In addition, Pound introduced Yeats t0 the Japanese Noh plays, which helped Yeats in his own the- ical writings such as Ar the Hawk's Well (1916). - Yeats proposed to Maud Gonne again (her husband had bee? Simmer nse sof he Ese Rng in 91 ate wd During these years he wae ee eee orien i mystical beliefs Cae in the process of articulating his philosophical fe Waunmely complicated system. The collections of poets from these years, The Wild Swans at Coole (1917), and Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize 1923, By now he was senator in the new I Sanaa ee , W Trish Fr Philosophical work, A Vision, n ree State and was working on his Published in 1926,Despite ill health ha Winding Stair in 1933, Produceg thy One of the most aston: © voluy ei aStonishi some oF is finest work a abou with its extraordinary mixt ‘ated later in, Mt Yeats ya, his charming early Iyrieg °F bitterness ag ne! He moved to the south and was buried in France, ae in 1938 bu decade later. OUBH his bog ie the Itis impossible in this timiteg a of philosophical beliefs and mysqhes® © 8 any re Yeats’ work; fortunately, his 'ystical g symbolism, to decipher them; though gq ee’ &° not reauice a ‘The xth Century Yeats’ prose writings expound a complex and ordered view of history and of man’s relationship with the universe. All esoteric systems interested Yeats, but he certainly was not gullible. He investigated and tried to find the truth behind all of them. Most of all, Yeats wanted a system that would confirm his heartfelt belief that the closest we can get to the truth is through the works of poets, painters, sculptors and theologians. Still, he was blocked from becoming a Christian by his early readings of Darwin and Huxley. Like Blake, whose work he helped to edit, Yeats created his own philosophical system through which he ic i ; ed fantastic to ordered his thoughts, emotions and desires. Yeats" system seemed fi his conter nae and they often wondered whether he actually believed in all ass hosts, life after death and great historical the things he wrote about: demons, 8! ‘ ’ cycles. Ir seems that he did, but he also wrote ofthis system: that: pean helmed by [77a sucha question: os i wer that if sometimes overwhelmed b oi To such a question! 16am Tae mit of Tne ke Kista Tavares al men mus be when 2 BMS a ow at ow T regard them as stylistic he drawing of Wyndham isi. They have helped me periods literally once my FeasOn Tig system stands out clearly in my "mi arrangements comparable oe Lewis and the ovoids in the s fa eats ality andj tohold in a single thovshs = which he would base erature. «are the three tings HPO” Below he says what or him re nings whieh Kant oust e MS three found literature om organ I would: postulate to make life liveable - Freedom, God, Immortality, The adi these three before “Bacon, Newton, Locke’ has made literature se Because Freedom is gone we have Stendhal’s ‘mirror dawaling down cies because God has gone we have realism, the accidental, because immoral gone we can no longer write those tragedies which have always seems w is alone legitimate - those that are joy to the man who dies. bai The Second Coming, from Michael Robartes and the Dancer con fying higher and higher in sale ond sree pure circles which out-| linea cone, or gyre, "eats calle it hore. This, land more dist from ch centre cannot hold: the balance is lost. loosed: liberated, set free. 5. ceremony of innocence: for Yeas this was one ofthe ualities which made life 'worth living inthe old aris- focratic societies. '6. ot hand: near, close by. + tg This is one of Yeats’most famous poems. Even though it refers directly we poets idea of historical cycles — here he prophesies the ending of te Chrsig era — and contains such strange ideas as ‘Spiritus Mundi’, this poem comain incredibly straightforward images which strike even the uninitiated reader The Spiritus Mundi of this poem is Yeats' explanation of certain images which obsessed him. He did not believe that they came from his own memory bt fom @ kind of collective memory of all mankind, ‘Those images that come in sey are (1) from the state immediately preceding our birth; (2) from the Spirius Mundi’ ~ that is 10 say, from ‘a general storehouse of images which have ceased to be a property of any personality or spirit.’ Yeats also seems to have regarded these common images or visions of mankind as being prophetic and as having an influence on the world. The other image of this poem is that of the gyres, or spinning cones. They are part of Yeats’ belief in Magnus Annus or the Great Year, a repeating cycle of 2000-year periods. In this poem, Yeats tells us of the image he received from the Spiritus Mundi, which he interprets as signalling the end of the Christan era and the complete dominion of our ‘scientific, democratic, fast-accumulal- ing, heterogeneous civilization,’ ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre q The falcon cannot hear the falconer!: Things? fall apart; the centre cannot hold3; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, ‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 5 ‘The ceremony of innocence’ is drowned: The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at handS; Surely the Second Coming is at hand, 10 The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi ‘Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desertshape with a lion’s by shape wil ody an “are blank and pitiless as oe ead oF a magn s the sun, in?, removing its SIOW thighs, white all about jt peel’ shadows of the indignant ‘The darkness drops again?; but ‘That twenty centuries! of ston, 12 i Were vexed to!? nightmare by a rocky ‘And what rough beast!4, its hour come Cradlel3, 20 slouches towards!5 Bethlehemt6 to Fe co at last, orn? the ‘above, whi (Mean 2. Were vexed to: were Istrbed ond nanstrmed desert binds, i 13, rocking cradle: 1. Why en t ta foleon hear the falconer? ara Eaten ihe 2 Michoaet o c tof the falconer symbolise? 14, bees in Chrison 3, How does Yeats describe the stone he we athe ls opel re ing he poem tthe fine of his writ EO pacar 4, What does the violence of the world sign Ronn What isthe image which Yeetsseeag 2 0H? heii seo te 6, What is the Spiritus Mundi2 etegriht bt i rs 7, What is the new era that Yeats feels is at hand? eee cy. iploce of Christ. Despite the poem’s complex system, its actual words, apart from terms like ‘gyre’ and ‘Spiritus Mundi’, are simple and direct; but they ore combined to form striking images. For example, it is with the simple assertion, Things fall opart’, whose very banality underscores the sense of inevitability, that Yeats conveys the idea that the Christian era must end, Find other such direct images in the poem. This poem was written in 1919. the impression that ‘mere anarc! 1. Do you think that the philosophy behin: ation of it? up by 2. Do you think our own era can be summed UP this poem? Which world events might have given Yeats hy’ had been loosed upon the world? 4 the poem ads YOU SPPTEC the first paragraph ofThe Oxen Pesce text 66 |wings of the swan are ings il lowen hough he & spon ak receives « hard punch tog: gers back), "= Pe? #8 dark webs: the webbed feet of the swan, 5, nape: back ofthe neck Like The Second Coming, Leda and the Swan is Yeats’ attempr to tnderstang history It relates to hs idea of history as a series of great wheels. inne ch ter of his book A Vision entitled Dove or Swan, which begins winks "€ Poem below, he wrote: ‘Timagine the annunciation that founded Greece as made to Leda, bering that they showed in a Spartan temple, strung up to the roo relic, an unhatched egg of hers; and that from one of her eggs and from the other War. But all things are from antithesis..." fas a holy came Love Elsewhere, Yeats wrote that he wanted to write a poem displaying his belief that aur democratic age, which he felt to be barren and destructive of many ‘noble qualities of mankind, must end in a violent way. The image that came his mind was that of Leda, a Spartan queen raped by Zeus in the form of a nae The children of this union were Helen, Clytemnestra and the Dioscuri (Cane and Polydeuces). The abduction of Helen by Paris was, of course, the cause of the Trojan War. Again, what adds authority to this image, for Yeats, is his belief in Spiritus ‘Mundi which he describes as follows in an essay on magic, bat the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can How into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy... That this great mind can be evoked by symbols.” As complex and even bizarre as these ideas might seem, they helped Yeats out of the situation that most writers had to face after the advent of Darwin. In his oem The Oxen, we saw Thomas Hardy’s reaction 10 this love of a system of symbol and supernatural beliefs accepted by all, i. Christianity. Yeats, too, rejected Christianity, but in its place he created his own system of symbols and magical beliefs, The poem below, therefore, works at several different levels. First as a piece of dramatic poetry with ‘out much need of explanation, except the fact that a woman, Leda, was raped by a god in the form of a swan. Second, it can be seen 4s an interpretation of or meditation on Greek mythology. Third, if we enter a moment into Yeats" world, as a vision of reality itself, it becomes a poetic description of how civilizations are born, E Sudden blow!: the great wings beating still 1 Above the staggering? gir, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her napeS caught in hig bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast,How can those terrifieg vay e feathered gloryS fron tee inBers conta bo can bode ees loosens — i feel the a Ody, laid? in that wie highs, feathered = 2 it le fothered glory: a strange hean? beating or & fondo gor =] les? hi Ashudder"” in the loins! chgenties The broken wall, the buming rose Srareng Sng And Agamemnon dead!3, of and tower Poet of Zain: te hoi A to heart oF a god Being so cg 10. these ‘aug (10. shudder: vibr lie. So mastered by the brute blood of ae i nt fe sealtoncta” Did she put on his knowledgels with prev FT lon predate Before the indifferent beak'® could ler ne ne Pesce . 12. engenders: rng ite | 15 laxistonee through proce. | “we | ct : \deod: the Seed 1. Find the various ways in whic hiker fet tons Pern dete cee +h Yeats alludes to the swan/Zeus, What union: The beoken wall 2, The ideas behind this poem are s you describe this description of Vague? Precise? Allegorical? Could this be a description of a real-life sexucl encounter (besides the ta Lec'tiea Tae fact that a swan is involved, of course)? |wild or cnimal-ke blood of the oie “Orson eectite lcsarghs now Once you have understood the meaning of this poem, meditate on ita bit. /16. liaskzie. <| You can even consider it on and off for a few days. Does it suggest some fms") = reality more than just an exciting story? Do you think Yeats has really drawn eSides ef sxtatyng his| upon some reality common to all mankind, the Spiritus Mundi? piritual and philosophical. How would {fon of Melon : neem the sexual union of a girl with a gode (re seeyore ma | Leda and the Swan, by