The Circus Animals' Desertion Summary and Analysis of "The Circus Animals' Desertion"

Summary

"The Circus Animals' Desertion" finds its speaker searching desperately for a theme: perhaps an idea,
inspiration, or central meaning that will allow him to understand all that has happened to him in his life
and that will inspire him to write. But he fails to find it. He thinks back to times long ago when he was
full of ideas and energy, when his "circus animals were all on show." He remembers what some of these
"circus animals," or old ideas and romances and inspirations, looked like, and he tries to return to them.
He remembers how enchanted he was by the mythological characters and fantastic, romantic dreams he
once had. Specifically, he remembers a character named "Countess Cathleen," and thinks through some
other myths he used to write about.

Upon a deeper reflection, he then realizes that perhaps it was the dream itself, or the act of dreaming,
that drew him in and made him fall in love with these characters.

The end of the poem finds the speaker emerging out of his memories to observe the present moment,
which is desolate: a street littered with trash, a "foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

Analysis

The first section of "The Circus Animals' Desertion" finds the speaker experiencing some sort of writers'
block or existential crisis—or perhaps both. It finds him seeking a theme, an idea or core of meaning,
every day for six weeks. The fact that he has been seeking this theme so determinedly for so long
reveals that he is diligently searching, determined to find something, which makes the fact that he
cannot find it all the more frustrating and existentially threatening.

He realizes that he is a "broken man," a phrase that might imply that he feels lost, old, or otherwise
compromised, damaged by the ravages of time or by emotional or physical turmoil that has left him
fractured. All he has left is his heart (an idea that will return at the end of the poem, so stay tuned).

He remembers that in the past, throughout all the seasons until he grew old, his "circus animals were all
on show." These circus animals, the "stilted boys" (or the stilt-walkers), the "burnished chariot," and the
lions, performing women, and other oddities and fantastic, colorful characters that characterize the
carnivalesque—these were his faithful companions during ages of old, when he was full of energy and
life and dreams. They symbolize the thrill of dreams and inspiration, youth and fantasy. The poem's next
stanza finds Yeats taking a deep dive into this carnival of youth and adventure and romantic inspiration.

First, the speaker remembers Oisin, the subject of Yeats' first publication outside of a magazine. Oisin
was a hero of Irish mythology, and Yeats' book The Wanderings of Oisin described the adventures of this
hero, as he made his way through the mystical land of Faerie. This land is often found in old medieval
texts, and is typical of romantic idealism. The ladies are always chaste, and there are always clear heroes
and clear villains, and there are usually great, grand battle sequences and romances.

The speaker references "three enchanted isles," which are "vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose"—all
landscapes he traversed through his writing and his imagination while living in the world of these grand
myths. Interestingly, he calls these "themes of the embittered heart." The poem, therefore, is not simply
idealizing the past. It admits that there was always some bitterness, and some hunger, in the human
condition, even in the old songs and courtly shows of the romantic past. But in this past, perhaps, stories
and myths were used to cover or cloak the fear and emptiness that haunts life, and for a while, they
worked.

The speaker admits that he truly always desired the fairy bride, the ultimate conquest in ancient
medieval myths. He finds this fairy bride, in a sense, in "The Countess Cathleen," likely a stand-in for
Maud Gonne, Yeats' longtime unrequited love. The Countess, like Maud, "gave her soul away" because
of "pity" (both these woman, the fictional and the real one, were revolutionaries—Gonne was an Irish
nationalist). Something about these women's willingness to relinquish their souls for their causes
inspires and infatuates the speaker, who is perhaps seeking his own infatuation, meaning, or theme to
focus his life on.

The speaker at last returns to his reality at the end of the poem, seeing it as it truly is. The sets come
down, the lights go off, and he sees the theatre for what it is: a theatre, a vehicle for performance. He
sees that the people and themes he loved so much were always just stories: circus animals, playing out
onstage, enchanting and luminous and unreal. And perhaps he loved them because they were unreal,
because they were detached from him and so could not be distorted by the truth of the real, so they
could not be unmasked by the light of day and shown for all their flaws and humanness.

The last part of "The Circus Animals' Desertion" deviates sharply away from the mythologies that the
rest of the poem delved into. No longer are we traversing enchanted isles and painted stages. The truth,
Yeats seems to be implying, is that all of these mythologies began on empty streets, in the lonely
chambers of the heart's secret longings. He built them up into glory, but at their core, there is nothing
but the "sweepings of the street," nothing but the blankness of a page, the slate of a life into which we
are born, upon which we project stories and myths.

There is nothing but "the raving slut who keeps the till," a harsh and brutal depiction of a suffering
madwoman who does nothing but work. So different from the Countess Cathleen or the fairy bride, this
character seems to have no real purpose; she gives her body away meaninglessly, randomly; she rants
and raves at nothing.

His "ladder" is gone—a ladder that led him up into the starry realm of dreams and the circus and the
theatre and magic—and now it is time, he says, to lie down "where all ladders begin," where all stories
ultimately come from—in "the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." This last is one of poetry's most
powerful and striking phrases, one that shines a harsh and somewhat nihilistic light on the human
condition. This foul rag and bone shop may represent the human experience without any flourishes,
ideologies, or masks. A rag and bone shop, during Yeats' time, was a shop containing used junk that
most people wouldn't find any use for. Yeats is perhaps implying that all stories start here—from messy
themes that are reused over and over again, that can be spun into beautiful meaningful stories but
ultimately decay. His descriptions of the detritus of the streets certainly seem to represent a chaotic,
meaningless sense of lostness.

On the other hand, perhaps the ending is not that nihilistic. Perhaps this rag and bone shop is what
inspires people to write and love and hope and romanticize. Perhaps it provides the tools and the
imperative to write or love one's way out of meaninglessness, into the circus of dreams—if only for a
little while.

Themes

Disillusionment

Yeats's "The Circus Animals' Desertion" is about disillusion: the way ideals, dreams, and fantasies have
broken down for the speaker as he has grown older, leaving him with nothing but himself.

Having lived—as poet, dreamer, and believer in various causes—in the sparkling world of illusions for
much of his life, the speaker is realizing that those illusions were hollow and unreal. He is coming to
understand and accept that he used to have delusions of grandeur, but those have departed, and there
is no cohesive theme or singular great narrative underwriting his life. Instead, there are only the pieces,
which form the poem.

Performance

"The Circus Animals' Desertion" centers around performance: circus performances, performances of
rage and hate, performances of being. Lines like "my circus animals were all on show" and references to
fanciful images and heroic characters like Oisin and "players and painted stage all took my love" all refer
to various theatrical performances. The speaker seems to say he has been living in a performative state
for most of his life, embodying and describing characters that are not truly real. The world before was a
carnival, a festival, but by the end, the stage has been cleared, the actors have gone home, and there is
only a "foul rag and bone shop" of the heart left behind.

Dreams and Illusions

In this poem, the speaker laments the loss of illusions and dreams. The quote "and this brought forth a
dream and soon enough/the dream itself had all my love" finds the speaker realizing that what he had
once loved and worshiped was in truth a dream, a falsehood destroyed by time's ravages. What
appeared to be beautiful and grand turns out only to have been a projection, made of nothing but old,
recycled ideas.

Old Age

At the end of the poem, Yeats uses the word "old" many times in a row, and the whole poem seems to
be a reflective expression of nostalgia and memory. The poet is reflecting on the passage of time, and
realizing that he has only been using the same old themes over and over in different ways; there are no
new territories for him to write about, and so he has lost his ability to create new things.

Meta-commentary

"The Circus Animals' Desertion" is "meta" because it is a poem that comments on itself, expressing its
speaker's own lack of faith in his previous work and his ability to create new work.

This makes it somewhat ironic, because in writing about how he cannot write, the speaker is still
managing to write, still managing to create something original and vibrant. These swirling layers of
contradictory commentary make the poem more difficult to analyze; it is not simply a poem about aging
and loss, it is also about what happens when aging and loss and disillusionment become poetic subjects,
making it an early work in the canon of postmodernism, which often comments on language's failure to
communicate real singular meanings.
Introduction

“The Circus Animals’ Desertion” was published by William Butler Yeats in 1939. The poem was his last
work published in his final collection where he uses it as an analogy to show his failure in finding
inspiration to write poems. Yeats, a legendary Irish poet, was a strong believer in occultism and magic as
seen in many of his poems which had similar themes reflecting his esoteric thoughts. This poem
emphasizes a feeling of disillusionment and was intended to combine his personal views and
understanding of the customs and beliefs of Christian Ireland as the Yeats suggests. The poet uses
aspects of Modernists and Postmodern literature

The poem is an ottava rima (eight-line stanzas with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c) in 3 parts, the
first and the last with 8 lines each and the second containing 3 stanzas of 8 lines. The meter begins as
iambic pentameter, but gets looser as the poem progresses.

The poem is written in iambic pentameter, and contains three sections, each written in the ottava rima
style of eight lines of iambic pentameter laid out in an ABABCC format. Ottava rima is traditionally used
for epic poems, like the kinds that tell stories of great myths, but "The Circus Animals' Desertion" is
really about the dissolution and falsities of mythology—just one of the poem's many ironies, as it is
essentially a new, highly original poem about the poet's inability to come up with new poetic themes.
Ultimately, it is a complex and moving vision of an aging man reflecting on his life's work, and wondering
it all means.

The Circus Animals' Desertion Quotes and Analysis

"I sought a theme and sought for it in vain"

The speaker

This quote describes the speaker's long, beleaguered journey to try to find poetic inspiration and/or
meaning in his life. He is seeking a theme, a central core that will generate meaning, but the search
proves fruitless. This powerful first line brings us into the speaker's mindset of disillusionment,
confusion and lostness.

"What can I but enumerate old themes,

First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose

Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams"

The speaker

This line finds the speaker returning to old ideas and sparks that once guided him and inspired him to
write and live with frivolity and joy. Since he is no longer able to come up with new, fresh themes, he
instead walks the well-worn paths of the legends, myths and lore that used to inspire him.

"Those masterful images because complete

Grew in pure mind but out of what began?

A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,

Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can"

The speaker

This paragraph finds the speaker thinking back, wondering what set him off on this whole long journey
of seeking great themes and living vicariously through hollow, unreal mythologies and fantasies. He
thinks that in truth, all of these masterful, wonderful images really just began from the only thing that,
ultimately, is left to us, once all the fires of youth and glory have faded away—the lonely desolation of
the heart. But it is this desolation that makes us create better, larger, superhuman worlds out of what
small materials we have within us; it is this ruin that lets us hope and dream. In the rag and bone shop of
the heart, everyone spins fantasies and dreams. But when it comes down to it, all ends where all begins,
and we must return to the humble reality of the simple truth of who we really are.

"Maybe at last being but a broken man

I must be satisfied with my heart"

The speaker

This line finds the speaker realizing that he has experienced a great deal in his life, and he has been
broken down by events that occurred. Having none of the embellishments he used to rely on—his heroic
stories, his vast dreams and fantasies—he has come to realize that all he has left is his heart, his ability
to love and care humbly. He is realizing that what is on the inside is truly what remains, for better or for
worse, while all other things decay.
Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

The circus animals (symbols)

The poem's title symbols, "all on show," represent the speaker's great dreams and memories that once
endowed him with inspiration and joy. The circus animals are his fantasies, his youth, his writing, and all
of the great trappings that have departed since he has aged and come to know loss and heartbreak.

Myth (motif)

The whole poem is threaded through with myths; although it is really about disillusionment with
romantic myths, it sure does a good job of paying tribute to a whole host of them here. In the poem, the
speaker continuously refers to old fantasies—the myth of Oisin, the Fool and the Blind Man (Cuchulain),
and enchanted islands: all parts of stories that are magical, fanciful, and fundamentally unreal. By
referencing myth so often, the speaker shows us that part of him is still enchanted by all the myths he
once believed in, though he now understands their hollowness and insubstantiality.

Stages (motif)

The speaker constantly refers to his specific love of performances, masks, and dreams, which he seems
to love even more than the real people on the stage and the real stories that substantiate his dreams.
He loves things because they are unreal, it seems; he falls for "players and painted stage," "not the
things they were emblems of." His deep love for performances and not for real people has left him alone
now that the curtain has finally closed and the lights have gone down.

The Fool and the Blind Man, Cuchulain, the Countess Cathleen, and Oisin (Allegories)

This poem is stuffed to the brim with allegories—stories used to represent larger themes or
mythologies. Yeats picks specific characters out of the mythology he spent so much of his life falling in
love with, deploying them here to represent specific aspects of the dreamworld he created out of poetry
and fantasy.

The Fool and the Blind Man appear in Yeats' Cuchulain cycle, acting as shadows of the main characters,
providing commentary on their actions. The Fool may be a reference to the tarot, in which the Fool card
symbolizes a new beginning or a creation, and the Blind Man may represent death.

Cuchulain is the protagonist of Yeats' epic poem about a mythological Irish hero, one of Yeats' deep
dives into grand Irish history and folklore.

The Countess Cathleen is a verse drama by Yeats, written in blank verse. It is the first play by Yeats and is
often cited as the first great play of the Irish Renaissance.
Oisin, a legendary Irish warrior poet, is the main hero in "The Wanderings of Oisin," one of Yeats' earliest
publications.

Critical reception

In "Yeats and Postmodernism," Earl Ingersol describes the poem as being one of the early pieces of
Postmodern literature suggesting that "The Circus Animals' Desertion" is a poem about writing poems.
He claims that the subject portrays a withdrawal from Modernist literature and the themes of Yeats'
earlier works.[5]

Michael O'Neil argues that the poem attempts to fill the gaps between Yeats's emotions and the poetry
they had inspired over his lifetime, as he was in his seventies when it was composed. O'Neil suggests
that the poet is tired at the time the poem is written and is searching for a "new source of creativity,"
only in "The Circus Animals' Desertion," that inspiration comes from a critical analysis of his previous
works.[4]

Another view is from Michael O’Neil who argues that since the poet was in seventies and tired when the
poem was composed, he tries to fill the gap between his emotions and the poetry that had been an
inspiration throughout his life and from a critical analysis of his previous works, he is inspired to write
the poem despite his search for a new source of creativity.

Helen Vendler suggests that the poem recognizes Yeats change in society from one position to another
and that the poem is highly retrospective as the poet criticizes his own previous work. This is seen from
the analysis of his reference to Oisin and The Countess Cathleen in the entire poem

In Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, critic Helen Vendler suggests that the poem is a
recognition of Yeats changing from one position in society to another as he moves from the prominent
poet who plays the role of the ringmaster in a circus to an elderly man with writer's block who must
recycle the themes of his past works. Vendler analyzes the references of The Countess Cathleen and
Oisin throughout the poem and puts particular emphasis on the narrator's critique of his previous works,
arguing that the tone of the poem is highly retrospective.[7]