Modern Poetry and W.B.yeats -An Overview

7/28/2019 Modern Poetry and W.B.yeats -An Overview

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Modern poetry & William Butler Yeats---an over view

Indranil Sarkar

Modern poetry

owes a great deal

to W. B. Yeats (13

June 1865 28 January 1939).The Nobel Committee in their award

ceremony in 1923 acclaimed W.B.Yeats as a poet whose "inspired poetry,

which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole

nation." Both England and Ireland found glorified in the dramatic and

poetic creations of W.B.Yeats. W. B. Yeats period of active literary

creativity had an illustrious span of over 50 years which is more than

that of Wordsworth and Tennyson, the other two revered name in the

annals of English poetry. In all these fifty years, he evolved from a

dreamer to a realist and from a realist to a passionate metaphysical

seer. Moreover, he is one of the very few Nobel laureates whose poetic

fountain did not dry up even after receiving the highest recognition.

The fear which disturbed a litterateurs like T.S.Eliot and George

Bernard Shaw proved fallacious in case of W.B.Yeats. This is because

Yeats steady and gradual creativity emerged from an ever insatiable

There are some poets whose poems can be considered more

or less in isolation, for experience and Delight. There are

others whose poetry, though giving equally experience and

delight, has a large historical importance. Yeats was one of

the latter. He was one of the few whose history was the

history of our own time, who are part of the consciousness ofour age, which cannot be understood without them. T.S. Eliot


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creative thirst, an infinitely rich creative heart as well as a wide

experience of the realities of life. That is why we find a number of

illustrious poems and dramas coming from his magical pen in between

1923 and 1939, the year of his death. Most memorable of these are, of

course, The Wild Swans at Coole, The Tower, and TheStolen Child

etc.

The long period of Yeats poetic life is a process of growth, maturity

and perfection of a literary creative mind. Yeats was not only a poet

but also a forceful literary and political activist. He had indirect but

influencing connection with the Irish Revolutionary Army. Together

with Lady Gregory he established the Irish theatre which became the

prestigious Abbey Theatre in course of time. Rarely has ever a great

poet been so responsive to changes and shown himself as an old man so

able to understand the thoughts of the young.

Ab initio, to speak the truth, Yeats was interested in dramaticliterature taking its theme from Irish legends and ancient mythologies

which took a turn to mysticism and spiritualism in the final years. Here,

his dream world was peopled by fairies and shadowy figures of Irish

Legends and folklore. It was the poetry of dream, fantasy and escape.

He was out and out Romantic like the great Romantics of early 19th

century. The young poet sought shelter in a mythical world of dreamand fantasy that had been destroyed by the sweeping progress of

science during the period of Scientific Revolution of the earlier age.


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W.B. Yeats poetic career officially started in 1887 with the publication

of his first volume of poems. It heralded the seeding of a continuous

process of organic growth for a long period of 53 years. A close study

reveals that the seeds of his later mastery were distinctly discernible

even in the very beginning. His recurrent themes are the contrast of

art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding

stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the

hubbub of modern lifei.However, it is his Collected Poems (1889) which

officially marks the beginning of this evolutionary process of the

makingof- a- great poet.

Like a well written essay, Yeats poetic zeal shows three distinctive

phases:

(i) A beginning;(ii) A middle and(iii) An end.

And again, these three phases can be classified in four distinctive

heads:

(a)The Celtic Twilight Period;

(b)Middle period

(c)Matured period and

(d) Last period of plays and poems.


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I.The Celtic Twilight Period: The Celtic Twilight Period contains the

earliest poems of Yeats. Fresh from school and in my early twenties

now, I was full of thought, often very abstract thought, longing all the

while to be full of images, because I had gone to the art school instead

of a universityii he wrote in his memoir. These poems were published

under captionsThe Crossway (1889), The Rose (1898) and The Wind

among the Reeds (1899). The Ballad of Moll Magee, the traditional Irish

song; Down by the Salley Gardens etc. All these poems expressed the

poets mind clearly. These were a mixture of Pre-Raphaelite and

Romantic poetry. He imitated Shelley in fluidity and Keats in

Colourfulness. His heroes were Orison, Harahan, and the man who

dreamed of fairy land etc... Sidhe, Dream Children, The Druids were

the characters of the fantasy world. It was a delightful, delicious little

world, an Arcadia, a land of romance, where a life of reverie of

imagination and solitude could be lived. Immortal poems like The Lake

Isle of Innisfree, The Man who dreamed of fairyland, The Stolen

Children etc. feature the poetic hall-mark of the young Yeats at this

time.

His homesickness was clearly visible in the poem The Lake Isle of

Innisfree

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.


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The young poets heartfelt yearning and nostalgic longing for home

(Sligo in Connaught) from his London abode was marvellously reflected

in the quoted lines. The city life of London could not captivate his

poetic longings anymore.

B.The Realistic Middle period: This is the period of transition. Both

social and personal struggles and turmoil were generating a radical

maturity on the poet. The nostalgia of the youth was giving vent to a

sterner realistic outlook to the poet. His frustrating amorous affair with

Maud Gonne, his frustration in seeing the wrong application of his

cherished Political views and the rejection of his literary ideals

generated an overall transformation in his mental makeup. This was

obviously the period of transition. And the transitional phenomena

were clearly visible in the poems that he wrote in this period. All these

factors led to Yeats coming out of his Ivory Tower.In The Coming of

Wisdom, he told us:

Though all the living days of my youth

I swayed my leaves and flowers in the Sun

Now I may wither into the truth.

At this period he cast off his earlier affinity for Pre-Raphaelitism. His

earlier self-introspection appeared Womanish to him and he became

determined to grapple with contemporary problems and controversies

and face truth and reality with courage. The change in the subject

matter of his poems in this stage might be succinctly called as


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emotional activities. By doing so they were inviting their own death on

the one hand and increasing the sorrows and sufferings of his unfed

and unclad countrymen on the other. Poems like The Irish Airman

foresees his death, and Easter 1916 are referential in this regard. His

views were found correct ultimately but he had nothing but to watch

the deaths and destruction quite helplessly. His rational opinions were

overthrown by the emotional craze of the Revolutionaries.

The angry political activist Yeats in his mid forties

The Green Hamlet and other poems marked the completion of Yeats

first metamorphosis. He came closer to life and reality.

c. Matured period: Then came the best of W.B. Yeats. His greatest

poems like The Wild Swans at Coolie (1919), Michael Robert and The

Dancer (1921), The Tower (1921), The Winding Stair and Other Poems

(1933), including the words for Music perhaps, and the Crazy Zone

group of Poems were published in this period. This was the zenith of

Yeats poetic career. Almost all the poems in this period revealed


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superb artistic as well as thematic excellence. The poet reached the

stage of perfection. Whatever he wrote marked the excellence of his

poetic genius.

Things to remember here in this context were his winning of the

Nobel Prize for Literature; coming in close contact with Rabindranath

Tagore and hasty marriage with Georgina in 1917 at the age of 51.

W.B.Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923. His

association and friendship with Tagore provided him with a mature

understanding of Mysticism as well as help realizing the inner virtues

of Oriental (Hindu) Philosophy while Georgiana became a companion of

his anguished mind.

The relationship between W.B.Yeats and Maud Gonne is one of the most

sensational incidents in the literary history of the World. Yeats met

Maud Gonne while as an art student at his early twenties when the

Aristocratic Revolutionary Activist & feminist Maud Gonne was sentwith an invitation to join the Irish Literary Society. The Young Yeats

fell in love with the girl without knowing that she was already married

and mother of a boy. In course of various toils and turmoil (both

political and personal) the two became closer with one another. Yeats

proposed Maud Gonne at least seven times (a world record indeed!)

before the final rejection by the lady. The historic love story of thepoet was so sensational that it had given a new meaning to the Word

Maudgonning which originally meant agitating for a cause in a

reckless flamboyant fashion. The new meaning was to pursue ones

love infinitely. It is said that Willie kept proposing; Maud kept


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refusing till his Maud obsession seemed to ebb, nearly 30 years after

they met first. However, nobody ever blamed the lady for her

decision in this regard. Maud Gonnes refusal was to keep the poetic

activity of the poet alive. She knew the basic difference between their

temperaments and could guess the tragic consequence of their formal

marriage. She understood that although Yeats was intrinsically a

nationalist, he had a deeper desire to live simply which she had not.

Maud Gonne The Nobel Laureate Yeats in 1923

Most of Yeats poems have their roots in the historic and

unprecedented love between the two. But at least in three of the best

poems ever written in English we get a clear picture of the intensity of

Yeats feeling toward his beloved. The poems are When you are Old,

No second Troy and The lover tells of the Rose in his heart.

d. Last poems and plays: All the literary activities of the poet in

between 1936 and 1939 belonged to the period known as Last poems and

plays.


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The style also changed side by side with the thematic change. The

Green Hamlet and other poems (1910), Responsibilities (1914) and The

Wild Swans at Coolie(1917) are really mysterious, beautiful and ever

delightful to mens eyes.The style of these poems was easy and

sluggish, overlaid with clotty metaphors and epithets, due of course, to

the influence of Spenser, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson & the Pre-

Raphaelites. It was extremely coloured, but the colours were faint,

shadowy and misty in accord with the indefinite, pensive and nostalgic

tone.

In the nineties, he came under the influence of the French symbolists

Mallarme and the English Aesthetics Arthur Symons, Walter Peter etc.

and accepted entirely without reserve their conception of pure poetry

and adoration of beauty. At this stage he fixed his faith on Art for Arts

sake and writes the poems on this particular theme. The Wanderings of

Orisin (1899), Crossways, Wind among the Reeds (1899) are a few to name

with praise. The Countess Cathleen (1891), a poetic drama was definitely

a representative of his aesthetic consciousness.

His frustration in love, his bitter experiences in Politics and the Abbey

Theatre, his entanglements in public controversies, all combined to

destroy his illusions and make the tune & trend of his realistic and

transitional phase harsh and heartless. His dreams were gone and hehad come to grips with life and reality. The change began with the

seven Woods (1904), and matured in The Responsibilities (1914).But, here

the world got his ironic commentary on contemporary affairs as well as


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life. His interest shifts to the 18th Century patriots and their illustrious

acts.

Style changed again. At this time the soap-bubble colour vanished, the

music of the fairy land died away. We behold only, earthly and clear,

the bare outlines of cold clear Rock and Gateway Rock and thorn. His

verse grew severe, definite and harsh, but at the same time gained in

vigour and intensity. Here, we come across with a compact,

unembellished language and rhythms of mostly Wordsworthian

simplicity, e.g.

A Coat

I made my son a coat

Covered with embroideries

Out of old Mythologies

From heel to throat;

But the fools caught it

Wore it to the Worlds eyes

As though theyd wrought it.

Son, let them take it,

For theres more enterprise

In walking naked.


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Old Willie in 1933 at 68.

Photo by Pirie MacDonald. U.S. Library of Congress.

W.B.Yeats died at the Htel Idal Sjour, in Menton, France, on 28January 1939. He was buried after a discreet and private funeral at

Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. His epitaph was taken from the last lines of

"Under Ben Bulben", one of his final poems:

Cast a cold Eye

On Life, on Death.

Horseman, pass by!

Yeats poetry was made from actual life. He built an atmosphere of

romance out of things seen and felt by him. In his writing we see the

world in which we are living, the world that we know with all its

blessings and antagonisms. The mind that sees is not nave, as the

heart that feels is not insensitive.Yeats poetry showed indebtedness

to Platonic philosophy, Theosophy, Occultism, Indian Mysticism, Magic,

Buddhist doctrines, Mythological wisdom, French symbolism, Greacio-

Roman and Celtic lores as well as English aestheticism. And for this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirie_MacDonaldhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Library_of_Congresshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Library_of_Congresshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirie_MacDonald


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Modern Poetry and W.B.yeats -An Overview

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