The uprising, passionate as it was, was futile in some ways. Home Rule was not given (or taken), and many who were involved lost theie lives, both in the fighting and in subsequent executions. But it was also because of the executions that the Easter Rising became a symbolic event, an important rallying point, for the Irish liberation movement. Republicans won the majority of the seats in the next parlimentary election, and Ireland declared independence in 1919, resulting in the Irish War of Independence.
Yeats, we should note, was uninterested in the onset of WWI. It didn't hit close enough to home. But when the Easter rising broke out soon after, Yeats was "changed, changed utterly." He knew the men that marched on the General Post Office, some of whom he mentions in "Easter 1916": MacDonagh and MacBride, Connolly and Pearse. Yeats did not necessarily agree with what these men did. "Was it needless death after all?" he asks in the poem (Yeats, incidentally, almost never answers the questions he asks. The poets role is to ask them.) He also writes that "Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart" - a line that nationalists like Maud Gonne did not like because they believed one could not sacrifice too much. But whether or not Yeats agreed with the actions of these men, the experience changed him a great deal. He began to see people in a new way (th
e poem, in fact, is largely about this altered perception of people). For example, Yeats disliked Maud Gonne's husband, Major John MacBride, "A drunken, vanglorious lout" as the poem has it. But MacBride, too, is numbered in Yeats's song, "changed" along with the others.We will talk about this poem, and these events, in greater detail, but what I would like for you to do now is focus on the birth of "terrible beauty" in this poem and others. Yeats's earlier work is beautiful, certainly, but it is not "terrible." As we discussed in class today, there is much in these middle-period poems that talks about the price that life exacts, whether in love, or art, or politics. That price became very real to Yeats in 1916. I would like to have a discussion about the awareness of "terrible beauty" that is evident in these poems.
I would also like to talk about the idea of passion, or rather the act of being passionate, in these poems. In particular, look at "The Fisherman," "The Wilde Swans at Coole," "September 1913," and "Ego Dominus Tuus." Talk about passion.
I would like for everyone to respond to one of these ideas before class on Wednesday.
-D
"Terrible Beauty." An interesting combination of words. It suggests that life can be both. When I ponder those two words together I am reminded of Tim O'Brien an American writer. But hey, with a name like O'Brien he has got to come from Irish stock. Anyway, the words "terrible beauty" remind me of some things that O'Brien said in a story having to do with the Vietnam War. O'Brien said, "Truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty." I think that quote can be applied to Yeats to some degree, that maybe he is bringing in some binaries to his poetry. It took an event like Easter 1916 to change Yeats' perception of people and life. I might be looking in the wrong direction, but I just find interesting that beauty can be found in the midst of terrible things, I wonder if that is what Yeats is doing in some poems. I'm just speculating. I could be totally wrong.
ReplyDeleteI can't think of any other way to describe that time period in Ireland than "a terrible beauty." Ireland was a nation that was on the verge of shaking loose the chains of English oppression...AND shaking those chains off only to be met with an immediate civil war. Those were perhaps the worst and the best times to live in Ireland. Events took place in the years just following the 1916 Uprising. To be a part of that history but also to be a part of the sorrow, the loss, the destruction...this would be the exact definition of a terrible beauty.
ReplyDeleteYeat's was friends with many of the 1916 martyrs. They weren't just blue-collar tenement dwelling men; they were reformers, philosophers, and poets. Pearse was a good friend of Yeats. Yeats devoted half a stanza to Pearse, the one who kept a school, a school for children where Pearse taught Irish history, language, and culture. He led the rebellion on a "winged horse". Pearse was a poet himself, a published poet.
Perhaps the reason Yeats was changed so much by these events was because, aside from John MacBride who had a career as a military man, none of these men were military men. They were scholars fighting for what they believed to be right. It is that passion that changed Yeats AND the country as a whole. It was also that passion that brought the Black and Tans, the War of Brothers, and the subsequent troubles in Northern Ireland.
I think that September 1913 speaks volumes of truth about how Yeats was changed (and how his work would continue to change) in the line that the poem keeps coming back to: "It's with O'Leary in the grave." I'm not educated enough about the situation(s) to know whether or not O'Leary is a real person or just a stand-in for Irish wistfulness, but Yeats' use of the line, especially multiple times, re-emphasizes the disillusionment that these incidents brought about.
ReplyDeleteI can definitely see the change from Yates impassiveness to investment of the war. “An Irish Airman foresees his Death” really stuck out to me, especially the lines “Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love.” There is a sense of apathy in those lines, he is fighting because it is something to do, but he has nothing really to be fighting for. There is neither something terrible, nor beautiful in those lines. It contradicts the glory and passion which we so often attach to the battlefield. The sense of impact that war can have on Ireland really changes from An Irish Airman..which reads “My country is Kiltartan Cross/ My country Kiltartan poor, No likely end could bring them loss/ Or leave them happier than before” to the stark development of impact found in Easter 1916 when Yates claims his countrymen are changed, changed utterly by the events of war.
ReplyDeleteThe events of the 1916 uprising though terrible on their own are and effectively can be contrasted with beauty making them then of course a terrible beauty. It is passion that is beautiful. It is the passion that moves men to act which actions inspire. Passion silences the rational mind and makes the impossible possible. “In Easter 1916” it is these actions acted in passion that become more then what they were born because they will continue to live as symbolic rallying points. Yeats alludes to the future and the enduring work of the Easter Uprising ‘Now and in time to be, / Wherever green is worn, This demonstrates Yeats understood the symbolic and eternal nature of the actions taken by mentioning the color green as a symbol and now and in the future.
ReplyDeleteYeats saw the change in those around him move from talk to action. This awoke in him a similar change as his poetry moved from talk to action so to speak. Gone are the flowery words and now a more direct verse grounded in real events.
In comment to Andy, O'Leary was a real person, a revolutionary that spent 5 years in Prison and exile in France after taking part of an armed rising in 1867. When he finally made it back to Ireland in 1884 he quickly became friends and a major influence on Yeats. O'Leary helped him get some of his first poetry published and really pushed Yeats to write "Irish" poetry.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me, as well, that Yeats was acutely aware of the cost of things. The cost of love, the cost of life, the cost of sacrifice, etc. I think he understood the necessity of sacrifice, he certainly regarded, quite highly, the actions of those sacrificed in 1916, even those he didn't care for, but I don't believe he was comfortable with the idea of expecting, or asking it, of others. Maud Gonne might be able to say that there was no limit of sacrifice to be asked for the cause, but Yeats seems to inform us of its price not just to further glorify those actions, but also in way of warning. Sacrifice if you will, but you risk a great deal. Love if you will, but you will have to pay dearly, and whatever price you pay, there is no guarantee of resolution or reward. I think he wanted others to go forth in their actions with their eyes open to the consequences.
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