W.B.Yeats
William Butler Yeats was borne in July 1865 as the eldest son of John Butler Yeats whose family came to Ireland from Yorkshire at the end of seventeenth century. His father was not a wealthy man. He moved his household several times. However, his mother’s family, the Pollexfens were well to do people. Therefore, Yeats would spend his childhood with his maternal grandfather’s family.
Yeats’s father was an artist so he encouraged him to write poetry. Not only that, his father sent him to Dublin to study art in 1883, where he met a student called George Russell. George himself was brilliant in mystique poetry. He shared his interest in mystic religion and the supernatural with Yeats. Both of these encouragement helped Yeats to start writing poetry in his teens.
His poetry was initially based on Irish legends. Moreover, Shelly and Spencer influenced his style. His aims were to write for an Irish audience and about Ireland. Take this –
Red Rose, proud rose, sad rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways;
Cuhulian battling with bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood nurtured, quiet eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;
And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old
(From The Rose, 1893)
A well-known critic of Yeats writes about this symbolic poem like this –
In general, rose stood for spiritualism and eternal beauty in his poetry. Here, Red Rose is symbol for Ireland. This poem also uses imageries from Gaelic legends. Cuhulian and Fergus
are two of them.
(William Jeffares, Selected poetry of Yeats, Pan Classics)
These kinds of legends he had read in nineteenth century translations, which filled him with feelings of nationalism. This fervent feeling was reflected in his poetry.
Slowly and slowly, he became more nationalistic; he joined those groups, which were revolutionary in nature. Subsequently, he met a lady called Maud Gonne in 1889. He immediately fell in love with her. She was leading a group of nationalist revolutionaries. Yeats too joined her. He spent many years with them partly to fight for Ireland and partly to impress Maud. So until 1897-98 he was deeply engaged in nationalist politics. He even joined secret extremist group Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.) for a brief period.
The accident occurred with Yeats that he proposed Maud and she immediately refused him. This accident occurred in 1895. Yeats was deeply hurt by this. The effect of the incident no doubt left a deep impression on his poetry. He became more aloof from the popular poetry.
…he was writing intense yet rarified poems, delicately beautiful and wekly adjectival. He was bringing his early work of the Celtic Twilight period to its fullest, most elaborate development.
(Norman Jeffares, Selected Poetry of Yeats, Pan Classics)
In 1899, he published his second poetry collection “The Wind among Reeds”. A poem from this collection will show his grief.
The Host of Air
(Selected stanzas)
And he saw how the reeds grew dark
At the coming of night tie,
And dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride.
He heard while he sang and dreamed
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad ,
And never was piping so gay
And he saw young men and young girls,
Who danced on a level place,
An Bridget his bride among them ,
With a sad and a gay face
He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young men there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hairs
This poem was based on old Gaelic ballad. Yeats himself ha translated and sung when was in Ballisodre, co. Sligo. The husband has come to home after along journey. He feels the keeners keening for his wife. (Yeats, Pan Classic) The keener is the person who laments over dead. So the husband becomes keener when he meets his dead wife.
His style of writing melancholy and spiritual poems changed to romantic and love poems. His book – “In the seven woods (1903)” – it is clearly shown. Slowly and strongly he recovered from his traumas and then he completed his ambitious project of creating a national theatre of Ireland.In 1904 this theatre was renamed as Abbey theatres. This theatre was first of its kind in Ireland. It got total success. In this work, he was helped by a kind elderly ladycalled Lady Gregory. He spent his summers in coming years at her countryside home. This provided him a life without financial and emotional strains.
His next volume of poems, Responsibilities (1914), contained an entirely different poery, the antithesis of his early work, stripped of its decoration. Astonishingly all the spiritualistic hue he was carrying was dropped of then. He repudiated all the Celtic Twilight’s embroideries out of old mythologies. He felt that not all the old mythologies are helping him in achieving his ambitions through poetry. Look what he writes-
A Coat
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eye
As though they’d wrought it
Song, let them take it,
For there is more enterprise
In walking naked.
Yeats began to praise the refinement and public spiritedness of aristocratic life. He was now changed man. In 1917, he married George Hyde Lees whom he had known for many years. His marriage made his life ‘serene and full of order’ and it provided the starting point for an altogether unexpected conjunction of his romantic and realistic strains of poetry. His marriage encouraged him to write a distinct kind of script, which he called ‘system of symbolism’. This script deals with various kinds of human personalities. It was published in 1926 under the title of A Vision.
Now his poetry was reblossoming. Yeats was able to write with authority to blend his appreciation of beauty with tragic rather pathetic elements of life, to give significance toordinary events of life, which his earlier poetry avoided. In the poem below, he talks about jis child who is sleeping. The tone is ordinary and situation is simple which signifies his attention towards simple things of life —
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle - hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
His life had got bettered too. He became Irish senator and worked a lot for public. He got Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Nobel Prize gave worldwide recognition to his poetry. He bought a home for his family. Now he had two children whom he loved very much. In nutshell, he was a happy man now. All the struggles of his life were bearing him fruits. This was sign of stability and maturity shown his poetry.
By the time, he realised that he had grown old. His body was ageing but he kept his muse younger. In the poem “Sailing to Byzantium” (1928), he shows passion of tension between sensual and spiritual –
That is no country for old men. The young
……………
The aged man is paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
…………….
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
……………… and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing.
(From The Tower, 1927)
He wrote continuously even he was severely ill in 1927-28 and in 1929. His books the winding stair (1931), Words for music perhaps (1931), a full moon march (1935) came and got success. Now he was fighting with old age. In a poem he writes -
“At Algeciras – a meditation upon death”
In last times, his mod was changing with different ieas erupting in his mind. He was showing his anger, eagerness, youthfulness, inquisitiveness in his Last Poems (published after his death).
Norman Jeffears writes—
“Filled with energy he fought death to the end but in ‘The Man and Echo’ he came to realise that all he knew was that he did not know what death brought. He hated old age; he called upon his ancestors to judge what he had done in ‘Are You Content?’”
(Norman Jeffares, Selected Poetry of Yeats, Pan Classics)
He died in Roquebrunne in January 1939. His body was brought back to Ireland and interred in September 1948. He will be remembered always as great English and Irish poet.
Milind
References –
1. Norman Jeffares, Selected Poetry of Yeats, Pan Classics
2. Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 2002
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