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

Indranil Sarkar

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‘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
Modern poetry history of our own time, who are part of the consciousness of
owes a great deal our age, which cannot be understood without them.’ T.S. Eliot
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
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 ‘The Stolen 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 dramatic

literature 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 19 th
century. The young poet sought shelter in a mythical world of dream
and 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 life”i.However, it is his ‘Collected Poems’ (1889) which
officially marks the beginning of this evolutionary process of ‘the
making–of- 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 university”ii he wrote in his memoir. These poems were published
under captions—The 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
poet’s 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 poet’s 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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‘externality’. He no longer wandered into the wonderland of Ireland’s
heroic past but started taking notes on contemporary sorrowful and
struggling life and events of Ireland. This was reflected in the opening
poem of ‘The Seven Woods’. He wrote on the coronation of Edward VII
thus:

‘I have forgot awhile

Tara uprooted, and new commonness

Upon the throne and crying about the streets

And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,

Because it is alone of all things happy.’

The Volumes of his collected poems in this period were ‘The Seven
Woods’ (1904), ‘The Green Hamlet and other poems’ (1910) and
‘Responsibilities’ (1914). Most of the poems encapsulated this process of
Transition in him.

Almost all his poems in this stage revealed a tone of bitterness,

disillusionment and frustration .The bitterness was borne partly of his
defeat in love and partly of the frustration in Irish politics. His dream
of an Ideal Ireland was shattered in seeing the meanness and narrow-
mindedness of the people with whom he had been working so long. He
could not support the revolutionary activities of the IRA activists
including Maud Gonne although he had highest regard for their
dedication and spirit of nationalism. He believed that the
revolutionaries were taking suicidal steps through their whimsical and

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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 sent
with 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 the
poet 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 one’s
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 Gonne’s 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 men’s 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 Art’s
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 he
had 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 World’s eyes

As though they’d wrought it.

Son, let them take it,

For there’s more enterprise

In walking naked.

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The poem proclaims as such that the new art will no longer give a go
by to realities.His best, bright and most complex poetry was written
when he was on the right side of 50. He moved further near to life and
actuality and his poetry exhibited a keen consciousness of outside
reality. The Easter Rebellion, The Civil War, The Commotion in Ireland
& Europe, Contemporary personalities, heroes & martyrs like Pearse,
Connolly, and MacBride all find increasing mention in his poetry as
contrary to legendary figures in his early poems. He, thus, succeeded
in building up poetic myths out of contemporary politics and
happenings. His personality shone with suppressing beauty and power
through new and live contact with humanity and the teeming men of
the world. He became clear-headed and clear-eyed and so the poems of
this period born of his pen and pains were so tremendously vital and
vigorous. His 1920 poem, ‘The Second Coming’ contained some of
literature's most potent images of the twentieth century.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.iii(O, Neill)

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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 Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France, on 28
January 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 naïve, 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

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wide range and varied themes Yeats’ is always very difficult to grasp.
T.S.Eliot called him ‘the greatest poet of the 20th century’.

i
. From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company,
Amsterdam, 1969.(the excerpt is from the autobiography/biography written at the time of the award
and first published in the book seriesLes Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel
Lectures.
ii
—from his memoir Four Years (1887-1891) (1921).
iii
. O'Neill, 58
iv.The poetry of W.B.Yeats by Bhabatosh Chatterjee
v.Yeats: The Man and the Masks by Richard Ellmann
vi.Eight Modern Writers by J.M.Stewart
vii.W.B.Yeats by B.Rajan

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