Yeats, My Influence

 

 

Born today in 1865: William Butler Yeats 

I love Yeats … came to know him early, early on. What I appreciate about him is his mysticism, his incorporation of mythology (especially Irish mythology, of course) into his poems, his diversity, and the depth of his prolific imagination. 

He inspires me to be creative and to explore not just the ‘rosy’ side of poetry, but comedic side; the tragic side; the hopeless and melancholic side …  the infernal side. He taught me that poetry is a strong, broad-spectrum realm, and by no means some tiny little limited sphere within the world of art.

He helped me appreciate poetry, and for it I thank him dearly.

On my list of poets, he’s one of the highest.

Under the Influence of Yeats

A year ago* I placed a journal entry referring to a poem I read by Yeats. The poem is called The Song of Wandering Aengus, and it influenced me so much so that not only would I adopt tetrameter as my own standard meter, but the rhyme scheme and stanza type would be sprinkled throughout my own works.

In fact, A Memory of Delta D.O.C. (a poem of true events) was the very first experimental stanza I wrote after having read Yeats' poem. I immediately felt comfort using these poetic parameters.

*****

A Memory of Delta D.O.C.

I left the buildings for the brink-
For Delta’s wretched grounds below-
To interface with others jailed,
When to delight a sight did show:
The prison sky seemed calm to me
As orange tints embraced her blue;
Then Jesus spoke through every cloud
With love no mortal mouth can do.

*****

I owe Yeats a great debt of thanks as his poem- this particular poem- has contributed a great deal to the poetic style of writing I’ve adopted . I thought it therefore utterly appropriate to post it here today- a sort of commemoration and extension of gratitude to Yeats and his work.

*****

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.



*The journal entry was actually on 11/23/08 and read:

Read The Song of Wandering Aengus by Yeats; recorded the format of this poem and scripted a stanza after its manner.

No Second Troy: A Yeats Poem

Edith Maud Gonne, who was born in England, would eventually acquire anti-British sentiments through the influence of Lucien Millevoye, a French political activist. Her revolutionary spirit would thrust her into the midst of the Irish independence movement. William Butler Yeats came to love her dearly, so much so that on a few occasions he asked her hand in marriage- Maud declined all of them. In fact, and to Yeats’ grief, she married Major John MacBride (an Irish nationalist).

Maud’s rejection of his proposals, her nationalistic tendencies and the men that these tendencies attracted (coupled with the pressing and climatic tension between Ireland and Britain), produced in our poet a series of reflections that ultimately found expression in the following poem:


No Second Troy

WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?


Of the Poem:

The poem seems to be divided into two parts: lines 1 through 5 deal more in the empirical realm (from emotional pain to political defiance and out rage), while lines 6 through 12 veer off into the ethereal- and apocalyptic- world of ancient Troy and its Helen.

WHY should I blame her that she filled my days / With misery describes the pain of Yeats’ unrequited love.

… that she would of late / Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways refers to Irish nationalists drawn to both her beauty and her nationalistic tendencies. That Yeats refers to them as ‘ignorant’ implies Maud’s intelligence.

My favorite line of the poem is: Or hurled the little streets upon the great, where ‘little streets’ is a reference to Irish nationalists and commoners rising up against the strength of a great British Empire. Yeats, it seems, has little confidence that the level of what they desire- an autonomous Ireland- would be met by an equal level of courage, hence the line: Had they but courage equal to desire.

Lines 6 through 10: Yeats exalts his would-be love by etherealizing her as above what he condemns in his own time (not natural in an age like this / Being high and solitary), and predicates upon her qualities of a goddess (peaceful, nobleness, beauty), even a warrior goddess (fire, like a tightened bow, most stern).

His language between lines 6 and 12 is suddenly one of allusions, memories and ideas that the earily Greeks would have known. He continues in line 11 with an allusion to Fate and Necessity, two ideas most certainly known by ancient Greeks, when describing her actions as being necessitated by her character (those attributes mentioned through lines 6 and 10): what could she have done, being what she is ...

Then comes- once again with Yeats- an apocalyptic consideration, a consideration which seems to me to be a synthesis of the empirical and ethereal tones of the poem as a whole: Was there another Troy for her to burn. In one breath Yeats refers to both Helen of Troy and 'Maud of Ireland’- where Ireland, another Troy, is set ablaze by a large and formidable foe (the fate of ancient Tory).

What I love about this poem is that it expresses so much- more than I dare attempt to touch on here- in just a few lines. Poets that do this (and do it well) leave me staggering in awe.

To know a poem in its context, even if vaguely, makes it so much more interesting and beautiful. Yeats would write notes and little comments about the works he produced; because he did this, some of his poems-poems that would normally be too remote for me to ‘feel’- have become some of my favorite to read and know. Context is a pretty thing.

The Second Coming: Yeats Poem

The Second Coming

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.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?



Of the Poem:

Yeats was heavily influenced by a mysticism whose theological content derived from a hodgepodge of deep Eastern ideas. Although Yeats was certainly not a Christian, he would throughout his life employ Christian language and themes to convey this or that particular idea. In his apocalyptic poem, The Second Coming, such use is made evident.

Yeats began to work on this poem in January of 1919, during a time when the political atmosphere was highly turbulent: the first World War just ended; the Russian Revolution- to which Yeats was heatedly opposed- had begun (not to mention the festering internal divisions of Ireland’s religious and political communities).

Like the philosopher Hegel (too a mystic minded man), Yeats believed there’s a dialectical process underlying historical events, and further believed that humans have the ability to glimpse it as they all have access to a ‘common consciousness’ not unlike the ‘world soul’ of the Transcendentalists. Note how Yeats derives his poetic vision from it when he says in line 12: a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi / Troubles my sight (where the Spiritus Mundi is the common medium).

The ‘gyre’ of line 1 is probably the most important individual word in the whole poem. This is a Yeatsian term that contains abstract geometrical figures whose superimposed movements work as a scale to determine a particular historical state or time (it’s essentially his crystal ball to historical events). For more on the gyre see comments area.

The repetitious use of words in the poem seem meant to produce within the reader a sort of nervous perception of impending danger or dark times (words like ‘turning’ in line one, ‘loosed’ in 4 and 5, and, along with the title of the poem, lines 10 and 11’s ‘Second Coming’).

Lines 7 and 8 are essentially a paraphrase of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. The ‘stony sleep’ of line 19 is borrowed from William Blake’s somewhat Gnostic myth, The Book of Urizen:

But Urizen laid in a stony sleep
Unorganiz'd, rent from Eternity.
Chapter III. Verse 10

The ‘rocking cradle’ of line 20 coupled with the reference to ‘Bethlehem’ in line 22 is clearly an allusion to the nativity of Christ, which would seem to suggest that the ‘rough beat’ slouching toward that holy city is an entity holding a particular hostility with regards to Jesus and Christianity. My personal take is that the reference is toward an antichrist figure very much similar to the one mentioned in John’s first letter (this despite the many interpretations which seem to rule that conclusion out).

The poem seems to depict a period in history (Yeats’ history to be clear) where a gloomy paradigm shift is at hand; where authority in the highest spiritual sense of the word is on the verge of abrogation (and this by the manifestation of that personae whom Yeats equates with that stony figure: the Sphinx).

If ever there were a poem one could deem as dark and riddled with dreadful prophetic imagery, would it not be this one? Top ten for creepiness for sure. What does it for me is that this poem was not for Yeats a hypothetical narrative or story… no, I am utterly convinced that he expected fulfillment of it.

There’s so much that can be elaborated on here with regard to this poem (and perhaps in time I’ll come back to it). I decided to post it- along with a brief biography from Poets.org- because Yeats was one of the first poets I actively began to read, and this particular poem was one of the first that … well, I’ll say it … really creeped me out.