W.b.yeats- Patriot, Poet , Magician

Katharine Dever Discuss the relation in Yeats’s work between his occultist interests in the supernatural and his determination to write about modern Ireland. Shortly after W.B.Yeats died in 1939, W.H. Auden would elegise the great poet1, and reflect on the parallel existing between his seemingly incongruous areas of interest. He considers Yeats’s indulgence in magic and the occult on the one hand ‘You were silly like us;’ (line 32) alongside his concern with the violent realities of his country on the other: ‘Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.’ (Line 34). The lines crystallise the essence of either side of this complicated relationship, and present Yeats as the slave of two masters. By including the ‘guiding passions’2 in Yeats’s commemorative poem, Auden is aware of how important both Ireland, and the occult were to the poet. However, dismissing Yeats’s occultist beliefs as ‘silly’ even in jest is precarious, as the influence of the supernatural must not be underestimated, powerfully capturing Yeats’s imagination early on, it would have an impact upon his poetry until the end: Yeats never ceases to believe in a supernatural realm inhabited by spirits and archetypal images, and these constitute a repository of eternally recurring moods or forms of life… 3 This discussion will concern Yeats’s early poetry in relation to his supernatural interests and his presentation of modern Ireland, exploring how Yeats creates a convergence between two supposedly contrasting preoccupations. A brief explanation of Yeats’s dealings with the occult will be offered, as the term itself seems so mysterious, it requires a little more definition, and one must ascertain exactly what can be included under the supernatural. ‘Modern Ireland’ is a vague term also, and in order to make this discussion clearer the contemporary historical and cultural events of the moment will have to be addressed, in order to place the poems in their 1

W.H.Auden, ‘In Memory of W.B.Yeats’ in Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy (eds), The Norton Anthology of Poetry (London and New York: W.W.Norton and Company, 1996) p.1369. 2 Thomas Parkinson, W.B. Yeats Self Critic A study of his Early Verse and The Later Poetry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,1971) p.3. 3 Edward Larrissy, (ed.) W.B. Yeats, The Major Works, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Introduction, p xix. Subsequent references are to this edition, unless stated otherwise.

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Katharine Dever respective contexts. Yeats, sharply aware of the fragmentation of society at the ‘fin de siecle’, saw the appeal of ‘things discovered in the deep’ as a possible counter-balance for the disintegration of the dogmatic and traditional belief systems. Through mysticism, with the theosophist theories of Mme. Blavatsky, and then the Rosicrucian beliefs of the ‘Golden Dawn’, Yeats found a world that transcended the mercenary aspect of modern Dublin, and he began to develop his use of symbols through magic. The function of the symbol as an instrument of magic and poetry becomes more primary as the image of the rose will feature prominently in this discussion. Yeats could see no distinction between the symbol in magic and the symbol in art, his essay on ‘Magic’ supposes that the power of the symbol, as an image, is its ability to span the breadth of time, due to its relation to the ‘Great Memory’, which is comprised of many symbols that condense ‘whatever the passions of man have gathered about’4. Yeats believes that images such as the rose could transcend the divides between culture, and at the same time the image serves to unite his philosophical beliefs with his national interests. Yeats awakens old ‘ghosts’ or spirits in an occultist fashion, throughout his poetry, which also bring about a unity of modern Ireland with the supernatural, as the spirits are also able to cross the barriers of time and open the poem up to wider connotations. These interlocking spheres of ‘unified thought and action’ are to be expected form Yeats, due to what Kiberd calls his ‘spiritual hyphenation’, the Anglo- Irish aspect of his descent meant that ‘Yeats could never sponsor one term of an antithesis for long without moving to embrace the opposite; and, even as he sidled away from the original term, he would cast longing glances back in its direction.’5 Which would account for him joining the Rhymer’s club, the Irish Republican Brother hood and the Golden Dawn in the 1890’s. 4 5

W.B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (London: Macmillan, 1989) p 50. Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995), p.317.

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Katharine Dever This discussion details the first spirits Yeats invokes, those of Irish folk legend, represented by Fergus and Cuchulain, then tracing the poet’s connected thoughts about the spiritual and the material world until he invokes the spirit of Major Gregory. An examination of two crucial poems, ‘To Ireland in the Coming Times’ and ‘Easter, 1916’, will dominate the discussion, as they cogently reveal the nature of the complex relationship between Yeats’s public concern with Irish affairs, and his private fascination in the supernatural. This does not mean to say that more obscure poems will be ignored, only that the analysis does not cover the whole of Yeats’s poetic career, in order to allow for sufficient detail and intensive scrutiny in these important poems. I The version of Irish history that Yeats re-vitalised and brought into modern awareness was due to a patriotic desire to liberate a national spirit. In drawing on old myth, folklore and legend he hoped to promote a ‘cultural unity’, and take his place in the Literary Revival. Although he was not as radical or revolutionary as some of his predecessors or contemporaries, he did not alter his beliefs, preferring to artfully combine them in some way, creating a new and different type of poem: Yeats was himself fully aware that his yoking of nationalist themes to a mystical and occult symbolism represented a departure from the flat rhetorical simplicities of republican ballads, or the poets of The Nation School.6 The early poems draw on Ireland’s ancient heroic legends and herald a glorious Irish past that Yeats resurrects with modern Irish culture in mind. The yoking of Yeats’s esoteric beliefs with his responsibility to express something more earthly and current for Ireland, is registered initially on this kind of regeneration. Dudley Young describes how Yeats was encouraged in his pursuits of an esoteric nature by his Irishness; the 6

G.J.Watson, Irish identity and the Literary Revival: Second Edition (Washington, D.C. The Catholic University of America Press, 1979) p.93. Subsequent references are to this edition.

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Katharine Dever ‘Druid land’ of Ireland is the perfect setting for the poet’s ‘Druid tune’ (‘To Ireland in the Coming Times’, l.32). The old Gaelic fili was a bard who in ancient times inherited magic powers from the ‘druid’, and the word was practically interchangeable with the words ‘prophet’ and ‘poet’ in the times of the Early Irish sagas7. Therefore, the poet has a magic of his own. The power of symbols and words are his to form images in the modern world. By exploring the supernatural the poet can then harness the sacred into the profane, and employ mystical principles in his work to incite his readers’ imaginations. Irish readers in particular could be more receptive to this idea, due to the ancient tradition of story telling and myths that suggest the supernatural interest of the nation, such as the legend of the Sidhe. G.J.Watson agrees with Young in the assumption that Yeats’s supernatural interests are complimentary to his Irish heritage and that Irish history has always been closely associated with the occult: The spiritual, the visionary and the occult are fit subjects of concern for Irish writers, because the true Gaelic nature, shown in the stories and visions of the peasantry, is in intimate contact with the occult.8 In ‘ The Song of the Happy Shepherd’, the poet is worrying about his place and position in Ireland’s current climate and wondering what the role of poetry is in the modern world, a problem that continued to haunt Yeats throughout his career. When the weary speaker mourns the ‘Grey Truth’ of the present compared with the ‘antique joy’ of the ancient world, a sense of longing for the glory of the past is established. The retrospective view of the speaker sees nothing in modern times that he can take strength from, claiming that ‘words alone are certain good’9, reiterating the power of

7

Dudley Young, Out of Ireland: The Poetry of W.B.Yeats (Cheshire: Carcanet Press, 1975) p.10. G.J. Watson, Irish identity and the Literary Revival: Second Edition (Washington, D.C. The Catholic University of America Press, 1979) p.96. 9 Ibid, ‘The Song of the Happy Shepherd’, lines 9-10, p. 3. 8

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Katharine Dever words and their proposed magical quality by repeating this phrase, almost like a spell or chant. Yeats’s interest in folklore and occultist wisdom leads him to the conclusion that to ‘hunger fiercely’ for truth will only lead to frustration, and that ‘there is no truth / Saving in thine own heart’10 (lines 26-7). A message that he communicates to the reader by instructing them to ‘Seek, then, / No learning from the starry men,’(lines 27-8) instead suggesting that they tell their story to an ‘echo harbouring shell’. The shell repeats back the word of the orator that is perhaps a metaphor representing the reader’s own introspective imagination. Poetry is a vehicle to inspire a subjective meditation, and in this way a unity of being can be achieved. Alternative wisdom, invoked from a higher order, can be transported via the poet through words and symbols, to affect a reader’s own vision, in turn making the poet a conjuror, in the same way as the fili. Edward Larrissy agrees with Young’s conception of the magical in Yeats’ work: a powerful force, that can, through the medium of the poet, be brought to the common man. He calls Yeats a ‘magician’, and explains how it would not be misleading to describe Yeats’s poems themselves as magical: in the sense that they are intended to elicit in the minds of his readers a genuine contact with supernatural powers. Like magic rituals and invocations, they have to induce the right state of mind by the judicious use of symbols and the suggestive power of words.11 The abundance of symbols and acute sensual imagery in the early collections of poems Crossways, and The Rose, published in 1889 and1893 respectively, contrive to create this internal state in the reader by transporting them into this other, magical world. The desire to act upon the minds of his readers in this manner is described by Larrissy as being due to ‘a nationalistic purpose’12, one that would be powerful in its 10 11 12

W.B.Yeats, The Major Works , p.xvii, introduction. Ibid.

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Katharine Dever provocation of a modern Irish liberation, based on the value of the Celtic temperament of the past. The heroes of Ireland’s past are beyond the grave, so the speaker is in one sense trying to invoke them, whilst also rhetorically questioning his readers; ‘Where are now the warring kings, / Word be-mockersBy the Rood / Where are now the warring kings?’13 Young notices this motive also, suggesting that by harnessing the supernatural and making contact with the past, one can simultaneously affect the present by prompting the public to be more aware and open to possibilities of the moment; ‘by giving us access to the past and the future, the poet can offer us some hope of access to the present’.14

In Crossways especially there is a sense of an idyllic and mystical by-gone universe, in which the poet is in perfect harmony with his environment and God’s creatures. In poems such as ‘The Indian upon God’, where the speaker’s spirit communes with the animals, this concurrence is evident, as he converses with roebucks and peacocks; whilst ‘The Madness of King Goll’ places the poet directly alongside the beasts: ‘The grey wolf knows me; by one ear / I lead along the woodland deer; / The hares run by me growing bold.’(Lines 45-6). The affinity the poet has with this utopian, natural world is often linked to the fact he has transcended the material world, his spirit seems somehow separated from his bodily presence, and the world of ‘faery’ comes to life. The repeated chant in ‘The Stolen Child’ offers the persona of the human child this alternative world, tempting him in an almost hypnotic fashion: Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. (‘The Stolen Child’, lines 9-12). 13 14

Ibid, ‘The Song of the Happy Shepherd’, lines 11-13, p3. Dudley Young, Out of Ireland: The Poetry of W.B.Yeats (Cheshire: Carcanet Press Ltd. 1975) p.10.

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Katharine Dever

The ritualistic mantra could be seen as Yeats himself tempting the reader to ‘come away’, from the materialist and troubled world ‘anxious in its sleep’. The troubled reality of modern Ireland cannot be changed, and this world that is ‘full of weeping’ cannot be understood. Yeats incorporates geographical place names to firmly establish the juxtaposition of the familiar, modern Ireland and the enchanted world of the poem, by including Irish place names such as ‘Sleuth Wood’, ‘Rosses’ and ‘Glen-Car’. As the focus of the poem closes down, and shifts towards the domestic setting of the boy’s home, with ‘the kettle on the hob’ (line 46) the setting becomes even more recognisable, appealing and comfortable. As the description of the everyday world ultimately becomes attractive, perhaps the suggestion behind the poem is that, in spite of all the woes of the earth, the reality is that it would actually be more disturbing if we escaped from it altogether? A fear is perhaps noticeable here, and this could be seen to introduce the idea of becoming too involved with the spirit world, and no longer being able to grasp reality, a fear that was very real to Yeats, and is reiterated in due course in the discussion of ‘To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time’. Evidently, the world of ‘faery’ is easily accessible to Yeats. He felt strongly attached to the west of Ireland, especially County Sligo, as it was the area his mother was from. The beautiful and unspoilt landscape is, to this day, associated with folklore and fairytales, dreams and legends, and has a great mystical quality. The poems in Crossways do not seem outwardly reflective of modern Ireland, and certainly not in a political sense, as G.J.Watson describes: These poems are remarkable chiefly in the very absence from them of the strident, hectoring tone of militant nationalism. Though they suggest a world of rarefied heroic dignity, Yeats does not try to enforce in them or through them any kind of exemplary moral for the Ireland of his own times.15

15

G.J.Watson, Irish Identity and theLiterary Revival, p.94.

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Katharine Dever This is due to the fact that Yeats, although determined to be thought of as an Irish poet, was concerned with cultural anthropology at this stage. He cannot stand ‘literature of the point of view’16 and so uses this rather more obscure method to relate his message. In seeking out old stories and songs, Yeats was trying to establish a sort of ‘cultural nationalism’. He resurrects ‘Down By the Salley Gardens’ from its original form as an old song, originally sung in Gaelic. It is highly lyrical and melodic, and Yeats retains its pattern of rhyming couplets in quatrains, to give it a ballad-like quality and firmly place it within the oral tradition: ‘Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;/ She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.’17 Through re-claiming and re-energising the past in this way, he believed that he could contribute to the creation of an enduring portrait of Ireland, thus producing a ‘cultural unity’ and a fabric for the society to build upon. The hope was to inspire a more unified nation, and through the invocation of past spirits, culturally inform a national consciousness, without political division and sectarianism. As an ‘Irish poet’ there was a pressure upon Yeats from his homeland to represent Ireland in her struggle against domination from the British, and to maintain a strong sense of national pride and identity. This pressure may have been felt more intensely by Yeats, as his detractors were sceptical of his Anglo-Irish background, his Protestantism, and that he did not speak the country’s mother tongue. In spite of these facts, Yeats responded to the call of his nation. In 1925, Yeats reflected that in Crossways, the majority of the poems must have been written before he was twenty, as ‘from the moment when I began The Wanderings of Oisin, which I did at that age, I believe, my subject-matter became Irish’18. He would give Ireland a voice, whilst 16

W.B.Yeats, Essays and Introductions, p.510. W.B. Yeats, The Major Works, ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’ (lines 1-2). p. 11 18 Yeats’s Notes to his Poems, from The Major Works, p.475. 17

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Katharine Dever attempting to define a nation, and resurrect a national past. It is not until the end of The Rose collection that a poem can be said to clearly present modern Ireland, and include his supernatural interests. That poem is ‘To Ireland in the Coming Times’. Yeats can be seen to prove that his poetry is actively evoking the patriotic spirit of Ireland, and that his conscience is more politically orientated than it may have at first seemed to some of his critics. From the title of the poem it is clear that the poet is unmistakably and directly addressing contemporary Ireland, with the future in mind. Introducing the poem with a vigorous imperative powerfully highlights this engagement with the current time and his readers: Know, that I would accounted be True brother of a company That sang to sweeten Ireland’s wrong, Ballad and story, rann and song;19 Using the Irish word ‘rann’ instead of ‘verse’ he further associates himself with his Irish compatriots. Being both a native English speaker, and a protestant, Yeats is perhaps consciously making these efforts to be thought of as part of the nationalist cause. Furthermore he is ensuring here that it is publicly known that his poetry is aiming to achieve a national purpose and is not just a response to the external world. He also believed that poetry could be effective in initiating an active response, and that this poetry could pursue the supernatural, without distracting from its more terrestrial purpose, as Daniel Albright suggests: ‘Yeats refutes the charge that his symbolic and artful method of composition is irrelevant to Irish political realities.’ 20 In fact, the symbolism and careful organisation that the poet employs in The Rose adds to a sense of his nationalism, as he leaves this particular poem until the end of the selection, to make a final impact upon the reader. Although Yeats wishes to be a 19 20

W.B.Yeats, The Poems p.70. Ibid, p.449.

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Katharine Dever part of the brotherhood of Irish patriotic writers, here he introduces the rose as feminine; ‘Because the red-rose-bordered hem / Of her…’and also as a pagan image, preceding Christianity and the dawn of Christ - ‘…whose history began / Before God made the angelic clan’, inspiring Irish writers as she ‘Trails about the written page.’ (‘To Ireland in The Coming Times’, lines 6-9). This idea invokes a sense of the muse, as even just a glimpse of the beauty of the rose has stimulated Irish writers for centuries. For Yeats, this reveals that ancient tradition can influence contemporary writing, and therefore his ancient mystic beliefs are not arbitrary, but actually constructive for expression and poetry, now and onwards into the future: Yet he who treads in measured ways May surely barter gaze for gaze. Man ever journeys on with them After the red-rose-bordered hem. (Lines 27-30) The idea of such ephemeral beauty having an eternal presence in the mind forges an impression on the imagination that lasts forever is useful metaphorically as this notion hints towards what Yeats may be striving for here. If he can render an idea of old Ireland’s beauty and ingrain it on the consciousness of modern society, perhaps he hopes that they too will be ‘measured’, more aware of themselves, and the consequences of their actions. The rose’s beauty, which is both old and new, not only endures time but also transcends it, like a spirit. Although beauty is fleeting, and transient, after decay there is regeneration. Yeats is appealing for a revision of the old ways to reinvigorate a new liberation for modern Ireland. The following section will discuss the rose. As a symbol for Ireland, whilst simultaneously associated with the Rosicrucian occult, the beautiful rose crucified on the cross of matter relates to blood sacrifice, the changes that the rose undergoes from the poems in The Rose to Michael Robartes and the Dancer are metaphorical for the changing time in Ireland.

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Katharine Dever

II The rose itself, a favourite symbol for Yeats can be seen as a microcosm, a symbol in which Yeats tries to reconcile and resolve the conflict between his occultist interests in the supernatural and his determination to write about modern Ireland I cannot now think symbols less than the greatest of all powers whether they are used consciously by the masters of magic, or half unconsciously by their successors, the poet, the musician and the artist.21 The symbol of the rose becomes a very dense image, many Irish poets, and English Romantics, employed the symbol of the rose as multivalent emblem; it could represent sex, love, beauty, human suffering, and it also had a long history as a traditional Irish symbol, a sign for the nation, specifically as ‘The Dark Rose’ of apocalyptic Ireland. James Clarence Mangan also employed the emblem in his presentation of ‘Dark Rosaleen’. Yeats would develop the rose as a ‘single prime symbol’22, and often see his beloved militant nationalist Maud Gonne as a beautiful rose involved in conflict, and yet at the same time the icon had strong associations with Yeats’s mystical fascinations involving the Rosicrucian occult. Therefore the rose as a symbol can represent both the mystical and the national, suggesting that, in as much as impressive poetry can arise from conflict between the two; there is also a level on which they can be seen to converge, and produce something powerful from their union. Yeats ‘insisted the Rose had sufficient breadth of reference to include national as well as private concerns.’23 In synthesising these matters it becomes apparent that they complement each other and effectively impel a nation’s political activity through cultural or poetic inspiration: ‘When time began to rant and rage /The measure of her flying feet / Made Ireland’s heart begin to beat; (Lines 10-12). 21

W. B. Yeats, The Major works, essay on ‘Magic’ 1901, p.349. Ibid. 23 W.B.Yeats, The poems, p.449. 22

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Katharine Dever In opposition to this convergence, however, is the ‘complete incompatibility of the supernal world with the physical world’24 as described by Harper. He expounds on the fact that material existence is almost insignificant when the spiritual world is invoked, as supernal wisdom cannot affect mortal action. This relates to the same tension that was apparent in Yeats’s earlier poems, the conflict between the value of pro-activity and the cost of dreaming present in ‘Fergus and the Druid’. The earthly king is bound to his duty in the secular world, and all the violent realities within it, and yet he aspires to something more transcendental, mysterious and evanescent: ‘Ah! Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrow / Lay hidden in the small slate- coloured thing!’25 (40). Despite this clear incompatibility between human truth and a higher idealism of the ‘starry men’, Yeats felt that he could reconcile the ephemeral with eternal by seeking out beauty in the real world: …because of his opinion that the spiritual loyalties of an Adept conflicted with a poet’s necessary ties to the material world, the prospect of discovering a tertium quid or synthesis between art and Adeptship became enormously attractive to Yeats.26 This dilemma and Yeats’s concern that Ireland would not take him seriously enough, unless he was manifestly patriotic, results in this balancing of the two seemingly opposing ideas. He attempts to achieve equilibrium as he claims that he may be ‘counted one / with Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,’ assuring his readers that he is an Irish poet writing for an Irish audience, when he received criticism for seeming immodest in suggesting that he be allied with these highly patriotic writers, he contested ‘I did not in the least intend the lines to claim equality of eminence…but only community in the treatment of Irish subjects after an Irish fashion.’27. He appeals to the reader to rely on a spell of imagination to uncover what may be buried below the surface; 24

George Mills Harper, Yeats and The Occult (London: Macmilllan Press Ltd. 1976) p.65. W.B.Yeats, The Complete Works, p.14. 26 George Mills Harper, Yeats and The Occult, p.68. 27 W.B.Yeats, The Complete Works, p.450 25

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Katharine Dever ‘Because, to him who ponders well, / My rhymes more than their rhyming tell / Of things discovered in the deep,’ (Lines 17-21). Yeats may be hinting at his subversive engagement with socio-political matters, preferring an opaque quality to his poetry, rather than a one sided transparent approach. This plea contrasts quite dramatically with his passionate opening of the poem, where he aligned himself with Irish writers and the nationalist movement in a statement, as now he appears to be urging a reader to realise he is not just concerned with the more spiritual side of life in Ireland. His tactic to achieve this is one of compromise. Not wishing to commit to one or the other, and determined to fully express all the aspects of his nature, Yeats fuses his literary, national and supernatural passions. He manages to succinctly present this negotiation in lines 23-24: ‘For the elemental creatures go / About my table to and fro’ Here, in an occultist fashion, Yeats draws on the elements and makes them ‘eternal principles’, but the fact that he harnesses the supernatural down to something as earthed as his own work desk has the effect of binding the all three concerns. He is yoking the vague, visionary aspect of his beliefs with the process of his poetic writing, and cementing the notion of his physical presence in the external world, and in doing so puts it onto a level of existence that is easily understood. This is in a similar vein to the poet’s request in ‘To The Rose Upon The Rood of Time’: Come near, come near, come near Ah, leave me still A little space for the rose-breath to fill! Lest I no more hear common things that crave; (‘To the Rose upon the Rood of Time’, lines13-15). The speaker wishes to be acquainted with the rose (the supernatural) but does not wish to lose his perspective on the present world to the extent that he can no longer notice the material aspects and details within it. Instead, he asks for the opportunity to be close enough to mystical wisdom, but to remain able to discover ‘Eternal beauty - 13 -

Katharine Dever wandering on her way’ (line.12) in the mortal world. By blending the two ideas, he reiterates the feeling that pervades the poem, that of the secular and the sacred being able to converge and relate to each other. Once again, it can be suggested that the relation between Yeats’s occultist interests in the supernatural is not necessarily in conflict with a presentation of the modern nation. The more numinous aspect of his writing does not have to detract from a modern Irish agenda, which he continues to insist, and display, that he is involved with. The last time Yeats employs the emblem of the rose is in 1917 in ‘The Rose Tree’. The rose is altered now, and represents a different Ireland to its previous association, as this is post- 1916, and everything is ‘changed, changed utterly’28. The rose symbol is used in conjunction with the traditional patriotic emblem of freedom, The LibertyTree, which was featured by the French in the 1790’s and was planted in celebration of the Revolution.29 Yeats combines the two images to make a powerful union; illustrating Ireland’s past and present, whilst anticipating her future. ‘The Rose Tree’ is essentially a commemorative piece, reflecting on the Easter rising of 1916 through the employment of this single memorable image. The rose is anchored in the present and the tree acts allegorically as a metaphor for Ireland in a hypothetical dialogue between the socialist and nationalist James Connolly and the founder of St.Enda’s school, Patrick Pearse. The poem opens questioning how the tree (Ireland) has become so damaged: ‘Maybe a breath of politic words Has withered our Rose Tree; Or maybe but a wind that blows Across the bitter sea.’ (Lines 3-6). 28

W.B.Yeats, ‘Easter 1916’ (line 15) p.85 A.N.Jeffares, A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W.B.Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1968) p. 231. 29

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Katharine Dever The delicate subject matter calls for this kind of figurative speech. Behind the symbolism lies the real question of who is to be held culpable for Ireland’s condition? Is the result of the Parnell tragedy and the incompetence of his successors? Or can the British take responsibility for the Irish troubles? The impact of this poem to my mind is Connolly’s response to Pearse that the Tree ‘needs to be but watered, /…To make the green come out again / And spread on every side,’ The word ‘but’ before ‘watered’ makes this practical task seem so effortless and trouble-free. However this is chilling for a reader as they realise the water needed is to be the men’s own blood. The casual tone of the statement works effectively as it highlights the debate about worth. It is as though the sacrifice the two men make is almost taken for granted by them, they are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for Ireland, and the value placed upon their lives seems to pale in comparison to the value of their deaths, as long as they make a difference. Is this the case? Is the sacrifice inevitable as the only way to make the metaphorical tree of Ireland green again? The nationalist idea that this will be all is needed is highlighted as being sadly ideological, highlighted by Connolly’s disarming optimism. A sinister and disturbing element is latently attached to his words, and they serve to cast a foreboding of the future. Yeats, with the privilege of hindsight, presents the poem in a prophetic way and the whole piece has a charged, anticipatory feeling about it. The final couplet suggests that the blood sacrifice of 1916 is inevitable, as: ‘There’s nothing but our own red blood / Can make a right Rose Tree.’(17-18). The jaunty and song-like rhythm of the poem adds to a distinct feeling of uneasiness, encouraging the reader to be aware of the dramatic irony Yeats is utilising here; the sobriety of the subject matter is made all the more disconcerting by its presentation in this way. John Wilson Foster argues that this meter is employed to create the

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Katharine Dever impression that the men are ‘ghosts speaking with a simplicity conferred by the grave’30. Yeats does invoke the spirits of Pearse and Connolly, but casts them as unaware of the tragedy. The scripted conversation gives the impression that it predates the Easter Rising. Yeats imagines Ireland’s history in a theatrical manner, as is clearly seen in this duologue between the two men, due to his ‘belief in the individual hero’s ability to rise above and deny necessity in the fulfilment of the self.’31 The idea of presenting modern Ireland in staged terms appeals to Yeats. In ‘Easter 1916’ he transforms the event into a kind of tragic drama. He offers a ‘dramatis personae’ of the principle characters; describing each one’s specific attributes and ‘part’ in the ‘casual comedy’ (line37), and brings the ‘motley costume’ of the Abbey Theatre to the Dublin streets. This aesthetic response to the Easter uprising, reiterates Yeats’s fascination with the illusory, and reflects his continued association with the supernatural. Concurrently, it is also becoming apparent that Yeats is making his poetry more noticeably faithful to a presentation of modern Ireland, presenting the happenings through his poetry, whilst securing his position within Irish history.

Although in Gloucester at the time, Yeats expresses in a letter to Lady Gregory his shock at the turn of events: I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move meand I am very despondent about the future. At the moment I feel that all the work of years has been over turned, all the bringing together of classes, all the freeing of Irish literature and criticism from politics.32 The Easter Rising forced Yeats into realising the realities of modern Ireland with a jolt. Judging from this letter, it would be the first time that he was ever truly moved by an incident in the external world. 30

John Wilson Foster, ‘Yeats and the Easter Rising’, Colonial Consequences (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1991) p. 146. 31 G.J.Watson, Irish Identity and the Literary Revival, p.113. 32 W.B.Yeats, The Major Works, ‘Letters’ p.463. Letter to Lady Gregory, [11 May 1916].

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Katharine Dever ‘Easter, 1916’ is a poem inseparable from its context. The title obviously suggests this. In addition, the highly personal aspect of naming the rebels and the intimate details of their professions or individual traits means that there is a familiarity established here that cannot be ignored: ‘So sensitive his nature seemed, / So daring and sweet his thought’ (lines 29-30). Details such as this demand that the reader has background knowledge of Ireland’s personalities and history to fully appreciate the poem. This could arguably be an intentional technique employed by Yeats to strengthen his relationship with his Irish audience; and to either alienate the ‘strangers in the house’, or encourage them to realise that each person they shot had distinct qualities and talents, and are much more than just a name on a warrant. As in ‘The Rose Tree’, Yeats employs figurative language to approach the delicate subject matter, in lines 42-60. This section of the poem veers away from the familiarity of the Dublin streets and the 1916ers, to become vague and highly symbolic. Nature is called upon, to directly impart the idea of a delicate world susceptible to change, ‘The rider, the birds that range / From cloud to tumbling cloud, / Minute by minute they change;’(line?) the inference being that everything is transient, and that revolution is in the air. The ‘living stream’ reiterates the sense of a fleeting and changeable world, and the stone that ‘troubles’ its waters has a bearing on everything around it: ‘The stone’s in the midst of all’, suggesting that its uncompromising presence has the potential to alter and revolutionise the landscape. This stone may represent the unyielding and hardened hearts of the sixteen men, hearts that were ‘Enchanted to a stone’; suggesting that they themselves were under a kind of spell, charmed to the idea of making a difference in Ireland. In laying down their lives in sacrifice the men bring about transformation; ‘Wherever green is worn, / Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.’( Foster argues that ‘Yeats the

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Katharine Dever student of alchemy may have in mind the philosophers stone’33 in which case the idea of transmutation not only applies to the event that has ‘utterly’ changed Ireland, but also to ‘Easter, 1916’ as an elixir, giving eternal life to the rebels of 1916 by ingraining their memory into the collective Irish historical consciousness, and weaving them into the fabric of Ireland’s literary canon. Ultimately, however, the most important question remains: ‘O when will this suffice?’ (Line 59). What more must be surrendered before the Irish can be liberated? Bernard G. Krimm sees this line as an accusatory one, unequivocally blaming England for the cause of Ireland’s withering, answering the question at the beginning of the Rose Tree: This is a truly nationalist statement, one that attacks the English occupation. For the situation causing the long sacrifice that turned hearts to stone is clearly not a situation of Irish making. […] The sacrifice has been “too long,” and hence deleterious, not because of the Irish, or because of any flaw in the men of 1916, but because of unrelenting English rule for seven hundred years.34 After the death of Parnell there was a fundamental change in Ireland and the period from 1892-1916 was widely regarded as a time of gestation, Yeats defines the utter change after the Easter Rising as a ‘terrible beauty’ as the oxy-moron succinctly encapsulates the ‘tragic joy’ that is felt by the nation. There is the fearful sensation of pain, grief and guilt at the self-sacrifice of the rebels, alongside the awed realization that after so many years of struggle, there may finally be some re-generation. Maud Gonne describes the mood in her thought that ‘tragic dignity has returned to Ireland.’35 Ireland now has some modern heroes for the nation to honour, and Yeats immortalises them through his poetry, whilst he hands over destiny to a higher force, ‘That is Heaven’s part’ (line 60) confirming that his occultist beliefs such as faith in 33

John Wilson Foster, ‘Yeats and the Easter Rising’, Colonial Consequences, p.143. Bernard G. Krimm, W.B.Yeats and the Irish Free State (NewYork: The Whitston Publishing Company, 1981) p.36. 35 Ibid, ‘Letters’, p.464. 34

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Katharine Dever pre-ordination and fate are still prescient. Simultaneously, he acknowledges his responsibility to ‘murmur name upon name’ (line 61) and write their names into the annals of heroic Irish history, clearly identifying the poet’s role in society, as though he is aware that his duty is of this earth.

The task of accounting Ireland’s circumstances is one that Yeats was committed to from the outset of his career; so far, this discussion has been centred on the poetry that can be seen to reflect this responsibility. At first, a revival of Ireland’s past acted as a method that could, in theory at least, then influence the present. Gradually, as Yeats entered further into the actualities of modern Ireland, he became more receptive to political and public disputes, and this was reflected in his poetry. At the beginning of the 1900’s his attentions were turned to culture, and the benefits for art that might stem from the Aristocratic and luxurious climate. Over the years spent with Lady Gregory in Coole Park, he achieved a more contemporary voice, and achieved a leaner style that was to initiate a clearer process of writing. Previously, Yeats was channelling the supernatural through symbols such as the rose to invite a response from a reader’s imagination. The rose has been a powerful symbol to fuse Yeats’s Rosicrucian beliefs and represent Ireland, and can be seen to present history via the ghostly to succour an apprehension of modern Ireland’s realities post 1916. The next section will explore how Yeats summons the spirits to help him register the absences from Irish society, and how The Wild Swans at Coole and The Tower integrate public and private themes in times of immense change. III As a volume, The Wild Swans at Coole, published in 1919 shows the aging poet ‘taking stock’ of the series of events that took place during the years of its

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Katharine Dever composition between 1912 and 1918. The ‘discourtesy of death’ ‘In Memory of Major Robert Gregory’ (line 48) is all too apparent at this time, due to the executions after the Easter Rising, the death of Hugh Lane on board the Lusitania, in 1915, and of Robert Gregory in the air over Italy in 1918, not to mention the Great War from 19141918. On an architectural and emblematic level, Coole Park was also threatened with disintegration. Although the direct effects of these painful incidents are not always directly obvious, Yeats’s attempts to find the resources to express coherently the effect of these absences are perceptible in these poems. The impact of 1916 has evidently been considerable. If this volume is read alongside ‘Easter, 1916’, the word ‘all’ is highlighted. Encompassing the past and the present, it resonates throughout these poems, as a continuation of the awed horror that ‘All changed, changed utterly’ ‘Easter, 1916’ (line 15). The repetition of the word ‘all’ in line eight of ‘In Memory of Major Robert Gregory’ emphatically embraces each and every one of the ‘friends that cannot sup with us’ (line 2) and demonstrates Yeats’s technical ability as a poet; ‘All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead.’ In a skilled fashion, Yeats plays out the line, delaying the reality of the situation until its conclusion, which is placed at the end of the first stanza. This rhetorical control over the words renders the actuality of the event as almost tangible to the reader, due to the finality of the word ‘dead’ and its position. The phonetic impression of the word is striking, as it is like a full stop, magnified by its suddenness and relating to the shock of death. The poet insists upon creating the same experience the he himself has: ‘that late death took all my heart for speech’. After the stanza is read aloud, the reader must pause for breath. The silence consolidates the poets own speechlessness; and, in the microcosm of the poem, represents the void that remains behind after the death of Major Gregory, who represented to Yeats all that was attractive about the Aristocracy: generosity, courage,

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Katharine Dever pride, dignity and worth. ‘All’ returns in the final verse to ensure that all those who died for instinct and a notion of honour are also assembled in this poem, which once again is reminiscent of ‘Easter, 1916.’ In the title poem, ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, the speaker reflects that: ‘All’s changed, since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread.36 (Lines 13-16). Both physically and temporally in a liminal state- as he is next to water, and it is twilight- the poet is in a position to access the spirit world, as Edward Larrissy suggests in his introduction to The Major Works: ‘…traditionally, both in Celtic and other folklores boundaries could function like cracks or openings through which the supernatural could intervene’.37 Confronted by such indisputable loss and violence in the modern world, perhaps the poet can only turn now to the unseen world, its mysteries are no more complexing than the incomprehensible pains and troubles in the modern day. The supernal and the natural are becoming inextricably linked, and the poet has recourse to conjure spirits and the visionary as his way of comprehending his personal loss, and the losses of a nation. As the poem is autobiographical, ‘The nineteenth autumn has come upon me’(line 7) -recalling the first meeting with Lady Gregory- Yeats can be visualised standing by the lake watching the swans; reflecting on current circumstances, past experiences and future doubts. Therefore, it might be inferred, that the poet who now has a heavier ‘tread’ is carrying with him the physical weight of the determination to express his times. In an occultist fashion, Yeats is looking for an actual collaboration with the spirits, and Larrissy wonders if this is widely understood: ‘Yeats believed we walk haunted through our lives, and that the relationship with a ghost is the source of creativity.’ With this in mind, it is as though 36 37

W.B.Yeats, The Major Works, ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, p.60. Ibid, Introduction, xvi

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Katharine Dever divine assistance is needed to help Yeats immortalise his memories and resurrect a form to what currently seems incoherent, this relationship that Larrissy justifiably suspects goes unnoticed, can, in fact be very clearly exemplified in ‘Broken Dreams’, in the same collection: ‘Vague memories, nothing but memories, / But in the grave all, all shall be renewed.’(20-21). The swan as a symbol presents death in terms of the ‘swan song’ Yeats is ‘singing’ to the deceased, imagining the soul’s flight from the body s the swan leaves the lake and the soul taking flight to a metaphysical world perhaps? ‘By what lake’s edge or pool / Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day / To find they have flown away?’ Ending the poem with a question, Yeats leaves the destiny of the swan/ soul up to the readers own imagination.

The poetic voice in this section seems weary, cold now and having to accept and adjust to the deaths of so many, and then express this loss with an audience in mind. The hard, clipped lines of ‘The Fisherman’ expound upon the dejection of the poet’s reality, that both ‘wise / And great art’ (lines 23-4) have been ‘beaten down’ by his race. Yeats uses the poem to reflect the realities of poetry (lines 13-24) and to contrast real men in Ireland with an idealised version of ‘A man who does not exist, / A man who is but a dream.’ The question of what it is to write for one’s own race is not easily defined. However, in Essays and Introductions, Yeats mentions Thomas Davis, and whilst asserting that his poems ‘were not good poetry’, and that he ‘hated that dry eighteenth-century rhetoric’ he admires the Nation poets’ ability to speak for a general whole, and their sense of purpose: …they had one quality I admired and admire: they were not separated individual men; they spoke or tried to speak out of a people to a people; behind them stretched the generations.38 38

W.B.Yeats, Essays and Introductions, ‘A General Introduction for my work’ (London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1989) p 510.

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Katharine Dever Popular recognition is of course essential to any poet, and for Yeats, it is the Irish masses that he wishes to affect and effect, speaking ‘out of’ and ‘to’. Like the ‘echoharbouring shell’39, in adopting the voice of his nation, he wishes to utter back the truths of Ireland through his poems. Therefore, these poems are responsible for rather more than just elegising Ireland’s heroes, they manage to reflect the anarchy of modern times and cast doubt over Ireland’s future. Watson considers the poem as ‘not just a noble elegy, but as a Yeatsian attempt to shore fragments against the potentially ruinous forces at work in the modern world.’40 Similarly, Declan Kiberd sees Yeats’s ‘Leda and the Swan’ as latently, and perhaps even unconsciously, chronicling wider concerns than those manifestly apparent at first sight: ‘Leda and the Swan may indeed be another account of the artistic or even the readerly process: but in teasing out those themes, it has much besides to say on the crisis of a newly independent people.’41 The poem tries to handle ambivalence as delicately as it can, with ‘vague fingers’ (line 5) pushing the ‘feathered glory’ (line 6), because of the ambiguity concerning Leda’s complicity in this union. The poem opaquely suggests that Yeats’s mind was in fact on contemporary politics, as the birth of Helen represents the dawning of the classical era in Greek mythology- with Ireland in mind, the poet anticipates the ‘Second Coming’ of a similar regeneration, the birth of the ‘Irish Free State’. The void that is so tangible in The Wild Swans at Coole, can be seen to be somewhat resolved in The Tower collection of 1928. Yeats has moved to Bally Lee, a secure place for him and his wife to live in, which reflects a progression in his writing. It was this volume that made the transition for Yeats, as he became recognised as a ‘modern’ poet. Written between 1922-26, the years of private triumph for Yeats were on a public scale extremely sour, due to the guerrilla war between Britain and Ireland, from 39

W.B.Yeats, The Major Works, ‘The Song of the Happy Shepherd’ p 4, line 37). G.J.Watson, Irish Identity and the Literary Revival, p.125. 41 Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995) p.315. 40

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Katharine Dever 1919 to 1921, followed by the Civil war in Ireland in 1922. Despite Yeats’s own deterioration and ageing, his increased responsibilities as senator gave him more political sway: In this period of his nation’s greatest modern crisis, Yeats tried to shape Irish political actions and attitudes through his writing, his speaking and his counsel. And this combining of the rules of poet and counsellor was certainly in keeping with ancient Irish bardic tradition.42 In a world where the previous system of beliefs and values are falling apart, the power of myth and the occult can be seen to mediate some kind of reality and form on a spiritual level. This deep need for structure and pattern is probably the foundations on which A Vision was built: ‘Now, in the years following Irish independence, Yeats struggled to define an alternative vision of society. A Vision, for all its arcane lore, was intended by him to provide a spiritual foundation for the new nation-state.’43 The revival of the Irish bardic tradition was initiated by Yeats some thirty years previously, and now it seems his status as a potent political figure in modern times will enable him to place this mask on. The role converges the supernatural with political, expressly issuing them as key elements in comprising a whole; due to the need for political counsel alongside representative poetry, capable of mystical appreciation or higher wisdom. Yeats, having logically come to terms with the occult in his creation of A Vision, whilst retaining a particular voice for Ireland, meets the requirements of the fili that were mentioned in the first section. The magical lore that Yeats learnt was substantially the same as the one known to the druids, so his balancing of both the presentation of modern Ireland and his fidelity to his esoteric interests is admirable. The relationship that at first seemed contradictory proves to be

42

Bernard G. Krimm, W.B.Yeats and the Irish Free State (NewYork: The Whitston Publishing Company, 1981) preface, xiii. 43 Ibid, p.316

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Katharine Dever resolved within the transformation of the shape-shifting Yeats, now wearing the mask of the ancient Irish fili. IV In ‘A General Introduction to my work’ Yeats’s first principle is that ‘the poet is part of his own phantasmorgia’, adding that ‘we adore [the poet] because nature has grown intelligible’44. The poems that have featured predominantly in this discussion prove this assertion to be true. Yeats’s poetry depends on the supernatural world in that it evokes certain ‘ghosts’ in order to comprehensibly form the present and enable a cohesive presentation of modern Irish concerns through a literary tapestry rich in tradition and symbolism. An in-depth study of the early poetry served to explore Yeats’s personal harmony with the supernatural and the realm of archetypal images such as fairies and ancient Irish heroes. This involvement with a magical world was a crucial ingredient in restoring modern Ireland’s pride and created a consciousness that aimed towards achieving cultural unity by referring back to a pre-Christian order devoid of secretarian divisions and materialistic occupation. ‘To Ireland in the Coming Times’ demanded particular attention as the first poem that could significantly express both the conflict and the convergence of Yeats’s ideals, and demonstrate the poet’s determination to act as a mouth-piece for Ireland, to be ‘counted one’ in the nation’s literary canon. The poem was employed to introduce the symbol of the rose to the discussion, which functioned as a composite emblem to combine Yeats’s main interests. The poet embraces the rose as a divine symbol, not separating its function in poetry from its occultist purpose. A longer essay would benefit from an advancement of the discussion into the later poetry, and time to thoroughly discuss the ideas of A Vision, concerning the masks of the poet, his ‘self’ and ‘anti self’ in direct opposition, as in ‘The Phases of The Moon’, and the character 44

W.B.Yeats, Essays and Introductions, p.509.

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Katharine Dever of Robartes. Also, it would be interesting to widen this discussion out to some more contemporary Irish poets, such as Eavan Boland, who constantly feels the pressures of a different version history upon her, one formed, in part by the cultural nationalism that has been explored in section one, as Edna Longley suggests ‘…in the early years of the century creating literature and creating a nation could validly be seen as concentric labours45. She also invokes past ghosts into her poetry, and often uses ancient myths to reflect upon the present. It might rewarding to compare the separate accounts of the rising of Easter, 1916, as Boland’s poem can be seen to echo Yeats’s famous line: ‘The wounds are terrible. The paint is old.’46 (‘The Dolls Museum in Dublin’, Line 1). The immortalised rebels are re-incarnated through Boland’s poem, and this is probably as Yeats would have wished, the gyres of time running on and Irish poets honouring his instruction: Irish poets, learn your trade, Sing whatever is well made, (68-9) (…) Cast your mind on other days That we in coming days may be Still the indomitable Irishry.47 (81-3).

Bibliography Boland, Eavan Collected Poems, (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1995). Foster, John Wilson, ‘Yeats and the Easter Rising’, in Colonial Consequences (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1991). Harper, George Mills, Yeats and The Occult (London: Macmilllan Press Ltd. 1976). Homes, Marjorie, Yeats’s Nations: Gender, Class and Irishness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Jeffares, A.N. A Commentary on the Collected Poems of W.B.Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1968). 45

Edna Longley, Poetry at War (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997) p.185. Eavan Boland, Collected Poems, (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1995) p. 178. 47 W.B.Yeats, The Major Works, p.168. 46

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Kiberd, Declan, Inventing Ireland (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995). Krimm, Bernard G., W.B.Yeats and the Irish Free State (NewYork: The Whitston Publishing Company, 1981). Longley, Edna, Poetry at War (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1997) Parkinson, Thomas, W.B. Yeats Self-Critic A study of his Early Verse and The Later Poetry (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971). Watson, G.J. Irish identity and the Literary Revival: Second Edition (Washington, D.C. The Catholic University of America Press, 1979). Yeats, W.B. Essays and Introductions (London: Macmillan, 1989). Yeats, W.B. The Poems, ed. Daniel Albright, (London: Everyman, 1990). Yeats, W.B. The Major Works, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Young, Dudley Out of Ireland: The Poetry of W.B.Yeats (Cheshire: Carcanet Press, 1975).

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