B.A Studies W.B.Yeats

W.B.Yeats

 William Butler Yeats was born in County Dublin on June 13, 1865. Due to the demands of his career as an artist, Yeats' father moved the family to London when Yeats was still young, but he spent summers in County Sligo, in Western Ireland. When Yeats was fifteen, his family moved back to Dublin, where he attended the Metropolitan School of Art.

Yeats' first work was published in the Dublin University Review in 1885. What is generally considered to be his first mature work, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Works, came out in 1893. After The Wanderings of Oisin, which was based on an ancient Irish saga, Yeats never attempted another long poem and confined himself to the lyric form.

Yeats grew interested in the occult at an early age. He visited a famous theosophist, Madame Blatavsky, and joined a Theosophy Society. Theosophy holds that all beliefs are a part of a larger spiritual system, and all hold some measure of the truth. Yeats attended many séances, beginning in 1886.

Madame Blavatsky later asked Yeats to become a member of the inner circle of London’s Theosophical Society as part of its Esoteric Section. However, Yeats was more interested in magical experiments and astrology, and was eventually expelled from the Theosophists. He later joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a cult that also included famous figures such as Aleister Crowley and Bram Stoker. His involvement in this cult may have led to his interest in theatre, as the cult often performed rituals using props. His mystical interests, many of which coalesced during his time in this cult, included a newfound belief in the magic of poetry and words themselves, which he believed can transport the reader to higher planes of understanding, much like a magic spell.

In 1889, Yeats met the love of his life, an Irish revolutionary named Maude Gonne (1866-1953). Unfortunately, Maude did not return his ardor, and after refusing his marriage proposals three times, she married Major John MacBridge in 1903. Collections of poetry from this time include The Rose (1893) and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899).

Yeats' early poetry drew on ancient Irish epics as well as the contemporary nationalist movement that was gaining force in Ireland. In the Ireland of 1880s and 1890s, the two were sometimes inseparable. Many members of the Gaelic League, formed to prevent the disappearance of the Irish language and rehabilitate its classics, were also members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a precursor organization to the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Yeats was fascinated by folktales, and, under the tutelage of George Russell and Thomas Hyde, he published Fairy and Folktales of the Irish Peasantry in 1888. In 1897, Yeats met Lady Gregory, another member of what was termed the Gaelic Revival, and she convinced him to start writing drama with Irish subject matter. Together with George Moore and Edward Martyn, the two set up The Abbey Theatre, Ireland's national theater, in Dublin in 1904. Yeats's Cathleen ni Houlihan, a nationalist play personifying Ireland as a woman, was performed on the opening night.

In 1917, Yeats bought Thoor Ballylee, a Norman stone tower in County Sligo, near Coole Park. He spent the following summer with Maude Gonne's family, and proposed to her daughter, Iseult, but was turned down. The same year, he married Georgie Hyde-Lee. His wife shared his interest in the occult and claimed a gift of "automatic writing," in which her hand was directed by a divine force. Together, the two produced The Vision, a notebook of spiritual thoughts, in 1933.

As well as writing poetry and plays and continuing to serve on the artistic board of the Abbey Theatre, Yeats became a member of the Seanad, the Irish senate, from 1922-25. He served on the committees that helped to create coinage for the new state. He left in disgust when the governmental organization was split in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War (1923-24).

Yeats remained political as he grew older, though much of his status as the key poet of the Irish Revolution of the early 20th century is based on myth. Having described his political sensibilities as "a continual quarrel and a continual apology," Yeats did identify as an Irish nationalist, hoping for the unification of war-torn Ireland—but he also hated conflict, and he published his revolutionary poem, Easter 1916, near the end of the Irish Revolution. 1919 found Yeats considering moving away to Japan or Italy to escape the guerrilla warfare that was tearing apart his country.

As Yeats grew older, he developed a friendship with Ezra Pound, a poet who drew him away from his mystical, lyrical style into something drier and sparer. Arguably his most famous collection, The Tower (1928) contains political poems as well as a more modernist return to mythological topics like "Leda and the Swan." Yeats became increasingly political in his old age, publishing a collection called Michael Robartes and the Dancer in 1921, which includes his famous "Easter, 1916" in which he describes the birth of modern Irish nationalism with the famous phrase, "a terrible beauty is born." The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) contains poems that focus on Yeats' own estate at Coole Park—the winding stair being the stair at Thoor Ballylee. His later poems, especially "Under Ben Bulben," express his desire to be buried there. After his death, he was buried in Sligo, and he rests under the epitaph "Cast a cold eye on life, on death; horsemen, pass by!" (Gradesaver)

The Second Coming

This poem of Yeats aepicts Yeat’s philosophy of history. Yeats believed that it is the events in the life of man that shapes the future society. Here, the poets mind was field gloom in consequence of the white spreat violence, killing, murder and blood shade. In Ireland in the course of the Easter rebellion of 1916. The Iyrish civil war that followed the great war.

The first world war 1914 to 1918 and various other events added to the gloom. The title of the poem is the out come of poet state of mind trouble with the brutality chaos of modern civilization. The title is also suggestive of a new manifestation of God to man. Yeats believed that the prior to the Christianity. It was the Grecioroman civilization attained is climax about 1000 be see when homer composed his two epics. This Grecioroman civilization collapsed after enkoying the life of 2000 years. Christ came and a new civilization was born out of the ashes of the earlier civilization. Like wise, the christen civilization has nearly   run its course of 2000 years and hance, Yeats believed a second coming is imminent wellof. History was complited a full circle and a new being. The birth of a new civilization symbolizes the death of the old.

“Things fall a part the center can not hold”

The poet describes the present state of the world its political upheavals, the chaos and cynicism of the modern civilization and the haphazard brutality of contemporary culture. The first image of the poet gives is bout falcon who symbolizes the intellect and falconer the spiritual and emotional make up of man. According to Yeats in the modern civilization intellect falcon that is science, technology and rationalism, is the human values of purity, spirituality is with the extinction. All this disastrous upheavals of society of modern civilization.  Connotes that new civilization is about to arrive and the second coming of God seems to be round the corner. This idea feels the poet’s mind with the image of a form coming out of spirits Mundi – a grotesque image which has a form the body of a lion and the head of human being and it is moving towards be-thlephem the birth place of Christ. It represents a thoughtless and mersyless violence and its birth is the death of the existing civilization.

Sailing to Byzantium

This is Yeats’ most famous poem about aging--a theme that preoccupies him throughout The Tower. The poem traces the speaker’s movement from youth to age, and the corresponding geographical move from Ireland, a country just being born as Yeats wrote, to Byzantium. Yeats felt that he no longer belonged in Ireland, as the young or the young in brutality, were caught up in what he calls “sensual music.” This is the allure of murder in the name of republicanism, which disgusted Yeats.

Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, which Yeats draws on for its decadent associations. The Byzantine Empire was centered on Constantinople, later renamed Istanbul. The speaker thinks that by escaping to Byzantium, he can escape the conflict between burning desire and a wasted body. Once there, he pleads to God’s “sages” to take away his life, meaning his body. This stanza is suggestive of Yeats’ religious beliefs, as he wrote this collection after a turn to theosophy. The idea of elders waiting upon God is not familiar from any Western religion, but would be acceptable under theosophy, which holds that all spiritualities hold some measure of truth. Yeats imagines this process as being consumed by a healing fire that will allow his body to take on any form he wishes when it is finished. His first wish, to become a statue, seems too static. His second, to become a mechanical bird, alludes to the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus. Theophilus, according to legend, had just such mechanical birds. It is thus the poet’s wish to be granted a body immune to death and to sing forever. (Gradesaver)

Works Cited

Gradesaver. <https://www.gradesaver.com/poems-of-wb-yeats-the-tower/study-guide/summary-sailing-to-byzantium>.

Gradesaver. <https://www.gradesaver.com/author/william-butler-yeats>.