[Laura Ostrowski]

While this is not a profound observation, I do want to point out a section of “The Celtic Movement” just because I really enjoyed it. We all know Matthew Arnold finds Celts passionate and emotional, and that Yeats does not think that sentimentality is a bad thing. When discussing passion in “The Celtic Movement,” Yeats explains that a “new fountain” is opening and will reveal and emphasize Gaelic legends, like Deirdre which has been told for thousands of years already. Yeats believes that, “‘The Celtic movement,’ as I understand it, is principally the opening of this fountain, and none can measure of how great importance it may be to coming times.” He speaks of legends that have been in Irish culture for centuries, yet something that is going to be new to the rest of the world. I find it an interesting paradox, taking something so classic to one culture, but by spreading it throughout the world, presumably, making it something brand new to a lot of people. Specifically, these legends and characters include “known woods and seas” but possess a “new beauty.”

[Joseph Figliolia]

I like your point about the “new fountain,” and I also see how celtic legends and myths–although native to Ireland–reflect the “global current” of thought that is inherent in all cultural traditions. For example, the stories of Cuchulain, the son of a sun god, mirror the stories of demi gods in Greek mythology like Theseus, Hercules, Perseus and Achilles. In some renditions of Cuchulain fighting the waves, there is the suggestion that Cuchulain loses his life. I couldn’t help but make the connection with the greek hero Achilles who sacrifices the promise of a long, albeit undistinguished life, for a brief life of unbridled glory.

[Conrad Baker]

I think this idea is really helpful for understanding early Yeats’ obsession with “Celtic racial pride,” if it can be called that, and the implications he saw in it for the global community. His early poems are deeply infused with exactly that kind of “beauty of the old anew” vibe, painting the ancient Irish landscape and geography and mythology in poetry collections that are being produced for and published by a 20th century readership. Presenting the unknowably old as something contemporary has its own kind of amiable illogic, whereby culturally closed images and names are used to evoke the soul of any reader anywhere. The strategy presumes that common, fundamental rituals and ways of life, to which all human beings are tied and recognize, are evoked by distinctly Celtic poetry, to the degree that others from outside of Ireland, with no connection to the names and songs mentioned in the poems, will “get it.” When set against concrete, conversational poems like “No Second Troy,” or “Upon a House,” or “The Witch,” these older poems are so dreamy and abstract I can’t help but feel Yeats’ liking for directionless evocation, poetry for poetry’s sake, beauty for beauty’s sake. It seems like a simpler, happier time in his life and career.

[Author]

Posts