[Joseph Fennie]

An era of violence pervades the poetry and lifetimes of both Yeats and Heaney in Ireland. This ever looming sense of violence is addressed by both poets in several poems most notably in Yeats’s “Easter, 1916” and Heaney’s “The Strand at Lough Beg”. Yeats and Heaney are in the middle of two different times of violence. Yeats is alive in the middle of the Irish Nationalist’s fight for an independent Ireland against the British and Heaney is writing during a time of conflict between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Within both poets’ works we develop a sense that they are trying to give a meaning to the violence. Most notably, Yeats writes “All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.” From the violence that is created from the conflict between Ireland and Britain, a unification and realization of motivation is born. After this violence there is now a push for an independent Ireland. Yeats explains that without this act of horrible violence this progressive idea would never have culminated and perhaps this change would never have even occurred. This ultimately gives purpose to the violence that took place. It pulls it out of the category of mindless, unnecessary, and wasteful and gives it the status of being a tool for positive change. This can be viewed as extremely dangerous because it plays back into the classic idea of Cathleen Ni Houlihan that it is the Irish’s duty to die for their land.

This seems to be the same reason that many people take issue with Heaney’s poetry about the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland. In Heaney’s poem “The Strand at Lough Beg”, he turns the violence committed against his cousin into something holy. Heaney’s speaker cleanses his cousin, then lifts him, and places a scapular upon him. This sequence of events is what elevates this act of violence to something holy. Once again the dead have become a symbol for the living. This symbol furthers these actions of violence because they become something a people must fight for. Both Heaney and Yeats make it so that the violence becomes part of the land. Yeats makes it so the rebels who died in 1916 died for Ireland, the land itself. Heaney makes it so the land purifies the corpse and therefore the violence. It is ultimately a return to the violence inherit in the land in Ireland.

 

[Joseph Figliolia]

Joe, I definitely agree with your attitudes about the function of violence in Yeats’ and Heaney’s poetry, but I think that both violence, and art, don’t necessarily have to serve as a tool for positive social change. For Yeats in particular, although he was a cultural nationalist who recognized the potential for art to be transformative, art was in a large part for the artist. I can’t help but think of the quote “Whats riches to him/ That has made a great peacock/ With the pride of his eye?” In this case, poetry is something inherently selfish and tied up with pride. In Heaney’s poem “the artist,” the poet is “obstinate” in staying true to his own poetic vision, and this vision need not necessarily conform with the social expectations expected by the poet from others.

[Vera Dokter]

You both raise some interesting points and I agree with Joseph Fennie’s point that at times, Yeats was writing some extremely risky poetry in the sense that it can indeed persuade people into believing that one must die for their nation, for their land.

However, I read the part where Heaney talks about his cousin Colum in  “The Strand at Lough Beg” differently. I read it as if Heaney is turning the ritual of caring for the dead into something holy, and subsequently showing his disgust and disapproval of the ‘ritual’  of the IRA and UVF to just ‘disappear’ somebody. Not that he is, as you say, turning the violence itself into something holy. I say this because I feel that Heaney’s overall disgust with violence becomes evident in the two lines that precede the part in which he tends to his cousin. “I turn because the sweeping of your feet / Has stopped behind me, to find you on your knees / With blood and roadside muck in your head and eyes”.  This doesn’t glorify the idea of violence I feel.

However, your explanation does make more sense if we read part VIII of “Station Island” in which Heaney allows his dead cousin to ‘react’  to Heaney’s representation of his death. For as Colum says: “you whitewashed ugliness and drew / the lovely blinds of the <i>Purgatorio </i>/ and saccharined my death with morning dew.” With these lines Heaney tries to express the feelings that he thinks a lot of Catholic Northern Irish people have towards him. Heaney, they feel, is not expressing what is going on, there are people dying, and Heaney should address the situation directly, in the same way the threat of death and the overall violence has directly influenced innocent people’s lives.

But this is not what Heaney feels the role of a poet is. He immediately clarifies that his reaction to his cousin’s death was filled with poetic imagery and metaphors. “’I kept seeing a grey stretch of Lough Beg / and the strand empty at daybreak. / I felt like the bottom of a dried-up lake’”. He immediately explains that he will take on the role of poet in regards to this death and will do so in regards to other people’s deaths.

[Joseph Fennie]

Vera, I still believe there to be a possible issue when he turns his cousin into a symbol. The imagery is clearly Christian in nature, turning his brother into a Christ-like figure: “I lift you under the arms and lay you flat,” Heaney writes. This symbolization of the dead feeds into the cycle of violence that was prominent during Heaney’s lifetime. If one dies for this cause then there is the possibility that s/he might be commemorated into art. Out of the suffering and the sin comes something beautiful like art. To me, it is very similar to “A terrible beauty is born” like I stated previously. It’s interesting to me to spot these similarities between Yeats and Heaney. Heaney has created this idea of tribes and the tribes will celebrate the violent advancement each respective side makes, which furthers the violence in a vicious cycle.

Joe, I agree with your statement. I think a recognition needs to be made, however, of the impact, whether positive or negative, the art has on society. If there is no reaction to the art then what is the point of its creation? It is fair to assess the poem as artistically and aesthetically beautiful and prominent, but an analysis of its social implications and reactions need to be recognized as well. This was the main focus of anti-revivalists such as Kavanagh and I feel as if in some sense this has been abandoned by Heaney.

[Eric Berman]

I particularly like this topic in context of the essay that we just read, where Heaney examines “Yeats as an Example?”. You each are touching on the dangerous idea of poets – Yeats, in particular – taking their external realities and aestheticizing them into a symbol to work with in their poetry.

As we talked about in class quite a few times, Yeats and Heaney both struggle with this-  trying to toe the line between paying homage to a dead person vs. the selfishness of the poet to take a person’s life and make it into art without their consent. As Joe Figliolia stated,  “In this case, [Yeats’] poetry is something inherently selfish and tied up with pride,” and Heaney’s “vision need not necessarily conform with the social expectations expected by the poet from others.”  Both artists cultivate their art through practice, and repeatedly utilize the same themes because these are the only things that they have practiced doing. Yeats, for example, wrote “<span style=”font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;”>The Circus Animals’ Desertion,”</span> noting how he would work for 6 weeks and fail to create anything new, instead just managing to “<span style=”font-family: Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;”>but enumerate old themes</span>”. Heaney’s bog poems deal with this same issue.

I think that both Yeats and Heaney were human, despite Yeats’ attempts to transcend the normal definition of what a human is. Both are observers, and both are poets. And violence, as Joe Fennie says in the intro, “pervades the poetry and lifetimes of both Yeats and Heaney in Ireland.”  I think that since violence pervades their environment, both poets are compelled to make some comment on it. No poet exists in a vacuum, particularly those that seek to have an effect on the world.

Yet both Yeats and Heaney acknowledge that whatever they create will inherently be flawed. The violence, simply by being mentioned, invites the author to take some sort of stance on it. If the language is beautiful, then the violence is condoned or the victim is made into a martyr. If the language is curt, one may offend the memory of the dead. Even aside from the frightening prospect of inspiring men to fight to the death for some unreachable symbol, as in Cathleen Ni Houlihan, the poets consciously cultivate this ambivalence towards violence since they cannot take any ‘correct’ stance.

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