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February 13, 2014 at 7:59 pm #236Conrad BakerParticipant
It is just troubling considering Yeats’ heavy involvement in movements for Irish cultural independence. One would think that one of the greatest poets of all time would anticipate this misinterpretation, assuming that it is a misinterpretation.
February 13, 2014 at 7:55 pm #235Conrad BakerParticipantWow, the “logic” of the poem (logic seems to be a problematic term in Yeats) clearly legitimizes the rule of aristocracy by virtue of their “gifts that govern men, and after these / To gradual Time’s last gift, a written speech / Wrought of high laughter, loveliness and ease?”. In other words, their appreciation for useless things, possession of art collections, freedom from work of any kind, and aristocratic poise empowers them almost as deities (though still biologically “bred”). Given your reading, I noticed that “Upon a House Shaken by the Land Agitation” could totally work to legitimize English rule of Ireland. Who owns more trivial things, art and huge houses than the queen? Who experiences less of the day-to-day struggle of the lower classes than the royal family? Lady Gregory doesn’t even come close to the queen’s level of aristocratic position or poise. This was kind of alluded to in class actually, when Dr. Doggett was lecturing about poise and he cited Prince William as an example of contrived aristocratic decorum that is designed to look effortless. I looked for something in the poem to stop the logic short, something like heavy Irish symbolism or name dropping, but the more I read the poem the more English it became! It legitimizes the rule of aristocracy over those people of the thatched roofs, an idea that reeks of imperial England. Its strongest symbols, the eagle and the sun, appear on many distinguished English crests and flags but no Irish ones that I have seen. The only thing that I saw that might undermine all this and make it more ironic than sincere is the flaws in the sonnet structure. There are only 12 lines, lacking a final g-g rhyme and leaving the sonnet incomplete. There is also an anapest in line 7, “That comes of the best knit to the best? Although”, which digresses from iambic structure. Perhaps these huge violations in this most distinctly English of poetic forms presents the “poise” of the poem itself to be imperfect and inherently false? This seems unlikely considering Yeats’ attraction to and admiration for aristocracy.
February 11, 2014 at 9:20 pm #222Conrad BakerParticipantI 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.
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