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April 28, 2014 at 9:36 pm #409Joseph FiglioliaParticipant
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.
April 7, 2014 at 9:51 am #375Joseph FiglioliaParticipantDevon I think your point about the changing function of the Rose in yeats’ poetry is a good one. I agree with you that even in Yeats’ early poetry, the rose serves as a symbol of transience. By definition, a flower is closely linked to the earth and the cycle of seasons, and by extension, inevitable death and decay. Paradoxically, however, yeats also conceptualizes the rose as a symbol of immortality independent of time and space. In the “Rose upon the Rood of time,” the Rose exists outside a subject-object framework allowing it to be both independent of the world, and simultaneously immanent. This is similar to the image of Attis hanging between two parts of the tree that are both “staring fury” and “blind lush leaf” in the poem vacillation. Although the “staring fury” and “blind lush lead” serve different symbolic functions, they are ultimately part of the same tree that comprise the “whole scene” characterizing human existence.
February 10, 2014 at 5:10 pm #214Joseph FiglioliaParticipantThis observation is especially interesting after our recent discussion about Yeat’s careful placement of his poems within this collection. For example, the concerted decision to transition from” Adam’s curse” to “Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland” is imbued with a layer of self conscious irony in light of the concluding stanza of the first poem. For example, yeat’s allusions to the celebrated Cathleen Ni Houlian, and by extension, Maud Gonne, ring hollow and empty after “Adam’s curse,” and Yeat’s lament about love, and art in the ideal, and love and art in reality.
February 5, 2014 at 5:07 pm #203Joseph FiglioliaParticipantI 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.
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