Yeats Reading Group

[Mrs. Dalloway]

I checked up an old school book, Had to check acuracy first.
Yeats was involved in the Anglo Irish Literary revival, which brought about the birth of the National Irish Theatre whom founded the Abbey Theatre on Lower Abbey St in Dublin. Yeats and Lady Gregory, two Dramatist that wrote many patriotic plays at the time, helped found The Irish Literary Theatre in 1899 along side Edward Martyn, Cousin of writer George Moore, which set up shop in the Abbey in 1904. J.M.Synge didnt become a director of the Abbey till a later date, i think after Martyn left in protest against on of synges plays. Many of the Earlier plays of the Anglo Irish Literary revival were based on Irish mythologies.
An Baile Strand is one of Yeats Plays based on Cuchulainn.

I'll look up some members for you.

So, he didn't write in Gaelic, did he? Ok Niamh thanks a lot!

[Mrs. Dalloway]

A Cradle Song

The angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.
God's laughing in Heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with His mood.
I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you have grown.

[Niamh]

So, he didn't write in Gaelic, did he? Ok Niamh thanks a lot!

No he didn't. The Anglo Irish Literary Revival was about writing about Ireland, Irish history and culture and Irish legands in English;Anglo being a term for English or of English origin.

[Quark]

I just read the elegy written by Auden. I was wondering what people thought the poem said about Yeats. While much of the poem is an argument by Auden about the nature of poetry and society in general, I think it does lead us to think certain things about Yeats. It makes me believe that Yeats wrote poems less from a perspective of success or joy, but more from tragedy and loss. Auden's last lines particularly lead me to that conclusion. He says:

"With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise".

Auden seems to be saying that Yeats wrote from a painful and depressed personal situation, but was able to use his suffering to teach his audience truth, compassion, and hope. Some of this is Auden's pessimism seeping in, but I think that he believes that Yeats shared this understanding.

[Virgil]

Quark, I'll post the entire poem:

In Memory of W. B. Yeats
by W. H. Auden


I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.




II




You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.






III




Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

For publishing rights, see here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15544. Let me digest this for a few days and I'll comment.

[Niamh]

I think your right Quark. Yeats poetry wasnt written for success, it was almost like an extention of himself. He poured all his feelings into them. When he was accused of basicly not trying to promote irishness enough C1910, he wrote so many stong poems fueled by his anger. Thats when he started pointing fingers at other groups and gave up His involvement with the Anglo Irish literary revival. He wasnt afraid to give his opinion.

[Mrs. Dalloway]

The Anglo Irish Literary Revival was about writing about Ireland, Irish history and culture and Irish legands in English

Why did they write in English? I mean, they could have writen about Ireland, Irish history and culture and Irish legends in Gaelic. Why didn't they do it? What do you think?

[downing]

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death


I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

[Niamh]

Why did they write in English? I mean, they could have writen about Ireland, Irish history and culture and Irish legends in Gaelic. Why didn't they do it? What do you think?

Oops! only saw this now! Alot of the members of the irish literary revival didnt have Irish as a second language and therefore couldnt speak it. Many of the ILR were from middle class and aristocratic back round, and english ansestry; to talk in Irish was frowned upon by many for the classes and the majority who spoke the language were the poor and working class Irish and mainly in the gaeltacht areas of the west. The upper class promoted the english language amonst their tenents for hundreds of years resulting in Irish almost becoming a dead language. The point of the Gaelic League was to revive the language, and promote it amongst their fellow Irish men but only a few of the classes joined and grasped the language. The reason why Yeats, Gregory, Synge and the others didnt write in Irish is because they werent apart of the Gaelic league. The Anglo-Irish literary revival was separate, used to promote Irish history and culture to the citizens of Ireland who didnt speak Irish. Its not an easy language to learn. So Ireland was being promoted through both the Irish and English languages. But, for the interest of anyone reading this, J.M.Synge could actually speak Irish, having learnt it in Trinity College, and spoke it almost fluently while living amongst the people of the Aran Islands. Hope all this helps! even if it is late!

[Mrs. Dalloway]

Thanks! very interesting Niamh!

[Niamh]

Since this thread has kind of gone quiet with Downing not around, i propose that as a group we should read one of his plays and discuss it. We have his Countess Cathleen on this site so it could be handy for us to read that. Personally i'd love it if we could read Cathleen Ni Houlihan.
What do you think? Whos up for it?

[Mrs. Dalloway]

good idea Niamh!! Can we read it from this site?

[Virgil]

I'm definetely up for it. I've been reading Yeats all week and loving it. I won't be able to start until toward the end of the week. For now I'll leave you with a poem that has captivated me the last few days:

The Circus Animals' Desertion
by William Butler Yeats
I

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

II

What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intetvened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

III

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

This is one of the last poems he wrote before he died. I think he was struggling to find some new subject and felt his age. But it is a great poem. I absolutely love that last line. Hey he mentions Countess Cathleen in the poem. Niamh, I don't know who she was, could you fill us in if you know?

[Niamh]

Oh Virgil I love that poem. I had to do a study of it for my Leaving certificate. I'm going to have to wreak my brain now because its quite a complex poem.

As for the Countess Cathleen, I've never actually gotten around to reading it, but if i recall correctly, i think its about a woman who sells her soul to feed her starving tenents during the famine.

And yeah we can read it from here!

[Mrs. Dalloway]

well then! what do you think about suggesting a date to have finished the reading and to talk about the play?