The Case of W.B. Yeats: Mind, Nation and Literary Landscape

Vol 2, No 1

- 48 lore, lore, as - resurgent - lilt lilt of the way . . The literary ern ern age was W.B.

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th in a cultural context of the

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century Ireland came to be represented scovery scovery of the supposed Ossian poems by th d this by projecting an ideal Irish state, while in the 19

, century, poets in Ireland wrote in English, in

th Case of W.B. Yeats Landscape Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Rosemarie Rowley cobite 18 (vision) gradually gradually as aspiration, contested continually over

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ature of Irelandin Irish instance, the For language. the collapse of osophy that had been handed down since the Enlightenment. It One of the first projects of Yeats equated the newly One figure who combined Romanticism and the mod By the beginning of the 20 The The loss of the Irish language came about as a result of this colonialism, The The Case of W.B. Yeats: Mind, Nation and Literary poet Robert Graves showed in his book English was spoken in a colonised country, Ireland. Yeats made this his focus: nationalism in the context of what, with the new communication possibilities, © Ecozon@ 2011 nationalism and its literature. He di based on a mystical transcribed identification from with Irish the into remnants of Gaelic speech placenames a in place names, in the phraseology and more that phonetic still English existed, spelling. There were traditions, the Irish and the English literatures, began to be defined in relation oneto another. Yeats. In his poetry, he attempted to create a new Irish nation in past, inthe known be came to what the Celtic as the revival. image of cerebral cerebral phil would be a mistake, however, philosophic project to of the study think of the mind. the What they did was Romantic more securely poets establish abandoned the role the of the mind gradual emergence and of imagination nation states. Two different civilisations, two different form form known as the of naïve nationalism, such as in the di (evenMcPherson only though authentic). some were a version of late Romanticism, which was an emotional reaction to the over haunt the literhaunt the the Bardic order, with its topography, genealogy and patronage, was noted Seathrún Ceitinnby (Geoffrey Keating) and Egan O Rahilly in poems of desolation in the l7th century. In the Ja as a beautiful maiden, symbolising the land, in need of rescue by the poet in a Nature, Nature, in loving detail which is spiritual as well as physical, while the idea of Ireland as a nation grew seven colonialism. years of hundred and the memory of Ireland as a nation of beautiful landscapes continued to The first examples of early Irish place, trees poetry and naming. are Indeed the pure Irish alphabet is nature founded on poems, tree the celebrating landscape of Ireland is, from its beginnings, imbued with descriptions of Author: Rowley, Rosemarie; Title: The Vol 2, No 1

, 49 rld rld Crossways 77), evoking a his account of the

Colooney, meadow of with for Lady Gregory was –

purpose of rhythm was to 9594

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( ” ISSN 2171 fort; fort; Knocknashee, hill of the fairies; quality. - Christian Christian and pagan, which suited Yeats’ The Celtic -

idge of the two Air Demons, which was the site nation whose state epic and heroes legends was he 20) 20) the Irish placenames are articulated in a tonal - me me important in his work or or the study of topology which had flourished in the

39) Yeats used in the first line of every verse, Irish

world, which was pre - dinnseanchas, dinnseanchas, tmosphere they evoked in the mind of the listener, as in “Red ed stories told to him by the firesides of cottagers and their experiences Collected Poems In 1893 Yeats had published By the incantation of Gaelic placenames, with their rhythmic structure, In “The Ballad of Father O’Hart,” from his first volume, Through Through her, Yeats came to see in the sound and phraseology of Irish, as If we take, for example, the poem “The Man Who Dreamed of Fairyland” s and was tying this into an imaginary Ireland and its literary landscape, names with the Irish landscape, in the poems, Yeats tried to create anew - Collected Poems become the foundationbecome the the of © Ecozon@ 2011 lore lore and legend of recount the Irish countryside and of the of other its villages, purposes in admirably. which This world he of portents and mystical intimations was to prolong prolong the moment of contemplation” (Brown 77); and in the fusing of place these the memory of nature, and in answer to the materialism of the age, a new wo order founded on ancient wisdom, and to give it a character in keeping with the new nation. Irish on the stones for all suspension that of belief Maeve in naming can the place but say without any specific means Maeve what says. or detail about he believed he could induce mystic states: “the Tiraragh, Tiraragh, country of the Innismurray, Murray’s ford; Island. Ballinafad, In English, mouth these than names of were the less important the a long Hanrahan’s ford; song about Ireland” he uses placenames in and a mystical sense: wind “The has bundled up the clouds high over Knocnarea /And thrown the thunder spoke poems his aloud. (Yeats, register akin to magical nomenclature, as the poet lists hazels; Knocknarea, hill of the ring qualities, e.g. Dromahair, The R of the capital of Breifne, an ancient kingdom; Lissadell, Ring fort of the blind; Scanavin, Shadow of the mountain; Lugnagall, Hollow of the Foreigner; and he fitted the anglicised sounds into his metrical it seemed magical a in have to English, ( placenames, rendered in English spelling, for their auditory and magical he he realised that he lacked a knowledge of Lady andGregory her involvement with the of life the country people in Irish.Galway, Through his friendship with however, placenames beca inspired by Bardic tradition Author: Rowley, Rosemary; Title: The Case of W.B. Yeats may have become an internationalism. As Yeats deepened his love of the Irish legend Vol 2, No 1

ic ic 50 in

- astic astic 102). all cloud, – romant – ). ). (Brown 80) Collected Poems work, in the mystical

nd and landscape in the ultism and elaborate symbology

ence Brown elucidates in his

9594 - what was not English occurred in the Rising for Irish – ISSN 2171 English, the la the esoteric world of alchemy, symbolism - the young poet had created, out of his , – worldly worldly powers. There is also considerable

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hour of eve’ (‘The Ballad of Father Gilligan’ -

ght, ght, the occult was the vehicle by which the reader was in relation to nationalism, “Fergus and the Druid,” like, like, shimmering the text, fairy Niamh inhabits a fant -

It It is an Ireland of the titanism, mind, in which a Deirdre literary is the fabrication. equal of hero from noble a saga; it is a Itworld Helentoo where occ of is Troy, a Cuchulain world an epic of find appropriate mythic setting in a stylised version of an seas, Irish landscape leaves aflutter, ‘cold wet twilight, ‘the moth winds ever blowing’ (‘the Pity of Love’) and The Wanderings of Oisin From From the beginning, Yeats was interested in a landscape that was Therefore, Therefore, Yeats went beyond mere exoticism, as he linked the sense of In his poetry, artifice is valued over nature, and the landscape acquires In Written in a sort of Hiberno ion, Yeats took the landscape of Ireland as his fieldwork, and for this he me me for the Irish nation was dark Rosaleen), and its occult meaning as when writing about the deaths that © Ecozon@ 2011 alchemy, alchemy, the colour red refers to a stage in the process which is mirrored by the adept, red is the occult colour of passion. several In esoteric “The Rose” poems (1893) Yeats writes “Cuchalain’s withFight the Sea,” as he used Irish the mythologies in building up a sense of identity for the new Irish state. This was developed in his later work, national as well as occult. collection For “The example, Rose” he in used the the early word Danaan early to invaders describe the with tribes of their the attention other in this volume to the part played by the Rose (in na Gaelic Ireland, the needed to signify Nature and its landscapes as something strange and mystical, unreal. In creating nationalist Ireland known and as the Celtic Twili its landscape, which came to be the transported to romantic new landscape the of nation people Ireland. and of strangeness to what was truly exotic and magic. For his revival of glorious a Irish past, to go forward to the destiny of a nat the the strange tint of alchemy and biography Yeats: of art, which Ter troubled troubled feelings about the modern world, a landscape and image of mesmeric beauty. In the dream territory of trees, birds, waters and continually between symbolism 47). myth (Brown and seas, where local detail seems to hover hands of Yeats undergo a strange transformation. The phonetics of English and its spelling of Irish placenames make the landscape itself exotic, an example of the Victorian tendency to make the Other byand almost definition. strange Author: Rowley, Rosemarie; Title: The recreating, to spur the Irish people on to greatness, from their and “fumbling of pence” materialism in for till the mean (Yeats, veniality Vol 2, No 1

f th 51

be be exemplar names only, - 179). things things which are

century. escriptive landscape was not it was materialist from its - th 9594

- Collected Poems , , with the progress of science, the y and Traditional Wisdom” makes a oul, oul, and his dedication as a poet was ISSN 2171 century th of Plato as translated by Plato as of translated Taylor:

nationalism, much as the work of Wagner used - Timaeus

the the

images are that which are present only to the mind, as - , , whose landscape was remembered in place

rogress rogress of the 19

The mind,The imagination, or is Yeats, for andthe at greatest, times, the only Kathleen RaineKathleen in essay her on “Poetr Yeats’ Yeats’ work was to create a new meaning out of decayed or forgotten For For Yeats, even more than landscape and its nationalist associations, the Yeats had an even larger project, and that was to overcome the n that mostn materialisticcenturies, 20 of that the motif and memory to limn heroic archetypes, Yeats tried to resurrect the - Kathleen Raine inKathleen recalls © Ecozon@ 2011 understand them. She describes the symbol, however, as forming a bridge from things of one another, therefore to order requiring imagination and mind. the reality. Yeats perhaps more than symbols any and images other poet has written extensively of useful distinction between symbol and sign. A states, words which simile, are alike and belong to the same order of being, in or this case, sign, is merely, she a materialist order. A word, and another word, can describe perfectly similar, and no therefore faculty of imagination the needs possessto or the the hearer on to a higher plane, the forget the language of ideal. archetypes and our Yeats, s like Plato, believed that we to give them a new energy and authenticity. images function as Those symbols, that created is, aural as a and pathway visual or door to soul, iswith the eternal. the mind, which, Irish Irish nation, Yeats reversed the naturalistic. process by privileging symbolism over the symbols of the past and by the incantation of these place names, the mind was concentrated to take literary incantation of landscape and presence. D enough, it needed to be imbued simple communication with between mind a and nature tinge was impossible of for the the poet. Therefore, he chose occult the language of symbolism. Whereas in the ancient world o supernatural, as Ireland, Nature had been rendered as description first, then symbolic of the heroes heroes of Irish legend in a mystical landscape, to typify soul i the battles of a noble process of mind was uppermost. In his works, Nature exists in Ireland as a onsweep of industrialisation and the endless manufacturing and consumption of household goods. He wanted to transmute this materialist age into heroic and spiritual a one, of whichmore the new nation of Ireland was to and leader. It was a sort of pan folk materialism materialism and p philosophical tradition since Locke and his followers, who denied all values, spiritual focused only on the century, a senses vulgar materialism had and taken over what they could teach. In the 19 Author: Rowley, Rosemary; Title: The Case of W.B. Yeats independence in 1916 he refers to “The Rose Tree”: own Can right a Rose make blood / ( red Tree” “There’s nothing but our Vol 2, No 1

spoke to – writes: d Poems

30) t’s t’s function was to find

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artifice itself. This was the means by ISSN 2171 though not, it may be, poets, for language had e.’ (485) –

Case of W.B. Yeats 12).

Byzantium, dominated by antithetical values of beauty and ation, and uses the generated paradigm, it is alike – d that in Byzantium ‘religious, aesthetic and practical life were one, erred those of artifice and artefact to any word describing

e, e, in constructing the antithetical self, Yeats, like Plato, Collected Poems

Yeats in his historical system civilisations saw the Byzantine empire as imagination one experienced of that the ‘unity high of being’ He believe which constituted high culture. that architects and artificers been the instrument of controversy and must have the multitude andgrown the few alik abstract When, therefore, an artificer, in the fabrication of any work, looks to that which always subsists according to the same, and employing a paradigm of expresses this the ideakind, and power in his work, it is his production should be beautiful. (Raine, “Poetry” for example, the words Yeats chooses for the sea are wrought in eats’ eats’ Ireland and its landscape was ultimately a world of mystery, in ical self, as both the creator and vehicle for poetry. This was opposed to –

Therefor Y Very early on, Yeats chose the idea of the antithesis of the self, or Yeats, Yeats, who “saw in mere Nature a cold and alien otherness,” could Throughout Throughout his work, from the beginning, Yeats accepted this antimony, This is in contrast to Nature, where the actual physical world of autiful artefact, somethingautiful artefact, quite distinct Nature. from © Ecozon@ 2011 from from nature, that is, to another order, to which civilisations were born and were nurtured, in the that images celebrated of the the poetry imagination, as they reconstituted Platonic imagination. editor the Augustin of Martin, the ideal forms of the artifice, artifice, such as the “enamelled sea” in volume (Yeats, “The Indian to his Love” in his first undervalued nature (Brown 257). Many of his poems, which contain the signs and symbols of nature, are scored to an emotional note and tone far removed antithet the thePrimary, word usedhe for Nature. The poetic mind, imagination, or had to be constructed through the images that played on it, however, these images, in he nearly pref all nature complex doctrinespractices and 79). magic (Brown of which preternatural mind was uppermost, Nature mere of realities decoration. and the actual appearances and renewed in every generation. This remembering, he believed, was the function of creativity in art, and art therefore takes on the be appearance and aspect of a depend for his faith in transformative possibilities for consciousness on the that that which is in necessary beautiful” his from that should work far (Raine, be “Poetry” 30). gener believing utterly in Plato’s Ideal Forms. He felt the poe those images, which must be beautiful, and which must be remembered and transformation and decay was of secondary importance: “But when he beholds Author: Rowley, Rosemarie; Title: The Vol 2, No 1

7) torn, torn, -

- 255 200) - 199 184). Despite his Collected Poems

Collected Poems Yeats,

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ISSN 2171 icers themselves become prophetic of Shelley’s in that he foresaw in the rise of tormented sea. ( -

oble oble sentiments, which might make a nation

get,

torn, that gong g g in this filthy tide, that apocalyptic revelation was the - ing artifice above Nature the succeeding generations have pon a golden bough to sing

dimmed tide” (Yeats, -

Of Of hammered gold and gold enamelling keepTo a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set u lordsTo ladiesand of Byzantium whatOf is past, or passing, or cometo Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make The smithies break the flood The golden smithies of the Emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies complexityof Those images that yet Fresh images be That dolphin rmented sea.” rmented to - In his desire to a recreate vital past into a new civilisation, what prevailed In Yeats’ work, the imagination was all. It was the precursor and This abjuration of nature is in direct descent from Platonic discourse

However thisHowever repudiated artifice high nature: Yeats’ Yeats’ mind was that we were coming to the end of civilisation, that we were science the mastery of nature which was to crumble and take all in the © Ecozon@ 2011 dedication to the task of recreating mythology for a nationhimself was and aware, livin its people, he proper response to the conditions of life surrounding him. terror, at In the this most poem, his grotesque, is realised. Yeats’ more fear prophetic that of either Blake’s anarchy or is in a sense such as Ireland a great one. But it physicalabjured the it was and haunted by apocalypse. was an imagination and a landscape that in cast on the “blood instances bytrue, plac in fact undervalued Nature and failed to see in it the ground and essential focus existence. our of forerunner of mighty deeds and n seemingly fruitful, ends in discord and destruction of nature “that dolphin gong that which held that nature was lacking, and nature, that there more were ideal perfect forms beyond than Nature, and even if this is in some particular This text shows how the prioritisation of cultural artefacts over nature, while destructionpoem as the “Byzantium”: in This can be read as a dialogue of civilisation, its artefacts and spirits, and in the later work poet shows how the artif Author: Rowley, Rosemary; Title: The Case of W.B. Yeats Vol 2, No 1

54 bolic bolic 324) there - concluding: concluding:

physical self was 199). The word

e e dilemma of a new nation

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Case of W.B. Yeats at present.at

ticularly animal of nature. It is this physical dread

e, but in the succeeding drafts he chose the falcon, as it ageing ageing intellect” (Yeats,

- greater mystery of which the symbol is a synecdoche or

poem a certain horror, which vindicates but does not explain the first ary. ary. Can we ask if the very definition of innocence in the natural order as no supernatural, and dissolves. Imagination is eternity,” ent for commemorative purposes. However, by aligning the physical It It is true that the mind, soul and intellect seek order, and that order Kathleen Raine, aKathleen Yeats scholar, following Plato, finds no idyllic beauty in In Yeats’ pursuit of the antithetical self he therefore abjured Nature, To speak of the “ceremony of innocence” has provoked much As Harold Bloom points out in his study of Yeats (Bloom 317 exists as part of a expression whole. the of part of © Ecozon@ 2011 has no outline, but imagination has, Nature has no tune, but imagination has. Nature h “Whatever beauty we see in Nature is the reflected “Poetry” 31). image of the soul (Raine, with gnomic properties, by survival, the not cost of this imagination is elucidating high, when it comes to our terms and times dependence we survivalof age like the live in on nature for Nature, as she quotes from the Preface to Blake’s “The Blast of Abel”: “Nature hoping to erect what he thought provided of as for m in an endless “monuments of flux un and rebirth and “monument” reconstitution, here to is provide far monum from anything found in Nature such as a stone modern poems. It also measures at the time of its publication, and in our own time, the distance between ourselves and Nature, th at the portal of becoming, and our civilisation’sown physical and realities landscapes. complete alienation from its comment is to do without ceremony? Given the apocalyptic time in which it was written, the poem with its dreadful concluding of andhorror Nature, fear par image creates more than anything, a which haunts the reader and has made the poem one of the best known of was that of the eagl belonged to the more arcane Nature in of mastery revolutions were the that come. to tradition of Egypt; the falconer loosing that apocalypse foretold in Christianity, implicit as a parody through the phrasing of the poem. The rebirth, being entirely physical, takes on a bestial character. This gives the verse, that the falcon and the falconer are torn apart, that anarchy is loose upon world. the qua Indeed, Bloom, the image first a of bird that came to mind Yeats’ prefigured. is a wilful misattribution to the title of second this rebirth. Yeats’ poem, language since is that it of is the in “adept.” fact form By Egyptian, about making he shows its a how sym far removed his vision was from the redemptive Author: Rowley, Rosemarie; Title: The dissolution of its power. The means he chose symbolic, intellectual, to apocalyptic poetry, do in which so fear of wasthe through a highly Vol 2, No 1

55 55), an

nd other poets have Collected Poems

ut of mystical landscape the 9594

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e e trajectory of Yeats’ art for the nation as he on Yeats’ privileging of the imagination and denial exists beyond mind is more difficult to prove, since

al, al, and will attempt a literal reading of the symbols in

siting mind as the only reality, undervalued Nature? A

reductionism of the secular materialists which found its Collected Poems (

song, and perhaps note its harmonic perfection. We can listen , , ten years after he had met his true love, Maud Gonne, and -

r r in bird I I will posit a reader who is innocent of Yeats’ later tormented project and The The poem can be read as an intermediary between the world of Has Yeats, in po In quoting Plato, that Nature has no tune, we might counter with what What What is pertinent to our idea of a national imaginary tied to a literary That That a higher order Therefore, Therefore, in privileging the mind above all else, particularly over

was in my head” of magic, and the poet went there in the persona of Aengus to quell a fire in his © Ecozon@ 2011 root Nature was denied.root abhorrence of the physic the poem to discover the behind nature order remains that occluded: “I went a out to Becausehazel wood,/ a fire behind the words, and whether what lays physical nature before he had spent his life for a “barren passion’s sake.” The love poems show that it was not a barren passion; yet, looking at the unfulfilled love, and its cost to Yeats, we detect how early of the physical had a heavy emotional cost. The physical was denied because at early early example of the brilliance of Yeats’ technique, might poem guide us is here. important The because it out of material which new the legends for nationIrish born. be might tries to create o imagination, and the natural world which is beginning to take its toll on his to to the sound of rain falling on and earth stone, and note how it us.affects It may ultimately be foolish harmonious. not to name these sounds as reading sweet, of “The Song pleasing of Wandering and Aengus” (Yeats, by the Platonists, and that th imagined it was ultimately Wetragic. may find that nature in its changing forms thanmay yield higher Yeats an had imagined. order we hea reality reality is harder to access, but can be reached, thedone, creation and through as recreation art. of Yeats a landscape is that we may find in nature itself more order than was granted to it modern philosophy denies the reality of anything outside the mind, to the point that even the mind itself cannot include be perceptions of verified, nature that or are pres its contents, and this answer, to prove would that by kicking a stone so that you can feel it, the outer world of nature can exist in a Johnsonian sense. But the higher order, the ultimate distance is not the apogee in the Oxford philosophy of the form of mid animism, of nature inhabited by a demonic spirit, which the mind fears and overcome. to tries Author: Rowley, Rosemary; Title: The Case of W.B. Yeats Nature, a certain distance from physicality is necessary for the poet. This Vol 2, No 1

56 or

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Collected Poems artifice of eternity

ats, ats, h h apple blossom in her hair

To consumeTo his heart away; sick with desire And fastened to dyinga animal knowsIt not what it is, and gather me Into the But something rustled on the floor, And someone called byme my name: hadIt become a glimmering girl Wit Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. And when white moths were on the wing, And Moth like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in streama And caught littlea silver trout. Collected Poems

usually interpreted as anger, an emotion, usually against a person who This is most explicit in the last lines of this where poem, he addresses the Once again, Yeats has chosen an artifice over the natural The final verse of the poem envisages the poet as “old with wandering,” Now, Now, his anger spent, he laid the fish on the floor, and went to blow the The The hazel wand was used for divining, and is noted for its beautiful pale Hooking a berry to a thread is an old method of catching a fish, but 55). alchemical silver and gold, has been preferred, and stated, and his neglect – © Ecozon@ 2011 sages in “God’s holy fire” order, order, where the final meaning is elusive. The promise of artifice over Nature, of the here of the physical nourishing apple is a foretaste ofyears to come, what the frail will paltry thing, haunt “a him tattered coat in upon a stick” that a dying body becomes (Ye done / The silver apples of the moon,/ The golden apples of the sun” ( Poems natural to feast on the apples, just as it Instead, was using to consummate alchemical love symbolism, for Yeats the takes girl. us to a higher, more secret having fulfilled his love, kissing her lips and taking h more serenely, among long dappled grass: “And pluck till time and times are fire aflame, presumably aflame, cookingfire or it, giving vent his to full anger, through through poisoning it. A poisoned perhaps fish reading it purely as would a symbol, the fish not as Christianity, is be Yeats going to of use poison that faith to which has so entrapped his anyone countrymen, denying the reality of love? sexual to a thread” a to ( sheen, so whygreen would poetwant peel the to save in it, an destruction? of act saying he Is wanted he destroy w to what that Author: Rowley, Rosemarie; Title: The head has frustrated the poet: “And cut and peeled a hazel wand,/ A Vol 2, No 1

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ould pe are ructed ructed bird who is

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is nascent in his work “words alone are certain between text and reader.

he he old Irish poetry is their – (Seabhach 205) 9594

ly present in the “now.” Even art as

ISSN 2171 the artifice of eternity,

made, made, denies the reality of nature at root, and in Labhras ar chaoin na dtor le gréin. - filled, desirable, valiant. -

ses the order of creation, by placing the artefacts of to be on the Hill of Éadair

6). 6). We may recall that the ancients believed that the world - 5

Truly sweet above the white wave A hill that is plenteous, with its full and plenty of boats A hill that is wine How sweet

we can recognise the opportunities for transcendence, for they are a (Seabhach 143). (Seabhach 143). In this old Irish poetry, the Irish language and the Irish landsca

There There is reference, while celebrating nature, to the heroes and legends of However, However, the difference between Yeats and t If If Yeats had been able to read Irish, he may have become more aware of So, So, the symbolic order, founded on magic, and delineated in the occult This extraordinary phrase, 1

reated reated out of sound. But the meanings these of words depend on place our “Fáilte ‘on éan is binne ar chraoibh/ 1 © Ecozon@ 2011 virtually virtually one and the same thing, as the whole language is oriented towards the celebration of naming places and the abundance of flowers, vegetation, animals old, as inold, Éadair Hill “The of (Howth)”: the Praises of distance or shield between nature and its celebrant There is a direct address by the poet to his subject: “Welcome to the sweetest on the branch / Who sings rising” delicately from the bush with the sun’s have have gone straight to the texts to discover that the relationship he so desired in the Irish nation actually existed civilisation. earlier obscured the marks of the in historical time, before colonialism had understanding of nature. The poetry written in Irish of the early age put no practices of alchemy, on a system partly of through correspondences the which abstract is epistemological book Nature. of const powers of the mind, may not be the a very close link true between Irish and identity and the natural landscape, he c the the eternity, which cannot be portrayed succeeds all life as and creation, and is eternal an artifice since it precedes andhigh serious as must underlying Yeats’ itsthe take place Nature, in whole. and was c in nature, in landscape, and described as an artifice or man in nation. So a the concept end, like actually “eternity” rever being humankind before that in which they have their birth and being: the timeless, from from the very beginning. His choice of mind and its images have more for reality him than any reality of the natural world. When good”, metaphysical means to a Collected world Poems beyond the senses, beyond Nature (Yeats Author: Rowley, Rosemary; Title: The Case of W.B. Yeats Vol 2, No 1

Irish realised

- Collected pungent, – th th became the like figure of Sweeney. of like figure eroism and the poet’s part

- 176), where he describes the realism, realism, where the cartoon

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(Heaney 39) letting and revenge: “We had fed the - th th its hunter’s peaks, bold with rugged fulfilment, fulfilment, which had the propensity to ISSN 2171

wells, and totally imaginary golden age, which

179).

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nuts…… -

ctions from a material age which he tried valiantly to

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The blackthorn is jaggya creel stippled with dark sloes; green watercress in thatch on where the drinking blackbird goes. The bushy leafy oak tree is highest in the wood, the forking shoots of hazel hide sweet hazel tasies,/ tasies,/ The heart’s grown brutal from the fare” (Yeats,

filled. - Despite the beauty of making poetry out of the remnants of the earlier Yeats expressed the complexities of real But has he no epic only poetic the heroes, bird However, in Yeats poetry, along with the mystical landscape prefiguring Seamus Heaney, particularly in his translations of early Irish poetry, And it goes on to praise the hill wi 211). y related to its heroes, to the naming and memory of Fionn and the manifestations of subliminal power, the beginnings of personality, became, in © Ecozon@ 2011 eschew, he ultimately failed to make an conjunctionethical with the nation state and Perhaps with such nature. only conjunction a nation’s existed the in literary landscape, and was an irretrievable could only be revived as a form of proto heart heart on fan Poems culture and of living speech, Yeats, because of his dependence on half literary models, and proje rebellion rebellion as a “terrible beauty” being born. The landscape he had conjured as a vehicle for the new nation had become the template of whose adeptsrace, would listen the to the ancient by legends as Yeats, retold as they new glorious became imbued with a whimsical wish turn a dream landscape into one of blood inspiration for the rebellion for nationhood, leading 1916, directly and to bloodshed: the “There’s Rising nothing of but our own Rose Tree”right ( red blood / Can make a in it, in the poem “Easter 1916” ( nationhood, as referred to above, the heroes in Irish my achieves comparable effects of lushness, of gre “Sweeney example: for Astray,” Fianna, the mythological warrior and his band, and his Gráinne, lover, (Gráinne eloped with of younger Diarmuid a man, in pursuit)tale their separate a and bushy greens, intoxicating with its uncultivated lofty mounds nutty, tree Author: Rowley, Rosemarie; Title: The and birds. In the Fenian cycle, the landscape as well as being exuberantly lush is directl Vol 2, No 1

59 the the hat hat the nd in the

433). Yet, there has to

the alchemical silver and at at in seeking art and artifice, h a leap of faith of leap a h belongs to the stage stage might right this balance 9594

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). Collected Collected Poems e e the destruction of Nature itself; and ISSN 2171 ridge ridge can be built from our moment when

to to read Yeats’ poetry in this islight, to be, at times,

(“Kierkegaard, Soren” (“Kierkegaard, comes an urgent task in our time, in our present ecological

may may cost us access to Nature, in th

bstantial bstantial somewhere” (Yeats,

at inat his work, both the exigencies of andrhyme syntax are in complete

That That the aesthetes and the atheists of modernism had their influence in a This praxis be In constructing a literary landscape, a sense of environmental ethics Even those most sceptical of Yeats’ intentions and methods cannot deny Yeats’ Yeats’ imprisonment of the self in a hieratic and hierarchical structure, to natural balance. Putting Nature centre

© Ecozon@ 2011 purposes. economictime of expansion may been have ultimately detrimental to planet,the and in it notand belongs, where put nature, Mind, outside beyondit. or sufficient for us now as we contemplat what he himself warned of: apocalypse. Since we live in a finite earth, creatures of and nature on that earth, are we have an imperfect mind and body that has to be answered in imperfections of landscape, nationhood, human and Nature itself a and sufficiency for our natural terms, and we may fi imperfection man everything human of can that only attain his by passing desire its opposite”through and existential crisis, perhaps we rather than could an alchemical reading emphasise is necessary. We that could ask if such Yeats’ vision is a naturalistic, would lead us to find a path where a b mired in a nation or a culture, we need a springboard to action. This easy is task, it not takes a an leap of faith to move from poetry to praxis, but that may be iswhat us of required at this point in“Suc history: frustrated. frustrated. In the imprisonment in reflective a stasis mind, of metallic golden his apples, sublimation, refusal of we have the failed to respect physical, Nature’s laws, with ofperhaps future the humanity. to and a huge cost its to earth itself, and metre; thmetre; harmony. There are, however, times when the meaning eludes us, or beckons us on to further readings and further contemplations which do particular signification. And not yield up any correspondences like Yeats: “What the world’s million lips Must be su are thirsting for / failure. a recorded be that he achieved his objectives of beauty and ideal form, that he was a master of led led to a stasis of metallic sublimation, a stage in alchemy which corresponds to the power of the soul. symbolic order does To not exist: from the correspondences be of high art and criticalbeauty of this we process can is appreciate that notit does, to and, we say can live t in the hope of finding perfect Author: Rowley, Rosemary; Title: The Case of W.B. Yeats the heroic poetry of Yeats, herself.landscape, Nature more important in the national story than Vol 2, No 1

. os os 60

Temen

. . Ipswich: Golgonooza ). ). Dublin: Educational

9594 - Dublín: Gill and Macmillan, 1999.

ISSN 2171 Wine of Poetry ( Derry: Field Day, 1983. 1983. FieldPrint. Day, Derry:

Case of W.B. Yeats Buckinghamshire: 1983. Smythe, Print. Ed. Augustine Martin. London: Arena, Arrow Quote.com. Quote.com. Xplore Inc, 2011. 13 May. 2011. Oxford UniversityOxford Print. 1972. Press,

of W.B. Yeats. 10 (2007). Print. Print. (2007). 10

. Oxford: .

The Life Sweeney Astray. The White Goddess: A Historic Grammar of Poetic Myth Fíon Fíon na Filíochta. Yeats

Collected Poem The Celtic Twilight.

Academy Review Books, 1990. Print.Books, 1990. Press, 1999. Print.Press, 1959.Company Ireland, of http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/sorenkierk402085.html London: Faber & Faber, &London:1966. Faber, Print. Faber W. B. Yeats and the Learning of the Imagination . © Ecozon@ 2011 Yeats, Yeats, W. B. W.B. Yeats, --- Seabhach, An. Heaney, Seamus. "Kierkegaard, Soren." Brainy Raine, Kathleen. “Poetry in Relation to Traditional Wisdom.” Bloom, Harold. Harold. Bloom, Brown, Terence. Print. Graves, Robert. Author: Rowley, Rosemarie; Title: The Works Cited