A Case Study of Mythical and Realistic Configuration of Yeats' Poetry
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JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 1 A Case study of Mythical and Realistic Configuration of Yeats’ Poetry Mrs. Bindiya Rahi Singh Guest Assistant Professor (Dept. of English) Govt. Degree College Kotabagh Nainital Uttarakhand William Butler Yeats was the gifted and the Noble Prize winning Irish poet of the 20th century and he began his career with the crafting of mythical and symbolical works in English Literature by choosing the subject matter of folktales and the fairy through the region of the western part of Ireland. From his early days, he was inspired by above-mentioned concepts by his father and maidservants who used to tell him the tales of the mystic world. So it was the impression of his childhood memory that increases his zeal of characterization of those motifs. The inhabitation of his land is full of the haunted stories of shadows and spirits. Besides it, he belonged to the protestant family that deals with the belief of the substance of Gods and they did not accept the orthodoxy of superstitious. The same appeal has been made into the works of Synge who was the partner of his poetic collection. Synge’ s Riders to the Sea, is a study of the philosophy and mysterious approach of Almighty God in the shape of a stormy sea that swallowed the all-male members of Maurya’s family. She stands alone repenting her tears on the death movements. This work is also used for the existentialism and the concept of life-death doctrine. Nicholas Grene has given his remarks in his article Yeats and remaking of Synge in which he utters the following words; Yeats knew Synge from their meeting in 1896 to Synge’s early death in 1909 and they worked as close colleagues in the theatre movement after 1902. From the beginning, Synge was cast as a Yeatsian hero, an artistic model, and after his death, he continued to recur as a key figure in Yeats’s poetry and prose. This figure of Synge is created and re-created by Yeats, if not in his image, in his imagination. But given that what is being transmuted in the case of Synge is the life and work of a writer whose own very real achievement remain in all its untransmuted actuality, this is a particularly illuminating instance of Yeats’s Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 683 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 2 imaginative process. It is worth looking at how Yeats shaped Synge into myth, at the impact Synge’s work, life and death had on Yeats, and the way in which he is re-made within Yeats’s poetry, to try to define the status of the reality of this Yeatsian Synge1 ( Grene, p. 64). Yeats is the master of myth-making with the perfect amalgamation of realistic ideas and thoughts regarding the social and personal symbol. Love, death, truth, introverts feelings of men and spirituality is the basic components of his works. He rejected by a lady thrice and that impression we can easily catch through his poetic collects. In this reference, Cleanth Brooks pointed out that in his book entitled Yeats: The Poet as Myth-Maker has presented his symbolical poem The Tower, The Winding Stair is full of mystic destiny. It’s well expressed in his following poem such as The trees are in their autumn beauty The wounded paths are dry Under the October twilight the water Mirror a still sky2 (Jeffares, pp. 410-411) It may be said that Yeats became a folklorist and a student of legend, myth, and magic because of his exposure to the material while at an impressionable age. These tales of the supernatural were imaginative nourishment to a mind conscious of a need to break with the agnosticism scientific skepticism of his father, John B. Yeats. The Celtic Twilight (1893-1902) is recollective reminisces of his memories about the witchcraft and magic. In this book, he said that all real stories are based on real stories heard among the people of his surroundings or real incident with a little disguise in names and places. As the title suggests it is the detailed version of the folklore of the Irish Peasantry and Irish Fairy Tales. Along with his poems are the gems of the creative power of his intelligence to reveal his concern about an imaginative movement in literature including all heritage of his cultural perspective likewise myth, legends, religion, custom, and thought. He sings the lore like common people through his vision of ‘Revolt of the soul’. His stay with lady Gregory in 1897, has embarked on folk legends and belief and they worked on the series of Essay entitled A Vision and Belief in the West of Ireland that has been published in 1920 and contain the theme of distinction between the concept of Self and Anti- Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 684 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 3 Self, his knowledge of Vedanta and structural doctrine of myth and mystery were the basic elements of his poetry3 (W. B Yeats writing on Irish Folklore, Legends, and Myth, Contents). Douglas Hydes in 1993, expresses his view on Yeats’s stories of Fionn and Oisin in this way; The lover in the Irish folk song bids his beloved come with him into the woods, and see the salmon leap in the rivers, and hear the cuckoo sing because death will never find them in the heart of the woods. Oisin new come from his three hundred years of fairyland and of the love that is in fairyland, bids St. Patrick cease his prayers a while…’4 (W. B Yeats writing on Irish Folklore, Legends, and Myth p. 194) In Yeast’s case, the role of art in recreating the social self as the subject of a social myth can be best analyzed by focusing on his poems on the ‘rose’. In ‘To Ireland in the Coming Times’, first published in 1892 in the countless Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics under the Title Apologia Addressed to Ireland in Coming days, Yeats defines his art as means to change social reality through the aesthetic enrichment of the subject of the action. The poet begins by defining himself as a member of an elite group, the charismatic sect of a warrior brotherhood of artists; Know, that I would accounted be True brother of a company That song, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong’ Balled and story, ran and song. His exploration attitude towards the phase of social self and aesthetic self are the qualities of his fusion of illusion5 (W. B. Yeats Social Myth and Monoglossia, p.117). The very popular definition of myth has given by Joseph Campbell wrote that; Throughout the inhabited world, in all the time under every circumstance, the myths of men have flourished, and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and the mind. It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestations. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 685 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 4 historic men, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic magic ring of myth6 (Myth and Reality in Irish Literature, p.1) Similar instincts have been adopted by the efforts of Yeats. He has obtained popularity in the concept of myth-making. His myths are liked with good and evil, a victory of corruption and an indication of the transformation of time and age. Through his works, he presents the entire picture of the emotions of the human world. A deep study of the works of Yeats can present his genius word image of mental conception. And his poetry is blended with symbols and stands him among the chief representatives of symbolic Movement in English Literature to uses innumerable symbols, for example, Rose, Swan, and Helen. His symbols are taken from the genre of Irish folklore, mythology, magic, philosophy, and metaphysical literature. Yeats has defined the concept of the symbol in his words as a symbol is true, the possible expression of some invisible essence. The symbol has been divided into two categories; traditional and personal. Yeast revealed not only denotative ideas but also they relate with connotative and evocative word construction. With it, he succeeds in elucidating the use of complex symbols in his works. To express his word construction image it can be said that he used the icon of Rose in twice methods; traditionally and personally. For traditional Symbol, Rose stands for the eternal truth of time and second it refers to the memories of his past that can rejuvenate his Symbol. Who dreamed that beauty that passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride… Under the passing stars, a foam of the sky Lives on this lonely face. (The Rose of the World) These lines have been taken from his crafting about his deep love for Moud Gonne who never accepts his true love. In the above-mentioned lines, he expresses his feeling towards that is fatalistic power of beauty that can transform into destruction. For the use of his crafting over the impression of traditional symbols it can be compared with his second poem the Rose of Battle that contained the theme of earth love and peace of war.