Reading Notes W13: Yeats, Part A

William Butler Yeats, “When You Are Old, Easter 1916…” (518-532)

William Butler Yeats:

·         1865-1939

·         The Twentieth Century’s greatest English-language poet

·         Is a voice for modern, independent Ireland

·         “His captivating imagery and his fusion of history and vision continue to stir readers around the world, and many of his poetic phrases have entered the language” (518).

·         His private mythology allowed him to explain things like: “symptoms of Western Civilization’s declining spiral-the plight of Irish society and the chaos in Europe in the period surrounding the First World War” (518).

·         The eldest of four children born to John Butler and Susan Pollexfen Yeats.

The Poems:

·         “When you are old”: poem from Pre-Raphaelite period that basically pleads his love for Maud Gonne (an actress and Irish nationalist). His feelings for this woman may have personified love, beauty, nationalism, hope, frustration, and despair because of her constant rejections of marriage to him.

·         “Easter 1916”: “Yeats recognized that the Eastern Rebellion, led by radicals whose politics and violence he disapproved, had altered not just the political situation in Ireland but its spiritual state as well” (520). He takes a political stand in this poem.

·         “Leda and the Swan”: This is a retelling of a mythical rape that foreshadows the Trojan War. “Zeus’s transformation into a swan and rape of Leda embodies a moment of world-historical change” (521). This has to do with problems in history.

Quotes:

·         “Easter 1916”: “Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith for all that is done and said” (524). Maybe he is debating whether all this death was worth it.

·         “Easter 1916”: MacDonagh and MacBride and Connolly and Pearse now and in time to be, wherever green is worn, are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born” (524). James Connolly is a labor leader/nationalist that was executed by the British. Major John MacBride was married and separated from Maud Gonne (who is Yeat’s love in “When You Are Old”). Pearse and MacDonagh were leaders of the rebellion and were also executed by the british. Possible themes: Death, Change, lost love, beauty, Execution in history.

·         “Leda and the Swan”: “A shudder in the loins engender there the broken wall, the burning roof and tower and Agamemnon dead” (525). Clytemnestra was a daughter of the raped Leda and killed Agamemnon. Possible themes: Death, Beauty, War, Sacrifice, and History (maybe?).