In 1936 Yeats wrote, "I too have tried to be modern". How does his poetry reflect the modernist movement?

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In 1936 Yeats wrote, “I too have tried to be modern”. How does his poetry reflect the modernist movement?

Modernism is the persistent experimentation with language and form. It relies and is dependent upon poetic images and mythology. It gave licence to artists to break away from convention and gave liberation from tradition. The period between, if regarded as a time-bound concept, 1890 and 1930 (Childs, p.12) saw the emphasis shifting away from the representational towards the subjective and impressionistic. The artist’s focus no longer remained on what was seen, rather how it was seen. The presentation of the artist’s vision of the object was fundamental to the artists of the modernistic movement, not the object (as it was with their literary predecessors).

The term ‘Modernism’ has many definitions and meanings. Due to the limited scope available in this essay it is not possible to include a comprehensive study of the modernistic movement. “It is now, however, perhaps both impossible and undesirable to speak of a single ‘Modernism’.” (Childs, p.12) This essay will be looking at the aspects that I feel are the most salient and how Yeats’ poetry reflects them.

One of Yeats’ most famous and most anthologised poems is The Second Coming, which represents (in Yeats' conception) the end of modern history. The dramatic, fierce imagery that Yeats employs in the poem creates an apocalyptical world for the audience.

The poem begins with the image of a falcon wheeling about in the sky, far away from the falconer who released it. The bird continues to wheel and gyre further and further away from the falconer. It gets so far away that it “cannot hear the falconer”(2). This is a metaphor for the loss control and it prepares us for the “mere anarchy” mentioned in line 4. The falcon represents a less significant power, a subordinate and the falconer gives the impression of authority. However the conventional image of the obedient falcon returning to its master is inversed. Looking at the historical context of the poem, written at the end of the World War One, the advancement of technology meant that destruction was much easier. So line 2 hints also at technology progressing beyond mankind's ability to control it. (Britzolakis)

The conditions of the present world are described in brevity, but the economical use of words is effective in this case, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”(3). The meter of the poem is very loose and it gives the illusion that it is written in free verse. It is however written in a very irregular iambic pentameter. This compliments the subject of anarchy and chaos. The last two lines of the first stanza are critical of the personalities of his times. Yeats says, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”(7-8) This also suggests dissociation between the best, which Yeats identifies as head people, the intellectuals, and the worst, whom Yeats associates with the mass, are those who react with passionate intensity not with careful intellectual study and expression.

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The second stanza begins with poet anticipating a “revelation”(9). He is expecting the “Second Coming”(10) but not the one of Christ, which was prophesised in the New Testament. He sees a “vast image”(12), which indicates something threatening and hostile. This new god takes the form of a lion, with “the head of a man”(14). A sphinx-like figure is in the “desert”(13), there is no civilisation and setting seems appropriate for the cataclysmic events, which precede the Second Coming, according to the Book of Revelations. The thought of the “rough beast”(20) moving is dreamlike and extremely ominous. Questions are raised, where ...

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