To what extent do you think that Yeats thought he was living in a 'Romantic Ireland'?

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Name: Laura Caldwell                                        Teacher: S.T

St Julie’s Catholic High School                                Centre #: 34358

Date: Jun 2010

Post 1914 Poetry from Other Cultures Essay

QUESTION: Choose any TWO of the poems we have looked at (September 1913/Easter 1916/The Second Coming/The Tower) and discuss them in relation to the following question:

‘From your reading of the two poems, to what extent do you feel that Yeats though he was living in a ‘Romantic Ireland’?’

I have chosen to compare the two poems ‘The Second Coming’ and ‘The Tower’. The Second Coming straight away seems to be extremely Unromantic and negative, giving off a chaotic vibe throughout. However, in The Tower, Yeats tells of a more Romantic Ireland that lies behind what meets the eye. This poem seems much more organised and calm than The Second Coming.

        Romanticism is when things are looked at as they should be, rather than the way they actually are. It refers to the ‘Romantic Movement’ in 18th and 19th century art and poetry, which privileged ideas of feeling, love, beauty, nature and the Supernatural over ideas of logic, order and reality.

        Both of the poems begin with images of negativity. In The Second Coming, the phrase ‘mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’ automatically tells us that the world is going wrong. The phrase ‘mere anarchy’ gives us the impressions that something worse than anarchy is coming next, and since this poem was written at the height of the Irish Civil War in 1921 before Ireland gained independence, this implies that the chaos occurring in Ireland will soon affect the rest of the world. Yeats’ use of the word ‘loosed’ indicates that this anarchy has just been unleashed on the world, like a wild animal. Words such as ‘loosed’ give the poem a chaotic effect as they seem uncontrollable and panicky. There is a very obvious unromantic theme at the start of this poem already, as Yeats is talking about Ireland being completely out of control.

Although The Tower starts negatively, it is a completely different kind of negativity altogether, as it refers to “decrepit age that has been tied to me/As to a dog’s tail”. ‘Decrepit age’ tell us that Yeats’ body is falling apart as he is getting old. The phrase ‘tied to me like a dog’s tail’ means that he cannot escape said old age. ‘Decrepit’ gives a sense of dissonance and emphasizes the negativity of the situation. At this point in the poem, there seems to be a lack of Romanticism as Yeats is looking at his life and Ireland in complete reality, which is not very pleasant.

In both poems, Yeats is trying to escape from something in his everyday life. The Second Coming uses dark and depressing words such as ‘The Second Coming!’, ‘things fall apart’ and ‘the best lack all conviction’. This makes it clear that he is trying to escape from all of the chaos, war and the birth of the antichrist. However, his opinion on the Civil War was ambivalent. Although Yeats disliked violence, he understood that those taking part in the Civil War were just good people who wanted a free Ireland, which is something he also wanted. His fear of the antichrist links in with his belief of the ‘gyres’. This was where holy ages and evil ages alternated every 2000 years, and because of recent events happening in his lifetime such as the Civil War, the Russian Revolution and World War I, he believed that he was living at the beginning of the next evil age. ‘The best lack all conviction’ also refers to the contemporary Irish people who are doing nothing to stop the bad people coming into power, and these bad people are taking advantage of the fact that it is so easy for them to unleash chaos. This is a Romantic image in the sense that the references to the jeopardy of modern Ireland tell us that Yeats would like to just escape back into the Romantic Ireland of the past, where there was more peace, and people actually stood up for their country instead of just doing nothing in the face of terror and violence. In The Tower, we know that Yeats wants to escape from his ‘decrepit age’. He also speaks of where a ‘tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the Earth’. This is a reference to Platonism, which was the theory of a philosopher called Plato that every imperfect item on this Earth is in fact just an inferior copy of its perfect ‘form’, which was in another realm. In the instance on this burnt-out tree, there would be an ideal form of the tree in the other realm. We can see from this that Yeats wanted to look through the real Ireland, to the perfect Romantic Platonic form beneath. We can also tell that he wants to escape into the Spiritus Mundi. This is his belief that the thoughts and emotions we feel are not our own, but are those of the dead. This is why our thoughts sometimes do not make sense, because they have been jumbled up by the senility of the dead. This looks opposite to The Second Coming, as there he seems to wants to get away from the Spiritus Mundi and the chaos it is bringing him. Yeats’ view of Platonic forms is in fact Romanticising the reality of the contemporary Ireland he was living in, as he is viewing everything as it should be without the influence of war and conflict. However, he does later state that he will ‘cry in Plato’s teeth’ meaning that living an active life would be a Romantic way of being an Irishman too.

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The Tower contains some examples of Romantic imagery, but The Second Coming does not seem to. In The Tower, Yeats refers to a ‘sudden shower’, which is a metaphor for a burst of life. However there is a hint of negativity in this phrase, as the underlying meaning is that life is very short-lasting and it can end very suddenly. Yeats also talks about a ‘glittering stream’ which sounds very beautiful and enchanted. This could be influenced by fairies and the Supernatural, which he held a strong belief and interest in. Yeats tried to escape into the world of the Supernatural ...

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