W. B. YEATS’S POETRY: CRYSTALLIZING IRISH ETHNIC AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

1 [This was read out at the International Conference on Ethnicity, Identity and Literature, organized by Sibsagar College Assam 10th October, 2012-15th October, 2014. It was published in the Seminar Proceedings Volume]. W. B. YEATS’S POETRY: CRYSTALLIZING IRISH ETHNIC AND NATIONAL IDENTITY ABSTRACT Myths and folklore often help create ethnic and national identity. Common shared heroic or subjugated backgrounds serve as focal points around which people can rally to a common cause. When the questions of ethnicity, identity and their impact upon literature, and viceversa, are mentioned the poetry of W. B. Yeats has to be reckoned with as a force which was both influenced by and deeply influenced the crystallization of Irish ethnicity and identity through the unearthing of myths and Celtic folklore lost in the palimpsest of time. The poetry and plays of W.B. Yeats often take subject matter from traditional Celtic folklore and myth, incorporating them into his work, in the form of stories and characters of Celtic origin, he endeavours to encapsulate something of the national character of his beloved Ireland. The reasons and motivations for Yeats' use of Celtic themes can be understood in terms of the author’s own sense of nationalism as well as an overriding personal interest in mythology and the oral traditions of folklore. During Yeats' early career, there was an ongoing literary revival of interest in Irish legend and folklore. The folklore, myth, and legends of ancient Celtic traditions gave Yeats a rich well of inspiration to draw from. By not falling into the trap of overly romanticizing his work, as many other authors of the time would do, Yeats was able to help begin a tradition of another sort, the Irish literary tradition. By placing importance on the Irish culture in his work, Yeats 2 fulfilled his own sense of national pride to the delight of his readers and audiences and to the chagrin of many of his English contemporaries who felt that nothing of value or worthy of study could come out of Ireland. My paper intends to explore how Yeats uses Celtic myths and folklore in his poetry in order to create an Irish ethnic identity and also crystallize the struggle for nationalism, while widening ethnic identity from a narrow definition to a wider one, with reference to some of his important and relevant poems. PAPER The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me. (O’Brien 141) The epigraph to this paper are Yeats’s own words about his poetry – which at once sought to draw from the well of the common social-psyche of Irish heritage but at the same time was interwoven with the present through the looms of the poet’s transforming imagination that sought to transcend the narrow bounds of fundamental and essentialist agenda ingrained in a segment of the Irish revival. In the works of William Butler Yeats the Celtic aspect of Irishness was of prime importance. This becomes clear in the titles of Yeats’s earliest works, where Celtism and folklore are the core ingredients. In 1888 he published Fairy and Folk Tales; in 1889, his first book of poems, The Wanderings of Oisin, and other Poems was published; in 1892 The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics was published while 1893 saw the publication of the Celtic Twilight. In all of these works, Yeats was attempting to express some deep element of Irishness which would allow him to participate fully in the Irish literary and cultural revival. 3 Myths and folklore often help create ethnic and national identity. Common shared heroic or subjugated backgrounds serve as focal points around which people can rally to a common cause. When the questions of ethnicity, identity and their impact upon literature, and vice-versa, are mentioned the poetry of W. B. Yeats has to be reckoned with as a powerful force which was both influenced by and deeply influenced the crystallization of Irish ethnicity and identity through the unearthing of myths and Celtic folklore lost in the palimpsests of time. The poetry and plays of W.B. Yeats often take subject matter from traditional Celtic folklore and myth, incorporating them into his work, in the form of stories and characters of Celtic origin, he endeavours to encapsulate something of the national character of his beloved Ireland. The reasons and motivations for Yeats' use of Celtic themes can be understood in terms of the author’s own sense of nationalism as well as an overriding personal interest in mythology and the oral traditions of folklore. During Yeats' early career, there was an ongoing literary revival of interest in Irish legend and folklore. The folklore, myth, and legends of ancient Celtic traditions gave Yeats a rich well of inspiration to draw from. By not falling into the trap of overly romanticizing his work, as many other authors of the time would do, Yeats was able to help begin a tradition of another sort, the Irish literary tradition. By placing importance on the Irish culture in his work, Yeats fulfilled his own sense of national pride to the delight of his readers and audiences and to the chagrin of many of his English contemporaries who felt that nothing of value or worthy of study could come out of Ireland, by rendering an Irishness to them in the English language! It would be interesting to explore how Yeats uses Celtic myths and folklore in his poetry in order to create an Irish ethnic identity and also crystallize the struggle for nationalism, while widening ethnic identity from a narrow definition – race, language and religion – to a wider one, with reference to some of his important and relevant poems. W. B. Yeats was one of the vanguards of Irish Literary Renaisance. He enlarged the panorama of modern English Poetry with Celtic mythology. Much of Yeats’s childhood was spent in Sligo with his mother’s family where he developed a lifelong interest in country people and the rural way of life. Thus, Yeats’s poetry is dominated by the Irish element right from the beginning, comprising of Irish heroic tales, belief in magic and faith in Anima Mundi. F. R. Leavis in his New Bearings in English Poetry remarks upon the 4 deep significance of the Irish element in his poetry: ‘Mr. Yeats starts in the English tradition, but he is from the outset an Irish poet’(Leavis 34). In fact much of Yeats’s early poetry shows a marked Irish programme and the richness of ethnic elements drawn from Gaelic folklore and myth. Celtic myth and symbolism gave his poetry both richness and a nationalistic vigour that was relevant in the years of the Irish Literary Revival, of which he came to be a key figure. As early as at the age of twenty-two he wrote in a letter to Katharine Tynan regarding his wishes to lay the foundations of: ‘a school of Irish poetry, founded on Irish myth and history, a neo-romantic movement’(Sen 2). Yeats was moved by the rich mythology of heroism of Ireland and worshipped it and sought to gift to those ignorant of its richness, through his poetry with the dual aims of instilling a sense of solidarity and pride in the Irish people dismissed by the English as having nothing rich enough to be proud of and also to let the world, enamoured by Greek and Latin myths, marvel at the greatness of Irish folkloric figures and mythical characters. Yeats wrote thus: ‘If we will but tell these stories to our children, the land will begin again to be a Holy Land, as it was before men gave their hearts to Greece and Rome and Judea’(Explorations 12-13). The myths of Aengus, Cuchulain and Queen Maeve show in simple diction Yeats’s efforts to retrieve the heroic traditions of the Gaelic past. Cuchulain was akin to the Greek hero Achilles, the mightiest of the Gaelic heroes and his heroic deeds and tragic end resonated in Yeats’s mind as symbolic of the fate of Ireland, and thus Cuchulain recurs in his poetry a powerful element reminding his Irish readers of their indigenous heroism. The Death of Cuchulain enumerates the sad tale of the hero and his son Conula, where not recognizing his identity Cuchulain slays him in a single combat and later after the discovery becomes mad with grief and dies fighting the sea waves. Bhabatosh Chatterjee comments : ‘Yeats in the early poems, treats the Celtic legends in a narrative or dramatic form. . . Yeats also creates new myths out of old and his Oisin, Fergus, King Goll, and Cuchulain, while retaining their individual characters as depicted in the legends, mirror the poet’s own personality’ (Chatterjee 28). Yeats was of the opinion that Political identity of Ireland could only be attained through Cultural revival through the recognition of a unity of purpose and ethnic identity, for which it was necessary for Irish people and poets to ‘Absorb Ireland and her tragedy . . . be the poet of a people, perhaps the poet of an insurrection’ and indeed following the 1916 5 Rising he had a crisis of conscience, wondering whether his play Cathleen ni Houlihan might have inspired some of the participants in the Rising: Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? Thus, much of Yeats’s work could be interpreted as promoting the ideal of an independent republic free from the taint of anglicisation, the drama Cathleen ni Houlihan being his most overtly republican work, hinting at the fact that Irish political union or identity was unrealizable unless the imagination of its people was fired by the sense of pride and awe at sharing a common glorious heritage, reminiscent of the heroic ages of Cuchulain, Finn, Conchubar, Deidre and imagine Ireland as Cathleen ni Houlihaan, the epitome of feminine strength and beauty. Yet there was danger in confusing myth with real life and Yeats realized this after the Easter Rising of 1916! In London literary circles Yeats always felt like an exile and yearned to be at one with Ireland which became for him not just a particular land or nation but a state of mind associated with calmness and peace, which he depicts romantically in ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. Yeats was deeply influenced by the Fenian John O’ Leary and the likes of Lady Gregory and was prompted to sing the glory of manly and rugged Ireland and of its people. In ‘Under Ben Bulben’ he urges Irish poets: Irish poets learn your trade Sing the peasantry, and then Hard-riding country gentlemen The holiness of monks, and after Porter-drinkers’ randy laughter. Among many of his poems with clear streaks of nationalistic vigour ‘To Ireland in the Coming Times’(The Rose) is one where Yeats tries to justify the role of his poetry in the cause of Irish nationalism. ‘To Ireland in the Coming Times’ has often been cited as an example of the young Yeats’s nationalism. Denis Donoghue argues that in this poem Yeats tries to find a place for himself in the honourable list of the Protestant nationalists. The poem starts with a description of a time when ‘Eire’, an ancient name for Ireland, was a free country ruled by the Irish: 6 There was a green branch hung with many a bell When her own people ruled this tragic Eire; And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery, A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell The elements – faery, Druid, the greenery are clear symbols of Irishness which recur in Yeats’s poetry. The very reference to a free Ireland ruled by the Irish implies that the present Ireland is not free and is controlled by foreigners. In the last stanza, the poet emphasizes that all his poetic accomplishments and whatever he writes is for his country: While still I may, I write for you The love I lived, the dream I knew. Yeats endeavours to prove his sincere and whole-hearted commitment to his country, so he declares, I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem. However what is noticeable is that these final lines do not address a present audience; their appeal is to a future Ireland. This suggests that Yeats was not satisfied with or sure about the reception and the relevance of his artistic work by the audience of his own time. Ironically, one of the most nationalist poems of the early Yeats’s turns into the poet’s attempt to vigorously justify the relevance of his aesthetic poetry to the sceptic nationalists. In some early poems nationalism and the poet’s nationalist stance has a stronger presence; it is the main theme or one of the main themes of the poem. This need for justifying his nationalism at every step arises from the dismissal of Yeats’s poetry by the nationalists who denounced his contribution to Irish ethnic and cultural revival because, firstly he wrote in English and secondly he depicted Irishness as steeped in dreaminess, magic, myths distanced greatly from the harsh struggles of the peasant class under English rule. An influential biographer and scholar of the Irish poet, Richard Ellmann describes the young Yeats as giving us ‘the impression of a man in a frenzy, beating on every door in the hotel in an attempt to find his own room’. Even Padriac Pearse, 7 one of the leading revolutionaries and martyrs of Easter 1916, which Yeats would later glorify in his poetry, could describe him in such demeaning terms: Against Mr. Yeats personally, we have nothing to object. He is a mere English poet of the third or fourth rank and as such he is harmless. But when he attempts to run an “Irish” Literary Theatre it is time for him to be crushed (O’Brien 128-129) The harshness of Pearse’s views and that of the Revivalists in general was based on the argument that Irish revival should be in Gaelic language. Because the key figures in the literary revival, Yeats, Synge, and Lady Gregory, wrote in English, thereby establishing a benchmark for future expressions of Irish identity, both in terms of its constitution, and in terms of its mode of expression. They attempted to invoke some basic markers of identity, notably Celtism, ancient Irish myths and sagas (in translation), and the rugged topography of the Irish landscape. However, by the very act of writing in English, they were undermining a seminal aspect of Irish-Ireland’s identity – the language. If Yeats wrote in English, then ipso facto, he was an ‘English poet’ in Pearse’s terms. Hence the vitriolic dismissal of Yeats as someone of little consequence. Yeats’s aim was to write in a way what would be the ‘matter of Ireland’, but in the English language, given his own inability to learn Irish to any reasonable standard. While this lack of knowledge was a factor in his desire to create an Irish identity in the English language, there can be little doubt that he also had an epistemological and ethical incentive. By so doing, he would radically transform the ‘matter of Ireland’. His own historical tradition of Anglo-Irishness would have been English speaking, but he, and his sisters, saw this as no reason as to why they should not be deemed ‘Irish’. He puts the situation succinctly in a typical Yeatsian epigraph: ‘Gaelic is my national language but it is not my mother tongue’ (Yeats: 1961; 520). In response to a grave fear expressed by Dr. Hyde that the Gaelic language would soon die out, Yeats asks: Is there, then, no hope for the de-Anglicising of our people? Can we not build up a national tradition, a national literature, which shall be none the less Irish in spirit from being English in language? Can we not keep the continuity of the nation’s life, not by trying to do what Dr. Hyde has practically pronounced impossible, but by translating and retelling in English, which shall have an indefinable Irish quality of rhythm and style, all that is best in the ancient literature? Can we not write and persuade others to write histories and romances of the great Gaelic men of the past, 8 from the son of Nessa to Owen Roe, until there has been made a golden bridge between the old and the new? (O’Brien 142) It is this transforming of essentialist concepts of nationality that sets the early Yeats apart from many other revivalists. That he still locates the core of Irish identity in the past is undeniable; however, even at this stage there is a willingness to attempt to broaden stereotypical notions of Irishness, as well as the rhetorical skill to attempt to deanglicize Ireland through the medium of translation into English! His view of ‘nationhood’ was definitely more interrogative than that of many of the Gaelic revivalists. Language, the inability of restoring Gaelic to its past glory would not be regarded by him as an impediment in the way of shaping present Irish identity nor as repository of national pride for posterity. It is true that Yeats’s poetry, just has his outlook, towards Irish political ascendancy and revival underwent several changes over the years. Yeats’s famous poem, which commemorates the Easter rising of 24 April 1916, was written in the aftermath of the unsuccessful nationalist uprising in Dublin against British rule. On that decisive day in Irish contemporary history, under the leadership of Patrick Pearse and James Connolly around 1600 members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood rose against the colonial rule of England. Yeats’s reaction was: ‘I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move me – and I am very despondent about the future. At the moment I feel all the work of years has been overturned, all the bringing together of classes, all the freeing of Irish literature and criticism from politics’ (L, 613). This amalgam of respect and annoyance, grief and horror, which would later permeate ‘Easter 1916’, is quite evident in this letter. On the one hand, Yeats could not negate the deep impact which the Rising has had on his worldview and on the other hand, he could not help expressing his discomfort, borne out of shock and disappointment, at the outcomes of that disturbing event. Yeats had already declared the death of Romantic Ireland in ‘September 1913’ where he regarded the same group which led the Uprising of 1916 with contempt thus: For men were born to pray and save; Romantic Ireland's dead and gone, It's with O'Leary in the grave. 9 It came to him as a shock that the members of the money-grabbing Catholic middle-class he had so harshly criticized in poems such as ‘Paudeen’ and ‘September 1913’ could rise to such a heroic stature as martyrs for a high ideal. The same people, who had up to then been the object of his contempt, are now depicted in a heroic way. Their heroic deed caused him to revise his sense of contemporary Ireland. Although Yeats does not forget to refer to their bourgeois background, this time the fact that the rebels belong to the middle-class coming from behind counter or desk does not imply any pejorative sense. Rather, they are somehow being romanticized by their bright complexion, their ‘vivid faces’ suggesting their vigorous liveliness, powerful feelings and youthful enthusiasm: I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses Then Yeats goes on to describe his everyday encounters with these people before the rebellion. He certainly did not take them seriously and respectfully. But however they had looked before within the poem, the participation of ordinary citizens in the events of the Easter Rising has drastically altered them: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born The oxymoron ‘terrible beauty’ suggests Yeats’s double reaction to what has happened. On the one hand the sacrifice of the martyrs for their people is aestheticised; on the other hand it is seen as a profoundly disturbing act. Yeats is thus both attracted and appalled by the Rising. Initially Yeats in his works espoused essentialist notions of identity by combining place, race, and a particular ethnic accent to mythologize ‘old Eire and the ancient ways’. However, at a certain stage in his writing, Yeats saw the dangers inherent in such an essentializing view of identity. His treatment of the Cuchulain myth, a pivotal trope in the literature of the revival, indexes his change of attitude, as he goes on to espouse a pluralistic and dialogic vision of what it means to be Irish. The relationship between people, language, and land is seen as a motivated and quasi-organic one, which is a 10 defining factor in the creation of notions of Irish identity. Despite the dreamy quality of his poetry and his aristocratic temper and his inability to face the facts of present day Ireland Yeats and the Literary Revival did indeed contribute to the formation of the new sense of national identity that was also being promoted by agencies such as the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League. Yeats was but one of a number of forces contributing to the formation of the new Irish sense of national identity, and to the new sense of confidence which would induce some to strive for a new Ireland. And he thus states, poignantly, that he not be differentiated from the nationalists just because he aspires towards more transcendental things but: Know, that I would accounted be True brother of a company That sang, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong, Ballad and story, rann and song…. Nor may I less be counted one With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson. Thus, through using the language of the colonizer Yeats was able to create an Irish identity that was at once reckoned with honour at the same time dissevering ‘irishness’ from the narrow confines of place, race, language and religion to mean a state of being and mind that had a broader locale and definition. Works Cited: Chatterjee, Bhabatosh. The Poetry of W.B.Yeats. Calcutta: Sarat Book Distributors, 1962. Print. Sen, S.C. Four Essays on the Poetry of Yeats. Shantiniketan: Viswa Bharati, 1968. Print. Kearney, Richard (ed.). States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. Print. 11 Leavis, F. R. New Bearings in English Poetry. London: Chatto and Windus, 1941. Print. O’ Brien, Eugene. The Question of Irish Identity in the Writing of W. B. Yeats and James Joyce. limerick.academia.edu/EugeneOBrien/Books/140672/The_Question - 639k-. Web. Meimandi, Mohammad Nabi. ‘JUST AS STRENUOUS A NATIONALIST AS EVER’, W.B. YEATS AND POSTCOLONIALISM: TENSIONS, AMBIGUITIES, AND UNCERTAINTIES. Phd. Thesis. University of Birmingham, 2007. Yeats, W.B. Explorations. London: Macmillan, 1962. Print.