The Great Hunger aka The Irish Potato Famine Roughly 1845 – 1852 Three Main Factors of Irish Poverty: Burgeoning poor population with no means for improvement Until the early 19 th C, it was illegal for Irish Catholics to vote, be educated, live in industrial towns, or to own land Absentee Landlords / Aristocracy Anglo-protestants were the land owners, most of whom lived in England and their estates were run by agents who broke land up to very small lots (allowing more rent but making profitable farming impossible) Irish goods were exported for British consumption, hence 1/3 the population reliant on potato as staple The Church 80% of the population was Roman Catholic No population control At odds with Irish Independence [refer to Parnell] And of course, British Prejudice…

Estimates are that roughly 1,000,000 – 1,500,000 died from starvation and disease over about five years. And at least another 1,000,000 emigrated.

Q: how does a country deal with such a cultural trauma, especially in the midst of ongoing oppression?

A: A cultural revolution. The Gaelic Revival

The Three Yeats: The Romantic, The Revolutionary, The Mystic

1865- William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin Family is Protestant Ascendency. Father an artist Mother from Sligo in Rural Ireland (Yeats raised there, link to Irish Myth and folklore) Family moves between Ireland and England He wrote his first poem and essay The Poetry of Samuel Ferguson Greatly influenced by Shelley and Blake Yeats met Maud Gonne, his “Muse.” Proposes three times, turned down. Publishes Wanderings of Oisin, heavily influenced by Irish mythology Becomes increasingly interested in mysticism (the Golden Dawn) Goes on to publish three more books of poetry involved with Irish Myth: Poems (1895), The Secret Rose (1897), and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) Yeats co founded the Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin Involved with Lady Gregory in the Gaelic Revival/Irish Renaissance Gonne marries John MacBride, a military man, converts to Catholicism. Separates in ‘ The Abbey theatre opened, dedicated to plays by and about the Irish Abbey puts on Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, which results in riots [refer to the dilemma of representation] consummates love w/Gonne. With the rise of the national revolutionary movement, Yeats reassesses his attitudes Meets and collaborates with Ezra Pound (a relationship that would last until 1916) Easter Uprising

1916- Proposes for a final time to MG, turned down. Proposes to her Daughter. Turned down Yeats married George Hyde Lees (two children) he was appointed to the first Irish Senate Yeats was honored the Nobel Peace Prize With A Vision, Yeats enters into his most symbolic (and reflexive and creative) stage William Yeats passed away on 28 January.

Early Yeats and the Gaelic Revival The Gaelic Revival is marked by: Return to “lost” national culture In music, myth, folklore, art, sports Reclaiming Gaelic as a language Conscious effort to establish a distinct literary identity

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE By William Butler Yeats I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core. 1892

Who Goes With Fergus? WHO will go drive with Fergus now, And pierce the deep wood's woven shade, And dance upon the level shore? Young man, lift up your russet brow, And lift your tender eyelids, maid, And brood on hopes and fear no more. And no more turn aside and brood Upon love's bitter mystery; For Fergus rules the brazen cars, And rules the shadows of the wood, And the white breast of the dim sea And all dishevelled wandering stars. 1893

The Abbey Theater and The Playboy of the Western World, 1907 Synge’s topics concerned the rural Irish, often characterized as uneducated and superstitious. Playboy concerns paracide, bragging, lying, flirting, drinking, etc. It sparked a riot and extended criticism in the Irish Press Yeats defended it Points to the problem of representation of an oppressed culture: Is it best to represent the Irish as equal to the oppressor (professional, educated, modern, etc.)? Or to show the plight of the oppressed, as products of a broken culture (yet natural)?

Yeats’ first stage is marked by: A conscious attempt to build a canon of literary symbols based upon Irish Folklore A celebration of the life of the mind over a life of action A creeping dissatisfaction with this methodology, especially in the face of growing unrest Yeats’ Second Stage: Personally reflexive Politically Conscious Replaces Irish Myth with the Irish as Mythic, especially those fighting for Irish freedom

A Coat Made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world’s eyes As though they’d wrought it. Song, let them take it For there’s more enterprise In walking naked. 1916

September 1913 Notice Yeats’: rancor against class and religion His immortalization of political and Irish figures rather than mythic figures

Charles Stewart Parnell

Easter, 1916

I HAVE met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a mocking tale or a gibe To please a companion Around the fire at the club, Being certain that they and I But lived where motley is worn: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. That woman's days were spent In ignorant good-will, Her nights in argument Until her voice grew shrill. What voice more sweet than hers When, young and beautiful, She rode to harriers? This man had kept a school And rode our winged horse; This other his helper and friend Was coming into his force; He might have won fame in the end, So sensitive his nature seemed, So daring and sweet his thought. This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vainglorious lout. He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart, Yet I number him in the song; He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream. The horse that comes from the road. The rider, the birds that range From cloud to tumbling cloud, Minute by minute they change; A shadow of cloud on the stream Changes minute by minute; A horse-hoof slides on the brim, And a horse plashes within it; The long-legged moor-hens dive, And hens to moor-cocks call; Minute by minute they live: The stone's in the midst of all. Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? That is Heaven's part, our part To murmur name upon name, As a mother names her child When sleep at last has come On limbs that had run wild. What is it but nightfall? No, no, not night but death; Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said. We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse - 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.

THE SECOND COMING Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Leda and the Swan A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Sailing to Byzantium THAT is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. 1926

The Circus Animals' Desertion I I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, I sought it daily for six weeks or so. Maybe at last, being but a broken man, I must be satisfied with my heart, although Winter and summer till old age began My circus animals were all on show, Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot, Lion and woman and the Lord knows what. II What can I but enumerate old themes, First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams, Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose, Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems, That might adorn old songs or courtly shows; But what cared I that set him on to ride, I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride. And then a counter-truth filled out its play, 'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it; She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away, But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it. I thought my dear must her own soul destroy So did fanaticism and hate enslave it, And this brought forth a dream and soon enough This dream itself had all my thought and love. And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea; Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said It was the dream itself enchanted me: Character isolated by a deed To engross the present and dominate memory. Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of. III Those masterful images because complete Grew in pure mind, but out of what began? A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart (Yeats Dies January 28 th, 1939)