1. Yeats and the Gyre HUM 3285: British and American Literature Spring 2011 Dr. Perdigao January 19, 2011

2. Epicness

3. Indeterminancy Darwin, Marx, Freud, Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg Darwin—challenge to Biblical literalism, idea of authority Marx—people’s actions controlled by economic system, altered ideas about human nature Freud—psychological determinism, discovery/invention of unconscious Einstein—space and time as great absolutes are relative Planck—atom, wave particle theory; light has both properties, complementary and contradictory Heisenberg—indeterminacy theory Challenges to nature, what constitutes knowledge

4. Framing Yeats 1891—first motion camera patented 1897—first subway opened 1900—US Census, 75 million people—150 million in 1950, population doubles Sense of loss, liberation High modernists—mythic poets, lamenting loss (cooked vs. raw) Liberation—as counter-modernism, not mythic but Adamic (begins anew, renames) Loss—intellectually difficult, obscure; liberation—transparent, easy to understand Impersonal vs. personal Use of tradition—experiments within traditions versus ex nihilo creation Reactions to fragmentation in twentieth century: ironic resistance (puts fragments together to make whole); immersed acceptance

5. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) London/Dublin Father—painter, skeptic, “religion of art” Poetic forms—late-Romantic, Pre-Raphaelite; language as dreamy, evocative, ethereal (2020) Shift from Romanticism with Ezra Pound’s influence, stripped-down style, modernist 1889 met Actor and Irish nationalist Maud Gonne— “No Second Troy” With help of Lady Gregory, Anglo-Irish writer, promoter of Irish literature, founded Abbey Theatre 1904, work in drama Dichotomies—late-Romantic visionary and modern skeptic, Irish patriot and irreverent antinationalist, man of action and esoteric dreamer (2021) Married Georgie Hyde Lees in 1917; automatic writing—gyres, symbolic system

6. Politics and poetics Irish poet whose language is English, colonial oppressor Politics within poetry “Easter, 1916”—Irish rebels taking over Dublin post office, hanging; Irish Free State; Yeats’ role as senator from 1922-28 Rising of Irish consciousness Yeats’ life—language taken away by oppressors, reinstating Gaelic in schools Yeats’ interest in the occult; culture filled with Celtic tales about fairies Tension between faith and skepticism 2000 year cycles of history, mathematical equations

7. Those gyres Yeats’ attitude toward change as modern phenomenon Continuity between past and present “Sailing to Byzantium” Old man dreaming of songs Surpassing limits of physical world Byzantium as “the purest embodiment of the union and subsequent transfiguration through art of the fleshly condition and the ideal of holiness” (Rosenthal xxxix). Universal system of “interpenetrating opposites... rotating gyres forever whirling into one another’s centers, merging, and then separating” (Rosenthal xxxix) Metapoem Yeats age 62 when writing the poem Wins Nobel Prize for literature in 1923

8. Answers “The Second Coming” Apocalyptic Christ’s return, Book of Revelations Christianity about to die, replaced by “rough beast,” horrible/natural Confusion at moment of cultural crisis, awareness of his confusion and loss As prophecy “Sailing to Byzantium”—Yeats’ fear of loss of sexual potency in personal terms; in a larger sense, modernist consideration, find alternative to collapse If religion no longer works, and philosophy is insufficient, what can we replace it with? Answer is art to become what religion once was

9. Forms Artist becomes the historian Idea of becoming a monument, contained But tension because no beauty like living in the present Request in “Byzantium” to be gathered in artifice of eternity, made a thing Poet of containment, holding fragments in tension but reveals artifice of language Critiques of Yeats—interest in aristocratic authority, plays with Fascist attempts at order, application of power of few on many “Second Coming”—something is ending but something new is to be born from it

10. Endings… or beginnings? That gyre thing again.