W. B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight and Selected Poems
1) Much of what we will discuss this week will revolve around the idea of modernism. According to John Jervis in Transgressing the Modern, "Modernism
can either push forward, disavow the past, press on insistently towards a
future it can only celebrate but never realize…or it can explore the new
through the fragments of a past that can only ever be juxtaposed, recombined,
with a reflexive awareness that their ‘pastness’ is indeed forever
unattainable, thus feeding into a nostalgia for meaning and origin that appears
resolutely ‘un-modernist’ but has always been there as modernism’s shadow”
(75). What do you think Jervis means by this description and how do you see this at work in Yeats' Celtic Twilight and some of his poems? Where do you see "nostalgia" in Yeats' work? How do you see Yeats' constructing Ireland in juxtaposition to modernity? Provide examples.
2) We spent a great deal of time last week discussing "the colonizer's gaze," and in particular how Anglo-Irish writers tend to construct the Irish as "dreamy," "romantic," "mystical," "simple-minded," and yet "educated." We also discussed how Anglo-Irish writers constructed Ireland as exclusively rural, pastoral, "misty," and lonely, sometimes even desolate. Where do you see such constructions in Yeats' work. In what ways are his constructions different than Lady Wilde and Le Fanu and in what ways are they similar?
3) Yeats always had a complicated relationship with women within his lifetime, in particular with Maud Gonne--the subject of several of his poems. How does Yeats construct women in The Celtic Twilight and in some of his poems?
4) In A Vision, Yeats describes history as two widening gyres intersecting into one another at the narrowest point. This intersection does not necessarily denote a passage into chaos, but into another dimension, an alternate state of consciousness, a new world. How do you see this world-view functioning in The Celtic Twilight and in some of his poems, in particular "The Second Coming"?
5) Yeats was a member of the The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn--an occultist sort of society--and later he and his wife Georgie became practitioners of "Automatic Writing," which was a way of channeling "the spirits" in a trance-like state onto paper. Some of his most famous poems--"The Second Coming" and "Sailing to Byzantium"--are supposedly from the work of automatic writing. How are we to read Yeats' encounters with the so-called "spirit world" or "faery haunts" in The Celtic Twilight and in some of his poems? Do you think these experiences are authentic, or are they, as some critics press, manifestations of his subconscious mind?
By Kate Bruegmann
ReplyDeleteI find A Visionary to be a poem about automatic writing. I think that the spiritual word seeks him to get their stories told. He puts himself it a state of mind that loses all consciousness and focuses on whatever comes to him through the unknown. In this poem he states, “One is wandering sentences, the other in symbolic pictures and subtle allegoric poetry to express a something that lies beyond the range of expression” (7). I think what Yeats is trying to tell his readers is that when he puts himself in that state and the spirits come to him in visions or through voices. I think when it comes to automatic writing Yeats acts like the middle man, so spirits can tell their untold stories. It reminds me of the show Ghost Whisperer in that way. The spirits come to both of them in need to help to accomplish the unfinished task. It is hard to tell if it really is spirits or if it is the repressed memories of Yeats that is coming back like a ghost to haunt him. I believe that spirits do come to us in many different ways, shapes, and forms, but we do not always relate to what it really is. Automatic writing is just one of the ways ghosts can contact the living. Yeats even says in the same poem A Visionary that “the spiritual eagerness draws to him all those who, like himself, seek for illumination or else mourn for a joy that has gone,” this is how they draw themselves to people (6).
By: Lukas Wagner
ReplyDeleteWhen Jervis talks about the idea of modernism in Transgression of Modern he really shows that we cannot relive or truly know what others have gone through in the past. He shows us the world today is different and we can never truly understand what the past was all about because we were not there. Last week we had talked a lot about the potato famine and how it killed many of Ireland’s people. During this time many of the younger generation also moved to places like America to find better jobs and a different way of living. Thus causing many of Ireland’s old ways to die off, because the younger generation has modernized from what Ireland once was. Today the only way we can get a feel about what really happen in the past with the potato famine and many other ideas is by talking to the elders of Ireland, and hearing their story’s, but that is also slowly dying with time moving on. We can honor them and show respect but as Jervis says we will never realize. In many of Yeats’ work we can see how he is constructing Ireland in juxtaposition to modernity. Many of his poems try and show us the life of the past and how it is very different now days. I believe “Dust Hath Closed Helen’s Eyes” is a good example of this. He talks about a lady named Mary Hynes and an old blind many who tells him about her and how Ireland now days is much different than it was back then.