REFLECTIONS ON THE W.B. YEATS EXHIBITION
By Edmund (Eamon) Henry; 12 June 2008ForewordThis brief note covers our visit this morning to the Yeats exhibition at the National Library, at the kind invitation of the Terenure Enterprise Centre to our Active Senior IT Society, with Ms Ann Moriarty leading us. Some 2000 documents are available, including many of William Butler Yeats’ original manuscript poems and letters on actual display. A detailed coverage is not intended here.
A few aspects of this extraordinary man who lived between 1865 and 1939 will be touched on below. This writer has had Yeats’ poetry in his bloodstream since childhood, which may come as no surprise, given that he grew up on the edge of “the Yeats’ country”, only some four miles to the south of Knocknarea, the hill that features in several of Yeats’ poems in a County Sligo setting. His poem “The Lake Isle of Inishfree” and other similar pieces were on our national school menu.
Great Mental EnergyHis large and varied output occurred from about 1885 right up to about September 1938, the date of his “epitaph” poem “Under Ben Bulbin”, through a period of some fifty-three years. The Nobel Prize for Literature awarded in 1923 indicates the unusually high quality of his output of poetry and plays. His successful launching of the Abbey Theatre about 1904, with Lady Gregory and others, is a further landmark achievement. He was made a Senator of the Irish Senate in 1922, which enabled him to promote his views on how to improve some aspect of education within the Freestate. Because of failing health, he resigned from the Senate in 1928. All this shows how Yeats could get things done so well.
Versatility with StrangenessThis writer claims little knowledge of Yeats’ dramas as such. However, it is generally known that he experimented widely with dramatic formats, including the Japanese “Noh” drama forms. His poetry also covers the full range of human experience, in fresh and delicate expression. In line with some of Francis Ledwidge’s greatest pieces, Yeats in his poem “The Stolen Child” describes “ferns that drip their tears over the young streams”, an indication of his sensitive handling of nature events, combined with elven (fairy) dimensions.
A “strange” or “un-Irish” aspect of Yeats was his heavy involvement with the occult, especially through his wife Georgie, a spirit medium, whom he married in October 1917. We may recall that this practice was much used by people such as Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of “Sherlock Holmes” the famous crime sleuth. Doyle wanted very much to contact the spirit of his only son who was killed in the 1914-18 War. Among all this there was the iconoclast Harry Houdini, who when allowed to join a séance frequently showed the fraudulent nature of the supposed communication with the spirit world.
Empathy with Plain People, the “Native Irish”A very likeable quality of Yeats was his insight and empathy with “the plain people of Ireland”, as one might put it. This was by no means to be expected from someone typical of a Protestant upper-middle class background. Several of his earlier poems treat rural themes, about a Father Gilligan, a Fiddler of Dooney, and various other “native Irish” themes, from the native point of view. Having John O’Leary, a definite Fenian, as his chosen mentor might shed further light on this aspect. The so-called Irish Revival brought Yeats into the company of John Synge, Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory and others, all intent on creating a culture based on the “native Irish” mentality and language, even if in English translation. It seems that Yeats did not know any Gaelic language as such. However, English versions of many folk-tales were available, such as Joyce’s “Old Celtic Romances”, which admittedly have a bit more to them than occurs for the fiddler of Dooney. The “Tain Bo Cuailne” (cattle raid of Cooley) gave in English translation much material to Yeats to work with, including the characters Cuculainn and Maeve, from early medieval sources.
Outlook Patriotic and StoicA further likeable quality of Yeats was his emphatic support of Irish Nationalist causes and persons generally. Several poems praise characters such as John O’Leary, the 1916 executed leaders, and Rodger Casement. A handicap for Yeats was his inability to read original Gaelic poetry and prose, much of which was not available in English translation. This implies that much written by the native Irish since say the year 1600 he could not directly access. A related problem may have been his not knowing the meaning of many place-names in their Anglicized versions of Gaelic originals. For example, in his poem “Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland”, he refers to a cleft on the south side of Knocknarea as “Clooth-na-Bare” as pouring out a rain flood. The Gaelic name is “Cluid na Bear” meaning “the nook of the bears”, indicating that wild bears used to live there at one time. This fact is quite worthy to bear mention in a poem, if readers will bear with my presumption! In this context, it is of course feasible that friends such as Douglas Hyde could readily answer any place-name questions he might raise.
In his “epitaph” poem “Under Ben Bulbin” he expresses the hope “that we in coming times may be still the indomitable Irishry”. We could think about this, in circumstances where only one out of two or three voters turns out to vote on an important political matter, in spite of vigorous advice from both Church and State to go and vote. Yeats’ hope is indeed close to that of at least a century earlier, expressed in the slogan “Erin go Brath”, meaning “may our Ireland last until the Day of Judgment”.
Regarding final things, his epitaph is contained in the same poem. Now carved on his tombstone at Drumcliffe, County Sligo, it reads: “Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by!”This outlook is close enough to that of the Graaeco-Roman Stoics of some two thousand years ago, which can be summarized as follows: “Keep your mind in a calm state, well above the level of passions which you must keep under control, and accept death as a perfectly natural and good event”.
Eamon Henry
