William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet. He was a leading figure of twentieth-century literature. He is a pillar of the literary establishment in Ireland. He assisted in founding the Abbey Theatre, and also served as Senator of the Free Irish State for two terms. Behind the Irish Literary Revival, he was among the leading force along with Edward Martyn, Lady Gregory, and many others.
The poetry of Yeats is featured with Irish Legends and occult. His first collection of poems was published in 1889. The poems in this collection are slow-paced and lyrical and indebted to Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edmund Spenser, and poets of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His 20th-century poetry was more realistic and physical. In his poetry, he renounced his transcendental beliefs and remained highly preoccupied with the spiritual and physical mask. He also talks about the cyclic theories of life in his poetry. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.
A Short Biography of William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was born on 13th June 1865 in Dublin, Ireland, to John Yeats and Susan Mary Pollexfen. He was the eldest son of the family. His father was a lawyer, and when Yeats was born, he left his profession. Yeats’ early years of life were spent in London and also made frequent visits to Ireland. His father studied arts in London.
In 1880, Yeats, while attending the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, pursued his own interest in arts. In 1885, he published his poems in the Dublin University Review. Soon after publishing, Yeats abandoned the art school.
Beginning of Literary Career
In the second half of the 1880s, Yeats encountered Lionel Johnson, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde. He also met Maud Gonne, a staunch supporter of Irish independence. Maud Gonne was a revolutionary woman and became a muse for Yeats for many years. Yeats proposed to her for marriage several times, but de declined. In 1892, Yeats published a drama Countess Cathleen, which was dedicated to her.
It was during this time that Yeats established the poetry group Rhymer’s Club with Ernest Rhys. He also joined the organization Order of the Golden Dawn. The organization discusses topics related to mysticism and occult. Yeats was much fascinated with the fantastical elements. His interests in the folktales of Ireland were the sources of his poetry. The title of his collection The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems published in 1889 was drawn from the account of a mythic Irish hero.
Celebrated Poet and Playwright
Besides poetry, Yeats also wrote plays. He became associated with Lady Gregory and to write works for the Irish theatre. In 1902, Yeats and Lady Gregory collaborated for the production of Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Yeats, during this time, also assisted in founding the National Theatre Society of Ireland. He also served as the president and co-editor along with John Millington Synge and Lady Gregory. Soon more plays were produced, and among them, the most celebrated was Deirdre, At the Hawk’s Well, and On Baile’s Strand.
In 1917, he married George Hyde-Lees. Following the marriage, Yeats entered into a new period of creativity by means of experiments with automatic writing. Yeats and his newly wedded wife would sit together for writing. They both believed that the forces from the spirit world would guide them. From his belief in the spiritual world, Yeats had formulated his intricate theories of human history and nature. The couple had two children: William Michael (son) and Anne (daughter).
Due to his services for establishing Irish Literature, Yeats soon became a political figure in the new Free State of Ireland. In 1922, he became a senator and served for six years. In 1923, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. The official website of Nobel Prize asserts that Yeats was given the prize “for his always inspired poetry, which is a highly artistic form that gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”
Yeats wrote poetry and other works till his late days. Important works of his late years include A Vision, The Wild Swans at Coole, The Tower, and Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems. On 28th January 1939, Yeats died in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. Shortly after his death, his collection Last Poems and Two Plays was published.
The Writing Style of William Butler Yeats
Yeats is regarded as one of the key poets of the twentieth century in the English language. He is known as a Symbolist poet. He used suggestive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his literary works. He decides on words and arranges them in a unique style that they also suggest the significant and resonating abstract ideas, in addition to a surface meaning. His writing style is mainly based on the use of symbols, which is mostly physical, that gives two meanings: literal and suggestive. Moreover, his symbols have immaterial and timeless qualities. They are applicable and comprehensible in every period.
Yeats has mastered a traditional verse form in his poetry. He does not practice free verse like other modernists. However, Yeats’s writing has been influenced by modernism. The modernism features can be seen in his rejection of more conventional poetic diction that he used in his early work. In his later works, the language is more serious; he directly approaches themes that significantly characterize his plays and poetry of his middle period. The works of the middle period are Responsibilities, The Green Helmet, and In the Seven Wood.
Yeats wrote his later poetry and played in a more personal style. These works were written in the last twenty years of his life. Yeats also refers to his daughter and son in these works. Moreover, these works are full of meditations of growing old. In the poem “The Circus Animals,” Yeats describes the motivation for his late works as:
“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.”
The early poetry of Yeats is heavily based on the myths and folklore of the Irish language. His later works focus more on contemporary issues. The shift of subject from folklore to contemporary issues marks a dramatic transformation in Yeats’s style. His works, and so as his style, can be divided into three periods. The poems written in the early phase are purely Pre-Raphaelite in tone, intentionally elaborated, and silted (according to the unsympathetic critics). At that time, Yeats wrote epic poems, The Wanderings of Oisin and The Isle of Statues. Other poems that he wrote in his early phase are lyrical and based on the subject of the esoteric and mystical subject and themes of love.
In the middle period, Yeats abandoned the writing style of Pre-Raphaelites that was the staunch feature of his early work. In the middle period, he adopted the Landor-style of social ironism. The critics who admire the middle period works of Yeats may feature it as having flexible yet powerful rhythm and also severely modernist, whereas those critics who do not admire his middle period works find his poems as barren with weak imagination.
The latter works of Yeats were based on the mystical system and extract its inspiration from it. Under the influence of spiritualism, Yeats began to work out a mystical system for himself. The poetry of this period, in many ways, marks Yeats’s return to the vision of his earlier works. He reproduced the theme of The Wandering Oisin in his late work, A Dialogue Between Self and Soul. Both poems deal with the subject of opposition between the spiritually-minded man of God and the worldly-minded man of the sword.
Critics also claim that the way Pablo Picasso covered his transition between the paintings Yeats also covered his transition from the poetry of the nineteenth-century to the twentieth century. However, some inquire whether the late poetry of Yeats has much in common with his contemporary modernists T. S. Eliot or the earlier.
The well-known poem of W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” is read by the modernist readers as a dirge for the decay of European civilization. The poem also explains the apocalyptical mystical theories of Yeats. The most important collections of Yeats poetry began with the publication of The Green Helmet in 1910, which was followed by Responsibilities in 1914. With the passing age, Yeats was getting more spare and powerful with the use of imagery. His poetry collection The Tower, The Winding Stair, and New Poems contain his most powerful imagery that features the modernist era of the twentieth century.
The mystical inclinations, well-informed with Hinduism, occult, and theosophical beliefs are the basis of the late poetry of Yeats. However, some critics have claimed that his late poetry shows a lack of credibility. Yeats’ system of beliefs can be read in connection with his system of mysteries that are fundamental present in his book A Vision published in 1925.
There are two common methods by which Yeats wrote poetry. The first method is spontaneous, whereas the other process is laborious and involves substitution and alteration. His spontaneous method belongs to his early period of writing, and he relied chiefly upon the inspiration and temptation of artistic creation without any effort. Whereas, in the later periods of his writing, he inflicted upon himself great pains and polish his verses time and again. Like Ernest Hemingway, he was a painstaking writer who attempted to say in the best possible words. His late artistic method is greatly depicted in his poems. For example, in the “Adam’s Curse,” he writes:
“I said, “All line will take us hours may be;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”
Throughout his long literary career, Yeats continued to mature and grow like an artisan, and this the most admirable thing about Yeats. His poetry is characterized by the dreamy flourishing style dull of lulling rhythms. His early poetry has a mostly pensive and nostalgic tone. Like Edmund Spenser, his poetry also had an abundance of exaggerated imagery.
It is so admirable that a great poet like Yeats soon grew dissatisfied with his ornate style in verse, and attempted to make his verse more simple, and bringing it near to the ordinary speech of daily use. He abandoned the archaism and poeticism in his poetry. In his later poetry, the imager also turned more certain, appropriate, and developed a sharp quality. Yeats’ superfluity and verbiage changed to intensity and potent. He started using brief and terse diction, and consequently, his poetry matured in density.
At the same time, Yeats also attempted to develop “passionate syntax.” In doing so, he became master of modulating the rhythm of his poetry so as to be aligned in the spirit of the poem. Yeats’s style is prominent in his poems “Sailing to Byzantium,” “The Second Coming,” “The Tower,” “Among the School Children,” and “Easter 1916.” Even one of his earliest poems, “When You are Old,” also shows this style.
It is astonishing to see the developed assurance and confidence in Yeats’ later poetic style. He employed accurate and definite rhythm, and most importantly, it matches the demands of sublimity and grandeur of language and subject without putting much effort. Yeats’ language became very practical. It has developed into sharp and became adapted to an inclusive range of ideas and concepts. He can easily put simple facts in simple words. For example, in the poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” he says:
“An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick.”
Similarly, in the poem “Vacillation,” he uses simple but sharps words:
“What theme had Homer but original sin?”
After developing his style, Yeats was able to use his poetry to employ various effects of calm or exhortation, passionate or philosophizing condemnation, celebration or lamentation, Prophecy, or nostalgia. His command over the meter and versification was also remarkable during his early period. At that time, he also had close correspondence between the mood and language for his escapist poem (his early poetry is much associated with the escapist poetry of Romanticism). In order to keep the fantastical atmosphere in his early poems, he employed half-spelled rhythm. To get the effect of the fantastical world, Yeats manipulated meditative and wavering rhythm in the poem “The Wind Among the Reeds.
Similarly, in order to keep pace with the theme of the poem in his later poetry, Yeats developed more varied, subtler, and intensely more adaptable rhythms. He also used a more inclusive vocabulary. Consequently, his metaphors appeared to be fresh with a wide range of references. Metaphorical aphorism is also observed in his poetry. Yeats’s perfect poetic use of epigram gives a shock of surprise to his readers. For example:
In his later poetry, again in keeping with his thematic content, Yeats was able to develop subtler, more varied, and dramatically more adaptable rhythms. His vocabulary had also become more inclusive. As a result, the metaphors were fresher and their range of reference wider. We also find that he employs the metaphorical aphorism. His use of epigram is a properly poetic one, giving the reader a shock of surprise. For example: in The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, he says:
“Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb
A fanatic heart.”
In Yeats’s poetry, the imaginative structure of the poems and its real expression appears to be definitely polished, natural, and spontaneous in effect.
Right up to the end of his literary career, Yeats continuously grew and matured. With his growth, he developed more confidence and assertion. Moreover, he carried words effortlessly with masterly skills. However, his self-confidence results in his propensity to treat exaggeration and hyperbolas. Various critics considered his inclination towards exaggeration and the use of hyperbolas his serious flaw. While commenting on weakness in Yeats’s poetry, D.S. Savage writes that his exaggeration and over-heightening, his indulgence in intensity are demonstrated in his frequent use of hyperbolic phrases and same-sounding words whose sole effect is to raise the meaning.
To conclude, William Butler Yeats was a gifted and conscious artist who cannot be equaled but by few artists. Certainly, the style of Yeats has some flaws, and these flaws are serious; however, these flaws do not dominate his true greatness as an artist. He wrote poetry from the inner urge, which provides his poetry with a unique inner glow and aspiration. His poetry is placed among the political monuments if it is not placed among the monuments of timeless intellect.
