WEBVTT 00:13.960 --> 00:19.420 Professor Langdon Hammer: For Wednesday--This 00:19.418 --> 00:22.948 is my--our first Yeats lecture. 00:22.950 --> 00:25.500 We're going to have three of them. 00:25.500 --> 00:34.460 For the next class I'd like you to, well, I'd like you to do a 00:34.460 --> 00:38.310 few things. I know that your teaching 00:38.310 --> 00:42.580 fellows will have handed out a meter exercise for you. 00:42.580 --> 00:47.360 I'd like you to work on something else. 00:47.360 --> 00:52.370 You don't have to do this for Wednesday but let's say for next 00:52.365 --> 00:56.135 Monday, and that is: I'd like you to memorize a 00:56.140 --> 01:00.080 short poem by Yeats or by Frost, either one. 01:00.079 --> 01:03.979 And this poem could be the basis of a first paper, 01:03.978 --> 01:07.628 a topic for one. It doesn't have to be but it 01:07.627 --> 01:11.467 might be. And on Wednesday I'll also hand 01:11.472 --> 01:14.822 out a topic for paper number one. 01:14.819 --> 01:21.929 In class I'll talk about "Easter 1916," "The Magi," "The 01:21.934 --> 01:26.854 Second Coming," "Leda and the Swan," 01:26.849 --> 01:31.709 and I'd like you to pay special attention to these special 01:31.708 --> 01:34.008 Yeatsian words: "tumult," 01:34.010 --> 01:37.470 "turbulence," "bestial." 01:37.470 --> 01:42.550 Think about also that phrase "terrible beauty" in "Easter 01:42.545 --> 01:44.675 1916." And finally, 01:44.681 --> 01:52.091 in your RIS packet you'll see a timeline that charts significant 01:52.090 --> 01:58.790 dates in modern poetry that tells you something about when 01:58.794 --> 02:04.914 the different poets we're reading were working, 02:04.909 --> 02:08.979 and helps you perhaps keep track of them; 02:08.979 --> 02:12.809 because confusingly, although the course has a kind 02:12.807 --> 02:17.167 of rough chronological order, we do move back and forth in 02:17.171 --> 02:19.311 time. And in fact today, 02:19.313 --> 02:23.673 right now, we're going to move back the furthest we go, 02:23.674 --> 02:28.684 all the way into the nineteenth century to talk about the early 02:28.681 --> 02:32.141 Yeats. Yeats's career is maybe the 02:32.137 --> 02:35.367 most famous one in modern poetry; 02:35.370 --> 02:41.860 that is, a career that has been seen as a kind of representative 02:41.861 --> 02:45.881 story about modern poetry as a whole. 02:45.880 --> 02:47.310 What's that story? 02:47.310 --> 02:53.780 Well, Yeats begins as a Romantic visionary and a late 02:53.778 --> 02:59.918 nineteenth-century aesthete, and under the pressure of 02:59.924 --> 03:05.334 political and social crisis he breaks with the artificial 03:05.332 --> 03:10.642 rhetoric of his early poems and becomes a kind of heroic 03:10.644 --> 03:15.454 realist. Now, there's something to this 03:15.450 --> 03:21.840 story but it is also a kind of cliché, and I'll try to 03:21.841 --> 03:25.841 introduce, I think, a more true and also 03:25.838 --> 03:29.568 more interesting way of understanding Yeats's 03:29.569 --> 03:31.349 development today, 03:31.350 --> 03:34.660 03:34.660 --> 03:38.330 starting with this picture. 03:38.330 --> 03:41.900 This is an unlikely picture. 03:41.900 --> 03:45.830 The face there, if you have seen him before, 03:45.827 --> 03:48.747 you will recognize as Yeats's. 03:48.750 --> 03:53.030 This is Yeats as King Goll. 03:53.030 --> 03:59.250 This is Yeats in costume, costumed as a figure from Irish 03:59.247 --> 04:03.577 myth, as an ancient bard, mad King Goll, 04:03.577 --> 04:09.237 which is the furthest thing from a modern poet. 04:09.240 --> 04:13.170 It's a late Victorian image of an archaic singer rendered in 04:13.174 --> 04:16.384 the melodramatic manner of Pre-Raphaelite art and 04:16.375 --> 04:20.505 thoroughly removed from the aesthetic values of modernism, 04:20.509 --> 04:23.529 such as naturalism, formal clarity, 04:23.528 --> 04:26.368 emotional restraint and so on. 04:26.370 --> 04:31.170 It's an image that was created by Yeats's father, 04:31.170 --> 04:33.670 the painter John Yeats. 04:33.670 --> 04:37.060 You could also say that it was created by the late 04:37.062 --> 04:40.252 nineteenth-century culture that Yeats's father, 04:40.246 --> 04:43.566 John, represented and introduced to his son. 04:43.569 --> 04:48.429 It's an image of Yeats that modern poetry eventually forgot, 04:48.425 --> 04:52.785 Yeats as an un-modern, nineteenth-century poet hamming 04:52.787 --> 04:55.357 it up. But this poet is, 04:55.358 --> 05:00.398 in fact, important to the one that Yeats became. 05:00.399 --> 05:05.509 In a way, Yeats is always in costume. 05:05.509 --> 05:11.259 His poetic identity is forged through identification with the 05:11.258 --> 05:17.008 heroic characters of his poems, characters who are sometimes 05:17.014 --> 05:20.914 surrogates for the poet, such as King Goll, 05:20.906 --> 05:26.366 the warrior Cuchulain or the mysterious Michael Robartes – 05:26.374 --> 05:29.344 all characters you'll meet. 05:29.339 --> 05:33.709 Or who are sometimes simply versions of the poet himself; 05:33.709 --> 05:39.309 that is, the poet rendering himself for us in stylized 05:39.314 --> 05:42.684 roles; that is, Yeats the public man, 05:42.684 --> 05:46.054 Yeats the lover, Yeats the mad old man. 05:46.050 --> 05:50.230 Yeats is always creating himself in his poems and 05:50.232 --> 05:54.592 creating himself as a kind of version of a type. 05:54.589 --> 06:00.249 And he does the same thing, in fact, to those around him, 06:00.252 --> 06:03.902 famously to his lover, Maude Gonne, 06:03.898 --> 06:09.688 who becomes Helen of Troy in "No Second Troy" and in other 06:09.686 --> 06:12.816 poems. The martyrs in the Easter 06:12.820 --> 06:17.000 Rebellion of 1916 become ancient Irish warriors, 06:16.995 --> 06:20.455 and we'll talk about that next time. 06:20.459 --> 06:25.699 There are many other instances of this myth-making imagination 06:25.698 --> 06:28.788 that Yeats is always working with. 06:28.790 --> 06:33.970 Yeats takes on self-consciously staged identities, 06:33.968 --> 06:38.828 requiring costumes, and he sees other people in 06:38.830 --> 06:43.270 similarly theatrical and mythic terms. 06:43.269 --> 06:45.549 His poetry is, in fact, deeply 06:45.554 --> 06:49.344 autobiographical, but it doesn't necessarily help 06:49.335 --> 06:54.215 to know that because his life is not a reliable key for reading 06:54.219 --> 06:58.919 the poems, exactly because he treated his 06:58.922 --> 07:05.012 life as art, raising the particulars of his experience 07:05.005 --> 07:11.665 into general symbols, working the narrative of his 07:11.667 --> 07:16.577 life into myth. This is a way of conceiving his 07:16.576 --> 07:20.546 activity as a poet but it's also, as we'll see, 07:20.547 --> 07:24.517 a way of conceiving, in fact, culture and human 07:24.518 --> 07:26.588 history in general. 07:26.589 --> 07:31.069 In Yeats, people are always particulars who are fitted to 07:31.069 --> 07:35.709 types, which are new versions of old identities that travel 07:35.709 --> 07:39.059 across time. In a certain sense, 07:39.058 --> 07:43.738 Yeats, I think, really felt that he was King 07:43.739 --> 07:46.739 Goll. Now, the story of King Goll is 07:46.744 --> 07:48.844 interesting. It's a longish poem, 07:48.835 --> 07:51.805 not in your anthology, but you can find it in The 07:51.807 --> 07:55.607 Complete Yeats, and I've given you on this 07:55.612 --> 07:59.692 handout page just a couple stanzas from it, 07:59.686 --> 08:02.496 so you have a sense of it. 08:02.500 --> 08:07.510 King Goll is a mythical Irish ruler who goes mad in the heat 08:07.510 --> 08:11.220 of battle. He becomes distracted by an 08:11.217 --> 08:17.287 inward fire that draws him into the woods where he wanders and 08:17.287 --> 08:20.967 sings, full of unfulfilled desire. 08:20.970 --> 08:27.430 Finally, he destroys his harp, in the scene represented by 08:27.427 --> 08:30.597 Yeats's father's portrait. 08:30.600 --> 08:35.720 This story is a certain version of Yeats's own early ambition to 08:35.718 --> 08:40.508 become a particular kind of figure--not an Irish king but an 08:40.511 --> 08:44.331 Irish poet, which would mean consolidating 08:44.333 --> 08:49.373 in himself a sense of national identity and explaining that 08:49.368 --> 08:51.608 identity, representing it, 08:51.613 --> 08:56.503 embodying it in all senses; representing and embodying 08:56.501 --> 09:02.491 Irishness, for an English speaking readership in Ireland, 09:02.491 --> 09:06.451 but also in England and elsewhere. 09:06.450 --> 09:09.410 The nationality of that identity is important; 09:09.409 --> 09:13.909 that is, Yeats's Irishness, and so is Yeats's audience. 09:13.909 --> 09:19.919 His ambition is to become the first major Irish poet writing 09:19.916 --> 09:22.226 in English. Significantly, 09:22.233 --> 09:26.563 this picture of Yeats as King Goll was used as an illustration 09:26.560 --> 09:30.320 for his first appearance in an English periodical, 09:30.320 --> 09:34.880 a magazine of art and ideas called The Leisure Hour. 09:34.879 --> 09:42.239 Yeats bridges Irish and English cultures, and he is importantly 09:42.241 --> 09:49.011 Protestant with social and family ties to English life. 09:49.009 --> 09:53.239 The ambition that I'm describing is a public and 09:53.240 --> 09:56.500 political one. But paradoxically, 09:56.495 --> 10:02.545 perhaps, for the young Yeats this ambition drew him away from 10:02.545 --> 10:08.595 the social and political world into the charmed landscapes of 10:08.596 --> 10:13.016 Irish myth, maybe in the same way as King 10:13.024 --> 10:17.784 Goll is drawn away from, lured away from battle, 10:17.780 --> 10:21.330 to wander in the Irish wood. 10:21.330 --> 10:27.230 All of Yeats's early poetry takes place in a symbolic, 10:27.229 --> 10:31.289 mythic domain. King Goll's madness and the 10:31.291 --> 10:36.361 destruction of his instruments are perhaps warnings about the 10:36.362 --> 10:41.942 dangers of a poetry that would be confined to a symbolic world, 10:41.940 --> 10:45.980 as if to fully enter it, to fully enter a mythical 10:45.980 --> 10:50.930 world, to write a kind of pure poetry that was archaic in its 10:50.929 --> 10:55.299 aims and its sources – this would be to go mad, 10:55.299 --> 11:00.279 to give sway to dangerously inward passions that can't be 11:00.277 --> 11:04.007 satisfied, to be cut off from the world. 11:04.009 --> 11:08.679 Being cut off from the world in some kind of higher or separate 11:08.676 --> 11:14.056 reality is a lure and threat, opened up for Yeats by the 11:14.057 --> 11:20.847 particular ambition that he had to write a mythic poetry on 11:20.854 --> 11:25.444 Irish themes. Now, something else is worth 11:25.444 --> 11:31.264 highlighting about King Goll as a way to understand who Yeats 11:31.261 --> 11:34.781 was. King Goll is a singer. 11:34.779 --> 11:39.919 Identifying with him, Yeats identifies poetry with 11:39.916 --> 11:42.066 song; in particular, 11:42.073 --> 11:47.263 with songs of passion in which--songs in which sound 11:47.261 --> 11:51.331 takes over, is ravishing, enchanting. 11:51.330 --> 11:58.110 Yeats's early poetry has those aspects of song as its aim. 11:58.110 --> 12:04.430 They suggest verbal and oral equivalents for the poetry's 12:04.427 --> 12:08.147 cognitive concern with symbols. 12:08.149 --> 12:12.289 That is, in sound, just as in theme, 12:12.291 --> 12:18.561 Yeats's poetry is idealized, purified, sensually rich, 12:18.563 --> 12:21.643 and yet also abstract. 12:21.640 --> 12:26.850 Contrast Frost. Yeats's poetry dominated the 12:26.849 --> 12:31.279 poetry world in which Frost began writing and publishing. 12:31.279 --> 12:36.729 Yeats publishes "King Goll" in The Leisure Hour, 12:36.728 --> 12:42.778 and Frost mocks the ideal of poetry as the "dream of the gift 12:42.782 --> 12:47.682 of idle hours"; he mocks the idea of poetry as 12:47.681 --> 12:53.841 "easy gold at the hand of fay or elf" in "Mowing" –characters 12:53.843 --> 12:57.623 that come right out of early Yeats. 12:57.620 --> 13:00.190 Frost's realism, his roughness, 13:00.192 --> 13:04.652 which is part of his sensibility – it's part of the 13:04.650 --> 13:11.220 sound of his poetry – well, it contrasts quite directly 13:11.221 --> 13:19.681 with the smoothness sought by Yeats and the kind of simulation 13:19.675 --> 13:24.785 of ease. You could go to Yeats's poem 13:24.789 --> 13:32.229 "Adam's Curse" to see the poet talking about this aesthetic 13:32.226 --> 13:36.736 ideal. Yeats there in "Adam's Curse," 13:36.744 --> 13:43.024 which is in your anthology, calls specifically for a kind 13:43.024 --> 13:49.414 of simulation of ease in poetry, which is a traditionally 13:49.408 --> 13:54.428 aristocratic ideal, one which hides one's labor in 13:54.427 --> 13:59.137 order to make accomplishments seem natural. 13:59.139 --> 14:03.349 Yeats, in "Adam's Curse," regrets that the beautiful is 14:03.351 --> 14:08.421 something to be labored for and he wants to conceal that labor. 14:08.419 --> 14:12.959 The contrast with Frost is powerful. 14:12.960 --> 14:18.080 Yeats once said that he wanted the natural words in the natural 14:18.077 --> 14:22.697 order, but he had a very highly cultured sense of what is 14:22.699 --> 14:26.579 natural, and his poetry is full of 14:26.576 --> 14:31.526 verbal archaism. It's characterized by a kind of 14:31.528 --> 14:33.648 high, formal bearing. 14:33.649 --> 14:38.689 It has a careful decorum, a kind of high sheen, 14:38.686 --> 14:42.076 especially this early poetry. 14:42.080 --> 14:49.160 Metrically, Yeats's attitudes result in a kind of superb 14:49.157 --> 14:53.377 regularity. In the early Yeats you find 14:53.379 --> 14:58.189 smooth, unbroken lines, a diction that's elegant and 14:58.194 --> 15:02.354 seemingly easy, without ever deigning to seem 15:02.348 --> 15:04.518 merely colloquial. 15:04.519 --> 15:10.429 The sound of Yeats was, and was meant to be, 15:10.430 --> 15:13.700 seductive. The poems are, 15:13.698 --> 15:20.168 in fact, very often about kinds of seduction – a child, 15:20.173 --> 15:23.783 a king, the poet, these figures are 15:23.779 --> 15:28.769 drawn away from society or from family towards secret, 15:28.769 --> 15:33.369 sacred places, magical places of love that are 15:33.373 --> 15:39.823 frequently imaged in these poems as an island or the center of a 15:39.819 --> 15:42.949 wood; in short, places of privacy 15:42.946 --> 15:47.686 that shut the world out and that stand for Yeats's ideal of 15:47.687 --> 15:51.657 poetic autonomy, his desire to create and 15:51.657 --> 15:56.187 inhabit self-sufficient, imaginative worlds. 15:56.190 --> 16:01.030 "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "Who Goes with Fergus?" 16:01.029 --> 16:06.809 "The Hosting of the Sidhe": these are all poems from your 16:06.810 --> 16:12.380 anthology that exemplify this idea, and there are many, 16:12.384 --> 16:16.334 many more. These poems come from a phase 16:16.331 --> 16:20.211 in Yeats's career, the climax of which is this 16:20.213 --> 16:25.303 book published in 1899 that I showed you the cover of in the 16:25.303 --> 16:29.043 first class, The Wind Among the 16:29.038 --> 16:34.438 Reeds, with its gorgeous Celtic aestheticism. 16:34.440 --> 16:38.540 Here's the title page, reminding us, 16:38.542 --> 16:45.222 again, that this gorgeous Celtic aestheticism is published 16:45.224 --> 16:52.344 and put up for sale in London, which is important again. 16:52.340 --> 16:58.360 And here's the table of contents, which you can't read, 16:58.357 --> 17:00.917 that has on it, well, 17:00.919 --> 17:05.139 the first poem, "The Hosting of the Sidhe," 17:05.135 --> 17:08.845 "The Song of the Wandering Aengus," 17:08.849 --> 17:13.759 and other famous poems from Yeats's early career. 17:13.759 --> 17:17.579 I'd like to look with you at "The Song of the Wandering 17:17.578 --> 17:21.608 Aengus" as a kind of model of the kind of poem I'm talking 17:21.609 --> 17:23.659 about and its aesthetics. 17:23.660 --> 17:24.940 It's on page 98. 17:24.940 --> 17:31.670 17:31.670 --> 17:38.750 Yeats says: I went out to the hazel 17:38.750 --> 17:44.520 wood [Yeats says--that is to say, Aengus says; 17:44.519 --> 17:49.429 it's a dramatic monologue for Aengus], 17:49.430 --> 17:58.380 Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, 17:58.380 --> 18:02.470 And hooked a berry to a thread [If you're having problems 18:02.470 --> 18:04.800 identifying iambic pentameter this 18:04.802 --> 18:07.252 should--well, it's not quite pentameter, 18:07.253 --> 18:14.103 but if you want to get an iambic rhythm in 18:14.098 --> 18:21.008 your head, this'll do it]; And when white moths were on 18:21.007 --> 18:23.137 the wing, And moth-like stars were 18:23.135 --> 18:28.085 flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream 18:28.089 --> 18:32.249 And caught a little silver trout. 18:32.250 --> 18:37.580 When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, 18:37.579 --> 18:39.849 But something rustled on the floor, 18:39.849 --> 18:42.239 And someone called me by my name: 18:42.240 --> 18:49.090 It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair 18:49.090 --> 18:54.370 Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the 18:54.373 --> 18:59.763 brightening air. Though I am old with wandering 18:59.759 --> 19:03.299 Through hollow lands and hilly lands, 19:03.299 --> 19:06.749 I will find out where she is gone, 19:06.750 --> 19:10.600 And kiss her lips and take her hands; 19:10.599 --> 19:13.879 And walk among long dappled grass, 19:13.880 --> 19:18.420 And pluck till time and times are done, 19:18.420 --> 19:22.440 The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the 19:22.435 --> 19:22.955 sun. 19:22.960 --> 19:27.110 19:27.109 --> 19:31.919 It's rhymed iambic tetrameter, four beats per line, 19:31.918 --> 19:34.128 with some variations. 19:34.130 --> 19:37.200 It is a popular song form in English. 19:37.200 --> 19:47.580 It's the way Puck and other folk characters speak in 19:47.580 --> 19:52.300 Shakespeare. Its smoothness and its 19:52.301 --> 19:57.241 simplicity are associated with folk forms, perhaps with the 19:57.236 --> 20:00.466 condition of enchantment or trance, 20:00.470 --> 20:04.970 into which the speaker, Aengus, falls. 20:04.970 --> 20:07.260 The poem is a fairy tale. 20:07.259 --> 20:11.869 It's the story of Aengus' longing and quest for union with 20:11.865 --> 20:14.365 a fairy girl whom he desires. 20:14.369 --> 20:18.799 Yeats spoke of the poem as a mad song, maybe not a kind of 20:18.801 --> 20:23.781 mad song we would--it's not what we would think of as a mad song, 20:23.776 --> 20:27.386 necessarily. The poem imagines, 20:27.390 --> 20:35.290 through a dramatic character, Yeats's own coming to poetry, 20:35.289 --> 20:39.299 which he represents here both as the undertaking of a 20:39.296 --> 20:43.836 specifically erotic quest and as a sort of fury in the mind: 20:43.842 --> 20:47.702 "a fire was in my head," Aengus begins. 20:47.700 --> 20:52.220 Yeats wants us to share in, as we attend to the sound of 20:52.220 --> 20:56.740 his poem, a certain state of enchantment and longing, 20:56.740 --> 21:01.120 which includes a feeling of monotony, as we listen to those 21:01.124 --> 21:05.894 repeated phrases and images and syntactic structures that always 21:05.886 --> 21:09.586 seem on the verge of redundance in this poem. 21:09.589 --> 21:13.149 Think about how generalized, how abstract, 21:13.151 --> 21:16.541 how unnatural nature is in this poem. 21:16.539 --> 21:21.609 But then, it's exactly a poem about nature transformed: 21:21.610 --> 21:25.650 the fish who turns into the glimmering girl, 21:25.647 --> 21:30.527 who, like any really marvelous catch, gets away. 21:30.529 --> 21:33.769 The transformation here, importantly, 21:33.769 --> 21:37.099 interrupts the eating of the fruit; 21:37.099 --> 21:40.309 consummation of desire is deferred. 21:40.309 --> 21:45.119 Appetite gets sublimated and at the same time deferred, 21:45.119 --> 21:46.989 held in suspension. 21:46.990 --> 21:50.530 The glimmering girl then calls Aengus by name. 21:50.530 --> 21:53.650 She names him. She, in a sense, 21:53.651 --> 21:55.701 makes him Aengus. 21:55.700 --> 22:01.240 Aengus is the Celtic name, the Celtic master of love, 22:01.235 --> 22:05.915 a certain kind of Irish version of Apollo. 22:05.920 --> 22:09.800 He's also a mortal who ages. 22:09.799 --> 22:14.089 The poem describes a vocational moment when the poet is called 22:14.093 --> 22:17.983 to his calling, called to his calling in a way 22:17.975 --> 22:22.805 that amounts to a kind of seduction, that lures him out 22:22.808 --> 22:27.048 into the woods, wandering as he follows this 22:27.047 --> 22:31.737 fish-woman and fairy girl, who is a kind of muse, 22:31.740 --> 22:36.070 or mother, too. The quest is without end, 22:36.067 --> 22:38.787 it's even without direction. 22:38.789 --> 22:44.419 It has a goal, however, that's described in 22:44.422 --> 22:46.972 that last stanza. 22:46.970 --> 22:51.450 Contrast Yeats's old age and the freshness of his desire in 22:51.452 --> 22:54.222 this poem. He holds in dream the 22:54.218 --> 22:59.468 possibility of satisfied desire, possession of the beloved; 22:59.470 --> 23:03.360 meaning specifically physical possession of her, 23:03.364 --> 23:07.924 which would be an apocalyptic event, the end of time and 23:07.921 --> 23:11.871 times. Yeats represents that moment of 23:11.872 --> 23:18.322 consummation as the plucking of the silver and the gold apples. 23:18.319 --> 23:24.099 Yeats was trained in the occult disciplines of Theosophy and 23:24.097 --> 23:28.937 Gnosticism. Those traditions merge in his 23:28.944 --> 23:35.604 early work with European symbolism, and also with Irish 23:35.601 --> 23:38.561 cultural nationalism. 23:38.559 --> 23:43.719 Here, the gold and silver apples are specifically 23:43.720 --> 23:49.950 alchemical symbols of body and soul, and a kind of mystical 23:49.954 --> 23:53.184 image of earthly paradise. 23:53.180 --> 23:57.070 23:57.070 --> 23:59.620 That's a nice touch. 23:59.619 --> 24:02.079 But don't worry about these symbols; 24:02.080 --> 24:04.540 don't worry about them too much. 24:04.539 --> 24:10.219 Here, as elsewhere in Yeats' poetry, it's not essential for 24:10.221 --> 24:15.901 you to be able to pursue his occult learning and decode his 24:15.902 --> 24:19.822 symbols in order to read his poetry. 24:19.819 --> 24:23.989 Jahan Ramazani, who is the editor of The 24:23.986 --> 24:29.476 Norton and a great Yeatsian, he himself has decided that all 24:29.477 --> 24:33.437 this is too much to explain and you don't really need it. 24:33.440 --> 24:37.330 And fair enough. The point is simply to 24:37.327 --> 24:41.417 recognize that the apples are occult symbols, 24:41.423 --> 24:44.963 which is to say they're not apples. 24:44.960 --> 24:50.000 They are rather images, symbols, artifacts. 24:50.000 --> 24:52.180 And isn't that clear already from their colors, 24:52.182 --> 24:53.892 the material that they're made of? 24:53.890 --> 24:57.670 Gold and silver, these colors marked them as 24:57.666 --> 25:02.496 fashioned, precious objects, inorganic, and in all these 25:02.496 --> 25:06.796 ways beyond time and nature, growth or decay. 25:06.799 --> 25:10.169 When Aengus or Yeats pursue their desires, 25:10.171 --> 25:13.051 the object of desire – that is, 25:13.049 --> 25:17.099 when they pursue a kind of hoped for unity of being that 25:17.097 --> 25:20.997 the merging with the beloved would constitute – this 25:20.996 --> 25:25.556 carries them out of the natural world into a realm of high art, 25:25.559 --> 25:29.419 of symbols. The realization of desire for 25:29.416 --> 25:34.086 this young Yeats is something only possible in art. 25:34.089 --> 25:40.669 In many ways Yeats retained this aesthetic bias. 25:40.670 --> 25:45.810 This is Yeats rather later, still dressed, 25:45.813 --> 25:51.963 however, in his study as an aesthete and dandy. 25:51.960 --> 25:58.450 You can see that wonderful coat and silk bowtie. 25:58.450 --> 26:02.800 He began and ended his career as a decadent, 26:02.804 --> 26:07.544 I suppose; a reader of Walter Pater and 26:07.537 --> 26:11.887 Oscar Wilde. Nonetheless – Oscar Wilde, 26:11.886 --> 26:17.026 a friend of Yeats – nonetheless, Yeats's poetry does 26:17.028 --> 26:22.168 undergo an important and notable stylistic change. 26:22.170 --> 26:25.430 When I said that there's a story about Yeats's career that 26:25.431 --> 26:28.121 makes him out to be an exemplary modern poet, 26:28.119 --> 26:32.759 I had in mind how over the course of this long career he 26:32.761 --> 26:38.161 leaves behind him that idealized world of late nineteenth-century 26:38.163 --> 26:42.193 art for a more fully human, realist poetry, 26:42.186 --> 26:46.496 one that, rhetorically, strips away Yeats's own 26:46.501 --> 26:51.191 poeticisms and locates his subjects in contemporary 26:51.191 --> 26:53.631 politics and history. 26:53.630 --> 27:00.450 This was the kind of generalized story of Yeats's 27:00.451 --> 27:04.231 career. Pound – Ezra Pound – is 27:04.234 --> 27:06.464 Yeats's younger friend. 27:06.460 --> 27:09.380 Pound, you'll see, keeps turning up in all of 27:09.378 --> 27:13.448 these stories. He had a role in pushing Yeats 27:13.449 --> 27:16.959 in the direction in which he went. 27:16.960 --> 27:22.350 He had also a big role in publicizing Yeats's development. 27:22.349 --> 27:28.319 Here's a copy of a letter to Pound by Yeats when they were 27:28.324 --> 27:30.844 both living in London. 27:30.839 --> 27:37.969 This is at the Beinecke among Pound's papers. 27:37.970 --> 27:41.430 Oh, and here's the--This is Yeats's letter. 27:41.430 --> 27:44.150 He's living, at this point, 27:44.145 --> 27:47.895 at Woburn Place, Yeats is, in London, 27:47.904 --> 27:54.384 where one of the bombs went off in London two summers ago, 27:54.380 --> 27:56.150 right outside Yeats's house. 27:56.150 --> 27:58.190 "My Dear Pound, here is the poem. 27:58.190 --> 28:03.950 Many thanks for taking so much trouble with it. 28:03.950 --> 28:08.640 Yours, W.B. Yeats." 28:08.640 --> 28:13.960 Pound goes to work on Yeats, goes to work on his poetry and 28:13.961 --> 28:17.761 helps modernize him, although I think in lots of 28:17.757 --> 28:21.177 ways the influence went just as much the other way. 28:21.180 --> 28:26.690 The period of Pound's influence coincides with Yeats's 28:26.686 --> 28:32.086 significantly titled book Responsibilities. 28:32.089 --> 28:36.599 This is published in 1914, which is the same year as 28:36.595 --> 28:39.505 Frost's North of Boston. 28:39.509 --> 28:43.799 These two books are coming out at the same moment in London. 28:43.799 --> 28:48.479 Some of the poems in this book dramatize, dramatize and 28:48.480 --> 28:52.900 describe the stylistic changes I'm talking about. 28:52.900 --> 28:57.030 For instance, the short poem, 28:57.028 --> 29:01.358 "A Coat." Here it is; it's in your 29:01.355 --> 29:05.355 anthology as well: I made my song a coat 29:05.360 --> 29:08.560 Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies 29:08.560 --> 29:12.400 From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, 29:12.400 --> 29:15.970 Wore it in the world's eye As though they'd wrought it. 29:15.970 --> 29:20.530 Song, let them take it For there's more enterprise 29:20.530 --> 29:27.630 In walking naked. Yeats is throwing off his early 29:27.632 --> 29:31.842 work as if throwing off a kind of costume. 29:31.839 --> 29:36.429 All that King Goll crap that he had on, he's tossing it off. 29:36.430 --> 29:41.150 The embroidery and decoration, all that now seems inauthentic, 29:41.150 --> 29:44.560 something that, in fact, Yeats's audience had 29:44.555 --> 29:49.125 failed to value properly; he's complaining here in this 29:49.128 --> 29:51.978 poem. In this short poem, 29:51.976 --> 29:58.696 he is referring to the vexed efforts by himself and his 29:58.703 --> 30:00.953 collaborators, J.M. 30:00.946 --> 30:08.166 Synge and Lady Augusta Gregory, to create an Irish national 30:08.171 --> 30:13.421 theater. Yeats sought a popular audience 30:13.418 --> 30:18.428 for his poetry, in part through his work in the 30:18.430 --> 30:23.120 theater, but he became disenchanted with the 30:23.116 --> 30:28.726 theater-going public; with imitators and detractors, 30:28.731 --> 30:32.071 too, all of whom, as he puts it here, 30:32.069 --> 30:34.109 caught at his coat. 30:34.109 --> 30:44.139 This is a poem that declares nakedness as a poetic value. 30:44.140 --> 30:48.460 It's a kind of semi-official announcement that Yeats is 30:48.460 --> 30:53.100 giving up his early manner, precisely because it seems like 30:53.099 --> 30:55.339 a manner and a disguise. 30:55.339 --> 30:59.469 In doing so, Yeats might have seemed to be 30:59.466 --> 31:03.086 moving closer to the Irish people, 31:03.089 --> 31:08.579 in a move something like Frost's foreswearing of the 31:08.576 --> 31:12.876 poetry of dream and elves and fairies, 31:12.880 --> 31:19.050 in favor of a poetry of fact. 31:19.049 --> 31:26.269 And let's keep in mind Frost's own wish to create a poetry that 31:26.267 --> 31:33.947 would reach ordinary people and would reach all kinds and sorts. 31:33.950 --> 31:39.720 Again, it might seem that Yeats is interested in something like 31:39.715 --> 31:43.805 this too and, again, in this same moment that 31:43.807 --> 31:47.897 Frost is publishing his work in England. 31:47.900 --> 31:50.570 But there's a difference in Yeats. 31:50.569 --> 31:56.529 He adopts this ideal of nakedness precisely as a 31:56.532 --> 32:01.102 repudiation of a popular audience. 32:01.099 --> 32:04.199 It's a kind of dare, demonstrating not just his 32:04.199 --> 32:08.039 indifference to the crowd but in fact his scorn for it. 32:08.040 --> 32:09.370 "I'm going to walk naked. 32:09.370 --> 32:11.970 I'm not going to dress for you." 32:11.970 --> 32:17.970 Yeats's early poetry is elite because it is high, 32:17.972 --> 32:22.352 aristocratic, ideal in character. 32:22.349 --> 32:25.869 The middle poetry, the poetry that begins with the 32:25.870 --> 32:29.320 volume Responsibilities, remains elite; 32:29.319 --> 32:32.299 only now, its elitism will be expressed differently. 32:32.299 --> 32:35.549 It will be expressed in a rhetoric of nakedness, 32:35.553 --> 32:38.463 or what Yeats will also call "coldness." 32:38.460 --> 32:44.350 32:44.349 --> 32:51.819 "The Fisherman": "The Fisherman" is another poem 32:51.817 --> 33:00.867 from this volume that both comments on and exemplifies the 33:00.873 --> 33:07.073 transformation that I'm describing, 33:07.069 --> 33:13.939 the transformation of Yeats's style and values. 33:13.940 --> 33:19.280 It suggests both the difference between the earlier Yeats and 33:19.279 --> 33:22.609 the middle Yeats, but also, importantly, 33:22.610 --> 33:27.090 the kinds of continuity between them, the ways in which Yeats 33:27.085 --> 33:29.765 remained very much the same poet. 33:29.770 --> 33:30.860 Let me read it for you. 33:30.860 --> 33:37.760 33:37.759 --> 33:40.229 Although I can see him still 33:40.230 --> 33:44.900 The freckled man who goes To a grey place on a hill 33:44.900 --> 33:51.820 In grey Connemara clothes At dawn to cast his flies, 33:51.820 --> 33:56.240 It's long since I began To call up to the eyes 33:56.240 --> 33:59.330 This wise and simple man. 33:59.330 --> 34:05.630 All day I'd looked in the face What I had hoped 'twould be 34:05.630 --> 34:11.960 To write for my own race And the reality; 34:11.960 --> 34:16.450 The living men that I hate, The dead man that I loved, 34:16.450 --> 34:22.930 The craven man in his seat, The insolent unreproved 34:22.930 --> 34:27.320 And no knave brought to book Who has won a drunken cheer, 34:27.320 --> 34:32.090 The witty man and his joke Aimed at the commonest ear, 34:32.090 --> 34:37.190 The clever man who cries The catch-cries of the clown, 34:37.190 --> 34:43.460 The beating down of the wise And great Art beaten down. 34:43.460 --> 34:50.460 Well, Yeats begins in scorn of an audience that's unable to 34:50.456 --> 34:55.036 recognize true wisdom and great art. 34:55.039 --> 35:01.339 In scorn of that audience, he imagines another audience, 35:01.342 --> 35:06.382 another audience to write for and to emulate, 35:06.383 --> 35:11.543 an audience represented by the fisherman. 35:11.540 --> 35:13.570 What is the fisherman like? 35:13.570 --> 35:16.360 What does he represent? 35:16.360 --> 35:20.710 What values does he embody? 35:20.710 --> 35:28.620 Grayness – grayness that suggests the color of a land and 35:28.624 --> 35:35.724 a culture, the color of stone, of peasant clothes. 35:35.719 --> 35:41.799 He, the fisherman, is a solitary figure in a 35:41.795 --> 35:47.155 landscape of stone, stone that is dark, 35:47.164 --> 35:52.824 resistant, apparently non-ideal; that is, 35:52.815 --> 35:56.085 real. Contrast this place, 35:56.085 --> 36:00.285 this way of imagining Ireland, what Ireland means, 36:00.288 --> 36:03.718 with the sensual landscape of Aengus, 36:03.719 --> 36:09.149 with the unreality of the world of that earlier poem. 36:09.150 --> 36:13.520 In a sense, the earlier poem, "The Song of the Wandering 36:13.522 --> 36:18.612 Aengus," transformed the Irish landscape into a place of myth, 36:18.610 --> 36:25.310 in the same way that the poem is describing the transformation 36:25.306 --> 36:28.486 of the trout into the girl. 36:28.489 --> 36:34.399 Yeats seems to be reversing this trick in "The Fisherman," 36:34.401 --> 36:39.381 seems to be converting myth back into reality, 36:39.380 --> 36:46.130 the ideal object of desire from a glimmering girl back into a 36:46.130 --> 36:49.290 trout. The poem represents a kind of 36:49.291 --> 36:53.741 – as does the short poem, "A Coat" – represents a kind 36:53.737 --> 36:57.707 of ascetic move, an active imaginative and 36:57.710 --> 37:00.400 rhetorical stripping-down. 37:00.400 --> 37:06.770 The landscape itself in, here in Yeats's poem, 37:06.765 --> 37:12.985 seems naked, barren, probably un-tillable, 37:12.989 --> 37:17.889 and the poetry that Yeats wants from this place will be, 37:17.888 --> 37:21.538 as it seems, as he goes on to describe, 37:21.540 --> 37:23.910 cold and passionate. 37:23.910 --> 37:26.620 Let me finish the poem here. 37:26.620 --> 37:32.170 Maybe a twelvemonth since Suddenly I began, 37:32.170 --> 37:36.680 In scorn of this audience [that Yeats has been describing, 37:36.682 --> 37:40.612 this audience associated with the Dublin 37:40.606 --> 37:44.706 middle class and theater-going public] 37:44.710 --> 37:48.770 Imagining a man, And his sun-freckled face, 37:48.770 --> 37:53.440 And grey Connemara cloth, Climbing up to a place 37:53.440 --> 37:58.840 Where stone is dark under froth, And the down turn of his wrist 37:58.840 --> 38:02.710 When the flies drop in the stream; 38:02.710 --> 38:08.430 A man who does not exist, A man who is but a dream; 38:08.430 --> 38:12.120 And cried, "Before I am old I shall have written him one 38:12.120 --> 38:16.340 Poem maybe, as cold And passionate as the 38:16.342 --> 38:20.732 dawn." The poetry that Yeats wants 38:20.727 --> 38:25.607 from this place, the place that the fisherman 38:25.613 --> 38:29.833 takes him to, it's going to be cold and 38:29.832 --> 38:33.832 passionate, as he describes it. 38:33.829 --> 38:37.729 You can see him, in a sense – Yeats, 38:37.732 --> 38:43.642 cooling the fire in the head of Aengus at this moment. 38:43.639 --> 38:49.779 The poem identifies also cold and passion with dawn, 38:49.781 --> 38:55.681 the moment of awakening, which is also a moment of 38:55.681 --> 39:01.101 coming into reality from dream and sleep. 39:01.099 --> 39:07.489 Yeats--the kind of rhetorical and stylistic transformation I'm 39:07.491 --> 39:12.521 describing identified with Yeats's modernness, 39:12.519 --> 39:18.959 his coming into modernity, has these qualities and is 39:18.964 --> 39:24.174 associated here powerfully with morning. 39:24.170 --> 39:29.370 Importantly, though, morning and dawn are 39:29.369 --> 39:33.789 also seen as moments of passion. 39:33.789 --> 39:39.999 If Aengus is a figure of passion, so, interestingly, 39:40.004 --> 39:42.324 is the fisherman. 39:42.320 --> 39:47.980 It's only what it means to write a poetry of passion that 39:47.980 --> 39:51.620 Yeats is now beginning to rethink. 39:51.619 --> 39:58.029 Passion seems to lie in coldness rather than heat, 39:58.025 --> 40:06.125 lies exactly in the restraining and disciplining of passion. 40:06.130 --> 40:09.270 In this sense, "The Fisherman" is not, 40:09.270 --> 40:14.360 after all, a poem that's very different from "The Song of the 40:14.362 --> 40:16.232 Wandering Aengus." 40:16.230 --> 40:22.140 In fact, Yeats is still writing about a solitary fisherman. 40:22.139 --> 40:28.679 And just as in that earlier poem, the act of fishing is 40:28.682 --> 40:31.592 symbolically resonant. 40:31.590 --> 40:35.950 "The Fisherman" is an image of man searching the depths of the 40:35.947 --> 40:40.517 world for the wisdom that hides beneath the surface of things. 40:40.520 --> 40:45.950 40:45.949 --> 40:51.659 Fishing is seen here, as in the earlier poem, 40:51.660 --> 40:57.630 as an image of quest and an image of desire. 40:57.630 --> 41:01.860 For all these reasons, "The Fisherman" is really a 41:01.862 --> 41:05.752 re-writing and even a kind of continuation, 41:05.750 --> 41:10.840 rather than a repudiation, of "The Song of the Wandering 41:10.837 --> 41:14.627 Aengus" and the poems from that period. 41:14.630 --> 41:23.500 In fact, as Yeats declares, the fisherman does not exist. 41:23.500 --> 41:25.740 It's a wonderful sentence, isn't it? 41:25.739 --> 41:32.209 "A man who does not exist, / a man who is but a dream." 41:32.210 --> 41:37.510 Yeats is still writing dream. 41:37.510 --> 41:42.600 The man is not a real man, the man is a symbol; 41:42.599 --> 41:45.569 only this time, a symbol of the real, 41:45.571 --> 41:50.361 a symbol of the actual and local, of the Irish race and the 41:50.359 --> 41:53.569 reality. And the poetry that he stands 41:53.566 --> 41:57.536 for – that the fisherman stands for – like all of 41:57.541 --> 42:01.211 Yeats's poetry, is a poetry again of symbols. 42:01.210 --> 42:05.730 The fisherman is also representative of the Irish 42:05.728 --> 42:11.748 peasantry to whom Yeats turns in scorn of the urban audience that 42:11.753 --> 42:15.993 he had tried to write for in the theater. 42:15.989 --> 42:18.809 This is, again, not a break with the 42:18.808 --> 42:23.878 aristocratic values of the early poetry but an aligning of those 42:23.881 --> 42:28.551 values with an ideal image of the peasant classes with whom 42:28.552 --> 42:32.662 Yeats creates a kind of imaginative bond against the 42:32.659 --> 42:37.009 bourgeois people who seem to represent the new order of 42:37.007 --> 42:40.387 things – modernity and Dublin. 42:40.389 --> 42:47.349 Yeats's sense of modern history, of the crisis of his 42:47.352 --> 42:55.392 moment – this is something we can describe and explore next 42:55.385 --> 42:58.995 time, in "Easter 1916." 42:59.000 --> 43:10.020 Before we finish today, let me just connect "The 43:10.024 --> 43:24.104 Fisherman" and its images of cold passion to another poem – 43:24.099 --> 43:34.619 the elegy for Robert Gregory, Yeats's friend, 43:34.624 --> 43:43.914 Augustus Gregory's son, who dies in the First World 43:43.908 --> 43:52.348 War, an airman. Yeats here evokes Gregory as a 43:52.349 --> 44:01.189 kind of fallen representative of Irish culture and of 44:01.190 --> 44:07.310 aristocratic culture, in particular, 44:07.312 --> 44:16.212 in which art and eloquence and political and cultural life all 44:16.210 --> 44:24.380 co-exist and all combine and form a passionate heart. 44:24.380 --> 44:33.530 Yeats evokes Gregory's death and sees it in relation to other 44:33.532 --> 44:41.162 friends and collaborators of Yeats's early life, 44:41.159 --> 44:45.989 including Lionel Johnson and Synge and others. 44:45.989 --> 44:52.509 This is, again, Gregory representing a kind of 44:52.510 --> 45:00.340 aristocratic elegance and culture that is juxtaposed to 45:00.335 --> 45:09.025 – will be juxtaposed to – the revolutionary violence that 45:09.030 --> 45:17.440 comes to shatter the Irish capitol in 1916 and in many ways 45:17.435 --> 45:25.695 reshapes Yeats's career as he encounters what he calls the 45:25.695 --> 45:33.805 "terrible beauty" of that explosive rebellion. 45:33.809 --> 45:40.339 Well, that's enough for today, and we'll continue with Yeats 45:40.339 --> 45:41.999 on Wednesday.