WEBVTT 00:01.020 --> 00:05.940 Professor Langdon Hammer: In our first Yeats 00:05.942 --> 00:11.552 lecture, I was talking about Yeats's early development and 00:11.554 --> 00:15.794 stylistic transformation over the course of, 00:15.787 --> 00:20.707 roughly, a twenty-, twenty-five year period. 00:20.710 --> 00:26.880 Yeats has a long career, really beginning in the late 00:26.878 --> 00:29.368 nineteenth century. 00:29.370 --> 00:37.130 The poems that matter the most to us today are those that he 00:37.125 --> 00:43.955 starts publishing around 1915, or 1914, and later. 00:43.960 --> 00:50.100 But he's really in the middle of his literary career at that 00:50.097 --> 00:54.857 point. I suggested in looking at that 00:54.856 --> 01:03.096 early development that Yeats is seen as a kind of representative 01:03.100 --> 01:08.990 figure who somehow moves out of symbolism, 01:08.989 --> 01:12.789 out of a kind of ornate aestheticism, 01:12.792 --> 01:16.492 towards a kind of heroic realism. 01:16.489 --> 01:22.059 But I insisted instead that, in fact, the way to understand 01:22.058 --> 01:27.238 that development is really a transition from one set of 01:27.242 --> 01:33.862 symbols to another, as exemplified by the movement 01:33.856 --> 01:41.486 between "Aengus" and "The Fisherman" in Yeats's early 01:41.494 --> 01:42.674 work. 01:42.670 --> 01:46.130 01:46.129 --> 01:50.169 The little poem, "A Coat," that poem about that 01:50.174 --> 01:55.894 stylistic transformation about the enterprise of walking naked, 01:55.890 --> 02:02.990 well, it's a poem that reminds us that Yeats's development was, 02:02.990 --> 02:08.250 as he understood it, conditioned by his relationship 02:08.254 --> 02:11.614 to his audience. Yeats, I said, 02:11.608 --> 02:17.278 wanted to speak for and to the Irish people, 02:17.283 --> 02:23.623 as well as to explain Ireland and Irishness to an 02:23.620 --> 02:28.240 English-speaking world abroad. 02:28.240 --> 02:33.440 At the same time, even as he has a kind of 02:33.444 --> 02:39.414 intense identification with the Irish people, 02:39.410 --> 02:43.880 he also, in that little poem and in other poems, 02:43.877 --> 02:47.297 fears being betrayed by the crowd; 02:47.300 --> 02:56.530 fears being sold cheap; complains of his reception. 02:56.530 --> 03:02.340 Last time, I alluded to Yeats's involvement in the Abbey 03:02.337 --> 03:05.397 Theater, beginning in 1904. 03:05.400 --> 03:11.000 This is an important phase of his career, when with the help 03:10.997 --> 03:16.967 of Lady Augusta Gregory and John Synge, Yeats tries to establish 03:16.973 --> 03:19.633 an Irish national drama. 03:19.629 --> 03:23.479 Synge's play, The Playboy of the Western 03:23.475 --> 03:28.505 World--which you may know – it was set in the Aran 03:28.510 --> 03:31.440 Islands, in Western Ireland. 03:31.439 --> 03:35.859 This was a kind of turning point in the movement. 03:35.860 --> 03:41.660 Misunderstood as a satire on the Irish peasantry, 03:41.662 --> 03:48.192 Yeats's production of the play led to riots in 1909. 03:48.190 --> 03:52.620 This is one of the events, I think, that Yeats is thinking 03:52.623 --> 03:57.213 about in "The Fisherman" when he speaks of "great Art beaten 03:57.212 --> 04:01.332 down." The audience that Yeats 04:01.330 --> 04:07.720 distains and turns away from in the teens is, 04:07.721 --> 04:11.741 importantly, a middle class, 04:11.743 --> 04:16.043 urban audience, and that attitude of 04:16.044 --> 04:23.914 Yeats's--it's a motif we find in other poets that we'll read, 04:23.910 --> 04:30.800 and I'd like you to note it; an attitude that we'll see in 04:30.801 --> 04:34.541 Pound, in Eliot, in different ways. 04:34.540 --> 04:40.000 The displacement of aristocratic and peasant 04:39.997 --> 04:44.437 cultures by an urban bourgeoisie, 04:44.440 --> 04:51.150 by the Dublin theater-going audience, the people at the 04:51.149 --> 04:56.679 center of a new mongrel, modern culture – well, 04:56.675 --> 05:02.215 these are the people that Joyce depicts so memorably in the 05:02.224 --> 05:05.194 daily life of Leopold Bloom. 05:05.189 --> 05:10.049 Yeats is a very different writer and has a different 05:10.048 --> 05:14.528 relation to the world of Joyce's Ulysses, 05:14.525 --> 05:18.695 for example. Yeats has a kind of hostility 05:18.697 --> 05:22.437 towards this ascendant middle-class world, 05:22.440 --> 05:27.920 and a hostility that you can view as a kind of anti-modernism 05:27.918 --> 05:33.308 or anti-modernness, that is again an important 05:33.309 --> 05:35.769 component in Yeats. 05:35.769 --> 05:40.309 Or maybe the right way to say it would be that Yeats's sense 05:40.310 --> 05:46.400 of his own modernity, of what it means for him to be 05:46.403 --> 05:54.913 modern, emerges in defiance of certain new social formations 05:54.906 --> 06:02.306 and also through a fantasy, I say, identification with the 06:02.309 --> 06:07.849 aristocracy and with the peasantry, with these cultures 06:07.851 --> 06:12.471 rooted in rural Irish society of the past. 06:12.470 --> 06:18.090 Like Pound, like Eliot, from a political and social 06:18.091 --> 06:22.931 point of view, you could say that Yeats is a 06:22.926 --> 06:28.776 reactionary modernist, turning away from the ascendant 06:28.776 --> 06:33.966 social forms of the present towards an idealized past. 06:33.970 --> 06:39.510 Or, rather, you could say Yeats seems to want to do this, 06:39.509 --> 06:45.449 seems to want to turn away from the present – expresses the 06:45.445 --> 06:48.675 desire to. In fact, however, 06:48.683 --> 06:54.683 Yeats's eyes remain really fixed in a kind of horror and 06:54.678 --> 07:00.778 fascination on the cataclysmic events of his time and the 07:00.783 --> 07:07.113 political life of his time in which he is himself very much 07:07.105 --> 07:10.955 involved. Yeats is, in fact, 07:10.955 --> 07:17.385 a far less nostalgic thinker than either Eliot or Pound, 07:17.389 --> 07:21.249 at least as I understand them. 07:21.250 --> 07:25.950 The stance that I'm trying to describe, which is a kind of 07:25.949 --> 07:33.589 ambivalent and complicated one, emerges powerfully in the poem 07:33.590 --> 07:40.480 "Easter, 1916," on page 105 in this book. 07:40.480 --> 07:43.770 And I'd like to spend some time with that, with you. 07:43.770 --> 07:53.170 07:53.170 --> 08:00.050 "Easter, 1916." The subject of this poem is the 08:00.051 --> 08:05.681 Easter Uprising, the Irish Republican challenge 08:05.678 --> 08:12.278 to English domination that briefly established an Irish 08:12.283 --> 08:18.383 state led by Padraig Pearse, who, along with, 08:18.381 --> 08:25.471 in fact, all but one of the leaders of the insurrection, 08:25.468 --> 08:30.438 was executed. These events have a--still have 08:30.435 --> 08:35.215 a kind of central and powerful place in modern Irish 08:35.216 --> 08:39.446 consciousness. If you go to Dublin and you 08:39.448 --> 08:44.528 enter the post office, one of the important scenes of 08:44.528 --> 08:51.398 the rebellion, you find great wall paintings 08:51.403 --> 09:00.933 of scenes from the rising, almost like Stations of the 09:00.931 --> 09:04.991 Cross. Well, Dublin is an interesting 09:04.988 --> 09:09.948 place to be with this poem in mind, partly because you realize 09:09.947 --> 09:14.417 when you are there that it's--the city center is a small 09:14.418 --> 09:16.758 one, and that, well, 09:16.761 --> 09:22.351 Yeats's house is--was not far from the post office; 09:22.350 --> 09:30.400 and the world that he's writing about is something very intimate 09:30.396 --> 09:35.246 and familiar, of which he is a part. 09:35.250 --> 09:38.470 And that is, in fact, one of the important 09:38.471 --> 09:41.301 points of departure for this poem. 09:41.300 --> 09:45.390 He says: I have met them at close 09:45.392 --> 09:48.512 of day Coming with vivid faces 09:48.510 --> 09:54.390 From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. 09:54.389 --> 10:02.119 [Dublin, "them" being the revolutionaries.] 10:02.120 --> 10:04.550 I have passed with a nod of the head 10:04.550 --> 10:10.090 Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said 10:10.090 --> 10:14.600 Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done 10:14.600 --> 10:17.900 Of a mocking tale or a gibe To please a companion 10:17.900 --> 10:23.830 Around the fire at the club, Being certain that they and I 10:23.830 --> 10:31.900 But lived where motley is worn: All changed, changed utterly: 10:31.900 --> 10:35.230 A terrible beauty is born. 10:35.230 --> 10:45.260 ["Motley" signifying their Irishness, as if Yeats and these 10:45.255 --> 10:48.675 men and women he speaks of shared 10:48.684 --> 10:54.844 only their Irishness.] In the second strophe of this 10:54.839 --> 11:01.769 poem he proceeds to talk about, to isolate individuals, 11:01.769 --> 11:08.299 particular figures of the revolt, which your editor 11:08.298 --> 11:13.388 identifies at the bottom of the page. 11:13.389 --> 11:15.649 That woman's days were spent 11:15.650 --> 11:19.810 In ignorant good will, Her nights in argument 11:19.810 --> 11:22.830 Until her voice grew shrill. 11:22.830 --> 11:26.440 What voice more sweet than hers When young and beautiful, 11:26.440 --> 11:28.780 She rode to harriers? 11:28.780 --> 11:33.720 This man had kept a school And rode our winged horse; 11:33.720 --> 11:39.730 This other his helper and friend Was coming into his force; 11:39.730 --> 11:42.400 He might have won fame in the end, 11:42.400 --> 11:50.060 So sensitive his nature seemed, So daring and sweet his thought. 11:50.060 --> 11:54.880 This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vain-glorious lout. 11:54.880 --> 11:59.380 He had done most bitter wrong To some who are near my heart, 11:59.376 --> 12:02.226 [Maude Gonne] Yet I number him in the song; 12:02.230 --> 12:06.420 He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; 12:06.419 --> 12:08.779 He, too, has been changed in his turn, 12:08.780 --> 12:16.470 Transformed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. 12:16.470 --> 12:21.850 12:21.850 --> 12:26.730 Yeats is describing his interaction with and his 12:26.734 --> 12:32.554 distance from Pearse and the others in that first stanza, 12:32.554 --> 12:35.364 and then in the second. 12:35.360 --> 12:40.180 He's saying something like, "I used to see these people all 12:40.184 --> 12:44.644 the time. I was proud, however. 12:44.640 --> 12:48.000 I kept myself apart from them. 12:48.000 --> 12:53.420 I felt we had nothing in common but "motley," our Irishness. 12:53.419 --> 12:58.979 But all that is changed by events. 12:58.980 --> 13:04.810 They have become political martyrs to the future Irish 13:04.813 --> 13:10.873 state, and I am obliged to remember and honor them in my 13:10.867 --> 13:14.717 poetry, even those I disdained. 13:14.720 --> 13:21.410 My poetry, which"--well, the dedication to which had 13:21.414 --> 13:28.114 defined Yeats's difference from them up till now. 13:28.110 --> 13:36.990 The poem's extraordinary refrain, "a terrible beauty is 13:36.994 --> 13:44.074 born," returns in the poem like a chorus, 13:44.070 --> 13:52.110 like the voice of some kind of abstract and impersonal chorus, 13:52.111 --> 13:59.231 and it suggests almost a strangely impersonal event, 13:59.230 --> 14:04.130 something that happens without agents making it happen. 14:04.129 --> 14:10.179 "A terrible beauty is born" – a passive construction. 14:10.179 --> 14:15.819 Take the first part of the refrain first: 14:15.823 --> 14:20.483 "All changed, changed utterly." 14:20.480 --> 14:25.190 "All changed, changed utterly." 14:25.190 --> 14:29.340 I think there are really three strong metrical accents in a row 14:29.335 --> 14:29.865 there. 14:29.870 --> 14:33.720 14:33.720 --> 14:40.560 By "all," that three letter word, a highly Yeatsian word, 14:40.562 --> 14:47.892 a word Yeats loves to use – you'll see him use it often – 14:47.894 --> 14:54.124 Yeats means "all of them," "all of those people," "all the 14:54.121 --> 14:56.601 people I've been describing." 14:56.600 --> 15:04.290 He also means "my relation to them," "the way I kept myself 15:04.290 --> 15:06.810 apart from them." 15:06.809 --> 15:12.199 He also means "all: everything, plain and simple," 15:12.204 --> 15:17.714 "all" in the sense of "everyone and everything"; 15:17.710 --> 15:23.900 "all" conveying a kind of apocalyptic, epochal event. 15:23.899 --> 15:29.149 That wonderful pileup of stress in that line, 15:29.146 --> 15:32.596 "all changed, changed utterly: 15:32.604 --> 15:37.384 / a terrible beauty is born"; another two, 15:37.379 --> 15:40.039 two strong three-beat lines in a row; 15:40.039 --> 15:42.429 they become a kind of, well what? 15:42.429 --> 15:51.039 A bell ringing in the poem, pealing and announcing the 15:51.041 --> 15:58.841 coming of the birth of a new and terrible age. 15:58.840 --> 16:04.800 How can something be changed utterly? 16:04.799 --> 16:08.609 How can something be changed utterly? 16:08.610 --> 16:14.920 Doesn't that mean "destroyed," to be entirely changed? 16:14.919 --> 16:21.629 Yeats is talking about an event that has brought forth 16:21.628 --> 16:28.458 destruction, destruction of the world before the Easter 16:28.464 --> 16:32.404 Uprising. And Easter is an important 16:32.400 --> 16:34.780 resonance here, obviously. 16:34.779 --> 16:40.409 Easter, another moment of death and transfiguration, 16:40.412 --> 16:45.832 transformation. Here, this destruction brings 16:45.834 --> 16:51.584 forth a new order, a new form of life that Yeats 16:51.579 --> 16:54.879 calls "terrible beauty." 16:54.879 --> 17:01.029 This may be the most memorable sentence in modern poetry: 17:01.026 --> 17:04.316 "a terrible beauty is born". 17:04.319 --> 17:10.699 I said that Yeats looks on the modern with a sense of both 17:10.703 --> 17:16.083 horror and a fascination, a compulsion almost. 17:16.079 --> 17:23.169 Well, it's a "terrible beauty" he sees that draws him in this 17:23.170 --> 17:26.170 way. He sees, specifically, 17:26.174 --> 17:31.394 the passion of the revolutionary's act and he finds 17:31.390 --> 17:36.110 it beautiful. Yeats aestheticizes their 17:36.112 --> 17:38.312 political action. 17:38.309 --> 17:43.819 He finds beauty in it, it seems even or especially 17:43.817 --> 17:51.537 because it is terror-filled, when the change that it enacts 17:51.539 --> 17:59.369 is utter, which is to say, a change that means blood. 17:59.370 --> 18:03.930 18:03.930 --> 18:09.620 To find bloody events beautiful, what do you think 18:09.620 --> 18:14.320 about that? How do you describe the 18:14.315 --> 18:20.265 politics, if you like, of such a position? 18:20.269 --> 18:27.549 Well, how does Yeats stand in relation to the events he's 18:27.549 --> 18:32.769 describing? "Easter, 1916" equivocates. 18:32.769 --> 18:37.229 Like that phrase, "a terrible beauty," the poem 18:37.233 --> 18:42.573 is full of contradictions, of contradictory feelings. 18:42.569 --> 18:45.849 It takes the side of the nationalists. 18:45.849 --> 18:49.259 It also makes the anti-nationalist, 18:49.258 --> 18:53.968 the English or pro-English or unionist, case. 18:53.970 --> 18:57.140 It sees the dead as heroic martyrs. 18:57.140 --> 19:10.590 It also sees them as ideologues, as stony-hearted 19:10.586 --> 19:16.746 political activists. 19:16.750 --> 19:22.490 It sees the dead as lovers, too. 19:22.490 --> 19:25.700 It sees them as dreamers. 19:25.700 --> 19:31.520 Yeats looks at them with pity, with admiration, 19:31.516 --> 19:37.946 with scorn. He speaks of them as a mother 19:37.950 --> 19:41.750 would of her children. 19:41.750 --> 19:47.100 All of these attitudes and others, too, are held in 19:47.096 --> 19:49.766 suspension in the poem. 19:49.769 --> 19:56.199 And you can hear them together, Yeats moving from one to 19:56.202 --> 20:00.532 another with, oh, incredible speed and 20:00.529 --> 20:05.909 agility in that final strophe of the poem, 20:05.910 --> 20:07.730 on the next page. 20:07.730 --> 20:11.500 20:11.500 --> 20:17.420 Listen to how quickly Yeats modulates from one feeling, 20:17.415 --> 20:22.665 one image, to another in these really very short, 20:22.672 --> 20:25.742 quick, three-beat lines. 20:25.740 --> 20:32.620 Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. 20:32.620 --> 20:35.830 O when may it suffice? 20:35.830 --> 20:42.770 That is heaven's part, our part To murmur name upon name, 20:42.770 --> 20:47.310 As a mother names her child When sleep at last has come 20:47.310 --> 20:50.480 On limbs that had run wild. 20:50.480 --> 20:53.330 What is it but nightfall? 20:53.330 --> 21:02.290 No, no, not night but death; Was it needless death after all? 21:02.290 --> 21:06.770 For England may keep faith For all that is done and said. 21:06.770 --> 21:08.880 We know their dream; enough 21:08.880 --> 21:12.970 To know they dreamed and are dead; 21:12.970 --> 21:17.280 And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? 21:17.280 --> 21:21.640 I write it out in a verse-- MacDonagh and MacBride 21:21.640 --> 21:25.570 And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, 21:25.570 --> 21:29.520 Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: 21:29.520 --> 21:32.740 A terrible beauty is born. 21:32.740 --> 21:36.040 21:36.039 --> 21:41.869 This is really moving poetry, remarkably so. 21:41.869 --> 21:47.459 And that may be the most important fact about it. 21:47.460 --> 21:54.230 When Yeats aestheticizes the political, he makes it moving, 21:54.228 --> 22:01.228 moving in the literal sense of, I think, emotionally engaging 22:01.229 --> 22:05.909 and cathartic. He specifically converts the 22:05.912 --> 22:11.472 political into tragic action; tragic action with which as 22:11.473 --> 22:16.753 spectators, the poet and the reader – ourselves, 22:16.750 --> 22:23.040 are meant to be passionately and imaginatively engaged, 22:23.039 --> 22:26.999 which is also to say implicated. 22:27.000 --> 22:33.970 Through Yeats's poem, Easter, 1916 goes on happening, 22:33.972 --> 22:39.472 happening in a sense in and even to us. 22:39.470 --> 22:46.330 The poem makes us see the political as a space of passion 22:46.333 --> 22:50.503 and of contradictions, like art. 22:50.500 --> 22:55.480 And it requires us to understand history not in moral 22:55.479 --> 23:00.839 terms, such as "good" and "evil," but rather in aesthetic 23:00.842 --> 23:04.632 terms. "Pity" and "terror," these 23:04.632 --> 23:09.642 become crucial terms, the terms that Aristotle, 23:09.642 --> 23:14.982 in his Poetics, used to define tragedy. 23:14.980 --> 23:19.620 When the bombs went off in London last year, 23:19.624 --> 23:26.324 I thought about Yeats and what he might have thought or written 23:26.319 --> 23:30.419 about this. As I said last time when I 23:30.424 --> 23:36.064 showed you that letter to Pound, Yeats's London apartment is 23:36.061 --> 23:41.511 essentially across the street from where the number 30 bus 23:41.507 --> 23:44.747 blew up. And interestingly, 23:44.749 --> 23:51.639 strangely, make of it what you will, the man who detonated that 23:51.637 --> 23:57.747 bomb, as I understand it, had studied Yeats at school in 23:57.747 --> 24:03.287 Leeds. There's a way in which Yeats's 24:03.294 --> 24:11.664 poetry of this period goes on resonating in the world we're 24:11.655 --> 24:15.805 living in. Yeats's sense of his own 24:15.808 --> 24:20.648 implication in history, well, it's something that we 24:20.651 --> 24:25.561 see in the intensive, stylistic transformations that 24:25.562 --> 24:27.582 his writing undergoes. 24:27.579 --> 24:31.199 Part of the resonance and power of that famous refrain, 24:31.199 --> 24:35.059 "a terrible beauty is born," is that this beauty is being 24:35.062 --> 24:38.372 born not only in the world but in Yeats's poetry. 24:38.369 --> 24:44.509 Something remarkable is happening to the poet and to his 24:44.512 --> 24:47.642 language at the same time. 24:47.640 --> 24:52.320 Yeats is saying even simply on one level, "I will write 24:52.322 --> 24:55.272 differently henceforth, I must." 24:55.269 --> 25:00.999 Yeats's stylistic changes in this way are coordinated with, 25:00.996 --> 25:05.836 respond to the historical changes he witnesses and 25:05.835 --> 25:09.435 participates in; in particular, 25:09.443 --> 25:14.233 coordinated with the violent emergence of, 25:14.229 --> 25:18.689 through civil war, of the Irish State, 25:18.690 --> 25:24.510 for which Yeats would serve as a senator in the 1920s. 25:24.509 --> 25:31.099 Yeats in this period makes and remakes his work out of passion, 25:31.098 --> 25:37.288 a sort of, as he images it, tumult in the breast, 25:37.291 --> 25:44.991 a tumult from which new modes of poetry, new modes of 25:44.994 --> 25:50.184 self-knowledge emerge for Yeats. 25:50.180 --> 25:54.560 Yeats's poetry is full of images of birth, 25:54.559 --> 25:59.899 and he tends to represent birth as an explosion, 25:59.900 --> 26:05.380 a bursting forth, a bursting forth of energy or 26:05.380 --> 26:11.100 presence in some sense that can't be contained or 26:11.099 --> 26:15.149 constrained in existing forms. 26:15.150 --> 26:20.980 I'll say more about this next time with reference to Yeats's 26:20.977 --> 26:25.727 late poetry. What I want to stress now is 26:25.729 --> 26:32.949 that Yeats sees passion at work in the same way in history. 26:32.950 --> 26:40.220 Powerful super human forces emerge from, or invade, 26:40.215 --> 26:44.715 human actors and change them. 26:44.720 --> 26:50.690 One consequence of this view is that for Yeats history starts to 26:50.689 --> 26:56.899 look like a poem, or it starts to conform to laws 26:56.898 --> 27:03.728 of poetic imagination or of tragedy, if you like, 27:03.725 --> 27:08.195 of myth. In the Easter Rising, 27:08.201 --> 27:15.141 Pearse and the others for Yeats invoke – as they, 27:15.135 --> 27:22.465 the revolutionaries themselves, deliberately and rhetorically 27:22.468 --> 27:25.808 did – invoke ancient Irish heroes. 27:25.809 --> 27:32.769 Pearse is seen as, in Yeats's poetry and in 27:32.770 --> 27:37.080 popular lore, as Cuchulain, 27:37.079 --> 27:45.199 as a kind of avatar of the mythic Irish hero. 27:45.200 --> 27:51.190 At the same time, as the superhuman enters these 27:51.191 --> 27:55.781 historical characters in this way, 27:55.779 --> 28:01.389 there is also, well, an energy that you would 28:01.387 --> 28:05.717 have to call sub-human, bestial, 28:05.720 --> 28:08.690 that does as well. 28:08.690 --> 28:14.890 In his late poem, "The Statues," which you don't 28:14.888 --> 28:21.218 have, Yeats says, "When Pearse summoned Cuchulain 28:21.219 --> 28:26.989 to his side, / what stalked through the post 28:26.991 --> 28:32.781 office," as if the revolutionaries' action brought 28:32.777 --> 28:40.097 forth at once the presence of a legendary hero and a beast that 28:40.099 --> 28:47.539 might be stalking through his embodiment and his presence. 28:47.539 --> 28:53.109 Yeats saw history in symbolic and mystical terms. 28:53.109 --> 28:56.109 This is a poet who, with his wife, 28:56.114 --> 29:01.034 practiced automatic writing, who believed that the dead 29:01.029 --> 29:03.669 spoke through the living. 29:03.670 --> 29:08.600 This occult Yeats is a genuinely and wonderfully 29:08.601 --> 29:13.311 strange thinker. He elaborated a systematic 29:13.307 --> 29:16.447 account of mind and history. 29:16.450 --> 29:19.950 As I said last time, talking about "The Song of the 29:19.954 --> 29:22.834 Wandering Aengus", and Yeats's interest in 29:22.828 --> 29:25.328 alchemy, which was developed, 29:25.333 --> 29:28.993 it isn't, in fact, necessary for you to grasp 29:28.992 --> 29:33.532 Yeats's system, which you'd have to go to his 29:33.525 --> 29:38.125 book called A Vision to begin to do. 29:38.130 --> 29:44.400 It isn't necessary for you to grasp his occultism in order to 29:44.404 --> 29:46.814 read his poetry well. 29:46.809 --> 29:51.619 Yeats said that the voices that he communicated with on the 29:51.618 --> 29:55.348 other side gave him "metaphors for poetry." 29:55.350 --> 29:57.800 This is what they deliver him. 29:57.799 --> 30:00.699 They also gave him, as he put it, 30:00.701 --> 30:04.421 "stylistic arrangements of experience." 30:04.420 --> 30:10.550 The occult gives Yeats aesthetic forms for 30:10.549 --> 30:19.369 understanding individual psychology and historical event. 30:19.369 --> 30:25.159 This is, I think, how we need to understand the 30:25.159 --> 30:31.829 various occult symbols in another great poem from this 30:31.829 --> 30:36.699 phase in his career, a little bit further on, 30:36.699 --> 30:39.319 "The Second Coming," on page 111. 30:39.320 --> 30:57.590 30:57.589 --> 31:00.699 Turning and turning in the widening gyre 31:00.700 --> 31:03.510 The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 31:03.510 --> 31:07.610 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 31:07.609 --> 31:11.049 Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 31:11.049 --> 31:14.639 The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 31:14.640 --> 31:17.800 The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 31:17.799 --> 31:21.709 The best lack all conviction, while the worst 31:21.710 --> 31:24.840 Are full of passionate intensity. 31:24.840 --> 31:28.000 31:28.000 --> 31:32.040 Surely some revelation is at hand; 31:32.039 --> 31:36.089 Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 31:36.090 --> 31:37.680 The Second Coming! 31:37.680 --> 31:42.240 Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of 31:42.243 --> 31:45.693 Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: 31:45.685 --> 31:49.155 somewhere in sands of the desert 31:49.160 --> 31:52.790 A shape with lion body and the head of a man, 31:52.789 --> 31:56.769 A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 31:56.769 --> 32:02.129 Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it 32:02.130 --> 32:05.650 Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. 32:05.650 --> 32:11.500 The darkness drops again; but now I know 32:11.500 --> 32:14.530 That twenty centuries of stony sleep 32:14.529 --> 32:18.409 Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 32:18.410 --> 32:23.080 And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, 32:23.079 --> 32:28.039 Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 32:28.040 --> 32:31.240 Another poem of birth. 32:31.240 --> 32:36.360 Notice how very casual Yeats is in that second strophe, 32:36.357 --> 32:41.567 how self-consciously fantastic and speculative he is. 32:41.569 --> 32:45.659 He doesn't insist that the Apocalypse is at hand, 32:45.659 --> 32:48.299 only that some revelation is. 32:48.299 --> 32:52.329 In fact, this poem's power lies, I think, 32:52.332 --> 32:58.582 in its--not only its inability but its unwillingness to specify 32:58.581 --> 33:02.111 the content of that revelation. 33:02.109 --> 33:09.079 Yeasts suggests that we think of this historical moment as the 33:09.081 --> 33:13.731 Second Coming. But this is not the return of 33:13.726 --> 33:17.316 Jesus that Christianity prophesizes. 33:17.319 --> 33:21.059 Yeats sees the Second Coming as an image, as a myth, 33:21.055 --> 33:24.785 an idea, a metaphor, a certain stylistic arrangement 33:24.791 --> 33:28.811 of experience. It comes out of what he calls 33:28.809 --> 33:32.439 Spiritus Mundi, a semi-technical term; 33:32.440 --> 33:36.590 Yeats's name for something like the collective unconscious of 33:36.588 --> 33:40.118 all peoples, a kind of repertoire of archetypes from 33:40.115 --> 33:44.605 which the symbols that we use to understand the world derive. 33:44.610 --> 33:49.430 33:49.430 --> 33:54.160 This is really, I think, a radical if not 33:54.162 --> 34:01.382 heretical idea for the national poet of a Christian people. 34:01.380 --> 34:04.580 Yeats is saying that Christianity is only one 34:04.578 --> 34:06.758 symbolic order among others. 34:06.760 --> 34:08.890 It has a history. 34:08.889 --> 34:13.409 It is now passing away as it once came into being. 34:13.409 --> 34:18.269 He is also saying that the birth of Christ in Bethlehem was 34:18.265 --> 34:21.525 a nightmare for the world it altered, 34:21.530 --> 34:27.050 the world that it changed utterly – a change that Yeats 34:27.052 --> 34:32.082 sees as the end now of the Christian Era and not its 34:32.082 --> 34:34.972 fulfillment. There is in there, 34:34.967 --> 34:39.397 too, the disturbing suggestion that Christ himself was a rough 34:39.396 --> 34:42.216 beast. Yeats develops this idea or 34:42.224 --> 34:46.744 develops another version of it in a somewhat earlier poem 34:46.735 --> 34:50.435 that's interesting in relation to this one. 34:50.440 --> 34:56.650 And let's turn back and look at it, on page 103. 34:56.650 --> 34:58.450 That's "The Magi"; 34:58.450 --> 35:02.190 35:02.190 --> 35:06.890 again, a visionary poem where Yeats is saying, 35:06.889 --> 35:10.439 "I see, I see in my mind's eye." 35:10.440 --> 35:14.990 The action of the poem takes place in Yeats's imagination. 35:14.989 --> 35:19.629 Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, 35:19.630 --> 35:22.940 In their stiff, painted clothes, 35:22.938 --> 35:27.898 the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the 35:27.897 --> 35:31.817 blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces 35:31.824 --> 35:36.294 like rain-beaten stones, And all their helms of silver 35:36.290 --> 35:41.000 hovering side by side, And all their eyes still fixed, 35:40.995 --> 35:46.455 hoping to find once more Being by Calvary's turbulence 35:46.455 --> 35:52.195 unsatisfied, The uncontrollable mystery on 35:52.200 --> 35:57.940 the bestial floor. The Magi here are, 35:57.938 --> 36:02.808 again, an image, a kind of visionary symbol, 36:02.809 --> 36:09.039 an image available "in the mind's eye" at all times. 36:09.039 --> 36:14.489 They are unsatisfied by "Calvary's turbulence" – 36:14.486 --> 36:19.596 "Calvary's turbulence," a remarkable phrase – 36:19.598 --> 36:26.158 unsatisfied by the scene of Christian martyrdom because they 36:26.156 --> 36:32.486 recognize that history is cyclical and that the cycle that 36:32.491 --> 36:38.721 they saw come into being can only be completed by another 36:38.715 --> 36:43.965 such birth, not by Christ's death and 36:43.973 --> 36:49.963 resurrection. Notice here how Yeats images 36:49.956 --> 36:56.006 what is at the core of Christ's birth. 36:56.010 --> 37:04.710 It is an uncontrollable mystery "on the bestial floor": 37:04.706 --> 37:09.046 on the floor, on the bottom, 37:09.054 --> 37:15.984 on the ground, where the animals dwell. 37:15.980 --> 37:20.720 The Second Coming, it seems, is as Yeats imagines 37:20.715 --> 37:25.445 it a kind of similarly uncontrollable mystery, 37:25.449 --> 37:30.859 and the energy, the new presence that it 37:30.859 --> 37:36.129 releases into the world, is bestial, 37:36.130 --> 37:40.130 is that of a beast. 37:40.130 --> 37:48.280 The divine enters the human in these poems of Yeats's through 37:48.278 --> 37:54.808 the bestial. It's a powerful and disturbing 37:54.813 --> 38:02.013 idea. There's another very powerful 38:02.010 --> 38:12.390 and disturbing poem that literalizes this idea, 38:12.389 --> 38:17.659 and that is "Leda and the Swan," on page 118: 38:17.662 --> 38:23.892 a poem that is a sonnet, though it doesn't quite look 38:23.893 --> 38:32.663 like it at first, a mythological poem that seeks 38:32.664 --> 38:45.594 to give a mythological image to or for the kinds of epochal and 38:45.590 --> 38:58.100 apocalyptic historical change that Yeats is living through in 38:58.099 --> 39:03.519 the 1920s in Ireland. 39:03.519 --> 39:09.179 In certain ways, it's a beautiful poem and a 39:09.183 --> 39:13.533 grotesque one at the same time. 39:13.530 --> 39:20.180 A sudden blow: the great wings beating still 39:20.179 --> 39:24.479 Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed 39:24.480 --> 39:29.260 By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, 39:29.260 --> 39:34.840 He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. 39:34.840 --> 39:39.900 How can those terrified vague fingers push 39:39.900 --> 39:44.720 The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? 39:44.719 --> 39:48.939 And how can body, laid in that white rush, 39:48.940 --> 39:53.250 But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? 39:53.250 --> 39:57.060 A shudder in the loins engenders there 39:57.059 --> 40:00.519 The broken wall, the burning roof and tower 40:00.520 --> 40:04.210 And Agamemnon dead. 40:04.210 --> 40:11.410 Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood 40:11.409 --> 40:16.589 of the air, Did she put on his knowledge 40:16.594 --> 40:20.324 with his power Before the indifferent beak 40:20.322 --> 40:21.992 could let her drop? 40:21.990 --> 40:25.860 40:25.860 --> 40:34.700 History, what makes history happen, is imaged here in the 40:34.700 --> 40:44.010 form of the rape of the human by the divine in the form of a 40:44.014 --> 40:48.754 beast, the form of a swan. 40:48.750 --> 40:54.840 The myth that Yeats takes up is of Zeus's rape of the maiden, 40:54.839 --> 40:58.289 Leda, whom he attacks as a swan. 40:58.289 --> 41:03.729 The offspring that the rape engenders includes Helen, 41:03.733 --> 41:09.913 the "terrible beauty" for whom the Trojan War was fought; 41:09.909 --> 41:15.969 also Clytemnestra, the wife of the Greek lord 41:15.970 --> 41:24.510 Agamemnon whom Clytemnestra murders on his return from Troy. 41:24.510 --> 41:32.450 Those future events are glimpsed in the sestet of this 41:32.447 --> 41:37.087 poem, in the final six lines. 41:37.090 --> 41:43.170 They are, in a sense, compressed and imaged and 41:43.165 --> 41:47.255 contained in the rape itself. 41:47.260 --> 41:52.910 There's a kind of radical foreshortening of temporal 41:52.909 --> 41:59.439 experience at what Yeats images as the orgasmic union of the 41:59.444 --> 42:06.424 divine and human – "a shudder in the loins" – bringing about 42:06.422 --> 42:11.772 the sack of Troy, the murder of the king, 42:11.774 --> 42:17.144 all that future contained in this generative, 42:17.140 --> 42:24.580 ambiguous violence in the present that the poem describes. 42:24.579 --> 42:30.449 In effect, in that middle part of the poem, Yeats collapses 42:30.448 --> 42:35.568 creation and destruction, suggesting that the same 42:35.570 --> 42:40.450 bestial energy flows through both of these acts. 42:40.449 --> 42:47.279 Here, divine force reduces to brute power in somewhat the same 42:47.280 --> 42:53.440 way as it does in "The Magi" and "The Second Coming." 42:53.440 --> 42:57.820 One result of this is Yeats's – and this is interesting – 42:57.818 --> 43:00.298 his lack of interest in the god. 43:00.300 --> 43:05.610 This isn't a poem about Zeus; it's not a poem about the swan. 43:05.610 --> 43:09.900 He doesn't name the swan, just as he doesn't name the 43:09.895 --> 43:13.105 "rough beast" in "The Second Coming." 43:13.110 --> 43:18.410 What the swan thinks or feels or intends doesn't matter. 43:18.409 --> 43:22.979 The swan is really only a force, and Yeats's concern is 43:22.981 --> 43:27.131 rather with the human experience of that force, 43:27.130 --> 43:31.610 which is, again, another manifestation of 43:31.610 --> 43:33.850 "terrible beauty." 43:33.849 --> 43:41.059 Yeats explores that experience, which is an experience of 43:41.055 --> 43:48.905 suffering here and of violation, through a series of rhetorical 43:48.907 --> 43:55.397 questions, which are a crucial poetic device for Yeats. 43:55.400 --> 43:59.530 Yeats is a poet who asks questions. 43:59.530 --> 44:01.890 Questions, well, they're different, 44:01.886 --> 44:05.486 even rhetorical questions are different, aren't they, 44:05.489 --> 44:07.429 from statements of fact. 44:07.429 --> 44:12.849 They're more like propositions, like speculations, 44:12.846 --> 44:18.926 that we're asked to test through empathic identification 44:18.925 --> 44:21.545 with, in this case, 44:21.546 --> 44:24.796 the poem's subject, Leda. 44:24.800 --> 44:30.490 This is what the form of the question invites, 44:30.486 --> 44:34.306 I think. In "Easter, 1916" I talked 44:34.309 --> 44:39.529 about Yeats's partial, complicated identification with 44:39.528 --> 44:43.268 the suffering martyrs of that poem. 44:43.269 --> 44:48.379 Well, that identification here is re-imagined and we're invited 44:48.380 --> 44:50.440 into it, too, troublingly, 44:50.440 --> 44:54.920 I think. The frightening experience that 44:54.921 --> 45:01.121 Yeats evokes here is the imposition of the divine on the 45:01.116 --> 45:04.786 human. "Helpless breast upon… 45:04.793 --> 45:08.793 breast": that's a wonderful phrase. 45:08.789 --> 45:14.439 The repetition of "breast" links them, makes us see them 45:14.441 --> 45:19.581 together, side by side, one on top of the other. 45:19.579 --> 45:22.479 It even, I think, identifies the divine and the 45:22.475 --> 45:24.925 human, makes them hard to tell apart; 45:24.929 --> 45:30.279 binds them, even while we are being confronted with their 45:30.278 --> 45:34.398 difference. Leda feels the beating of the 45:34.395 --> 45:38.655 swan's heart, and that heart is "strange" to 45:38.659 --> 45:42.129 her, that simple, powerful word. 45:42.130 --> 45:47.910 The poem's great final question concerns that perception: 45:47.913 --> 45:52.873 "Did she put on his knowledge with his power"? 45:52.869 --> 46:00.819 Did she know the heart she felt or could she only feel it? 46:00.820 --> 46:05.300 What difference would it make between those two things, 46:05.299 --> 46:09.529 between knowing that heart and merely feeling it? 46:09.530 --> 46:13.430 It's the difference between knowing history – 46:13.432 --> 46:17.762 understanding its patterns and motivating forces, 46:17.760 --> 46:22.380 causes, intentions – and merely feeling it, 46:22.377 --> 46:27.417 merely suffering it, serving as its instrument or 46:27.415 --> 46:31.985 vessel, an object to be dropped when 46:31.990 --> 46:34.800 it's no longer useful. 46:34.800 --> 46:38.100 To know history, to be able to put on the god's 46:38.097 --> 46:41.747 knowledge with his power, would be to have access to 46:41.753 --> 46:46.383 history's meaning, and therefore to be more than 46:46.379 --> 46:51.639 merely subject to it, subject to its capricious and 46:51.636 --> 46:53.736 violating forces. 46:53.739 --> 46:58.299 But Yeats doesn't answer the question, does he? 46:58.300 --> 47:04.260 Well, why not? Probably because there isn't an 47:04.258 --> 47:07.978 answer. The further implication is, 47:07.976 --> 47:14.546 I think, that whether or not we can have access to historical 47:14.546 --> 47:20.636 knowledge, the only path to such knowledge 47:20.638 --> 47:28.618 is through submission to its bestial or brute power, 47:28.619 --> 47:33.109 which is a kind of shattering experience in this poem. 47:33.110 --> 47:39.940 Well, on Monday we'll look at some of the figures in Yeats's 47:39.943 --> 47:47.133 late poems, who represent a kind of knowledge to be had through 47:47.125 --> 47:53.375 an experience of violation or of shattering power, 47:53.380 --> 48:02.060 characters such as the mad old men or Crazy Jane in Yeats's 48:02.055 --> 48:03.995 late poems.