Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival

“On that afternoon in the west of Ireland in 1897, Lady Augusta Gregory, the wealthy widow of a County Galway landowner, and a shy, awkward poet from Dublin, William Butler Yeats, sat next to a roaring fire, looking out of large windows lashed by wind and rain, and decided that the time had come for Ireland to have its own theatre“ Felton, R. T. (2007)

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th a movement that would change the history of Ireland’s literature emerged.

Tired of the way in which Irish peasants were being depicted in English theatre, there was a feeling arising, that Celtic culture could be more faithfully portrayed in a way that allowed the world to see how proud Irish people were of Ireland.

This movement has been has also been referred to as the Celtic Twilight, name adopted from the book under the same title by W. B. Yeats.

Yeats is probably one of the most important authors of this movement due to he and Lady Gregory founding the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899, which later originated the Abbey Theatre where many Plays by Irish writers would be performed by Irish actors. One of the most popular plays linked to this movement was actually written by Yeats and Lady Gregory: ‘Cathleen Ni Houlihan’, of which Yeats wrote in ‘The United Irishman’: “My subject is Ireland and its struggle for independence.”

When the idea began to take form, it seemed necessary to seek for supporters, people who were also willing and enthusiastic to give Ireland its own theatre so Lady Gregory claimed: "We will show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and easy sentiment as it has been represented, but the home of an ancient idealism. We are confident of the support of Irish people, who are weary of misrepresentation" Gregory (1972)

At the time, supporters to this movement used to frequent ‘An Stad’ (The Stop) which was a tobacco shop in Dublin mainly frequented by nationalists like Maud Gonne, and artists like Yeats or even James Joyce, whose writings also revolved around Ireland but not in the same idealistic way as Yeats’, as you probably know, Joyce’s Dubliners portrays Ireland as a place of paralysis and stagnation. The universe described in Dubliners has often been compared with the one in Yeats’ Stories of Red Hanrahan; Joyce is very time-and-place specific, whereas Yeats only informs the reader that the stories take place in rural Ireland.

I would say that it is rather clear how Joyce tries to pronounce a realistic judgment when describing Dublin, while Yeats romanticizes the mystical Irish traditions. In my opinion they are different perspectives but both brilliant in their own way and it is so interesting to contrast the feelings that you are left with when reading Dubliners with mysterious scenery in The Stories of Red Hanrahan.

Finally, I would like to invite you to read The Stories of Red Hanrahan, particularly The Twisting of the Rope and Hanrahan And Cathleen The Daughter Of Houlihan (in that order) if you want to understand a little better this topic. Thank you for reading and I’d be glad to read your comments on the Irish Literary Revival, Red Hanrahan, Dubliners, or any other thing that caught your attention.

“One night I had a dream almost as distinct as a vision, of a cottage where there was well-being and firelight and talk of a marriage, and into the midst of that cottage there came an old woman in a long cloak. She was Ireland herself, that Cathleen ni Houlihan for whom so many songs have been sung and about whom so many stories have been told and for whose sake so many have gone to their death. " Yeats, W. B. (1903)

Bibliography

• Abbey Theatre - Amharclann na Mainistreach. Retrieved May 31, 2015, from http://www.abbeytheatre.ie/behind_the_scenes/article/yeats_on_his_play_cathleen_ni_houlihan
• Byrne, J. P., Coleman, P., & King, J. (2008). Ireland and the Americas: culture, politics, and history: a multidisciplinary encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
• Felton, R. T. (2007). A journey into Ireland's literary revival. Berkeley, CA: Roaring Forties Press.
• Gregory (1972). Our Irish theatre; a chapter of autobiography. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Yeats, W. B. (1903). Where there is nothing: being volume one of Plays for an Irish theatre. London: A.H. Bullen.

The Taste of War

It is curious how war have been constantly defended by different nations along the history. Most of its defenders idealize war as an aggressive but necessary step that a country should face in order to rise and be seen as the most powerful and influential in front of their enemies. What they do not understand is the prices that the society is paying in order to satisfy the ego of those who desire more power in their hands instead of thinking about the well-being of their nations and the future generations.

As we can see in Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen, the war is an event that endangers our society by perverting every part of our lives with its violence and dishonor. It perverts the soldiers' minds in the sense that its aggressiveness force our younger generations to transform themselves into monsters desirous of blood and vague glory. A topic as important as death is transformed into a trivial business that will bring honor and success to the nation and to the soldier.

What our young soldiers do not understand is that war is a situation in which glory could not exist.
One of the meanings of the word "glory" is great beauty, so we should ask ourselves: "Hey, Is there any beauty on acting as a coward and killing other to satisfy an empty conviction that will bring power to a few and suffering and pain to thousands? Is there any satisfaction on dying in a trench while others has sent you to die to a place far away from your home? And why? For your country? The same notion of "country" that has perverted the technologies by inciting scientists to create weapons and use science in order to kill others? Is that the same country that have let your friends and family die in the trenches?

The nation cannot erase memory, it cannot remove from our minds those visions of violence that war implies. The only event of being in war is synonym of dishonor, death and trauma. How can a nation rise if the hands and minds of their population are bloodstained?
War is not sweet, it taste as blood. War is not right, it is the inhuman.





References:
Owen, W. (1920) Dulce et Decorum Est.

-http://www.enotes.com/topics/dulce-et-decorum-est/in-depth
http://www.articlemyriad.com/analysis-dolce-decorum/

Analysis of "Anthem For Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen

Before taking the course "Contemporary Literature", I used think that poetry was just about love with all its faces. However, when we started studying the unit 2, Wilfred Owen's poems -that are "certainly the finest written by any English poet of the First War" (Day Lewis, 1963) - made me realize how wrong I was. Poetry can be heartbreakingly illustrative and Owen knew how to highlights the horrors of a war and the terrible events that he and his fellows faced. This heartrending topic was the reason why I decided to briefly analyze another of his poems, which talks about the death of the soldiers in the war.  

(You can listen the poem read by Stephen Fry)

"Anthem For Doomed Youth" 

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, - The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires.  

What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds. 

The title gives us the first cue to know what this poem is about. It could be infer that by using the word "anthem", Owen is trying to commemorate the lives of casualties in the war. So, ¿who are the "doomed youth"? The doomed youth are "the future of the nation", all those young soldiers that were convinced that fighting in the war for their countries was the most honorable act of patriotism. They were promised glory and acknowledgment, however, the only thing that many of them received was just a dreadful death.   

In this poem, Owen seems to do a complain for how casualties' deaths are commemorated. 

As we have seen in movies or read in books, in most of the cases, the soldiers' bodies are never given back to their families, sometimes, because these have not been found or just because it would be horrible to give a wife or a mother the mutilated body (or parts of it) of her husband or son. Thereby, their only passing-bells were the deafening noise of the gunshots and their souls were deprived from the funerals and prayers of their loved ones, with no pall and no flowers, just lying on mud among their dead fellows.  

As Day Lewis said (1963) this poetry is not about heroes, "nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honor, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War." Thus, this poem is one more image that Owen give us about the horrors of the War and how these "men of glory" were forgotten in the battlefield, being remembered just by their loved ones, but not by their countries.

I hope you liked my entry and if you want you can leave your comments below :)

References 

BBC POETRY - Unknown author. Retieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poems/anthem_for_doomed_youth.shtml
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by C. Day Lewis (1963)