The Great Hunger aka The Irish Potato Famine Roughly 1845 – 1852

1. The Great Hunger aka The Irish Potato Famine • Roughly 1845 – 1852 • Three Main Factors of Irish Poverty: • Burgeoning poor population with no means for improvement • Until the early 19th C, it was illegal for Irish Catholics to vote, be educated, live in industrial towns, or to own land • Absentee Landlords / Aristocracy • Anglo-protestants were the land owners, most of whom lived in England and their estates were run by agents who broke land up to very small lots (allowing more rent but making profitable farming impossible) • Irish goods were exported for British consumption, hence 1/3 the population reliant on potato as staple • The Church • 80% of the population was Roman Catholic • No population control • At odds with Irish Independence [refer to Parnell] • And of course, British Prejudice…

5. Estimates are that roughly 1,000,000 – 1,500,000 died from starvation and disease over about five years. And at least another 1,000,000 emigrated.

8. Q: how does a country deal with such a cultural trauma, especially in the midst of ongoing oppression?

9. Q: how does a country deal with such a cultural trauma, especially in the midst of ongoing oppression? A: A cultural revolution. The Gaelic Revival

10. The Three Yeats: The Romantic, The Revolutionary, The Mystic

11. 1865- William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin • Family is Protestant Ascendency. • Father an artist • Mother from Sligo in Rural Ireland (Yeats raised there, link to Irish Myth and folklore) • Family moves between Ireland and England • 1885- He wrote his first poem and essay The Poetry of Samuel Ferguson • Greatly influenced by Shelley and Blake • 1889- Yeats met Maud Gonne, his “Muse.” Proposes three times, turned down. • Publishes Wanderings of Oisin, heavily influenced by Irish mythology • Becomes increasingly interested in mysticism (the Golden Dawn) • Goes on to publish three more books of poetry involved with Irish Myth: Poems (1895), The Secret Rose (1897), and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). • 1899- Yeats co founded the Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin • Involved with Lady Gregory in the Gaelic Revival/Irish Renaissance. • 1903- Gonne marries John MacBride, a military man, converts to Catholicism. Separates in ‘05 • 1904- The Abbey theatre opened, dedicated to plays by and about the Irish. • 1907- Abbey puts on Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, which results in riots [refer to the dilemma of representation]. • 1908- consummates love w/Gonne. • With the rise of the national revolutionary movement, Yeats reassesses his attitudes • 1909- Meets and collaborates with Ezra Pound (a relationship that would last until 1916) • 1916- Easter Uprising

12. 1916- Proposes for a final time to MG, turned down. Proposes to her Daughter. Turned down. 1917- Yeats married George Hyde Lees (two children). 1922- he was appointed to the first Irish Senate. 1923- Yeats was honored the Nobel Peace Prize. 1925- With A Vision, Yeats enters into his most symbolic (and reflexive and creative) stage 1939- William Yeats passed away on 28 January.

13. Early Yeats and the Gaelic Revival The Gaelic Revival is marked by: Return to “lost” national culture In music, myth, folklore, art, sports Reclaiming Gaelic as a language Conscious effort to establish a distinct literary identity

14. THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE By William Butler Yeats I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core. 1892

15. Who Goes With Fergus? WHO will go drive with Fergus now,And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,And dance upon the level shore?Young man, lift up your russet brow,And lift your tender eyelids, maid,And brood on hopes and fear no more. And no more turn aside and broodUpon love's bitter mystery;For Fergus rules the brazen cars,And rules the shadows of the wood,And the white breast of the dim seaAnd all dishevelled wandering stars.  1893

16. The Abbey Theater and The Playboy of the Western World, 1907 • Synge’s topics concerned the rural Irish, often characterized as uneducated and superstitious. • Playboy concerns paracide, bragging, lying, flirting, drinking, etc. It sparked a riot and extended criticism in the Irish Press • Yeats defended it • Points to the problem of representation of an oppressed culture: • Is it best to represent the Irish as equal to the oppressor (professional, educated, modern, etc.)? • Or to show the plight of the oppressed, as products of a broken culture (yet natural)?

17. Yeats’ first stage is marked by: • A conscious attempt to build a canon of literary symbols based upon Irish Folklore • A celebration of the life of the mind over a life of action • A creeping dissatisfaction with this methodology, especially in the face of growing unrest • Yeats’ Second Stage: • Personally reflexive • Politically Conscious • Replaces Irish Myth with the Irish as Mythic, especially those fighting for Irish freedom

18. A Coat Made my song a coatCovered with embroideriesOut of old mythologiesFrom heel to throat;But the fools caught it,Wore it in the world’s eyesAs though they’d wrought it.Song, let them take itFor there’s more enterpriseIn walking naked. 1916

19. September 1913 • Notice Yeats’: • rancor against class and religion • His immortalization of political and Irish figures rather than mythic figures

20. Charles Stewart Parnell

21. Easter, 1916

22. I HAVE met them at close of dayComing with vivid facesFrom counter or desk among greyEighteenth-century houses.I have passed with a nod of the headOr polite meaningless words,Or have lingered awhile and saidPolite meaningless words,And thought before I had doneOf a mocking tale or a gibeTo please a companionAround the fire at the club,Being certain that they and IBut lived where motley is worn:All changed, changed utterly:A terrible beauty is born.That woman's days were spentIn ignorant good-will,Her nights in argumentUntil her voice grew shrill.What voice more sweet than hersWhen, young and beautiful,She rode to harriers?This man had kept a schoolAnd rode our winged horse;This other his helper and friendWas coming into his force;He might have won fame in the end,So sensitive his nature seemed,So daring and sweet his thought.This other man I had dreamedA drunken, vainglorious lout.He had done most bitter wrongTo some who are near my heart,Yet I number him in the song;He, too, has resigned his partIn the casual comedy;He, too, has been changed in his turn,Transformed utterly:A terrible beauty is born.Hearts with one purpose aloneThrough summer and winter seemEnchanted to a stoneTo trouble the living stream.The horse that comes from the road.The rider, the birds that rangeFrom cloud to tumbling cloud,Minute by minute they change;A shadow of cloud on the streamChanges minute by minute;A horse-hoof slides on the brim,And a horse plashes within it;The long-legged moor-hens dive,And hens to moor-cocks call;Minute by minute they live:The stone's in the midst of all.Too long a sacrificeCan make a stone of the heart.O when may it suffice?That is Heaven's part, our partTo murmur name upon name,As a mother names her childWhen sleep at last has comeOn limbs that had run wild.What is it but nightfall?No, no, not night but death;Was it needless death after all?For England may keep faithFor all that is done and said.We know their dream; enoughTo know they dreamed and are dead;And what if excess of loveBewildered them till they died?I write it out in a verse -MacDonagh and MacBrideAnd Connolly and PearseNow and in time to be,Wherever green is worn,Are changed, changed utterly:A terrible beauty is born. 

24. THE SECOND COMING     Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;    The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity.     Surely some revelation is at hand;    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.     The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.     The darkness drops again but now I know    That twenty centuries of stony sleep    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

25. http://www.yeatsvision.com/twelvefold.html

26. Leda and the Swan A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.                                   Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

27. Sailing to Byzantium THAT is no country for old men. The youngIn one another's arms, birds in the trees- Those dying generations - at their song,The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer longWhatever is begotten, born, and dies.Caught in that sensual music all neglectMonuments of unageing intellect.An aged man is but a paltry thing,A tattered coat upon a stick, unlessSoul clap its hands and sing, and louder singFor every tatter in its mortal dress,Nor is there singing school but studyingMonuments of its own magnificence;And therefore I have sailed the seas and comeTo the holy city of Byzantium.O sages standing in God's holy fireAs in the gold mosaic of a wall,Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,And be the singing-masters of my soul.Consume my heart away; sick with desireAnd fastened to a dying animalIt knows not what it is; and gather meInto the artifice of eternity.Once out of nature I shall never takeMy bodily form from any natural thing,But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths makeOf hammered gold and gold enamellingTo keep a drowsy Emperor awake;Or set upon a golden bough to singTo lords and ladies of ByzantiumOf what is past, or passing, or to come. 1926

28. The Circus Animals' Desertion  I I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,I sought it daily for six weeks or so.Maybe at last, being but a broken man,I must be satisfied with my heart, althoughWinter and summer till old age beganMy circus animals were all on show,Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,Lion and woman and the Lord knows what. II What can I but enumerate old themes,First that sea-rider Oisin led by the noseThrough three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;But what cared I that set him on to ride,I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride. And then a counter-truth filled out its play,'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.I thought my dear must her own soul destroySo did fanaticism and hate enslave it,And this brought forth a dream and soon enoughThis dream itself had all my thought and love. And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the breadCuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is saidIt was the dream itself enchanted me:Character isolated by a deedTo engross the present and dominate memory.Players and painted stage took all my love,And not those things that they were emblems of. III Those masterful images because completeGrew in pure mind, but out of what began?A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slutWho keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,I must lie down where all the ladders startIn the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.  1939 (Yeats Dies January 28th, 1939)