Man and the Echo

1. Man and the Echo

2. Question ‘I lie awake night after night/ And never get the answers right.’ Discuss ways in which Yeats presents fears and uncertainty in ‘Man and Echo’. In your answer, explore the effects of language, structure and verse form, and consider how this poem relates to other poems by Yeats you have studied.

3. STEP 1 – UNPACK QUESTION • Yeats believed in the essential nature of opposition– inspired by father’s love of Blake who wrote: ‘Without contraries no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are necessary to human existence.’ • Out of ‘the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry’ (Yeats) • Fears – failure, love, ageing, self, poetry, death... • Uncertainty- impact of work on life, Irish politics, which mask is the right one? • Richard Ellman ‘affirmative capability’ – unlike Keats, not content with certainty in uncertainty – seeking answers and affirmation – but this is frightening and perhaps, impossible!

4. STEP 2 – IN OTHER POEMS/ TYPICALLY • The Cold Heaven – fear that failure in love will persist after death • Wild Swans – fear of being alone/ loss of inspiration/ contemplative poem • The Fisherman – loss of an ideal • A Coat – misinterpretation of work by ‘the fools (who) caught it’ • Easter 1916- his ‘effort and discipline overcome by sudden violence of great action’ (Ellman) • The Second Coming – fear of global anarchy/ impact of violence • Contrast in ‘An Irish Airman...’ – note of certainty/ balance?

5. STEP 3 – IN THIS POEM • One of last poems, written in 1939 – old/ ill/ nearing death • Haunted by questions • Echo vocalises fear of death • A self-conscious dialogue that aims to work through fears and uncertainty, but ends with typical ambiguity

6. KEY POINTS • Yeats explores his fears about death • Yeats expresses uncertainty about the value and impact of his work • Yeats attempts to confront his fears in this poem • The ending however is uncertain and ambiguous

7. 1. Yeats explores his fears about death • Return to place of ‘The Stolen Child’, County Sligo- rocky fissure at Knocknarea • Temporal marker ‘Now that I am old and ill...’ • Plosive b sounds- into the metaphysical depths (inevitability mirrored in ‘The Second Coming’ with cyclical imagery) • ‘Until I sleepless would lie down and die’ – can’t say ‘will’- a future action, indicates fear • Echo symbolises fear (not playful here though like ‘Cat and the Moon’); explore words and how it interacts with the man/ what it echoes • Death can only come when something meaningful has occurred; ‘all work done’. Concerns mirrored in desire to be immortal in ‘Byz’/ ‘Easter 1916’ : ‘was it needless death?’

8. 2. Yeats expresses uncertainty about the value and impact of his work • Use of questions about ‘that play of mine... Words of mine...spoken words’ (compare to questions elsewhere) • Internal half rhyme ‘words of mine’ and ‘woman’s reeling brain’ connects the two • ‘I lie awake night after night’ – repetition/ torture – (link to ‘Cat and Moon’) • Desire for redemption ‘a work so great./ As that which cleans man’s dirty slate’ – beneath ‘comic vigour’ (O’Neill), a wish that it could? • Echo fails to comply- symptomatic of his work and perhaps, inevitability of time • Contrast to ‘Among School Children’ – last stanza – unity of imagery/ content and form combine to resolve – and unity of ‘Irish Airman...’, chiasmus etc

9. 3. Yeats attempts to confront his fears in this poem • Deliberate action: ‘Under broken stone I halt’ • Shrinking sound patterns/ trochaic tetrameter/ couplets – aurally chipping away – into the depths/ attempt to confront (contrast with other forms e.g. Tetrameter of ballad) • ‘shout a secret to the stone’ • Battle between man and echo: ‘lie down and die- - continuation of line ‘that were to shirk...’ • ‘pursue the thoughts I pursue’ – epanalepsis – won’t let it go • ‘O rocky voice/ Shall we in that great night rejoice?’ • ‘we face/ One another’ – line break • Connect to counter-notes/meditations/ terrified questions of ‘Easter 1916’

10. 4. The ending however is uncertain and ambiguous • ‘But hush, for I have lost the theme’ – not a volta but a softening, a dying out • Uncertainty returns – ‘joy or night’ ‘hawk or owl’ ‘sky or rock’ • Predatory ‘hawk or owl’ (‘rough beast’/ ‘falcon cannot hear the falconer’) – present life of suffering and pain distracts (context 1939 – WW2) • Off rhyme mirrors distraction/ sense he is overcome by fear ‘hawk’ ‘struck’ ‘rock’ ‘stricken’ – disintegration • Extra syllable in first line ‘A stricken rabbit is crying out/ And its cry distracts my thought.’ Present tense/ failure to separate man and echo, mind and body, artist and art. • ‘crying out’ and ‘thought’ – pararhyme – are they the same? Can man only cry out against suffering? Anticipates post war period/ coming of an age of violence/ inevitable turning of gyres • Compare to other endings of poems and how they resolve (or not)

11. Conclusion • Later poems characterised by Yeats’ desire to ‘lie down where the ladders start/ In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart’ (The Circus Animals’ Desertion) • Do you think this poem resolves Yeats’ fears and uncertainty? Can we find anything affirmative here? • Does knowing Yeats died very soon after writing this poem make any difference to how you receive it?