The Act : On Yeat's Poems
This blog is a thinking activity assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I illustrate W.B.Yeats' two poems 'Death', 'Adam's Curse' 'and also try to describe my own interpretation of the poems.
W.B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats is Widely considered to be one of the greatest poets of the 20 th century. He belonged to the protestent, Anglo Irish minority that had controlled the economic, political, and social, and cultural life of Ireland since at least the end of the 17 th century. He received the Nobel prize for Literature in 1923.
He was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1865, he was the oldest child of John Butler Yeats and Susan mary pollexfen. Yeats spent much of his early years in London, where his father was studying art. He afterwards became a distinguished painter. He was educated in London and at the high school in Dublin, later studying art at the metropolitan school of art and the Royal Hibernian Academy school.
When he was young he was reading Dante Alighiery, William Shakespeare, John Dante and the works of William Black and Percy Bysshe Shelly, recommended by his father and inspiration for his own creativity. He was influenced by Standish James O'Grady and Sir William Ferguson.
William Butler Yeats published his first works in the mid 1880s while he was student at Dublin's Metropolitan school of art. His early epic poems such as 'The Wanderings of Oisin' were published in 1887, and other poems (1889) and such plays as 'The Countess Kathleen'(1892) and 'Deirdre'(1932). He died in 1939.
Here are some of his best poems-
Meru
Leda and the Swan
The song of Wandering Aengus
He wishes His Beloved Were Dead
When you are old
The Circus Animals Desertion
Lack Isle of Innisfree
The sad Shepherd
The Second Coming
Easter, 1816
Death
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Adam's Curse
Death
Introduction
'Death' is one of the most famous poems by W.B.Yeats, this is probably the shortest of all his finest poems. In just a dozen lines, Yeats the writer of the poem examines human attitudes to death and contrasting them with an animal's ignorance of its own morality. This poem was written in 1929 and included in Yeats 1933 volume 'The Winding Stair and other Poems'.
Poem
Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again.
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath;
He knows death to the bone -
Man has created death.
Analysis
The first part of the poem simply tells the truth that we are human and we are unlike other animals. Here in this poem Yeats compares mans awareness that he will die with an animal's lack of awareness of this, and an animal doesn't fears death because it has no concept of dying, and also not any hopes for life after death as man does, consoling themself through religion that death will not be the end. For this yeats writes
Many times he died,
Many times rose again
There are many symbolic deaths we go through in life, many times men break down emotionally and mentaly but they have to rise again and continue their life.
This kind of sentiment or thought put forward by William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar that 'Cowards die many times before their deaths. The brave experience death only once.' Humans die in their lives many times, through failure or facetime failing in life in other senses. Many times we get another chance to make our lives good. This line indicates another line that 'A great man in his pride'. A great man, one who has to deal with, and confront, men who commit murder has learnt to ridicule man's fixation upon death, which is described as mere superssion of breath.
The poem then suggests an ambivalence when we breathe our last breath on this earth, do we merely replace one kind of existence with another ? Not that these questions trouble the great Not that these questions trouble the ‘great man’ Yeats mentions: he ‘knows death to the bone’ and knows that ‘Man has created death’ – that is, death is a man-made concept. For this J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone said this line that -
“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
Of course, Yeats is not denying that men die; what he is rejecting here is the notion that death or mortality is something we should dwell too much upon.
Every creature on the earth has to die one day. An animal dies, just like a man; but an animal does not live its life with fear about death, and also they don't know about the concept of afterlife. Religion gives the concept of afterlife, if humans do good karma they get a good life after death, but if they do many sins they have to suffer in their afterlife.
To indicate the ‘great man’ Yeats refers to in ‘Death’ is Kevin O’Higgins, an Irish politician who had been assassinated in 1927 (O’Higgins has overseen the execution of several IRA men, which had made him very unpopular among the IRA). But Yeats’s poem is not, of course, rigidly wedded to its political context, and makes a general point about man’s attitude to his own mortality. How can we forget that one day we will die?
Adam's Curse
Introduction
"Adam's Curse" is a poem written by William Butler Yeats. He reproduced some of the finest poems in English literature. This poem is in contrast to his style and this poem written in a simplistic manner with use of iambic pentameter. In the poem, Yeats describes the difficulty of creating something beautiful. Yeats originally included the poem in the volume In the Seven Woods, published in 1903. This poem gives him great recognition like other poems.
Poem-
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labor to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
Analysis-
This poem is simple but this is autobiographical, this poem conatains love, labor, and time. This poem is about suffering as a human compared to his situation in life, and also tries to understand the beauty of women. Yeats wrote Adam's curse during the year 1902 and that was the time when he tried to win the heart of Maud Gonne, but his efforts were not successful, which many critics believed to be the curse of writing the poem.
In the very first stanza the poet speaks about words that are meant to impress and how they can be ignored without a second thought. This is true in case of personal expressions and verse meant for universal reading. Here Yeats put the bankers, clergymen, and schoolmasters would consider who compose verses as idle meaning that there is no use of them in the world, because it is a curse itself.
Second stanza, Yeats gives out the view of a woman who believes that woman labor more than anyone talks about. Here the poet mentions Adam's Curse as a pioneer to all labor that mankind has to suffer. This is the point where the speaker accepts that being a woman requires hard labor too. In the same stanza Yeats criticized the form of love in the society. He mentioned that love was classical and required labor. Modern society sees love as an "idle trade".
In the last third stanza, the speaker replies to the criticism regarding love and poetry. His words are only for the ears of his beloved and his expressions serve the purpose of loving her in the classic way. But just as the moon has become a hollow shell washed by time his love too has become hollow and they got weary of the methods. This too indicates the labor of the speaker who, despite having the choice, chose to travel in the traditional way and win over the heart of his beloved.
Structure-
This poem is composed of three stanzas of heroic couplets, 19 couplets total. In this poem some of the rhyming are full like years/ears and some are only partial like clergymen/thereupon. The first, second and third stanza are linked by an informal slat rhyme scheme.
