W. B. Yeats as a Modern and Romantic Poet | Symbolism in Yeats Poetry | Characteristics Yeats Poetry

 

W. B. YEATS AS A MODERN POET

INTRODUCTION:

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), a poet and dramatist, is one of the brilliant stars in the galaxy of modern English poetry. He has influenced a number of his contemporaries as well as successors, such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and W.B. Auden. He used his mighty pen in the service of writing poetry for nearly fifty years. 

FAMOUS POEMS BY YEATS:

Among School Children, The Stolen Child, Sailing to Byzantium, A Prayer For My Daughter, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, Death, Leda and the Swan

EVOLUTION OF YEATS AS A MODERN POET:

We find three different stages in the evolution of Yeats as a great modern poet. W. J. Long comments in this regard:

“In fifty years he evolved from a dreamer to a realist and from a realist to a passionate metaphysical seer. Thought and passion drove him all the time. He was a poet all the time, and a great poet.”

FIRST PHASE:

In Yeats’ poetry produced till 1900, we find dreaminess, picturequeness and mythological love of the Pre-Raphaelite poets. A dream like quality in his early poems like ‘The Wandering of Oisin (1899), ‘The Wind Among the Reeds’ (1899) and ‘The Shadowy Water’ (1900) is visible.

SECOND PHASE:

From 1900 onwards, there comes a change in Yeats poetry. The dreamer and lover of the far off things is shaken by the rude realities of life. Poetry for Yeats was now no more an escape from reality. We find this realism in his ‘The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910).

THIRD PHASE:

Again we find a noticeable change in his attitude and outlook to his poetic creation after the World War I. His is found grim, gloomy, sorrowful and philosophical in his later poems like ‘The Tower’ (1928), ‘New Poems’ (1933), ‘Last Poems’ (1939). A note of suffering and sadness is clearly visible in his later poems.

YEATS’ TRADITIONALISM AND MODERNISM:

YEATS’ ROMANTICISM AND REALISM:

Yeats is a unique poet as he is a traditional and a modern poet at the same time. Though he started his poetic career as a Romantic and the Raphaelite, he very soon evolved into a genuine modern poet. In his early poems, we find the spell of the fairies, ghosts magic and the mysterious world. All the romantic traits found in Yeats early poetry collapsed in his later poetry. His later poems are highly realistic. The poems like ‘The Winding Stair’, ‘The Tower’, ‘In Memory of Major Robert Gregory’ and ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ etc. are very realistic. He focused more on the expression of the cruelty and frustration of the post war world in his later poems. Thus, Yeats is a poet who is both romantic and realist, both traditional and modern.

PESSIMISM AND FRUSTRATION IN YEATS’S POETRY:

As a typical modern poet Yeats has represented the post-war modern world which is full of in a disorder and chaotic situation. After the World war-I people got totally shattered and they suffered from frustration, boredom, anxiety and loneliness. Yeats has expressed this in famous poem ‘The Second Coming’. Mark these lines:

“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 last two lines from the poem ‘To A Shade’ express his pessimism:

“You had enough of sorrow before death—

Away, away; you are safer in the tomb.”

SYMBOLISM IN YEATS POETRY:

It is rightly said that symbols give “dumb things voices, and bodiless things bodies” in Yeats’ poetry. In fact, Yeats was a leader of the movement of symbolism in modern English poetry. He has taken his symbols from Irish folklore and mythology, philosophy and metaphysics. His key-symbols shed light on his previous poems and “illuminates their sense”. ‘The Rose’, ‘Swan’ and ‘Helen’ are his key-symbols. 

MYSTICISM IN YEATS’ POETRY:

Yeats’ mysticism makes him a modern poet. Though modern age is the period of the development of science and technology, yet modern poetry has traces of mysticism in it. Yeats is the modern poet who initiated occult system and mysticism in his poetry. Mysticism runs throughout his poetry in which the gods and fairies of the Celtic mythology are presented. The state of spiritual exaltation is described in ‘Sailing to Byzantium’:

-----------------------, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing,

HUMANISM IN YEATS’ POETRY:

Humanism is another modern trait in literature. The threat of war cast a gloomy shadow on the poetic sensibility of the modern poets. The sad realities of life paved the way of humanitarian aspect in modern literature. Yeats’ poetry also abounds in humanism. In ‘Easter 1916’, he expresses his feeling even for his rival and writes:

“He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart”

OBSCURITY AND COMPLEXITY IN YEATS POETRY:

Modem poetry has often been described as being very complex and obscure, and it is not at all surprising that Yeats’ poems have been termed as some of the most obscure and complex poems. Obscurity in Yeats’ poetry is due to his occultism, mysticism, Irish mythology and use of symbolism. He places two opposite ideas together (the past and the present, the spiritual and the physical). Such dissimilar concepts and his condensed rich language make his poetry obscure.

CONCLUSION:

Thus, on the basis of the above discussion one may say that W. B. Yeats is the last romantic and the first modern poet of English literature. He is a link between the romanticism and modernism. He is known as a master artist who has influenced a host of modern poets. He is known for his mysticism and symbolism. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923 which confirms him as a great modem poet.

Click to watch a video lecture.