Yeats as an Irish Poet

Yeats explores one of the most unique issues concerning the Irish identity, the lack of one. In the readings we read how Ireland has always been a locus of invasion, colonization, and rebellion. Inevitably this blurred the sense of what a true Irishman is. From looking at the history we saw how an Irishman could be Celtic, Viking, British, Catholic, Protestant, or some combination of all of these. And further each heritage has had a period of triumph, oppression, or rebellion. In a way Yeats has combined aspects of this history with the political unrest he had experienced in his lifetime to help define himself as an Irish poet.
In the Yeats poems I see a recurring character type, a wanderer. A wanderer suggests that a person does not have a home, or is not welcomed. Since Yeats had ties to the Fenian movement, he may have felt alienated by British rule, despite being a native Irishman. Usually through the wanderings of Yeats’ characters they encounter many specifically Irish problems. For example in “The Madness of King Goll” the speaker travels through different terrains like wetlands and forests. This relationship with nature that the speaker has mirrors Celtic poetry. Many of the Celtic poems I read through often were blessings, hoping that nature would be a guide and protector. And we see something like this in “King Goll.” In stanza four the speaker moves in unison with the hares and deer. But Yeats does not praise nature as much as original Celtic poetry, for in “King Goll” the speaker seems burdened saying he “must wander…summer’s heat and winter’s cold” (70). Other wanderers are in “Moll Magee” and “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Moll represents Ireland by being impoverished, and Yeats may be suggesting that this pity she yearns for may be what Ireland deserves. Then in “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” we see a man wanting to settle down and have peace. This reminded me of the Land War in the history reading. The desire for property was something Yeats probably saw in his early life. And in the poem I feel that Yeats connects this one political conflict to the history of Ireland, since the Fenians wanted the Irish to rule Ireland. I look forward to seeing how these themes of alienation change through Yeats’ poetry, since he eventually became separated from the political movement that help start his career.

Questions:

Would you consider the poems we’ve read so far to be Modern? Since they seem very structured and embedded in traditions of Celtic poetry and folklore it seems hard to relate it to many of the definitions of Modernism we gave on Wednesday.

Who is Fergus? I found this poem very compelling, but difficult to make sense of.