Yeats Through A Modernist Lens. The Modernist View Of Poetry

William Butler Yeats is one of the most esteemed poets in 20th century literature and is well known for his Irish poetry. While Yeats was born in Ireland, he spent most of his adolescent years in London with his family. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he later moved back to Ireland. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and joined the Theosophical Society soon after moving back. He was surrounded by Irish influences most of his life, but it was his commitment to those influences and his heritage that truly affected his poetry. William Butler Yeats’s poetry exemplifies how an author’s Irish identity can help create and influence his work.

The poems, "The Wild Swans at Coole" and "The Great Scarf of Birds," unconsciously play off one another. Yeats and Updike paint similar pictures about similar topics. Although these poems consist of similar subjects, the authors' diction and details are at completely different ends of the poetry spectrum.

In the first stanza Yeats expresses his conflicting loathing and admiration for modernity through the juxtaposition of “vivid faces” and “grey houses”. This represents the possibilities that modernity can bring; the revitalising of the community or the destruction of tradition and age old energy already lost by the modifications in the city. The repetition of the phrase “A terrible beauty is born” in the first and fourth stanzas articulate this inner turmoil revolving around modernity. This oxymoronic declaration is emphasised throughout the text by Yeats’ confusion towards the rebellion and its necessity. The fourth stanza embodies this conflict, removing the previously represented idea that life in pre-rebellion Ireland was a “casual comedy”, alluding to an Elizabethan play where the characters were content. By asking the rhetoric questions “was it needless death” and “O when may [British rule] suffice?” Yeats parallels the unresolved contradiction of “terrible beauty”. However, this sensitive treatment of conflict allows the retainment of ambiguity and can be related to any change within life, hence allowing audiences to superimpose their own beliefs and ideas into the poem. Yeats continues to explore his aversion towards modernism in The Second Coming with the appointment of a new “gyre” standing as the symbol for a new age. The fear of

Through the use of vigorous, ritualistic imagery and war-like diction, Yeats accentuates the inauspicious course of events the world has faced. Yeats, in the first stanza, uses violent and warlike imagery and diction to illustrates that the world is on the threshold of an apocalyptic revelation. Yeats describes that the world is going to “fall apart,” and that “mere anarchy is [loosened] upon the world,” and ‘everywhere...innocence is drowned.” The use of violent diction in the first stanza contributes to the concept that world is going to end, and that humanity cannot recover from the destruction the world has caused, but Yeats uses ritualistic imagery to describe “a rough beast” with “a shape [of a] lion body and head of a man” to show that this “New Age” will bring some hope. William Yeats uses this violent and ritualistic imagery and diction to illustrate that in order to bring a new era, the old epoch must die violently, which is his concept of “the second coming.” Yeats believes that a violent revolution will bring hope to a new era. Similarly, how the Russian Revolution was destructive and brought an end to an era and started a new age which bought Russia to new heights, Yeats believes that a violent end of the world can bring the new world to new

This poem is also about Art, and the Irish people's response to it. It is structured around the contrast between the Yeats' dream to write for the Irish people, and the reality.

In both openings, each poet recognizes the ephemeral element of life. Keats’ fears that he “may cease to be,” while Longfellow reflects, “half of life is gone” (Keats 1; Longfellow 1). Through diction, this trend becomes evident. For example, Keats uses the words, “Huge cloudy symbols,” and “shadows,” indicating almightiness and transcendence (Keats 6, 8). Longfellow too recognizes nature’s power, going even further, capitalizing the words “Past” and “Death” (Longfellow 9, 14). Such capitalization is done out of respect for the power of these words, and further, as a reiteration that the present is determined by the past and the future. In effect, Longfellow realizes that the present is the morphed version of the past and the future, and thus gives no capitalization, or significance, to it. Keats experiences the opposite. He very much endorses the attitude of carpe diem, trying to move on from the past only to be greeted by the grim face of death. By the end of the poem, each poet describes similar circumstances. Keats approaches a shore, while Longfellow ascends a hill to contemplate life. They differ, however, as Keats views a “wide world” replete with literary repute and love, but realizes it is “nothingness” in the bigger picture (Keats 13-14). Thus, he pursues what remains of his opportunities, despite knowing his human insignificance. Conversely, Longfellow sees the “gleaming lights” of an idyllic past with a waterfall of death that will haunt him now and what remains of his future (Longfellow

William Butler Yeats’ poem “Leda and the Swan” is a dark tale originating from the Greek myth, in which Zeus takes the form of a swan to seduce the beautiful woman, Leda. Traditionally, the swan is a symbol of beauty and grace in Greek culture (“More Animal Symbolism”). Yeats uses the representation of a swan as an illusion to set the tone of the poem. Though the readers would expect the swan to be the protagonist, contrarily, the swan is revealed to be the antagonist in the poem. The speaker uses unclear words that appear less destructive than than the actuality occuring, as well as a double meaning in his writing such as, “And how can body, laid in that white rush” (Yeats 7) shows that not much information is given as to what is happening and who the speaker is talking about. This exhibits how confused Leda is to the situation and how readers may also feel similar towards the poem. Through the use of irony within the swan’s symbolism, the deep thoughts to reveal what the speaker is trying to represent, and the loss of trust, it established an understanding that the appearance of innocence indeed, by capable of committing great evil.

Though written only two years after the first version of "The Shadowy Waters", W.B. Yeats' poem "Adam's Curse" can be seen as an example of a dramatic transformation of Yeats' poetic works: a movement away from the rich mythology of Ireland's Celtic past and towards a more accessible poesy focused on the external world. Despite this turn in focus towards the world around him, Yeats retains his interest in symbolism, and one aspect of his change in style is internalization of the symbolic scheme that underlies his poetry. Whereas more mythological works like "The Shadowy Waters" betray a spiritual syncretism not unlike that of the Golden Dawn, "Adam's Curse" and its more realistic fellows offer a view of the

6) You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but the end is not yet.

In William Butler Yeats poem “Leda and the Swan”, he uses the fourteen lines of the traditional sonnet form in a radical, modernist style. He calls up a series of unforgettable, bizarre images of an immediate physical event using abstract descriptions in brief language. Through structure and language Yeats is able to paint a powerful sexual image to his readers without directly giving the meaning of the poem.

In the context of John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” “The Wild Swans at Coole” by William Butler Yeats raises compelling dialogue with Keats’ piece, which suggests that Yeats, to some degree, draws inspiration from John Keats, in that his pose concerning the nightingale becomes a basis and “touchstone” for “The Wild Swans at Coole.” Aside from commonalities concerning avians, both poems share elements of Romanticism, melancholy, feelings of weariness, and other key ideas, images, and plots as “Ode to a Nightingale” and thus, “The Wild Swans at Coole” strengthens Keats’ initial ideas in a harmonic and resonant fashion using its own unique methods. As a response to Keatsian Romanticism, Yeats revises the ideas surrounding transcendence of

William Butler Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” after World War 1 ended, in a time when the image of society was catastrophic. Yeats was deeply affected by these horrors caused by the war. Yeats predicts this image of a catastrophic society due to war will reappear in the near future. In “The Second Coming”, William B. Yeats uses a variety of literary devices to portray his idea of what the downfall of society will look like.

The aim of this article is an attempt to know the different moods of the poet John Keats how Keats moves from Negation to Affirmation how he reacted against problems, how he turned between reality and unreality, joys and sufferings, imagination and reason, and how he turned towards poetry. The poet who once declared that he wanted to “fade for away, dissolve and quite

Modernism by definition is “a style or movement in the arts that aims to depart significantly from classical and traditional forms”. A movement which is undoubtedly a reflection of the fragmented and collapsing Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, Modernism was a reaction to the world in which it existed. Subsequent to the overly imaginative and emotive era of Victorianism, Modernism was indeed a dramatic movement away from the changing values and ideas of the Victorian world. What Modernist Literature essentially evoked in its audience was a sense of dissolution with the world, a world which it believed held traditions in literature, art, science, religion, among countless others, which were seen as incompatible with the current social

“The Chimney Sweeper”, the romantic poem by William Blake and “The Second Coming”, the modern poem by W.B. Yeats.present readers with two interpretations of hope. “The Second Coming” is set in 1940s Europe, while “The Chimney Sweeper” looks at a specific group in a certain period of European history. Speakers in both poems certainly state that people are hopeless towards an certain future, but comparing and contrasting them reveals that the tone which they used to show their attitudes are quite different.In “The Chimney Sweeper”, the speaker expresses his thought in a sarcastic tone, meanwhile, the tone that the speaker from “The Second Coming” used is more pessimistic.