Yeats's 'Easter 1916' and the Ireland of its time
As part of the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Irish poet, WB Yeats, the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool recently arranged an evening of readings from, and discussion of, Yeats's work.
The Institute is a major centre for Irish studies in Britain. I am a big supporter of the Institute because I see Irish studies as an important means by which knowledge and understanding of Ireland can be enhanced on our neighbouring island.
I have had a lifelong interest in WB Yeats. I admire him as a poet who wrote powerfully from youth to old age, but my interest in him has always been fired in particular by what I see as his value as an interpreter of the Ireland of his time. Against this background, I was delighted to be in Liverpool to participate in a panel of readers alongside BBC journalist, Fergal Keane, and two Irish poets, Tom French and Martin Dyar. The panel was chaired by the Institute's Director, Dr Frank Shovlin. The event attracted an impressive attendance of around 250, which confirms the widespread interest in Yeats's work.
Asked by the University what I would like to read, I chose Yeats's 'Easter 1916'. I did so because I see it as the most important Irish poem of the 20th century for it deals with what was probably the central event in modern Irish history, the Easter Rising of 1916. This was an event that also had a wider impact on the politics and constitutional structure of these islands.
The Easter Rising, its causes and consequences deserve to be better understood in Britain and Yeats's great poem offers a compelling road map for this journey of understanding. It provides a kind of verse tutorial on the Rising.
Yeats had a unique perspective on the events of 1916. When he wrote this poem, he had been involved in Irish public life for more than 25 years, as a promoter of the Irish literary revival, founder of Ireland's national theatre and a supporter of many nationalist causes. Latterly, he had become disenchanted with Irish politics and in 'September 1913' had proclaimed the death of 'Romantic Ireland.' The Easter Rising revived his interest in, and engagement with, Ireland.
Yeats knew many of the leaders of the Rising personally and was deeply affected by the events of Easter week and their aftermath. Those feelings inspired him to compose a powerful elegy, reflecting on the Rising and its implications.
The opening stanza records his impressions of the leaders, with their 'vivid faces' coming from ‘grey 18th century houses.’ Like most of his contemporaries, he had not taken them seriously and the Rising had come as a big surprise to him.
The second stanza provides brief portraits of four prominent figures, the aristocratic revolutionary, Constance Markiewicz, the school headmaster, Patrick Pearse, the poet and academic, Thomas McDonagh, and Maud Gonne's estranged husband, John McBride, whom Yeats viewed as ‘a drunken vainglorious lout’, but yet acknowledged that he had been transformed by his participation in the Rising.
The third stanza consists of an extended meditation on the idea that 'hearts with one purpose alone' seem 'enchanted to a stone to trouble the living stream.' This reflects the fact that Yeats was somewhat ambivalent about the Rising. It is this ambivalence that makes 'Easter 1916' such a significant piece of writing. He was neither a cheerleader for the Rising, nor was he a critic. Rather, he was an engaged contemporary, struggling to make sense of what had happened. The poem's refrain, 'a terrible beauty is born' pithily conveys Yeats's mixed feelings.
The final stanza dwells on the consequences of the Rising as it pays tribute to the leaders, and their exalted status 'now and in time to be'. He also asks a question that has run through subsequent analyses of the Rising:
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
This raises the question what would have happened had the First World War ended say in January 1916? Would Ireland have been granted Home Rule as had been promised in 1914? And what would have occurred in Ulster where there were deep divisions between those supporting Home Rule and those opposed to it? And would those who had opposed Irish Party leader John Redmond's support for the war in 1914 have accepted a limited Home Rule settlement?
'Easter 1916' covers a lot of ground and provides a delicately layered response to the Rising. It does not, of course, tell the full story, for no relatively short poem could do so. Yeats's great achievement was to recognise in the immediate aftermath of the Rising - for the poem was written in the summer of 1916 - that this had been a transformative event. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Rising, it did bring about fundamental change in Ireland and in our relations with Britain or, to put it another way: 'all changed, changed utterly’.
I look forward in the year ahead to commemorating the centenary of the Easter Rising and a century of Irish independence. Just as the First World War centenaries have helped to highlight the Irish involvement in that terrible conflict, I hope that 2016 will bring about a greater appreciation in Britain of the complexities of Irish history and the dynamic that led to Irish independence and, latterly, to the very friendly relations that now exist between our two neighbouring countries.
Daniel Mulhall is Ireland's Ambassador in London.