WB Yeats
Revolution of the mind
Songs and
imagining the immigration myths - There is no free state without Yeats. Ireland does not exist without the Poet.
Excellent TV
program recently about the Irish poet WB Yeats narrated by Bob Geldof.
Yeats became
the Irish National Poet. He looked at the old myths and stories and wanted to
write of the spirit and voice of Ireland. He had a vision of a pluralistic,
tolerant Ireland that prevails today.
He was a Protestant
born in Dublin. His father was a barrister and his mother’s family were from
Sligo Ireland which they visited often and where he learned of the myths and
magic tales from the servants.
He later lived
in London where he Oscar Wilde and other writers and poets. There he also met
his muse, Maude Gonne, who was a revolutionary for a free Ireland.
He believed
in the arts, poetry and in the sovereignty of intellect and the mind.
His work was
about the celebration of pro Ireland NOT what Ireland is against and to
celebrate Irishness – rather than oppose England.
He wrote “No
fine nation without literature and no fine literature without nationality.”
He dreamed
of a modern, tolerant nation that was open and pluralistic . He wanted to tear down the idols of the
market place. And he knew that nations are not about lines – and that every
people need their myths.
Yeats gave
the Irish ‘who they were’ before the endless fighting. Yeats elevated the old
heroes – political expression of a people. – Pens not guns.
Meanwhile in Scotland
in 1780 a Robert Burnes,
also wrote
of the old stories and collected the old songs around Scotland, from the
borders to the highlands. He too became the core and poetic voice of a true and
honest Scottish voice.
In 1920s after WW1 in Montrose, as part of a Scottish Renaissance there, another poet Hugh MacDiarmid took up this mantel
again and he too wrote in both Scots and English – drawing on the past stories
and imagining the Scotland of the future.
He was one of the visionary poets that began the Scottish national civic
movement.
