My problem with William Butler Yeats

The Nobel Prize? Who cares what they think? They didn't give one to Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Jorge Borges, Henry James . . .

They did give one to Jean Paul Sartre. Jean Paul Sartre!

Who cares what they think?!

My favorite W. B. Yeats poem:

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death

this is my fav:

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

I took a grad course in Yeats, Auden, and Eliot. Gave a seminar presentation on Yeats. I can't think of a single poem. Well, "Lake Isle of Inisfree (sp?)," but I don't like that. "Easter 1916." I like that. Eugenicist freak...

Yeats was not politically minded, in that he agitated for one side or the other. True, he had firebrand friends or acquaintances who were leaders in Ireland's struggle for independence, but he was more concerned with art, not politics. (He wrote about current events - "Easter 1916" - but even then, was more concerned with aesthetics). His mind, most often, was a thousand years in the misty past, searching for the mythic Irish heroes. Thank God for that mind, too - the greatest poet of the 20th century.

do you post at Black Flag Cafe Forum under the same name, bobby?

Obama, Gore, Carter, Arafat all won a Nobel Prize. I actually feel happy for Yeats to be excluded from that "esteemed" group.

Comrade Obamskii wrote:

Obama, Gore, Carter, Arafat all won a Nobel Prize. I actually feel happy for Yeats to be excluded from that "esteemed" group.

Yeats DID get the Nobel Prize (for literature, not peace like your examples). OP is suggesting he shouldn't have gotten it.

My favorite Yeats poem is "The Stolen Child."

Asking how a person in a marginalized group of a country can write about that country is like asking how a marriage counselor can do his/her job. Of course Yeats can write about Ireland as a Protestant. Being marginalized in a country, in fact, offers a distinct and poignant perspective about that country--being in a country, but not of it, is essential to being a poet, I think. You need to be able to view things differently than most other people.

It's the same with African American literature in the US: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka--they're part of a marginalized voice, yet sometimes, we need to hear that voice that only they can offer.

my two cents wrote:

Asking how a person in a marginalized group of a country can write about that country is like asking how a marriage counselor can do his/her job. Of course Yeats can write about Ireland as a Protestant. Being marginalized in a country, in fact, offers a distinct and poignant perspective about that country--being in a country, but not of it, is essential to being a poet, I think. You need to be able to view things differently than most other people.

It's the same with African American literature in the US: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka--they're part of a marginalized voice, yet sometimes, we need to hear that voice that only they can offer.

Just in case you didn't know, Protestants weren't exactly "marginalized" in Yeats's Ireland.