This is an interesting question. What is really being asked here is whether Auden's poem is concerned with Yeats himself as a human being, or if it is simply about what his death meant to poetry, the loss of a literary giant.
Certainly, Yeats is celebrated as a writer—he is called "the poet" by Auden in the first part of the poem, as if this were his defining characteristic. In traditional elegiac style, Auden follows a three-part format: lament, then praise or admiration, and then consolation. But in the second section, Auden does take the time to praise and admire Yeats's humanity as well as his gift. He describes Yeats as having been "silly like us," a phrase which is celebrating not Yeats's poetry or his "madness," but his personal qualities. He also speaks of Yeats's homeland, Ireland, and how it stimulated ("hurt") him into writing. Yeats is not simply a vessel born to produce poetry, but a man with emotions from which that poetry was born, and a man with a personality outside of his poetry, too.
In the third part of the elegy, Auden returns again to impersonal language, addressing the dead Yeats directly as "poet." In this consolatory section, Auden seems to have moved beyond discussing Yeats specifically at all—instead, he is expressing his views about poetry itself. For the most part, then, this poem is far more about Yeats as a poet, and about poetry, than it is about Yeats as a man. However, especially in the middle section, we do see elements of Yeats's humanity.
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
Is it true that the poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" represents Yeats as a man as well as an absolutely unique and irreplaceable poet?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
"Mistaken Identity" is an amusing anecdote recounted by the famous author Mark Twain about an experience he once had while traveli...
-
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman was enormously influential. We can see its influences on early English feminist Mary Woll...
-
As if Hamlet were not obsessed enough with death, his uncovering of the skull of Yorick, the court jester from his youth, really sets him of...
-
In both "Volar" and "A Wall of Fire Rising," the characters are impacted by their environments, and this is indeed refle...
No comments:
Post a Comment