The Relationship Between Art and Politics
Yeats believed that art and politics were intrinsically
linked and used his writing to express his attitudes toward Irish
politics, as well as to educate his readers about Irish cultural
history. From an early age, Yeats felt a deep connection to Ireland
and his national identity, and he thought that British rule negatively
impacted Irish politics and social life. His early compilation of
folklore sought to teach a literary history that had been suppressed
by British rule, and his early poems were odes to the
beauty and mystery of the Irish countryside. This work frequently
integrated references to myths and mythic figures, including Oisin
and Cuchulain. As Yeats became more involved in Irish politics—through
his relationships with the Irish National Theatre, the Irish Literary
Society, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and Maud Gonne—his poems
increasingly resembled political manifestos. Yeats wrote numerous
poems about Ireland’s involvement in World War I (“An Irish Airman
Foresees His Death” [1919], “A Meditation
in Time of War” [1921]), Irish nationalists
and political activists (“On a Political Prisoner” [1921],
“In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz” [1933]),
and the Easter Rebellion (“Easter 1916” [1916]).
Yeats believed that art could serve a political function:
poems could both critique and comment on political events, as well
as educate and inform a population.
The Impact of Fate and the Divine on History
Yeats’s devotion to mysticism led to the development of
a unique spiritual and philosophical system that emphasized the
role of fate and historical determinism, or the belief that events
have been preordained. Yeats had rejected Christianity early in
his life, but his lifelong study of mythology, Theosophy, spiritualism,
philosophy, and the occult demonstrate his profound interest in
the divine and how it interacts with humanity. Over the course of
his life, he created a complex system of spirituality, using the
image of interlocking gyres (similar to spiral cones) to map out
the development and reincarnation of the soul. Yeats believed that
history was determined by fate and that fate revealed its plan in
moments when the human and divine interact. A tone of historically
determined inevitability permeates his poems, particularly in descriptions
of situations of human and divine interaction. The divine takes
on many forms in Yeats’s poetry, sometimes literally (“Leda
and the Swan” [1923]), sometimes abstractly
(“The Second Coming” [1919]). In other poems,
the divine is only gestured to (as in the sense of the divine in
the Byzantine mosaics in “Sailing to Byzantium” [1926]).
No matter what shape it takes, the divine signals the role of fate
in determining the course of history.
The Transition from Romanticism to Modernism
Yeats started his long literary career as a romantic poet
and gradually evolved into a modernist poet. When he began publishing
poetry in the 1880s, his poems had a lyrical,
romantic style, and they focused on love, longing and loss, and
Irish myths. His early writing follows the conventions of romantic
verse, utilizing familiar rhyme schemes, metric patterns, and poetic
structures. Although it is lighter than his later writings, his
early poetry is still sophisticated and accomplished. Several factors
contributed to his poetic evolution: his interest in mysticism and
the occult led him to explore spiritually and philosophically complex
subjects. Yeats’s frustrated romantic relationship with Maud Gonne
caused the starry-eyed romantic idealism of his early work to become
more knowing and cynical. Additionally, his concern with Irish subjects
evolved as he became more closely connected to nationalist political
causes. As a result, Yeats shifted his focus from myth and folklore
to contemporary politics, often linking the two to make potent statements
that reflected political agitation and turbulence in Ireland and
abroad. Finally, and most significantly, Yeats’s connection with
the changing face of literary culture in the early twentieth century
led him to pick up some of the styles and conventions of the modernist
poets. The modernists experimented with verse forms, aggressively
engaged with contemporary politics, challenged poetic conventions
and the literary tradition at large, and rejected the notion that
poetry should simply be lyrical and beautiful. These influences
caused his poetry to become darker, edgier, and more concise. Although
he never abandoned the verse forms that provided the sounds and
rhythms of his earlier poetry, there is still a noticeable shift
in style and tone over the course of his career.
