The Easter Rising and the Irish War of Independence
1916 : during World War I the Irish Volunteers ( militant Irish nationalists) organized a
rebellion on Easter Monday 1916 and proclaimed an Irish republic. Some died on the
spot, others were executed later. They became legendary symbols of Irish heroism in
the face of oppression.
1918 : in the 1918 election, the Sinn Fein (ourselves alone) won nearly all the seats
except in the province of Ulster.
1919 : the Irish voluntereers became the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and prepared for
civil war.
1921 : the civil war was only ended with the stablishment of the Irish Free State, while
the six Protestant counties of Ulster remained part of the United Kingdom with their
own parliament in Ulster.
1949 : The Free State became the Republic of Ireland
YEATS
He was the most important figure of the so called Celtic-Revival. He was involved in
the revival of the Irish theatre as a playwright and as Director of the Abbey theatre in
Dublin, one of the symbol of Irish nationalism. The meeting with the French symbolists
and the young modernist poet Ezra Pound had a great influence on Yeats’s poetry,
which became less evocative with a clear language using images both realistic and
symbolical. This shows well in his most famous poem Easter 1916 (1921), a celebration
of the Easter Rising, the Irish revolt against British rule.
EASTER 1916 (it is a memorial)
As a writer Yeats was divided between his desire to contribute to the Irish cause and
his doubts about to direct a political involvement. His famous poem too, has become a
symbol of Ireland’s independence, typical of Yeats’ attitude.
The title of the poem is so precise in dating the celebration of a political event, but the
tone is far from being triumphant. The poet expresses mixed feelings about it , because
he knew many of the insurgents personally. The poet wanted to celebrate the sacrifice
of these heroes and at the same time to reflect on the contradictions of political
commitment and nationalism. His poem wanted to immortalize these figures and
make them part of the Irish heritage which all the Irish people could share.
With this poem he wanted to pay tribute to those who sacrified their lives to the Irish
cause, but he also expressed his ambivalent attitude towards Irish patriotism. The
poem shows the shifts in thoughts and feelings that the poet goes through, feelings
both critical and compassionate. The atmosphere is melancholic, with strong emotions
and feelings.
The four stanzas are divided by a blank space. The rhyme scheme is regular, it
underlines words whose role is important to provide information. The content is
divided into 4 sections:
1) Introduction of the figure of the poet. He sees the rebels with an ironic eye but at
the end something terrible has been born. The semantic area the images belong
to that of the theatre. The insurrection has created meaning, changing the people
against the banality of everyday. The contrasting image is in line 2
2) Introduction of the insurgents he knew very well. The use of demonstratives is
relevant: that (once), this (three times). They are used when the poet introduces
the martyrs to create a sense of intimacy and shared experience despite the fact
the poet does not mention proper names.
3) It deals with the commitment to an idea: everything in nature changes, except
man’s idealism which remained fixed and immovable, still like a stone. It is a
reflection on: all human actions must be measured. There is an extended
metaphor (ll.41-56) the images of the stream and stone are repeated between the
flow of life (nature remains indifferent, changes but they don’t change to their
destiny, to their single idea to rebellion and its consequences) and rigidity of
political fanaticism. The stone represents the constant presence of the conflict
between Ireland and England.
4) The poet’s evaluation of the rebellion: he gives an epitaph for the Irish dead, the
pity, they become heroes. There are some questions to achieve a dramatic effect
without requiring an answer.
Oxymoron : ‘a terrible beauty’ repeated at the end of each stanza, implies
sorrow, fear and even death. It is in contrast with the idea of pleasure linked
with beauty. It is a sort of refrain and it also conveys the poet’s feelings about
the sacrifice implied in the change.
l.74: ‘I write it out in a verse’ it bridges the distance between the poet, the
heroes and the reader.
Urban wanderers and anti-heroes
The classical hero (Achille, Ulisse,Beowulf) was an extraordinary individual that in
some way represented an ideal incarnation of the values on which a society founded
its own mythology.
The tragic hero (Hamlet) was typically an antagonist force whose individual will or
desire threated the order and stability of the community.
Modern fiction brought with it a new type of character, reflecting the isolation and
anonymity that was a relevant feature of modern urban existence. The most common
name for such figures is the anti-hero.
“Evening on Karl Johann Strauss” by E.Munch (1892) Munch’s painting shows the
atmosphere of claustrophobia and paralysis present in Joyce’s Dubliners
Men and women of the crowd
E.A.Poe identified the prototype for this new type of figure: the anonymous urban
wanderer, indistinguishable on the surface from the crowds who surround him. The
alienated conditions of the modern urban environment tended to loosen traditional
community ties, and often reflected in a solitude that provides an intense mental life,
daydreaming and memory. Physical wandering around the city was coupled with a
form of mental wandering that might absorb details of the external environment into
its flow of thought. Such experiences had already been experimented by W.Blake, by
the Symbolist poets such as Baudelaire and T.S.Eliot.
Consequently the characters of European modernist fiction form a pantheon of great
anonymous wandering thinkers: from Joyce’s Leopold Bloom to V.Woolf’s Clarissa
Dalloway. These characters , unlike the French Symbolist poets, who rebelled
against certain aspects of modernity,they have no particular preferences. Their
personality are basically blank and empty, their minds open to all the nuances of
thought and experience that happen to enter them. Such characters, thanks to their
openess, are capable of great visions in which the most ordinary things appear in an
intense new light.
IMAGISM
“It is better to present one Image in a lifetime to produce voluminous works”
(E.Pound)
The poetry had to create clear, precise images in the mind of the reader and avoid any
superfluous words. The right image, they felt, would form a clearer idea for the reader
and express much more briefly what the poet wanted to say. In order to do this they
saw the need to bring poetic language closer to a more colloquial idiom so giving the
poet greater freedom. The Imagists rejected the traditional idea of poetry, inherited
from the Romantics according to which all poetry should be an expression of the
feelings and personality of the artist. They stated it had to represent things and
experiences in an exact way and at the same time with a ‘union of thought and
passion’. As a consequence the poetry of Imagists was much less subjective as they felt
that the poet should ‘depersonalise’ himself in his work, allowing the work to speak
for itself it was the message of the poem conveyed which was important not the
person who conveyed it.
