WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Biography
o Born in an Anglo-Irish family in Dublin in 1865
o As he was growing up he lived near Sligo, in the west of Ireland, then London
and then Ireland
o Religious by temperament but rejected Christianism and replaced it by
various kind of mysticism, theosophy, spiritualism and neoplatonism
o 1889 Met the actor and Irish nationalist Maud Gonne and Lady Gregory
o 1899 Launching of the Irish National Theatre
o Eugenics: his believed in the necessity of increased breeding by those with
a perceived large number of heritable traits

Periods of his writing

• First period 1885 – 1900. – The stolen child
• Second and third period (1900 – 1920): transitional periods. – Easter 1916
• Fourth period 1921 – 1934: mature poetry. – The second coming
• Fifth period 1934 – 1939

Women
• Maud Gonne: his love for many years, revolutionary. She was the subject of
many of his poems. Never married.
• Augusta Lady Gregory: promoter of irish literature. Co-founded the irish
literary theatre and the abby theatre
• Bertha-Georgie Hyde Lees: his wife. She practiced automatic writing, which
greatly influenced Yeats

First period

Celticism
o Irishness and a national audience.
o Pagan celtic Ireland: celt stereotype as spiritual, dreamy, imaginative,
solitary…
o Importance of place names
o Opposition natural / supernatural
o Local folklore: child / human stolen my fairies
o High style: dreamy, evocative and ethereal
o Melancholic tone
o Cartographic impulse. He is anti-colonist writer (Edward Said)
Occultism
Yeats had a deep fascination with mysticism and the occult, and his poetry is
infused with a sense of the otherworldly, the spiritual, and the unknown. His
interest in the occult began with his study of Theosophy as a young man and
expanded and developed through his participation in the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, a mystical secret society. Mysticism figures prominently in
Yeats’s discussion of the reincarnation of the soul, as well as in his philosophical
model of the conical gyres used to explain the journey of the soul, the passage
of time, and the guiding hand of fate. Mysticism and the occult occur again and
again in Yeats’s poetry, most explicitly in “The Second Coming” but also in
poems such as “Sailing to Byzantium” and “The Magi” (1916). The rejection of
Christian principles in favor of a more supernatural approach to spirituality
creates a unique flavor in Yeats’s poetry that impacts his discussion of history,
politics, and love.

Characteristics
o National literature
o Irish folklore and legend
o Symbols / The occult
o Evolution occurs in the direction of a harder, more assertive style that leaves
behind the dreamy lyrical nature of the earlier work and with a less mannered,
more stripped down style, influenced by Ezra Pound
o Influences: Willliam Blake and Christina Rossetti

THE STOLEN CHILD

Happens in County Sligo, where Yeats spent much of his childhood
4 stanzas + refrain
Ballad rhythm and rhyme (abcb or abab)
Alternation of 3 and 4 stresses per line

o Theme: folk motive – a human child stolen by the fairies. Irish folklore, irish
fairies are the speakers in the poem
o Names of places. Provokes a national flavour – roots his poetry in the
landscape of his country
o Pre-Raphaelite art influence
o Natural / Supernatural – Humans / Fairies
o Fairy world described in perfect decadent style: a vague and watery world,
dim, hazy and invaded by weariness.
o Description of nature dominated by pre-Raphaelite criteria of color and
profusion of adjectives – almost all the nouns are accompanied by its
respective adjectival qualification.
o Romantic idea of nature
Second period. Transitional and mature periods

Style
o Bare and cold
o Simpler and closer to the rhythms of everyday speech
o No vagueness or abstraction. Intellectual symbols (imagists, ezra pound and
ts eliot)
o No escapism
o New bitterness and resentment: opposition between the poet and the
modern world.

EASTER 1916
Easter 1916 opens with Yeats remembering the rebels as he passed them on
the street. Before the rising, they were just ordinary people who worked in shops
and offices. He remembers his childhood friend Constance Markievicz, who is
“that woman”; the Irish language teacher Padraic Pearse, who “kept a school”
called St.Enda’s; the poet Thomas MacDonagh “helper and friend” to Pearse;
and even Yeats’ own rival in love John MacBride, “a duren, vainglorious lout”.
After reflecting on the rebls’ constancy of purpose, as if their hearts were
“enchanted to a stone”, the poet wonders whether the rebellion was worth it.
The poem ends on a note of ambivalence and futility, reflecting Yeat’s own
reluctance to engage in political debate. The poem is divided into four stanzas,
symbolizing the mont of April, the fourth month. It is known for its famous refrain,
“all changed, changed utterly (completamente): a terrible beauty is born”.

Stanza 1
In the first stanza, Yeats reflects on the time before the Independence war, where
he was a well-known figure in the city. He acknowledges the people he
encountered, treating them with courtesy but without deep individual
connections. What united them in his eyes was their Irish identity, creating a
sense of unity and kinship. However, this sense of unity was not intense, and
they all lived peacefully until a momentous change occurred, signifying the
beginning of the revolution.

Stanza 2
Yeats portrays life before the revolution by highlighting the everyday aspects of
Irish society. He uses key figures from the conflict, depicting their imperfections
to emphasize that heroes are ordinary individuals striving to aid their community.
The poem's notable shift in character descriptions, from flaws to heroism,
underscores how altruism and loyalty can inspire personal growth and positive
change.
“A terrible beauty is born”: oxymoron. there are many interpretations for this line.
Some people say that it refers to the revolution, as it was a war for freedom that
moved the people to fight for a bigger cause, not only for their ordinary worries.
But it was also the cause of thousands of deaths, not only literal deaths, but also
deaths of souls: people stopped feeling, pitying, crying, because they were so
accustomed to war and death that they did not feel horrified anymore.

Stanza 3
Here, Yeats uses nature to express the conception of nature a sa changeable
unstable reality that changes constantly, minute by minute: creatures change
unstoppably, just as the stream does, a beautiful stream in the middle of which
there is a stone, a rock that impedes the free flowing of water. This stone
represents the revolution, which irrupts in people’s peaceful lives interrupting
que normal course of life.
This stanza is full of lyrical nature in the pastoral tradition, but instead of being
peaceful as in the pastoral, it is nature in movement and transformation.

Stanza 4
The final stanza is also a lament for the dead.
The final stanza of the poem seems to suggest that sometimes, freedom is not
a strong enough reason to justify such a great loss of lives. He also implies that
when someone’s life has been very hard, it may be difficult to continue being
sensitive and one can endure the hardships of losing loved ones to revolution
more easily.
He also wonders whether the revolution had been useless, since it may be
possible that the british government really intended to stop the home rule’s
suspension after the war was over. What this implies is that maybe the rebels ha
dbeen blinded by an excess of love for their country. This suggests the idea that,
while loving your country is good, a too strong and blinding patriotism may have
bad consquences. As leading you to your death. This point is related to the fact
that some of Yeat’s poetry was culturally nationalist and had inspired some of
the rebels.
The last lines of the poem reinforce the idea that after six days of revolution,
Ireland would never be the same.

THE STOLEN CHILD QUESTIONS

1. Which features of Yeats’s early poetry in terms of theme, style, tone poetic
devices, etc., can you appreciate in this poem?
The poem retains some features of Yeats's early poetry, such as its connection
to Irish mythology and folklore, its use of vivid and imaginative language, and a
sense of mysticism. The tone is dreamy and alluring, with a focus on the
intersection of the real and the magical.

2. Who or what is the poetic speaker in the poem? That is, who or what does
the pronoun “we” refer to? And, is this poetic voice addressing someone in
particular?
The poetic speaker in the poem is one of the faeries, and the "we" refers to the
faeries as a collective group. The speaker is not addressing a specific person
but rather providing an invitation or proposition to any human who might be
willing to join them.

3. Do all the stanzas in the poem describe the same world and in the same
terms?
The stanzas in the poem do not describe the same world or in the same terms.
They contrast the human world with the world of the faeries, illustrating a divide
between the ordinary and the enchanting.

4. How is the world of the fairies described? Do the fairies appear as

benefactors or malefactors, that is, as good or evil spirits?
The world of the fairies is described as alluring and enticing. The fairies
themselves appear as benefactors, offering an escape from the cares of the
human world. They are portrayed as good spirits, luring humans away from the
mundane and into their magical realm.

5. What is that the fairies want to achieve and why? Do they provide some
justification for their act?
The fairies want to achieve the stealing of a human child to bring them to their
fairy world. They believe that the human world is filled with suffering, and they
offer the child a refuge from the hardships of life. This is their justification for
taking the child.

6. Focus on the last stanza. What does it describe? Is the tone of the
description positive or negative?
The last stanza describes the child's transformation and adaptation to the fairy
world. The tone in this stanza is positive, as it suggests the child has found a
new, joyful life.

7. How do you interpret the variation in the refrain in the last stanza? What
does this variation signal?
The variation in the refrain signals the child's transformation and adaptation to
the fairy world. In the first refrain, the child is enticed to "come away." In the last
refrain, the child is described as having "gone away." This indicates the child's
transition from the human world to the fairy world.

8. What, would you say, is the central opposition in the poem?

The central opposition in the poem is between the ordinary human world with its
troubles and the enchanting, idyllic world of the fairies. This contrast highlights
the allure of escape from the hardships of reality into a world of beauty and
magic.