William Butler Yeats and the Celtic Twilight

Imagination, symbolism and art are all good and important to the human soul. Stories are passed down from generation to generation to educate, to entertain and to move us. William Butler Yeats believed in the beauty and the power of these things. He wanted to inspire a redefining of Irish national character through folklore and myth shown in his folklore and critical writings. I am going to show how Yeats accomplished this as well as how he presents his ideas as facts in his poems; The Stolen Child, The Lake Isle of Innisfree and The Song of Wandering Aengus.

Yeats talks about his desire to redefine and reawaken Irish nationalist character in his Folklore and critical writings. In his work From the Message of the Folk-lorist (1893), Yeats has this to say about folklore; “No conscious invention can take the place of tradition, for he who would write a folk tale, and thereby bring a new life into literature, must have the fatigue of the spade in his hands and the stupor of the fields in his heart. Let us listen humbly to the old people telling their stories, and perhaps God will send the primitive excellent imagination into the midst of us again.

Why should we be either ‘naturalists’ or ‘realists’? Are not those little right hands lifted everywhere in affirmation?” (Yeats 263) Here Yeats points out that folk tales are valuable things from which people can be moved. He wants his people to be inspired to use imagination. In his work The Celtic Twilight (1893), Yeats states that he has “desired to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who care for things of this kind. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen (…).” (Yeats 177) Yeats is telling us that he wishes to inspire “creative work for the Irish revival, and it would promote a distinctively Irish racial and cultural mythology in opposition to what he saw as the “Gray Truth” (…).” (Yeats 177)

Yeats emphasizes that folk art, in any medium, is “the soil where all great art is rooted.” (Yeats 191) He says that “appreciation of the arts that a single mind gives unity and design to, spreads quickly when its hour is come.” (Yeats 191) He goes onto to say “In a society that has cast out imaginative tradition, only a few people— (…) only then have an understanding of imaginative things, (…) men understood that when imagination is impoverished, a principle voice—some would say the only voice—for the awakening of the wise hope and durable faith, and understanding charity, can speak but in broken words, if it does not fall silent.” (Yeats 191) We can see here that Yeats thinks imagination is vital to the Irish revival and bringing it back to the people is imperative.

In his work Hopes and Fears for Irish Literature, Yeats discusses how art had become self-conscious and uninteresting. He tells us that the people of literary ambition in Ireland tend to like literature that “must be the expression of conviction, and be the garment of noble emotion and not an end in itself.” He goes on to tell us he finds works like this “crude and uninteresting.” (Yeats 259) Yeats believes Ireland has the tools within itself to produce “new great utterance for which the world is waiting.” (Yeats 260) To do this, Yeats thinks the Irish need to dive into themselves and their culture, the good, the bad and the ugly which is a concept he brings up called “know thyself.” Yeats believes it is the duty of the people to nurture the culture the Irish have and the beauty it holds. Yeats goes on to talk about the “Celtic element” in literature from his work The Celtic Element in Literature (1898).

The “Celtic element,” according to Yeats is passion, excess and imagination. Also within the “Celtic element,” there is beauty, mystery, nature, romance and emotion. It contains the beliefs of ancient times, which sets it apart from other literature. To Yeats, Celtic literature has been “at the heart” of European literature for a long time; “the Celtic alone has been for centuries close to the main river of European literature. It has (…) brought the ‘vivifying spirit’ ‘of excess’ into the arts of Europe.” (Yeats 265) He explains that Celtic literature has contributed an immense amount of genius to Europe. He points out that the Celtic race had a love for Nature unlike any other. He also talks about the melancholy that is seen in Celtic literature, citing Matthew Arnold, saying that the English “got much of its melancholy from a Celtic source, with no doubt at all that from a Celtic source it got nearly all its natural magic.” (Yeats 265) Lastly, Yeats tells us that Irish legends have “a new beauty, that they may well give the opening century its most memorable symbols.” (Yeats 266)

The first poem mentioned, The Stolen Child, embodies many of Yeats’ ideas mentioned above. The poem paints us a picture of the scenery including the “rocky highland,” the “wave of moonlight,” the “warm hillside.” Yeats tells us about the animals in this scenery such as the rats, herons, calves and mice. In this poem, Yeats creates a beautiful picture of nature and the creatures that live within it. The repeating line in the poem tells us about the human child and the “faery” that wants it to be his companion. It also tells us that the child is unaware of the melancholy in the world, saying “For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” (Yeats 8) This highlights the fact that Irish writings contain themes of melancholy. The second poem mentioned is called The Lake Isle of Innisfree. This poem is very much about nature and the impact it has on us. Whether it be the beauty of nature or even the messiness of it, it does something to us as shown by Yeats. He describes the nature surrounding him vividly as well as symbolically here.

The emphasis is that nature invokes emotion inside of him. One example of this is; “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.” (Yeats 15) The last poem mentioned is called The Song of Wandering Aengus. Again, a common thread of Yeats’ writing, there is beautiful imagery of the surroundings in each poem. One example of this is “The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.” In this poem, he brings in folk lore, as Aengus is “the god of youth, beauty and poetry.” (Yeats 24) In this poem as well, there is mystery. We don’t know where the “glimmering girl” has gone or if she will come back. Each of these poems inspire imagination and wonder for nature as well as evoke some sort of emotion within me. In these poems, he illustrates his ideas into something real. He shows us the love for nature of the Irish people like no other, he shows us the melancholy, the impact these words and symbols have.

In conclusion, I find Yeats’ ideas to be realistic. I believe that he, as a writer, was successful in proving to the Irish people, and anyone else, what he set out to prove and to do. He has shown that through his works, through his poetry and the works and poetry of the Irish in general, can redefine and reawaken the Irish nationalist character and inspire a new sense of Irish identity.