Easter 1916 (Themes)

Themes

Public Vs. Private Life

For much of his life Yeats struggled with his conviction that public life had an adverse effect on the private person — especially the poet. He thought that mixing with or leading the crowd would coarsen sensitivity due to constant arguing as well as unsettle one’s peace and principles from repeated compromise. Yet he was a social and political person, a tireless joiner and fraternizer, even becoming a senator in the newly independent Irish Free State for six years. In “Easter 1916,” Yeats’s conflict between the public and private spheres is transposed to five of the revolutionaries of the Easter Rising. Where Yeats saw a conflict, it is probable that some of the revolutionaries — especially the writers, Thomas MacDonagh and Patrick Pearse, and the charity worker, Constance Markiewicz — saw the act of revolt as less a conflict with their private sentiments and lives than a necessary continuation of them. While, for Yeats, revolt would have meant troubling self-examination, to the revolutionaries, to not revolt would have meant the same. In this poem, and in comments made to others, Yeats expressed regret that peaceful, sensitive souls got involved with the Rising, not only because politics and militarism did not suit some of the revolutionaries — Yeats might even say, coarsened them — but also because it killed them.

The dichotomy between public and private is clear for Yeats when it comes to observing how privately sensitive natures are made shrill in argument and combat; the poet is therefore comfortable with his regretful sentiments. Where the poem becomes more than an elegy, however, is not where the binary between public and private has been tragically and regretfully transgressed by the revolutionaries, but, instead, where the polarized difference between public and private is not so clear and where it becomes troublesome. This is the tension that has made this poem endure. The reader might sense that Yeats, fully understanding the transformation that the Rising has brought, is annoyed by the possibility that he himself might have had more effect on Ireland if he had also put down his pen and picked up a gun. Against his more rational or rationalizing side, the poet of “Easter 1916” seems to wonder just under his breath whether the extensive space he once saw between the public and the private appears only from certain angles. From another viewpoint — after the Rising and the quick execution of its leaders — the public and private do not look so far apart, because it can be said that these men and this woman died for something that, before it became extremely public, was passionately private. But as Yeats’s lifelong friend Maud Gonne had remarked, perhaps there would have been no public Rising without the publication of Yeats’s private passions for Irish tradition — publications that were likely internalized by the likes of Pearse, MacDonagh, and Markiewicz before they would again emerge in the public explosion of 1916.

Memory

The Easter Rising lasted from April 24 to April 29, 1916. Yeats dated his poem “Easter 1916” on September 25, 1916. Why did it take as long as it did to finish the poem? Even with Yeats’s appended date, critics disagree as to when the poem was written. Some say it was a couple of weeks after the executions, which would be the last two weeks in May. Others say the writing took place in July and August. Whatever the case, Yeats reportedly did not know what to make of the event immediately. Additional incidents would have to take their course, people would have to be listened to, and thoughts sifted. Perhaps what is even more surprising is that the poem was not published until 1920. While this is not the place to speculate on exactly why Yeats waited to write and publish, some general remarks may be ventured. After the Rising, most of Ireland was angry at the revolutionaries. But after the executions, anger was directed at Britain. Yeats’s sentiments seem as fickle as the public’s. Unlike what might have been a public response, Yeats did not direct a poem of hate at Britain but, instead, took a more indirect and arguably a more effective route: he remembered the martyrs with love.

“Easter 1916” is nothing if not a eulogy — one that could have been read at the martyrs’ funeral. Yeats, while acknowledging certain failings of the martyrs, always ends on a note of praise, remembering these men for what could have been their finest hour. Yeats’s course resembles that of memory itself. With time, memory — unless the self suffers a major blow that provokes revenge — sluffs off its anger and keeps its fondness, usually an easier emotion. “Easter 1916” is a poem of memory and, even if Yeats was unaware of it, about memory. With the passage of time, Yeats could more easily forgive the leaders of the Rising and even praise them.

The recitation of the revolutionaries’ names in the last stanza is like so many names upon the walls of war memorials or on AIDS quilts. Names connected with tragedy are forgiven, since it is difficult to hate or remain angry at those who have suffered, even if they have caused others to suffer. Perhaps Yeats waited as long as he did to write the poem, even publish it with changes, until the action of memory softened his tone and until the poem could inspire its readers to identify the insurrectionists as heroes. Perhaps Yeats believed that love, more than anger, was the best emotion to provoke the populace into passion for the liberation of Ireland

Change

Memory’s connection to change has already been discussed — more often than not, bruises and anger are minimized or forgotten, leaving behind what can be praised. This is how the Rising’s rash revolutionaries were transformed into heroes. Ireland also changed after the Easter Rising; the “terrible beauty” was born. Before the Easter Rising there were other Risings — in 1798 and 1803 — but none lasted as long and resulted in so many martyrs. After the 1916 Rising, a more entrenched nationalism — a hunger for independent nationhood — took hold and took on a militant aspect that continues to this day. The “terrible beauty” of Yeats’s time would eventually result in a completely independent Republic of Ireland and may yet result in a united Republic of Ireland: in May, 1998 a Northern Ireland peace agreement was signed, giving more power to Ulster Catholics, many of whom are sympathetic to unification and complete independence. This is probably the most prominent feature of the utter change foreshadowed in Yeats’s poem.

There is also another type of change depicted in “Easter 1916.” In stanza three — the only part of the poem written in the language of images — Yeats shows himself devoted, almost religiously, to the idea of change. Yeats paints change in the transformations of clouds, reflections, animal movement, and seasons. For the notion of stagnancy, that thing that does not change and that presents an obstacle to those things that do change, there is the image of the stone. Stanza three contains no argumentation, just presentation of the notion that change is good and that which stays the same is bad. The same is true in the first two lines of stanza four. Here, the imagery is transferred to inside the body where the constantly beating, changing heart is transformed into a stone by holding on to unchanging ideas and passions. Yeats is undialectical, change being all good and constancy being all bad. Further, the imagery is ineffective, especially because it is difficult to invest stones with the image of an incorrigible person. True it is that people can take on characteristics attributed to stone: hardness, denseness, deafness, coolness. In this respect Yeats’s image of a heart turned to stone is successful. But it is more difficult to turn stones into a certain kind of person, because constancy and stability have their place in the scheme of things, and because stones are rarely invested with threat. While tales of monstrous plants and animals abound, seldom do stones cause fear. More, stones are the product of fear — as in petrified wood and people. On the other hand, Yeats was astute in selecting the word stone rather than rock, in that rock connotes solidness and dependability. Perhaps Yeats even considered transforming the troubling stone of stanza three into the rock of commitment at the end of “Easter 1916.” But this would have clashed with the three refrains describing utter change and transformation, even risked privileging constancy over change. For a man who valued change so highly, this would not have been the best option.

Topics for Further Study

• What different events or phenomena in the realms of psychology, politics, nature, etc., can you describe with the words “terrible beauty?”
• Consider the advantages and disadvantages of using pictures or textual images, instead of words of explanation to describe ideas such as those in stanza three.
• The Easter Rising was timed to coincide with Christ’s rising. Compare and contrast events and figures of the Easter Rising with the story of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.