As an Irishman I have been drawn to look at the poet, WB Yeats
YEATS, that towering figure drawn to the occult. His swans, THESE Swans, who he wrote poetry about, were not entities, they were DIVINE DISCOURSE,
What Yeats wrote poetry about were not 'swans' as objects, he wrote ABOUT THEM AS IF THEY were floating signatures OF THE INVISIBLE; his poetry was a means for Spiritual discourse.
The swans, not unlike, THE WINE AND BREAD, CEASE TO BE Material ENTITIES for Catholics AND BECOME THE MEDIUM OF PURE PRESENCE, they are no longer material entities they are the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
But is there not a soupcon of cannibalism in this Catholic theory? After all, you are supposedly ingesting the body of Jesus Christ.
Yes, for Yeats and a lot of those alienated anlgo-Irish Protestants things were signs.
A la Plato, there is no meaning in this world, what we are seeing are mirages, reflections.
if reality exists independent of the mind, SOMEWHERE ELSE, in that Platonic mode,
then we FETISHISE or take part in a REIFICATION, this could be viewed as a form of idolatry.
However if there is no meaning
without an interpreter, if this is the case then the world lives in OUR response to it.
YEATS DOES NOT Portray THE NATURAL World WITH THE RICH SPECIFICITY THAT Keats did.
FOR YEATS IT IS Meaning THAT COUNTS .NOT MATERIALITY
The NATURAL BEAUTY of Ireland CAN BE left TO TH IRISH Tourist Board
It is difficult for the Irish to be rationalist and empiricist for their heritage, THE MATERIAL WORLD OF CELTIC MYTHOLOGY IS SO VITAL AND ANIMATED THAT IT IS HARD TO SEPARATE IT FROM THE SPIRITUAL
THE WORD AS SPIRITUAL HAS A VENERABLE IRISH PEDIGREE it is Idealist IN TENDENCY,
For the THE REAL World IS NOT this DINGY Poverty STRICKEN, STRIFE Torn Island, but you as a poet you resort to Seeing it is A HIGHER spiritual DOMAIN
Yes Rationalism or empiricism Rings HOLLOW IN A DOWN AT HEEL COLONY, in Yeats Ireland,
There is RESISISTANCe TO REASON IN IRISH CULTURE, COLONIAL Subjects FIXED THEIR Thoughts ON HIGHER THINGS that the English would understand
In Yeats time and now, the Irish populace may have their ARSE's Hanging OUT OF Their trousers, but so what, unlike the English, they KNEW a ting or two about the VIRGIN BIRTH AND come to dat, the immortality of the soul.
Yeats and other anlgo-Irish poets were part PART OF A PROTESTANT elite MAROONED IN a sea OF MUTINOUS PAPists, in a Spectacularly IMPOVERISHED Island
As Seamus Heany inferred, Yeats and others like him, even Beckett, were ONE OF A LONG LINE OF ANglo -IRISH ECCENTRICS
Source Terry Eagleton
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