Poetry Newsletter November 24th 2020

 W.B. YEATS

Irish Blue Shirts or in Irish the Na Léinte Gorma

A quasi Fascist movement with a disturbingly familiar salute.

Here is the quote I was thinking about, in which Yeats explains why he chose  Byzantium as his destination.

"I am trying to write about the state of my soul, for it is right for an old man to make his soul, and some of my thoughts about that subject I have put into a poem called ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. When Irishmen were illuminating the Book of Kells, and making the jeweled croziers in the National Museum, Byzantium was the centre of European civilization and the source of its spiritual philosophy, so I symbolize the search for the spiritual life by a journey to that city."

William Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature.  A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, he helped  establish  the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served as an Irish Senator for two terms and was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival.

He was born in Dublin and educated there and in London. He spent childhood holidays in County Sligo and studied poetry from an early age when he became fascinated by Irish legends and folk stories and by the occult. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the 20th century.

In the earlier part of his life, Yeats was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Because of the escalating tension of the political scene, Yeats distanced himself from the core political activism in the midst of the Easter Rising, not publishing the poetry inspired by the events of 1916 until 1920. He became a member of the Irish Senate, the Upper House of the Irish Parliament which was established by British law and consisted of a mixture of Irish peers and government appointees. The Senate convened in 1921 but was boycotted by Irish nationalists and so never became fully operational. It was formally abolished with the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922.

In the 1930s he became fascinated by The Army Comrades Association (ACA), later the National Guard, then Young Ireland and finally League of Youth, but better known by the nickname The Blueshirts  or in Irish, the  Na Léinte Gorma. This  was a quasi- fascist organisation in the Irish Free State in the early 1930s.

After the Blueshirt movement began to falter in Ireland, he distanced himself from his previous views, while continuing to lean towards fascism and nationalism. Like Pound and Eliot he was anti-Semitic. See below for a link to a “warts and all” article on Yeats.  

https://www.headstuff.org/culture/literature/yeats-and-fascism/

His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889. From 1900, Yeats largely renounced the transcendental and occult beliefs of his youth. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

 

YEATS AND POTENCY

His curious medical procedure, the Steinach operation, was carried out by Norman Haire when Yeats was 69. Steinach was a physiologist, hormone researcher and biology professor who became the Director of Vienna’s Biological Institute of the Academy of Sciences in 1912. He developed the "Steinach operation," or "Steinach vasoligature," the goals of which were to reduce fatigue and the consequences of aging and to increase overall vigour and sexual potency in men.

It consisted of a half (unilateral) vasectomy, which Steinach theorised would shift the balance from sperm production toward increased hormone production in the affected testicle.

Norman Haire was an Australian medical practitioner and sexologist described as "the most prominent sexologist in Britain between the wars.” Haire became rich and famous on the crest of an obsession with rejuvenation and the restoration of sexual potency.

While men were at the forefront of the craze, some women had their ovaries irradiated in the hope of achieving renewed erotic energy.

Until the medical claims were refuted, optimistic patients paid high fees to revitalise their sex lives and defer physical and mental decline. Yeats believed that he was revitalised by the operation and wrote of “entering a second puberty” of heightened erotic energy. Which only serves to prove that you can be a lyrical poet of extraordinary skill and power and a gullible fool.

Below is a curiously serendipitous article from the Irish Times about Yeats and his wife George.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/wb-yeats-the-spanish-flu-and-an-experiment-in-quarantine-1.4412485

 

Here is Pangur Ban, the poem about the cat I mentioned, translated from the Irish by Seamus Heaney

Pangur Bán and I at work,

Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:

His whole instinct is to hunt,

Mine to free the meaning pent.

 

More than loud acclaim, I love

Books, silence, thought, my alcove.

Happy for me, Pangur Bán

Child-plays round some mouse’s den.

 

Truth to tell, just being here,

Housed alone, housed together,

Adds up to its own reward:

Concentration, stealthy art.

 

Next thing an unwary mouse

Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.

Next thing lines that held and held

Meaning back begin to yield.

 

All the while, his round bright eye

Fixes on the wall, while I

Focus my less piercing gaze

On the challenge of the page.

 

With his unsheathed, perfect nails

Pangur springs, exults and kills.

When the longed-for, difficult

Answers come, I too exult.

 

So it goes. To each his own.

No vying. No vexation.

Taking pleasure, taking pains,

Kindred spirits, veterans.

 

Day and night, soft purr, soft pad,

Pangur Bán has learned his trade.

Day and night, my own hard work

Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.

 

Below is a link to Seamus Heaney’s translator’s notes. 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/145824/translator39s-notes-pangur-bn-by-anonymous

 

That will suffice as our extra poem.

 

Finally

Paul is providing tomorrow’s poem. I met the deadline for the U3A Christmas Newsletter.

I hope everyone thrives. Best wishes, Elizabeth.