15.2. Poetry of the xXth century. Yeats. Elliot.

As for the English Poetry of the XXth century, a most prominent poet to be mentioned here is William Buttler Yeats. Born near Dublin of a cultured Irish family Yeats was educated in London but returned to Ireland in 1880 and soon afterwards he began his literary career. recognition came quickly. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Like so many of his contemporaries, Yeats was sharply conscious of the spiritual emptiness of his age and his whole artistic career is best seen as an attempt, at first to escape from pitiful materialism which he found everywhere, and later to formulate a new positive ideal which would supply his spiritual needs. His early works have something of the melancholy pictures. A believer in magic and similar arts Yeats sought to escape into the land of the “faery” and looked for his themes in Irish legend and the simple, elemental impulses of Man’s primitive nature. The best remedy for the emptiness of the present seemed to lie in a return to the simplicity of the past. To this period belong his narrative poem “The Wanderings of Oisin”, which first established his reputation “Poems”, “The Wind among the Reeds”, and “The Shadowy Waters” and it was in these early days that he wrote many of the lyrics, whose simplicity of style and melodic beauty have found them a place in numerous collections of modern verse. Probably the best-known of them is “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”:

“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree

And a small cabin build there, of clay

And wattles made nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade”.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings”.

I will arise and go now, for always, night and day

I hear lake-water lapping with low sounds by the shore

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Between 1900 and 1910 much of Yeat’s time was devoted to the drama and philosophical and literary essays but such poetry as was produced during this period shows a gradual movement away from the escapism of his early work, and a steadily growing courage in grasping the nettle of contemporary reality. The increasing realism of this period is clearly seen in “The Green Helmet and other Poems” and “Responsibilities” which strike a more personal note. It was however, the impact of the 1914-1918 war, and even more of the Irish troubles of 1916, which brought him face to face with the need to grapple with the realities of life. his mystical and philosophical studies and his excursions into spiritualism led to the publication of a new philosophical system, and much of the poetry of this period was devoted to the explaining of his theories, which are most fully stated in his prose work “A Vision”. The peak of his achievement is reached in “The Tower” and ‘The Winding Stair and Other Poems”, in which he handles philosophical themes with a compact precision of style and a great mastery of rhythm and language. He continued to write with undiminished vigour until his death, and to his last period belong “Tthe Crazy”. Jane poems, some of which had appeared in “The Tower” and ‘The Winding Stair”. In them his philosophy, hidden beneath a mask of childlike simplicity, is put into the mouths of such characters as “The Fool”.

It is no exaggeration to describe Yeats as one of the most difficult of modern poets. His attempt to formulate a philosophical system which could replace the scientific Materialism of his age underlines most of his later verse. His trust was in the imagination and intuition of man rather than in scientific reasoning, and his attempt was to reach back, through the study of Irish folklore and legend, to primitive impulses of human life. The natural man (the peasant or the fool) he felt to be more in contact with these primary forces than the intellectual man of the world; and this idea and his great belief in passion, led in his later work to a constant assertion of the importance of the human individuality. An ideal type of being was the “Solitary Soul”, above the crude world of politics and action. Yeats believed in fairies, magic, and other forms of superstition, and his later thought was much influenced by his study of Indian and other mystical philosophies and the excursions into spiritualism, which became more frequent after his marriage, in 1916, to medium.

Thomas Stearns Eliot is the master of modernism in poetry. He was born in the USA and moved to England in 1915. In 1948 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. he began his literary career in England, in 1915 he published “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”), “Portarit of a Lady”, “preludes”, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”).

In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” he ironically depicts a mean man’s pretensions on sincere feeling. The poem represents the stream of so consciousness of the lyrical hero. Alfred Prufock realizes that his feelings are ridiculous and absurd. The poem ends with a gloomy conclusion of dream vainness.

Urban theme in “Rhapsody on a Windy Night’ is marked with deep pessimism. Town life is represented as a dreadful realm of fatal power as a mad existence.

Eliot’s poems are cold and they urge to transmit abovepersonal people’s feelings. Contrary to romanticists and realists Eliot in his Verse didn’t liberate emotions but ran away from them. In romanticists and realists tried to reveal the unique individuality of a human being, Eliot was no image of individual personality. Eliot rejected emotional and individual conception of life.

Lecture 16.

An outline of English literature in the second half of the XXth century.

In the 50-s in English literature there appeared a literary movement – “angry young men”. The writers who are called angry young men don’t form any united artistic group. They don’t depend on each other but nevertheless there are common features in their works. Literature of the “angrys” is distinguished with a powerful emotional beam of the society and in the same time it is deprived of any positive program. Hopes for the essential changes in afterwar reality were replaced with disillusions and despair of angry young men whose lives proved to be dull and uninteresting, full of dissatisfaction and fear of nuclear war.

The “angry young people” literature reflects the spirits of a whole generation of the young. Their aimless existence caused anger and protest against the bourgious laws and morals.

In the novel of Kingsley Amis “Luky Jim” there formed the basic features of the “angry” prose: the main character is a young man, intelligent, whose adventures are shown in comic situations. Jim works at a provincial university. This teacher feels that he is needed by none, his work is interesting to nobody. This gave rise to his discontenet with everything who sees around. The university seems to be a cemetery to him, scholars seem to be monstrous. He can hardly control himself in the presence of the professor who caused disgust and so on.

A very important figure of the literature of the 2^nd half of the XXth century is Samuel Becket. He is very popular, famous at least fashionable. he was born in Ireland but has spent most of his adult life in France and has written many of his works in French before translating them into English as a young man. He was s friend of James Joyce and like him is fascinated by words; but unlike Joyce he sees language as building a wall between human beings which stops them communicating. His play “Waiting for Godot” is one of the most influential work in English written this century. It takes away the surface detail from the situations it presents and shows their real nature; in the words of one critic, “it describes the essence of the human condition”. The play shows two tramps, Vladimir and estragon, who are waiting for the arrival of the mysterious Godot to give their lives some purpose and direction. But Godot does not come, and may never exist. The play shows the pain and fear as well as the humour of the two men as they despairingly. Try to use reason and argument to help them in a situation. Reason is not enough. Of the two, Estragon is more determined that they should wait for Godot as they have been told to do:

Vladimir: What are you suggesting? That we’ve come to the wrong place.

Estragon: He should be there.

Vladimir: He didn’t say for sure he’d come.

Estragon: And if he doesn’t come?

Vladimir: We’ll come back tomorrow.

Estragon: And then the day after tomorrow.

Vladimir: Possibly.

Estragon: And so on.

Vladimir: The point is.

Estragon: Until he comes.

Vladimir: You’re merciless.

“Endgame” also shows characters in a closed situation which they continually fight against. As in “Waiting for Godot”, the surface details are cut to the bare essentials; it is set in no particular place, at no particular time, and the characters play games with words which they intend only to pass the time but which take on a meaning they ahd not thought of. “Krapp’s Last Tape” has only one character, an old sitting in a closed room with a tape recorder, playing the tapes he made at earlier points in his life and reflecting on the thoughts and impressions he had had as a younger man and the difference in his thoughts and feelings now. In “Happy Days” the main character is a woman, Winnie. The characters in Beckett’s earlier, plays were despairing and lost, fighting against the emptiness of their lives and their loss of hope: Winnie is resigned to her fate with a cheerfulness that is almost more frightening than their despair. The title of the play holds a bitter humour: she is determined to be happy, because she will not face the terrible things that are happening to he. Her defence is that she will not allow herself to care and for this reason, this has been described as Beckett’s most despairing play.

Beckett is interested in those characters who refuse not only love but any real relationship with anyone else; they are lost and unhappy, and have only the pleasure of language left. Beckett’s language is very carefully used, and there is much more humour in his play than the despair of the themes might suggest.

Samuel Beckett is a famous example of the twentieth century English drama, where we can see the individual’s search for identity in an unfriendly outside world, and the difficulty and fear of communicating with other individuals.

Edward Bond is less concerned the individual search for identity and more with the results of right and wrong that they have made for themselves. His plays are on a heroic scale, with the theme that the world is badly organized and must be changed. In his plays man’s self-destructiveness is often made clear in his violent actions.

“Narrow Road to Deep North” set in an ancient Japap, shows how a baby left to die becomes a cruel ruler , and asks whether the poet who saw the child and did nothing is responsible for all the pain and suffering that the ruler caused. The play also considers the effect of colonialism, both on those who rule and those who are ruled.

“Lear” is Bond’s account of Shakespeare’s tragedy “King Lear” in which Lear’s good daughter, Cordelia, is made evil and dishonest by achieving the power she set out to destroy. “Bingo” shows Shakespeare himself as an ill and dying man, returned to his home in the country after his success in London. there is a powerful comparison between Shakespeare the great artist and Shakespeare the man, who is a failure as a husband and a father and agrees to actions by the authorities that will harm ordinary peoples.

“The Fool” is also about the life of an English poet; it is based on the story of John Clare, a poet in the eighteenth century who was kept in prison as a madman for many years. The play explores the mysterious relationship between pain of the mind and heart, and true poetic vision. This is a theme also explored in “The Woman”, in which the main character gains new knowledge and understanding through great pain and suffering. Bond’s world is often a cruel and bitter one, although there are touches of humour; but many things that have happened in the XXth century are cruel and bitter, and Bond’s work like that of the other dramatists can be said to reflect the world in which we all live.