“Too long a sacrifice/Can make a stone of the heart,” Yeats claims in the final stanza, lamenting the fixation on a single cause that has hardened the hearts of the martyrs (“Easter, 1916,” lines 57-58). Because he was a landlord dependent on rents, he remained suspicious of Charles Stewart Parnell’s vision of Home Rule, or self-government, for Ireland, especially following the Land War of 1879-82, which helped transfer power from the Protestant ascendancy to former tenant farmers. Events in History at the Time of the Poems. Unlike Yeats, who raises the fallen heroes into the immortality of art, O’Casey questions the motives of the rebels and their rhetoric of blood sacrifice. Ed. Scholars have often puzzled over his reaction, viewing it as an anomaly in the poet’s generally right-wing politics, but Yeats consistently took issue with the acquisitive mentality of the Catholic middle classes and not with the lower, working classes, for whom he could occasionally express sympathy. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. It is divided into two…, Sources _____. Ed. At the end, Yeats relinquishes his rhetorical questions and throws up his hands in despair, acknowledging that the heroic ghosts should not be reawakened: “let them be, they’re dead and gone,/They’re with O’Leary in the grave” (“September 1913,” lines 31-32). The latter refers to the period of unrest after the art collector Hugh Lane offered his paintings to the Dublin Municipal Corporation. Before marching out to join the Rising, Thomas MacDonagh taught his last class, on Jane Austen, the topic revealing that he did not reject English influence, but rather the British imperial system, which denied freedom to its subjects. The structure of the poem is in an alignment of the rhyming scheme 'ABAB'; this allows a reflection of the rigid state of Ireland at this time. in Ireland/(On reading much of the correspondence against the Art Gallery).” While the poem was overtly written to deride the middle classes for refusing to give financial support to Hugh Lane’s proposed art gallery, Yeats may also be calling into question the behavior of the middle class towards the working class during the labor strike and lockout of 1913. (function(d, t) { 2 vok. The death rate, 44 in every thousand, exceeded that of any major European city, and was even worse tha… London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977. Cathleen ni Houlihan. . var r = d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0]; The bill became law in September 1914, but its implementation was suspended for the duration of World War I. . DIED: 1939, Roquebrune, France And we asked ourselves why our Willie Yeats should feel himself called upon to denounce his own class; millers and shipowners on one side, and on the other a portrait-painter of distinction. In the second stanza, Yeats contrasts the present greed of the middle classes with the self-sacrificial mentality of heroes of the past, whose names “stilled” his “childish play,” and who “have gone about the world like wind,” an image of energetic and wasteful expenditure that contrasts sharply with the pinched, sterile asceticism of the middle classes (“September 1913,” lines 10-11). Both socialist and nationalist revolutionary, James Connolly (1868–1916) was born to an Irish immigrant family in Edinburgh, Scotland…, “Rothschild’s Fiddle” and “The Lady with the Dog”, “Introduction to the History of the Petty Kings”, “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/september-1913-and-easter-1916. Various disputes related to the revival, along with the 1913 labor strike, increased his sense of alienation and removed him from Irish politics for a time. “September 1913” received indirect praise as part of the volume Responsibilities (1914). ?” (“September 1913,” lines 17-19). Ed. Meanwhile, the Irish Volunteers drilled with fake guns, scheduling “exercises” for Easter Sunday 1916 that were actually a cover for revolutionary activity, which the Military Council of the IRB had been planning for a year. “Constance Markievicz: The Countess of Irish Freedom.” The Wild Geese Today-Erin’s Far Flung Exiles. Yet they were of a different kindThe names that stilled your childish play,They have gone about the world like wind,But little time had they to prayFor whom the hangman’s rope was spun,And what, God help us, could they save:Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,It’s with O’Leary in the grave. Your email address will not be published. In “September 1913,” the poet mocks the acquisitive mentality of the Catholic middle classes, portraying them as incapable of rising to revolutionary heroism, in contrast to the nationalist martyrs of the past. Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, All-Ireland Senior Football Championship 1913, All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship 1913, "Column: 'A tragedy of the very poor' – Remembering the 1913 Church Street disaster", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1913_in_Ireland&oldid=961787847, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 7 July – the Home Rule Bill is once again carried in the. Sixty-four rebels, more than 100 British troops, and over 200 civilians were killed, while another 2,614 were wounded (Rees, p. 207). Larkin supported Lane’s gallery—likely to annoy Murphy—and while Murphy’s newspapers declared that the proposal was too expensive and would take money away from the poor, Yeats and Larkin were quick to point out that Murphy had no altruistic tendencies, as evidenced by his war with the trade unionists. Held in Dublin, his funeral drew 200,000 mourners. 3 September – a meeting of 400 employers with. Richard J. Finneran. Hyde led successful campaigns to establish St. Patrick’s Day as a national holiday and to force the post office to accept letters and parcels in the Irish Gaelic language. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. . GAR Media. To prevent further loss of life, Pearse and Connolly surrendered, and the rising, which lasted only one week, was over. Roger Casement, who had visited Germany in an attempt to rouse support for the Irish insurrection, planned to return to Ireland to warn the Military Council against pursuing any revolutionary activities, but when he was smuggled into County Kerry by a German submarine on April 20, he was immediately arrested. Overview Jeffares, A. Norman. Five years earlier, in 1908, the labor leaders James Connolly and Jim Larkin had organized the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU). In many of his poems, Yeats laments the loss of the Irish aristocracy, showing himself to be nostalgic for the “custom and ceremony” of a leisurely, gracious life, where one can avoid the crass utilitarianism of the marketplace and find time to delight in aesthetic pursuits. John P. Frayne and Colton Johnson. “Midnight” is part of Seamus Heaney’s third collection, Wintering Out, which was published in 1972, about three years after the outbreak of c…, THE LITERARY WORK Inventing Ireland. In the first stanza, Yeats recalls encounters with casual acquaintances on the streets of Dublin, whom he would pass “with a nod of the head/Or polite meaningless words,” never suspecting that these ordinary people would later be transformed into the martyrs of the Easter Rising (Yeats, “Easter, 1916,” Collected Poems, lines 5-6). As for Yeats, few questioned his nationalism after seeing his play Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), in which an old woman who symbolizes Ireland calls men into battle against England, promising them eternal glory and the liberation of their country if they sacrifice their lives. Kiberd, Declan. In October 1913, Yeats witnessed crowds attempting to blockade the ports and railway stations to keep workers from sending their children to England. Prev Article Next Article. Pound, Ezra. World Literature and Its Times: Profiles of Notable Literary Works and the Historic Events That Influenced Them. Torn between the contemplative life of mysticism and the active life of politics, he continually oscillated between extremes. Wolfe Tone (1763-98) founded the United Irishmen and petitioned the French for military support; Robert Emmet (1778-1803) led a thwarted revolt in 1803 and was hung for high treason. The poem is about Yeats’ hatred towards the middle classes, and has a resentful and bitter tone throughout. His play The Countess Cath-leen (1892) helped launch the Irish National Theatre in 1899—later called the Abbey Theatre—while his early poems, in collections such as The Rose (1893) and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), sought to awaken an interest in Celtic legendary material. Yeats wonders when their sacrifices will suffice, but he leaves that question up to Heaven; instead, the poet’s part is “to murmur name upon name,/As a mother names her child/When sleep at last has come/On limbs that had run wild” (“Easter, 1916,” lines 60-64). The “wild geese” were Irishmen who served in the armies of France, Spain, and Austria, due to the Penal Laws, or anti-Catholic measures, passed after 1691. She told the court martial at her trial, “I did what was right and I stand by it” (Gar Media). The British shipped most of these prisoners off to detention camps in North Wales, which, ironically, became the training ground for new nationalists and new members of the IRB. A. Norman Jeffares. © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. 1 September – protest by locked-out workers lead to serious riots in Dublin. It was voted just outside the top ten of Ireland’s favourite poems by readers of the Irish Times in 1999. Yeats and Larkin also shared a common enemy in Murphy, who played a prominent role in opposing Sir Hugh Lane’s proposed art gallery, a project important to Yeats and Lady Gregory. 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