Modernism in Poetry (1865 - 1939)

W. B. Yeats (1865 – 1939)

˝The Second Coming˝ (1919)

 The second coming  the apocalypse, end of the world, all people will be smitten, good
people will rise, share happiness in heaven
 First stanza  almost like a modernist manifesto, world is falling apart, no order, everything
becomes evil and tainted, similar to Marlow who has empathy but doesn’t do anything
 The world is in a bad place in a way
 ‘surely some revelation is at hand’
 He’s referring to the Sphinx, it’s come to life, moving
 It’s a kind of a monster, defeating her by knowing the answer, but the modernist man does
not know the answer
 The entire humanity is in danger
 ‘The darkness drops again...’  biblical references, don’t really match what occurs according
to the Bible
 No saviour will be born in Bethlehem, but a beast
 The future is uncertain, but it’s certainly bad
 Very pessimistic poem, questions the biblical truths
 We cannot be saved

˝Easter˝ (1916)

 1916 Easter Uprising in Dublin

 1921/2 Formation of Irish Free State; Northern Ireland (Ulster) remains part of Great Britain
 1937 Ireland (Republic of Ireland)
 Terrible beauty  beautiful idea, but terrible outcome
 Very patriotic poem
 He doubts the need for violence, but admits it’s beautiful and noble that these people
actually have done something meaningful and beautiful
 ‘wherever green is worn’ people will remember the sacrifices of the rebels of 1916

˝Sailing to Byzantium˝

 Byzantium: an anctient Greek city  Constantinople (Romans)  Istanbul, Turkey

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˝Leda and the Swan˝

 Violence will always beget more violence

  Violence is a permanent...

T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

 US – born, moved to Britain in 1914
 Complex poetry
 Irony achieved by sudden shift from the formal into colloquial language
 Allusions to objects/ideas that sharply contrast with those expressed by the surface meaning
of the poem
 ˝The Metaphysical Poets˝ 1921
 ‘Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity,
playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results.’

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˝Tradition and the individual talent˝ (1919)

 Cannot be inherited, but obtained by great labour

 ‘The whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature
of his own country has a simultaneous existence’
 ‘No poet... has his complete meaning alone. ...his appreciation is the appreciation of his
relation to the dead poets and artists.’
 ‘Art never improves’ – it is always good, no need to become ‘better’ (as opposed to Woolf!)
 ‘But ... the material of art is never quite the same’ – change in complexity, refinement,
depends on social situation...
 The analogy of the catalyst  ‘the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in
him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates

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˝The Hollow Men˝

 Eyes signal life, as opposed to death

 All the kingdoms he is mentioning

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