Davies - Summary, Analysis and Questions and Answers AnalysisĪlong with his piece on the death of Sigmund Freud, Auden’s tribute to the poet William Butler Yeats is a most memorable elegy on the death of a public figure. Despite “human unsuccess,” the poet can sing out through the “curse” and “distress.” Thus one’s poetry is a “healing fountain” that, although life is a “prison,” can “teach the free man how to praise” life anyway. Meanwhile, “the dogs of Europe bark” and humans continue their “intellectual disgrace.” But the poet is to “follow right / To the bottom of the night,” despite the dark side of humanity somehow persuading others to rejoice in existence. In the third, final section of the poem, the poet asks the Earth to receive Yeats as “an honoured guest.” The body, “emptied of its poetry,” lies there. Poetry survives and gives voice to survival in a space of isolation. In the second section of the poem, Yeats is called “silly like us.” It was “Mad Ireland” that caused Yeats the suffering he turned into poetry. While the rest of civilization moves on, “a few thousand” will remember the day of his death as special. He lives through his poetry, scattered among cities and unfamiliar readers and critics, who modify his life and poetry through their own understandings. Yet, for Yeats himself, mind and body failed, leaving no one to appreciate his life but his admirers. While nature followed its course elsewhere, mourners kept his poems alive without letting the poet’s death interfere. The thermometer and other instruments told us the day he died “was a dark cold day.” William Butler Yeats died in winter: the brooks were frozen, airports were all but empty, and statues were covered in snow. And the only way a poet could honour the dead, was to write an elegiac poem. For Auden, while the memory was to do with the past, it took place in the present. Yeats was such that for his admirers, it crossed all borders of nations. The lament in the poem is not just directed to the death of Yeats but also towards a world that is threatened by its own destructive potential. The poem focuses on the poetic afterlife and also the function of poetry as an art to unify the collective minds of the readers in a world crippled with modern technology and warfare. Yeats and is written in a tributary form, with a reflection on the foreshadowing events of World War II. The poem is based on the great modern poet W.B. It is a 63-lines poem that is divided into three sections. Shelley and Matthew Arnold in the 19th century. This form is a very ancient literary tradition that began with Theocritus and Moschus, defined by Virgil, developed and enriched by the great Renaissance poets and popularly reinvented by P.B.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |