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- O'Leary told Yeats to write about real places in Ireland
- Yeats went to Sligo in his youth, his mother's home town
- Poem was written before modernism - Romatic period still lingers in this poem
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Yeats speaks of O'Leary who was one of his heroes, and an Irish Republican - he taught Yeats that revolution could be born of art
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Yeats talks of the Irish people with disgust - they are scrooge like figures
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This poem was written in response to what Yeats saw as the materialistic and cynical ideals of the Irish people
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The 1913 Lockout and the lack of support for the Irish lower class from the Irish middle class
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1913 is when Irish middle class wouldn't support Irish lower class in their strike, byy not prviding the better working conditions and wages they asked for
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- Yeats is wondering about life after death and his confusion is reflected in the vagueness of the poem
- Biblical alusions to the Bible - Revelations 21:1
- Undermines the belief that heaven is synonymous with peace
- An epiphany about an event that happened in Yeats' past - he realises that what happened was not his fault
- Inspired by strange sky patterns
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Coole is where Yeats' friend Lady Gregory lived and where he visited often
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Yeats references the park in another poem 'Coole Park, 1929', where the park is described as a symbol for the revival of Irish literature
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Term
| An Irish Airman Foresees his Death |
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Definition
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Written in dedication to Lady Gregory's son, Major Robert Gregory, who died in WW1
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Gregory lived in the small town Kiltartan, which is referenced in the poem
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Gregory volunteered to go to war for the English
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Often interpreted as being about Yeats' relationship with Maude Gonne
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Often interpreted as being about how events/people are interlinked whilst remaining seperate entities
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It is thought that the cat in the poem may have been Maude Gonne's cat
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Speaks of the non-materialistic view of nature of contemporary Ireland
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Connemara is a real place - O'Leary told Yeats to write about real Irish places...
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Scrutinises what it means to be Irish and exposes Yeats 'dishappiness with the Irish after the failed Easter 1916 uprising
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Talking about Maude Gonne, Yeats' love
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Published just after Yeats' proposal to Maude Gonne
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John MacBride was already dead from Easter uprising
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Yeats is older - 52 - he is reflecting upon his life with Maude
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About the Easter uprising
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References MacBride who was one of the startes of the uprising, and who Yeats hated for mistreating Maude Gonne
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Pearse is also an initiator of the uprising - he is a learned man, who Yeats considers to compare to greek philosophers
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MacDonagh also an initiator and an Irish writer
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Con Markiewitz - an initiator & Yeats' childhood friend
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Written at a time of fundamental change - there was a contraction of the English gyre and the Irish gyre was starting to expand
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Modernist writers were scared that anarchy would take over the world
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Yeats was married to a spiritualist writer at this point
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Yeats was dead before WW2 - a prediction?
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Byzantium was an Ancient Greek city - it was the biggest city in the world and was the centre of arts and culture
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Yeats was questioning the idea of death and the afterlife in the time he wrote this poem - old age
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Through the poem, Yeats is undergoing a metaphorical search for artistic perfection
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Yeats puts more emphasis on the journey than the arrival- he is metaphorically undergoing this journey now in old age?
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An ancient myth
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The creation of Helen of Troy
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The swan is Zeus in disguise - therefore the child born of it will be half immortal - a positive act after all
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About a swan raping a woman
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Symbollic of England 'raping' Ireland
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About Maude Gonne when she's little
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Yeats used to be a school inspector
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Yeats is visiting a Montessori school
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Disagrees with the way children are taught in his society - no appreciation for the arts, only interested in results
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Written in the form of a memory - rambling and incoherent as that is what a memory is
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Yeats' childhood friends
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The poem is a memory
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Con is an Irish nationalist now and was one of the initiators of the Easter rising
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Con was sentenced to death but wasn't killed because of public outcry due to her being a woman
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Eva was a lesbian suffragette who Yeats wanted to propose to
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References Yeats questioning his role in the Easter rising
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Yeats communicating with himself via poetry - asking himself what he's done and life and considering if it was good
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Questions if he should have done the things he did in life, e.g. have an affair with a mentally unstable woman
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