LOOKING AT YEATS'S TOWER
In William Butler Yeats we see a poet who is surprisingly refreshing, modern, controversial, inspiring even;
He reportedly heard voices throughout his child hood, and one day,
vision-like, he was told ???Hammer your thoughts into unity.??? That
motto is a great summation of who we know Yeats to be. His young
poetry is an apprentice-like devotion to lyric poetry, where the
greatest influences were Spencer, Milton, and Blake. The poems often
contemplated upon beauty, form and his unrequited loves, most notably
Maud Gonne. Moreover, until Yeats there was an unspoken rule: to
be a considered a great lyric poet, you had to skillfully write an
exceptionally long poem, like The Faerie Queen or Paradise
Lost. Surpassingly, Yeats reinvents himself and his lyric
poetry. He produced one long poem, The Wanderings of Oisin in 1889; the rest of his work is a deliberate composition and
ordering of many smaller poems, it is the difference between one
beautifully sculpted Beatles B-side and one Freebird; the effect is
larger than the sum of its parts.
In The Tower, we have one of the finest examples--it
is the beginning of the poet's best years, and coincides with his
long-delayed requited love, and a long-delayed return to Ireland, where
he buys the dilapidated Castle Ballylee, restores it, makes it his
home, and in this writers opinion, the ideal symbol of how he has
crafted his life with his own hands. Moreover, The Tower
shows readers a new Yeats; ???gone is his preoccupation with youth and
physical beauty. He turns to the enrichment of the soul and to
his own immortality, as in the opening poem ???Sailing to Byzantium??? 1 Upon moving to the newly rechristened Thoor
Ballylee, the referent of the volumes title, Yeats notes, it was ???a
setting for my old age, a place to influence lawless youth. 2???
The tower is a symbol that figures prominently into
any discussion that we could have about Yeats, so lets be a touch
absurd for a second, just for the sake of imagination: Looking at
Yeats life as a whole, the period marked by Thoor Ballylee sticks out
exactly like a tower, glaringly, the most eye-riviting spot on the
horizon. On that horizon that represents Yeats life, I want to
look around it, and see what kind of life he had, what makes this spot
so glaring. Therefor we will first, talk about the events of
Yeats life leading up to this period. Then when I get to the
tower, I want to see what the tower itself looks like, and we will
discuss Thoor Ballylee and Yeats life in that area. Then, the
long road completed, I want to see what it is like inside the tower, so
we will conclude with a discussion of Yeats???s collection of poetry, The
Tower.
TOWER IN THE DISTANCE
In reading any writer, its a given that a knowledge
of their life history, attitudes and beliefs, and context within the
landscapes of literature will help the reader to digest and understand
the writer???s product. In reading Yeats, personal knowledge
becomes more than preferable, it becomes necessary. In an
especially frank letter to McGreevy, her wife comments: ???there???s
nothing in his verse worth preserving but the personal 3??? Most importantly, we must consider the complexity of
Yeats???s personal life and the fact the his poetry dramatizes
this. ???There is perpetual self dramatization, an oscillation
between opposing aspects of personality, real or imaged; and this, a
stumbling block to many readers as evidence of Yeats??? ???insincerity??? 4??? In The Tower, we don???t see the single minded
aspirations of a young writer, but a turn to the complex and diverging
currents of a man ???going over the hill???, which makes for a poet
reaching his most elevated peak--he is old enough to recognize that he
is pulled separately by the forces in his life and begin to account for
them all with the scope of experience.
Of Yeats???s special experiential style, Thomas Rice
Henn observed, ???It grows out of experience, but does not, and cannot
summarize experience.??? The Tower is only 104 pages, yet it
reflects upon a great variety of topics: ???his life as husband, father,
senator of the Irish Free State, Nobel Prize winner, and celebrated
poet 5. Yet each of those topics become more
complicated still. As we know, Yeats had a sordid love life until
this period, we also know that he is trying to survive as a poet in a
difficult place in a difficult time. When writing in his younger
years, Yeats pays homage to the English literary tradition, but now he
returns to Ireland. While his love of Ireland, its people, and
its scenes is great, Yeats also returns to lead it in its own literary and political independence.
In the years preceding the release of The Tower,
important dates seemed to be crammed more fully than would fit in a
common chronology. Concerning women, "1896 was perhaps the most fateful of all years, for Yeats met Lady
Gregory, and began the long association with Coole [Park] . . . Lady
Gregory even asked Maud Gonne, bluntly, whether she would ???marry Willie
Yeats???. The conflict of women for the poet had begun 6..??? Relationships with both women are heartbreaking to hear. In 1899,
Yeats visited and again proposed to Maud Gonne 7, the
dominant figure of unrequited love which obsesses Yeats???s early poetry.
1903 saw the marriage of John MacBride to Maud Gonne, 1905 saw their
separation 8, and in 1916 the Easter Rising flared and
failed; sixteen men were executed, including MacBride. In the summer of
the next year, Yeats proposed unsuccessfully to Gonne???s daughter,
Iseult 9. After meeting the widowed Lady Gregory,
Yeats describes their ???miserable love affair???, yet they continue to
collaborate on a number of works, including recording the unique local
speech and folklore 10. They visit Italy in 1907 and
Yeats first sees the pictures and mosaics which show up so strongly in
???Sailing To Byzantium??? 11. In 1915, Lady
Gregory???s nephew Hugh Lane drowned when the Lusitania was torpedoed,
and in 1918, her only son, Irish Airman Major Robert Gregory was shot
down over Italy. But Yeats was not destined
to remain unrequited; in 1909 he met his future wife Bertha ???Georgie???
Hyde-Lees and they were wed in 1917 12.
Happily married, Yeats buys the dilapidated Castle
Ballylee in the 1917 and renames it Thoor Ballylee. Home is where
the heart is, and we see in this period, and in The Tower, that Yeats
heart passionately resided in Ireland. Yeats was raised in Sligo
town, ???in a cup of the hills, where a short but broad river takes the
waters of Lough Gill into the Atlantic. As you stand facing the
sea, there are two mountains: Knocknarea on the left hand . . .said to
be Queen Maeve???s grave. On the right, far beyond the town and
river, a great shoulder of mountain drops to the plain. . .This is Ben
Bulben.??? It is this picturesque scene where Yeats opened his
life, and on top of Ben Bulben he eternally rests. 13
To experience such Idyllic scenes, I believe, would
make superstitious visions, nightmares, and legends all the more
vivid. ???In every district there were many superstitions, with a
curiously ambivalent attitude to them on the part of country-folk and
gentry alike. The early Christian missionaries had taken over
many of the features of the Elder Faiths of the locality. 14??? This
explains multiple things about Yeats spiritual side. We not only
see the rich superstition and legend which Yeats grew up with, but we
also see how that legend was picked over, retrofitted with new legend
and symbolism. It should come as no surprise then that Yeats
continued the practice later in life: absorbing one mystical belief,
exchanging it with more of the occult, supplementing--Spiritually, he
was ???hammering his thoughts into unity???, so to speak.
While Yeats poetry gives vividness to the landscape and
its locals, by using local legend and language, it is always with the
backdrop of class relations: sometimes dramatically obvious, at other
times unspoken but looming. Yeats lineage accurately
displays Ireland???s class division: ???In and about Sligo there were
relatives of the Yeats family; and farther south, in Mayo and Galway,
the ???half-legendary men,??? the ancestors whom he drew into his own
legend of great place. 15??? Concerning W.B.???s
childhood, Thomas Rice Henn describes the Yeats???s as ???middle-class???,
yet simultaneously notes: ???In this society there was (outside the big
cities) no middle class, and this was its fundamental weakness. . .
.The relations between Protestants and Catholics might have been
better, and memories of the Penal Laws were long 16.???
It is this mixture which creates Yeats???s, and also that which he seeks
to capture in verse.
When talking about class division in Ireland, Yeats
and others try to stress that those divided parts were actually mixing:
The upper class ???mixed with the peasantry more freely and with a
greater intimacy (especially in childhood) than would have been
possible in England 17.??? It is this mixture and its
effects which fascinate Yeats. On one hand, there is the appeal
of aristocratic culture, which ???before the First World War . . .seemed
to have given so much: pride of race, independence of thought, and a
certain integrity of political values.??? ???Lady Gregory and the
Gore-Booths had shown him the security that came from the wealth of the
great estates, and the life, leisured and cultured that seemed to make
that possible.??? It is this antebellum attitude, this longing for
the past, which dominates so much of The Tower.
On the other hand, there is a fascination with
Ireland???s attitudes and predicament as a whole. ???Standish O???Grady
could write bitterly of The Great Enchantment, that web of apathy in a
country with an alien government and an alien religion, subject at
every turn to patronage and the servility it brings, into which Ireland
had fallen. 18??? On this subject, the best summation of
Yeats???s interest comes from Yeats himself:
???But remember always that you are face to face with Ireland, its
tragedy, and its poverty and if you would express Ireland you must know
her to the heart in all her moods. You will be a far more
powerful mystic and poet and teacher because of this knowledge. . .
.You are face to face with the heterogeneous and the test of one???s
harmony is one???s power to absorb it and make it harmonious. . . .Absorb
Ireland and her tragedy and you will be the poet of a people, the poet
of a new insurrection. 19
Not surprisingly, Ireland could only take it so
long, and The Rebellion of 1916, and the Troubles that followed it, and
the Civil War evoke significant response for Yeats. He was
outspoken in his poetry and other literature, gave lectures and
eventually came to be a Senator for the newly born Irish Free
State. But at times Yeats feared for his safety 20 Additionally, at least some part of him was a guilty
conscience: ???I
count the links in the chain of responsibility, run them across my
fingers, and wonder if any link there is from my workshop.??? 21 While Yeats and his friends did not fight (pg.
17--Henn), he was surely right in the mix of it. At one point the
Yeats's were even holed up in Thoor Ballylee due to fighting, and in
Oct. 1922 they had to flee: the adjacent bridge was blown up, the river
was blocked, and the bottom floor of the castle was flooded. 22
IN FRONT OF THE TOWER
Thoor Ballylee from the riverbank
Thoor Ballylee was originally the Norman castle Islandmore, built by the de Burgo family.1 It dates to before 1585, when it was first mentioned in the Booke of Connaughte, a register of the Galway area in Ireland. The
castle passed through various families until it became attached to the
Coole estate in the mid-nineteenth century, by which time it had been
renamed Ballylee Castle.
Yeats
placed great importance on the idea that fate had brought him to
Ballylee; the tower was associated with mysticism and the legend of
Mary Hynes long before the poet knew of the estate.2 Mary Hynes was a renowned beauty, the Irish counterpart to Helen of Troy. Although she did not live in Ballylee Castle, she was allegedly from the surrounding countryside. Men
died on their way to visit her, but she was so handsome that many
thought that she was not of the world, but the ???sidhe,??? an Irish
underworld that often crossed over into real life. She
purportedly knew the answers and cures to all the evils of the world,
and it was for this knowledge as well as her beauty that men lost their
lives in fantastic ways on their journeys meet her.3
William Butler Yeats first saw the castle and heard of the legend in
1896, on his first visit to Lady Gregory???s estate, Coole Park.
Yeats??? love affair with Ballylee Castle and the surrounding area began that summer, when he found the one place on earth that made him feel most centered and alive. The tower would become a ???permanent symbol of my work,??? ???rooting???my theology in earth.???4 In
1917 he finally bought the property between the road and the river when
the land was redistributed away from the Coole estate. Yeats
paid the Congested District Board ???35 for the land, castle, and two
ruined cottages, after convincing the inhabitants that they would be
much happier living elsewhere.5
Cottage attached to west side of tower
However,
the purchase of the castle was contingent upon Yeats??? marriage, for he
could not live alone in the country, being almost blind and having a
tendency to easily become lonely.6 He
first offered for Maude Gonne???s adopted daughter, Iseult, then Olivia
Shakespear, and finally George Hyde-Lees, who accepted him.7 At this time, he also gave the estate its final name. A
few months after his marriage to George, he wrote in a letter to Olivia
Shakespear, ???What do you think of our address???Thoor Ballylee? Thoor is Irish for tower and it will keep people from suspecting us of modern gothic and a deer park. I think the harsh sound of ???Thoor??? amends the softness of the rest.???8
Thoor Ballylee was in George???s hands and money within weeks of her marriage to Yeats, even though she had yet to lay eyes on it.9 She had a practical and artistic eye and worked well with the local masons her husband had hired to restore the estate. The adjacent cottage was quickly refurbished and they took possession of it in 1919. The
castle received contributions from several enthusiasts; most of them
were Yeats??? friends, but George managed to hold everything in check. She began by making the first floor into a usable study for Yeats until the rest of the castle was inhabitable. From the first floor, he could watch the world pass by and see George move about the garden. As
he wrote to Olivia Shakespear, ???It is a great pleasure to live in a
place where George makes at every moment a fourteenth century picture.???10 This is easily imaginable, as the castle had no electricity and the nearest drinking well was half a mile away.11 Thoor Ballylee was a place of peace and purposeful living. Because
of this, when their first child was ready to be born, Ezra Pound urged
his friends to have their child at the castle, where the planets were
well-aligned.12
The tower, which was principally used as a summer home, was never completely restored. It
seemed fairly small from outside, but the large rooms measured
approximately thirty square-feet and the precipice of the tower was
surprisingly high.13 By
the time of Yeats' death, the cottages were finished with a large
walled garden off to the west, The shutters of the tower were painted
green, a compromise between Yeats??? red and George???s blue.14 The
cottages were attached to the tower by a porch, which led to Yeats'
favorite feature of the tower: it???s silent, winding staircase. This opened into the ground floor dining room. On the first floor was the living room with a grand fireplace and Yeat???s writing desk, which looked directly over the stream. Above
this, the second floor housed the Yeats??? bedroom, with the ceiling
painted in rich and mystical colors: gold, blue, and black. The third floor was intended to be a "stranger's room," or guest bedroom, but was never completed.15
The normally urbane Mrs. Yeats quickly adapted to life in the country. She
would fish for their dinner from the dining room windows of the castle
and cycle the eight miles to and from the village twice a week for odds
and ends.16 As
she began to know the local citizens, George collected their stories,
an activity in which Lady Gregory and Yeats also participated.
The community was eager to entertain William Butler Yeats, and his ties to the countryside were equal to his wife???s. In his letters he paints a scene of domestic tranquility:
"I
have been driven in from the river back where I have been writing &
catching a distant glimpse of a young otter fishing, I suppose for
trout. . . . We saw just his brown head & a long ripple on the
water. Anne & George were there, too, George sewing &
Anne lying wide awake in her seventeenth century cradle. I am
writing in the great ground floor room of the castle--pleasantest room
I have yet seen, a great wide window opening on the river & a round
arched door leading to the thatched hall . . . I am writing at a great
trestle table which George keeps covered with wild flowers."17
His hide-away, however, was occasionally visited by the real world. At one point, when Mr. and Mrs. Yeats were visiting London, rioters spent the night in the castle and broke every single window and mirror. They
were in all other ways respectful of the castle, though, even moving
one of George???s paintings from the mildewed wall to a dry shelf.18 The
Irish Civil War had a great impact on Yeats??? thoughts and feelings and
he was faced with the decision of whether to abandon his ideal or
defend it against the world.19
George's fishing window and its green shutters
After Lady Gregory died in 1932, the castle began its decline into ruin. William Butler Yeats spent several years in indifferent health and the damp castle was not conducive to his betterment.20 After Yeats??? death, the castle fell into disrepair. By 1958, Thoor Ballylee was almost as Yeats had first encountered it in 1896, housing farm equipment, the scenery for cows. George
Yeats commented that her husband would probably find it a fitting end
in letting the estate return to the condition in which Yeats had found
it.21 In
1963, however, the estate was put into a trust which has since
re-established the tower to Yeats??? idealized condition and is open to
visitors the year round.22
When
Yeats began to use Thoor Ballylee as a summer home with his family in
1919, he was fifty-four years old and beginning a new phase of his life
with his wife and four-month old daughter (1). Seamus
Heaney writes of Thoor Ballylee, ???Here he was in the place of writing.
It was one of his singing schools, one of the soul???s monuments of its
own magnificence. [. . .] Ballylee was a sacramental site, an outward
sign of inner grace. [. . .] all this transmission of sensation and
symbolic aura made the actual building stones into touchstones for the
work he would aspire to???(2). Indeed, he published the collection of poems The Tower in 1928, and a sequel, The Winding Stair,
in 1933. The tower symbol and the romantic themes of Irish mythology
began to particularly take hold of his poetry in these works, informing
both his identity as a poet and his depiction of the spirit of the
Irish landscape.
INSIDE THE TOWER
The
poems contained in these collections reflected much of the change that
took place in Yeats??? life as he lived and wrote in Thoor Ballylee.
Particularly important among these are ???Sailing to Byzantium,??? the title poem ???The Tower,??? and the civil war sequences, ???Meditations in Time of Civil War??? and ???Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen.???
Throughout these poems, the tower symbol evolves with the poet, as
Ziolkowski writes, from ???a conventional romantic topos first to an icon
for the retreat of the poet [. . .] then to an emblem for Ireland, next
to a symbol of human consciousness, maturing into the winding gyres of
its stairway, and finally, on its ramparts, to a springboard into the
cosmos??? (3).
The historical context of The Tower
reveals much of the forces at work behind Yeats??? move, physically,
emotionally, and poetically, into the tower. The Easter Rising took
place a few months before he made negotiations for
the property in 1916, the Battle of the Somme that summer, and the
Russian Revolution in 1917 (4).
More importantly, from 1919 onward Ireland witnessed the war of
independence, and between 1922 and 1923 the civil war came very close
to Thoor Ballylee. These events not only exposed defects in the western
world, but especially in the Irish national character (5). Yeats laments, ???We have lost the ablest and most fine-natured of our young men. A world seems to have been swept away??? (6). The civil war sequences, ???Meditations in Time of Civil War??? and ???Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,??? particularly demonstrate his disillusionment with Ireland and the horror of war.
???Meditations in Time of Civil War??? and ???Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen???
reflect Yeats??? perspective after witnessing the first world war and the
Irish civil war, as well as his ideals for Irish life and culture,
which are threatened by the these violent events (7).
The two poems work in tandem, ???Meditations??? being a personal reflection
on the events in Ireland and depicting the tower, Thoor Ballylee at the
center of the chaos. For example, ???The Road at My Door,??? the fifth poem
of the ???Meditations??? sequence, details the event in which the IRA blew
up the bridge outside the tower and put the family under house arrest.
The last poem, ???I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart???s Fullness
and of the Coming Emptiness??? reveals Yeats??? message in its title alone.
In the first stanza he describes himself ascending the tower and
viewing Ireland from the top, as well as ???Monstrous familiar images
[that] swim to the mind???s eye??? (VII.8). Among these images are fantastic and mythological characters, such as ???cloud-pale unicorns??? with ladies on their backs (VII.18).
The tower becomes a symbol for the retreat of the poet and sanctuary
for self-reflection. The last stanza of the last poem, Yeats writes, ???I
turn away and shut the door, and on the stair / Wonder how may times I
could have proved my worth / In something that all others understand or
share??? (VII.33-5).
???Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen???
takes on broader themes and harsher tones in discussing the poet???s
general disillusionment with the world as a whole. He reflects his
bitterness at Europe and the trust that has shatter in a time of war in
Part I:
Public opinion ripening for so long
We thought it would outlive all future days.
O what fine thought we had because we thought
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out. (I.12-16)
Yeats dwells upon violent images from the war, emphasizing the
breakdown of laws and virtue in the modern world. This world, he says,
is a word where ???a drunken soldiery / Can leave the mother, murdered at
her door, / To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free??? (I.26-8).
He expresses his shocked disillusionment especially in the questions
that the poem asks and answers. The futility of humankind manifests
itself in the lines, ???But is there any comfort to be found? / Man is in
love and loves what vanishes, / What more is there to say???? (I.41-43).
Moreover, Part V reveals his perception of the modern world as having
lost its tradition and values. The three stanzas bitterly invite the
reader to mock the great, wise, and good, and the last stanza closes
with the last invitation to ???Mock mockers after that / [. . .] for we /
Traffic in mockery??? (V.16-20). In these sequences, Yeats
describes the forces that compel the poet to turn inward, to retreat
into the imagination, to climb the tower and find meaning from above.
The rejection of
the modern world becomes apparent with Yeats??? consequential embrace of
traditional and romantic iconography. Ziolkowski describes Yeats???
physical and psychological move into the tower as a ???symbolic turn away
from his own past dreams of Gaelic nationalism [. . .] a move from the
modernism of the cities where he had spent much of his life--Dublin,
London, Paris--to an ancient countryside that embodied the culture of
Anglo-Irish gentry that was gradually coming to constitute his new
ideal??? (8). This transition becomes apparent in both ???Sailing to Byzantium??? and ???The Tower,???
where the poet despairs at his physical condition and yearns for an
immortality in the imaginary. While the imagery Yeats uses to depict
his ideal in ???Sailing to Byzantium??? is a nightingale ???set upon a golden
bough to sing??? (30), in ???The Tower??? it is atop his tower (II.1).
In both poems, he invokes the singing poet, the bard, in ???Sailing to
Byzantium??? the nightingale; and in ???The Tower,??? Blind Raftery, the
Irish poet, and Homer. In addition to Blind Raftery, Yeats describes a
whole cast of mythic and historical characters from Thoor Ballylee???s
past to populate his poem, rooting his imagery in the romanticized past
of Ireland.
???Meditations in Time of Civil War???
also dwells on Yeats??? traditional ideals and regard for the past,
generating many of the icons that he uses in other poems. The first
poem of the sequence, ???Ancestral Houses,??? nostalgically recalls the
great houses of Ireland and the second, ???My House,??? describes Thoor
Ballylee. ???My Descendants??? reflects on Yeats??? fear of decline over
time, using the deterioration of the tower as a central image for the
decline of his own family. Moreover, this sequence serves to unite the
Yeats??? traditional themes with those of the civil war. Thus the entire
collection of poems in The Tower are connected by both his
repulsion towards the modern world and his withdrawal into the tower,
his dependence on his imagination and his art.
I declare this tower is my symbol. I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my
ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have traveled there1
In conclusion, one might say that Yeats was at the center of a gyre of chaos. His idyllic dreams for Ireland conflicted with the violence of the post-war world and revolutionary Ireland. However,
Thoor Ballylee became his bulwark against these outside tensions that
he strove to resolve physically and emotionally within the tower. Thus,
Yeats??? ultimate symbol of this struggle is Thoor Ballylee, where he
could retreat from and observe modern violence and purposelessness to
turn inward and question the world in safety as he created meaningful
responses through poetry. The tower was Yeats??? platform to ??????sing his last song/And declare [his] faith.???2