Trope
“transparent like the wind…”
Yeats does not use trope extensively at all, which is a stark contrast to Bishop's work in which I could practically turn to a random page and find a trope! I was very hard-pressed to find even simple similes let alone full metaphors. What “The Tower” lacks in metaphors (which is actually a nice change of pace), it makes up for in rich language full of interesting adjectives and adverbs. “On a Picture of a Black Centaur by
It uses phrases such as “dark margin of the wood,”
“sultry mud”
“wholesome sun has ripened”
“mummy wheat”
“mad abstract dark”
“sleep a long Saturnian sleep”
“unwearied eyes”
Daaamn!
Personification is also used very often in this work. All of “Owen Ahern and his Dancers” is about a heart that is personified to be a character in and of itself.
A strange thing surely that my heart when love had come
unsought
Upon the Norman upland or in that poplar shade,
Should find no burden but itself and yet should be worn out.
It could not bear that burden and therefore it went mad.
The south wind brought I longing, and the east wind despair,
The west wind made it pitiful, and the north wind afraid.
It feared to give its love a hurt with all the tempest there;
It feared the hurt that she could give and therefore it went
mad.
I can exchange opinion with any neighboring mind,
Io have as healthy flesh and blood as any rhymer’s had,
But oh my Heart could bear no more when the upland
caught the wind;
I ran, I ran, from my love’s side because my Heart went mad.
II
The Heart behind its rib laughed out, ‘You have called me
mad,’ it said.
‘Because I made you turn away and run from that young
child;
How could she mate with fifty years that was so wildly bred?
Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird
mate in the wild.’
‘You but imagine lies all day, O murderer,’ I replied.
‘And all those lies have but one end poor wretches to betray;
I did not find in any cage the woman at my side.
O but her heart would break to learn my thoughts are far
away.’
‘Speak all your mind,’ my Heart sang out, ‘speak all
your mind; who cares,
Now that your tongue cannot persuade the child till she
mistake
Her childish gratitude for love and match your fifty years.
O let her choose a young man now and all for his wild sake.’
The personification is pretty evident, illustrated by the heart’s being able to speak. What I was really intrigued by though were the words Yeats chose to isolate in their own lines. The words are “unsought,” “mad,” “caught the wind,” “mad,” “child,” “away,” “mistake.” These words are clearly negative in nature, greatly adding to the other words used through the poem: “burden,” “despair,” “pitiful,” “afraid,” “tempest.” These are appropriate I suppose, considering the disturbing subject matter: a man “with fifty years” in love with “that young child.”
What I love about Yeats’s writing is how detailed he can get without using metaphors or similes. Reading his work has taught me that great poetry need not include metaphors, something I mostly thought was a necessity of poetic writing. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it is another option. As seen below.
The true faith discovered was
When painted panel, statuary,
Glass-mosaic, window-glass,
Straightened all that went awry
When some peasant gospeller
Imagined Him upon the floor
Of a working-carpenter.
Miracle had its playtime where
In damask clothed and on a seat,
Chryselephantine, cedar boarded,
His majestic Mother sat
Stitching at a purple hoarded,
That He might be nobly breeched,
In starry towers of
Noah’s freshet never reached.
King Abundance got Him on
Innocence; and Wisdom He.
That cognomen sounded best
Considering what wile infancy
Drove horror from His Mother’s breast.
Awesome
2 comments:
I thought you would do well with Yeats; he is a peculiar writer with vast and varied obsessions, and though I have had the delightful opportunity to look at his life and work in some depth, I am still frequently surprised by the new things I encounter on a regular basis, both in his work and in my research.
I'm interested in your observations on adjectives, which have come to be regarded in modern poetry with some suspicion. Yeats is a master of matching adjective with noun. However, how do you think that avoiding figurative language serves Yeats? Does it make his adjectival obsession necessary, more noticable, or weaker? Are the two even related?
"What I love about Yeats’s writing is how detailed he can get without using metaphors or similes."
Yeats doesn't use direct similes/metaphors very often, but I still think that his poetry has implied comparisons. The reader just doesn't notice his comparisons on first glance since the formulaic "is, like, as" rules aren't followed. Yeats' lack of similes/metaphors is what makes his poetry so complicated--the reader is not automatically told that one thing is another...instead, we have to infer.
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