AN ASSESSMENT
YEATS was absent from Dublin for the Rising but his response to it was intense: “I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move me,” he wrote to Lady Gregory, “and I am very despondent about the future”. This iconic poem, which disappointed Maud Gonne when she read it, is a formal masterpiece, as well as a work that charts Yeats’s uncertain feelings towards the events of 1916.
It begins with an image of the revolutionaries going about their everyday lives; only their “vivid faces” indicate the power of their inner feeling and their potential for heroic action. Yeats’s disengagement from these men is highlighted by the repetition of the phrase “polite meaningless words” and by the fact that his most vigorous response in language is to make fun of them to his friends.
His contemplation of these figures as individuals begins with Constance Markievicz, whom Yeats had known for more than 20 years. His view of her is nostalgic; he contrasts her youthful beauty and gentleness to her ‘shrill’ revolutionary persona. Of the men, first Patrick Pearse and then Thomas MacDonagh, Yeats is more tolerant: as poets, educators and leaders, their potential for greatness is acknowledged. Even Gonne’s husband, John MacBride, immortalised here as a “drunken vainglorious lout”, deserves a measure of praise.
Sweetness is set against bitterness in this poem, as pure idealism is contrasted with violence and political struggle. Yet the transformation that the rebels — and ultimately Ireland — will undergo is seen as both redemptive and destructive. Here are the seeds of the “terrible beauty” that has remained so resonant for modern readers.
Tragedy and comedy are interwoven in the poem. Twice — in the reference to motley and to the “casual comedy” — Yeats allows the ideals of the rebels to be viewed lightly, before their full implications may be recognised. Likewise, the flux of the world is set against the determination of the revolutionaries, their steadfast commitment to independence: these “hearts with one purpose alone” defy the endless fluctuations of the natural world, where animal life pursues its own unthinking goals.
Yeats distinguishes between the larger philosophical questions that are raised by the actions of the rebels and our need to honour their idealism. This focus on the good faith of these men and women ensures their immortality, both in Yeats’s own poem and in Irish cultural and political history.