Chapter 15 Early 20th-Century Poetry From An Outline of English Literature by Thornley and Roberts

English Poetry in the Early 20th Century Support the remark that poetry is a private art form (p.181) Each poet works as a private and separate person who makes his or her own world from his or her own deep concerns

W. B. Yeats Born in Ireland (p.181) Theme in his early poems -- shows and honors the nature and character of Ireland and the Irish people Theme in his later work -- was more universal, how people and the world, divided, can be made whole “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

The Lake Isle of Innisfree I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,  And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;  Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,        And live alone in the bee-loud glade.    And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,          Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;  There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,        And evening full of the linnet's wings.   I will arise and go now, for always night and day  I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;   While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,        I hear it in the deep heart's core.

T. S. Eliot Writes as a man living through the years after WWI in which men’s lives had been lost or damaged, hopes destroyed and promises broken (p.187) Sees poetry and ceremony as forces that can give meaning to the emptiness and confusion of the modern world References to ceremonies come from the Christian church and from much earlier beliefs in ceremonies that brought life and hope back to a dry dead hopeless world.

T. S. Eliot “The Waste Land” A highly complex poem that brings together a group of characters as different in kind Brings together the ancient beliefs in the circularity of the natural world’s movement through life and death to new life, with the Christian belief in spiritual life after physical death Much of the picture of human unhappiness in the poem comes from the fact that the characters cannot understand the meaning of their own experiences. Sees the root of the modern world’s unhappiness and confusion as the fact that people can’t bring together the different areas of their experience to make a complete and healthy whole His aim is to bring together a great variety of human voices and experiences.

T. S. Eliot Four Quartets (1944) Shows different ways of experiencing God and reality in different times The force of religion will give wholeness and purpose to man’s life and mind. Shows different kinds of time through the lives of different people, universal history and sudden moments when truth about life and God is made clear In the middle of the confusion and suffering of the modern world, timeless values still exist and can still be touched

W. H. Auden Early Poems – shows a concern for the important political and social events, and a wish to become part of them (p.189) Saw changes in the forms and subjects of literature as a way of helping political and social change Writes about political events and their effect on private lives By the end of WWII, he lost his earlier hope that the world could be changed and made better by decisive human action After this, his poetry became in many ways more personal and, increasingly, looking for spiritual qualities in the life around him

W. H. Auden Communicate a strong sense of the realities of everyday life Lyric Poems: “Musee des Beaux Arts” “As I Walked Out One Evening”

Musee des Beaux Arts About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

The title refers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels The title refers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. Auden visited the museum in 1938 and viewed the painting by Brueghel, which the poem is basically about. Generalizing at first, and then going into specifics the poem theme is the apathy with which humans view individual suffering. Auden wrote that "In so far as poetry, or any of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.“ The poem juxtaposes ordinary events and extraordinary ones, although extraordinary events seem to deflate to everyday ones with his descriptions. Life goes on while a "miraculous birth occurs", but also while "the disaster" of Icarus's death happens.

The reader of the poem is placed in front of the Breughel painting in a museum, and at the same time is expected to project those images and truths to the world outside. This allows a reader to become aware of his human position. The poem first discusses a "miraculous birth", and at the end "the tragedy" of a death. The theme in the poem is human suffering. The poem suggest a religious acceptance of suffering. Religious acceptance basically means coming to terms with the ways of the world.