“I had grown wild”: A Critical Reading of Yeats’s Journey towards His ‘Final Mood’

Abstract

W. B. Yeats had a long poetic career which is marked by three different moods expressed through his poetry. His journey towards the ‘final mood’ has passed through the early years of escapism, romanticism and a trace of pre-Raphaelite influence. Yeats began as a late romantic with his bent towards Irish tradition and folklore. But he soon moved from the dreamland of fairy tales and reached a world of life and reality. With the influence of French symbolism, his conception of beauty and poetry evolved further. The nostalgic yearning for the good, old days landed the poet in a mood of despondency and pensive thoughts. Yeats’s frustrating experience with Maud Gonne and his disillusionment with the prevailing Irish customs led him towards self-introspection. Naturally, his choice of themes became more realistic. The spectacle of war in both Ireland and Europe presented before Yeats a broad canvas of violence and destruction which reflected in his philosophical overtones and mastered imagery throughout his poems especially of the Middle Era. Like a true tragic hero, Yeats’s journey is from darkness to light and from suffering to the joy hidden in its bosom. The painting of gross destruction is left behind and the poetic theme became the gaiety of the sages. Yeats discovered significant meaning of life even through its trivial happenings. He unleashed the beautiful and lofty through individual experiences which are of real value. In his Last Poems the poet’s deeper understanding of human nature elevates him to a person with a rare kind of vision. The poetic joy of this visionary poet is more pronounced than then tone of despondency, desolation and loneliness expressed in his early poems.