Home » So Yeats, what were you bellyaching about?

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So Yeats, what were you bellyaching about? — 18 Comments

  1. “It is myself that I remake”. It seems to have been a major theme in his life. I never heard about the “rejuvenation” operation, but it figures.

  2. From the Wikipedia entry on Maud Gonne:

    She refused many marriage proposals from Yeats, not only because she viewed him as insufficiently radical in his nationalism (and unwilling to convert to Catholicism) but also because she believed his unrequited love for her had been a boon for his poetry and that the world should thank her for never having accepted his proposals. When Yeats told her he was not happy without her she replied,

    “Oh yes, you are, because you make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you.”

    The photos of her there put me in mind of Vanessa Redgrave, and made me wonder why Hollywood has never done a Yeats-Gonne movie. Or has it?

  3. Withering rhymes, withering times, my dear Yeats?

    My versicle for your verse.

    Sincerely,

    Keats

  4. Up until, say, the last several decades in our society the old were generally, to some extent, respected and revered, and it was thought that with age came experience, and out of those experiences perhaps came some modicum of wisdom, and the old were often looked to for guidance and counsel.

    When families back then were more tight-knit, were less mobile and often lived close together, there were more multi-generational families, with women and other family members staying home to work and not going out, it was very common for families to take care of their elders, and not to just ship them off to some impersonal, stranger-run “Sunrise Acres,” there, sometimes forgotten, to rot away and die.

    Since religion has weakened and fallen away for many of us, its admonitions to revere our elders and their wisdom have also been diminished in their force and sway.

    You can even see this diminishing and change in behavior in how our cemeteries are neglected, for it used to be the custom for family members to make frequent visits to cemeteries where their ancestors were buried, to remember and to honor them, often by ritually cleaning up their grave sites. Once modern transportation and economic developments led to geographically dispersed families, making such visits harder, the custom of these frequent visits and this care of grave sites has generally faded away.

    Then, add to the mix a culture fanatically fixated on and devoted to “youth,” and you have a recipe for dismissal and neglect of the old.

    The old seen by some leftist ideologues like Ezekiel Emanuel MD, the President’s Science advisor, and his ilk as no longer “useful” to society since, in retirement, they pay lower taxes as compared to their high “maintenance costs”–and are seen as a net loss to society–often dismissively referred to as “useless eaters.”

    A utilitarian approach, Emanuel’s “Complete Lives System” which gives priority for medical care to those, from 15 to 40 and in their prime productive and tax-paying years, it is reported will likely be applied under Obamacare, to limit and ration services to seniors as a cost cutting measure.

    Given all these developments and today’s atmosphere, would it be any wonder if there were “seniors” who were not happy contemplating their supposed “golden years.”

  5. Perhaps if Viagra had been available in his time, he would have had a less maudlin outlook.
    Being a critical reader, I notice his reference to plumage (the rooster/cock?), the coat on the stick, the dog’s tail…. Maybe he was telling the reader something else. 🙂

  6. “When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
    And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
    And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
    Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

    “How many loved your moments of glad grace,
    And loved your beauty with love false or true,
    But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
    And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

    “And bending down beside the glowing bars,
    Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
    And paced upon the mountains overhead
    And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”

  7. His chosen comrades thought at school
    He must grow a famous man;
    He thought the same and lived by rule,
    All his twenties crammed with toil;
    “What then?” sang Plato’s ghost “What then?”

    Everything he wrote was read,
    After certain years he won
    Sufficient money for his need,
    Friends that have been friends indeed;
    “What then?” sang Plato’s ghost “What then?”

    All his happier dreams came true —
    A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
    Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
    Poets and Wits about him drew;
    “What then?” sang Plato’s ghost “What then?”

    “The work is done,” grown old he thought,
    According to my boyish plan;
    Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
    Something to perfection brought’;
    But louder sang the ghost, “What then?”

  8. }}} There’s poetry, and then there’s life….

    …And then there’s being a whiny-ass beyotch of an artistic type…

    Seriously.

  9. I’ve seen the Japanese de pict graveyard ceremonies where the families of the departed come, put down some offerings, and throw some water over the headstone. But I’ve never heard the same said about Western civilization.

  10. My only exposure to Yeats was in my college freshman English course. I had developed a phobia to English courses in high school, and writing a paper on a Yeats poem merely reinforced my viewpoint of English courses. The professor, credentialed with a Ph.D. from Columbia, was competent. It was that I didn’t respond well to the junior literary critic role that English courses demanded of me.

  11. Perhaps, less than complaining about “looks”, the gripe of aging is rather a complaint about “feels”, i.e., the loss of a once known physical power (kinesthetically known, if you will) — hence limbs as sticks. Vigorous body users (and dancers would be among these, would they not?) might be among the most sensitive to these effects, though anyone could just as well remark them.

  12. Wolla Dalbo,
    “Currently, Emanuel is acting as Special Advisor for Health Policy to Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.”

    “Dr. John P. Holdren is Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).”

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