Callaghan, M. (2019) “The artifice of eternity”: The Wanderings of Oisin and the Byzantium poems. Irish Studies Review, 27 (2). pp. 177-194. ISSN 0967-0882
Abstract
Yeats’s poetry and drama centre on conflict, and crucially, on the clash between the mortal and the eternal. In this essay, I focus on the way in which The Wanderings of Oisin foreshadows and informs the treatment of eternity in Yeats’s later Byzantium poems. The Wanderings of Oisin explores the intensity of human longing for the eternal despite our time-bound nature, prefiguring his later impassioned though analytical Byzantium poems. Although the Byzantium poems seem initially to glorify eternity at the expense of human life, this essay traces the complexity of Yeats’s desire. Previous criticism has understated the extent to which Yeats’s poetry actively resists the siren song of eternity. The Byzantium poems problematise the eternity that they seem to desire, and this article reveals them as inflected by the way in which The Wanderings of Oisin questions the value of the eternal realm in the light of mortal heroic values. The “intensity, solitude, defeat” of the artist are inevitable, but there is a victory of sorts won from the poet’s deliberate inability to commit to any version of the eternal that preclude his own power and humanity. Yeats’s poetry runs the gamut between versions of desire that express an overweening desire for resolution even as they retain their resistance to any single pure state of being, if any such state is possible.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Irish Studies Review. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | yeats; byzantium; oisin; eternity; poetry; mortal |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of English (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Aug 2018 09:19 |
Last Modified: | 08 Oct 2020 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/09670882.2019.1600638 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:134116 |