Yeats and Boland: Irish Bardic Tradition and Modern Verse

The Bardic Tradition and Irish Poetry

While William Butler Yeats and Eavan Boland may be united by a common nationality and literary heritage, they are divided by almost a full century. Boland, as an Irish poet living after Yeats, has certainly been indebted to his influence. Ignoring such a debt would indeed be impossible, and Boland herself has admitted to the importance of Yeats's Irishness to her:

There were great and wonderful Irish male poets, all of whom I found inspiring in different ways. It meant an enormous amount to me in a very tribal way that William Yeats was Irish. And I would have liked, I suppose, to include in that tribalism a woman as well. (Boland and Quinn, "The Stoicisms of Love")

Boland here admits that she sees herself in a line of Irish poets and that she has a literally "tribal" kinship with them. While this may seem like a strange image for Boland to employ, one must remember the long and distinguished oral tradition of poetry in Ireland, in which poets told important stories from the history and culture of their people. Boland ultimately argues for the importance of this "bardic" tradition in Irish literature, suggesting it is Irish national poetry's defining characteristic:

Irish poetry has a bardic history. The Irish bards lay down in darkness to compose. They wrote poems to their patrons that ranged from christening odes to the darkest invective. They were poets who were shaped by an oral culture... (Boland and Schmidt, "Where Poetry Begins")

In arguing for this tradition of the Irish bardic poet, Boland also offers a meaningful insight into how she sees the role of the poet — particularly the Irish poet — both in tradition and today. For Boland, part of the role of the poet within the Irish tradition is to tell the "tale of the tribe," the phrase Ezra Pound used to describe his epic poetic work, The Cantos (Bernstein). This idea of the poet as speaker for the whole of the "tribe" can be seen in the poetry of William Butler Yeats as well.

Yeats as Tribal Poet

It is interesting to note that, in his Nobel Lecture, "The Irish Dramatic Movement," William Butler Yeats chooses to assign the creation of modern Irish literature to a national political cause — the death of the great Irish patriot and politician Parnell — saying that "The modern literature of Ireland, and indeed all that stir of thought which prepared for the Anglo-Irish War, began when Parnell fell from power in 1891" (Yeats, "The Irish Dramatic Movement"). Here we see the idea that the Irish poet serves to tell the tale of his tribe reflected in Yeats's assignment of a national cause to the creation of an Irish poetic movement. In this gesture, Yeats suggests that the creative impetus for Irish writers was not personal inspiration in the Romantic mode, but rather concern over a national, if not "tribal," state of affairs. Thus, the Irish writer, and the poet in particular, serves as the mouthpiece for the hopes and dreams of a nation and a culture. So for Yeats, as for Boland, being an Irish poet carries a cultural, national, tribal, and traditional dimension.

This fact is evident in Yeats's poetry as well. Ireland, its history, and its folklore are among his chief concerns. In his classic poem "To Ireland in the Coming Times," Yeats demonstrates the manner in which his poetry serves as a reflection on the national character:

Know, that I would accounted be
True brother of a company
That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
Ballad and story, rann and song; (Yeats, "To Ireland in Coming Times")

Here, Yeats announces his desire to be "accounted" among the poets who have previously contributed to the glorious tradition of Irish poetry. He purposefully includes several traditional poetic forms, such as the "ballad" and the "rann," to make the connection between his more modern verse and the Irish tradition more concrete. Moreover, he emphasizes the almost familial nature of that tradition by stating that he wishes to be "brother to a company." In the concluding lines of the poem, Yeats reflects on the final significance of Ireland to his work:

cast my heart into my rhymes,
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem. (Yeats, "To Ireland in Coming Times")

Here, Yeats most firmly establishes his connection with Ireland's poetic past and expresses his hope that readers will recognize that his poetry is ultimately an attempt to connect with the Irish tradition and carry it forward. The phrase "red-rose-bordered hem" functions as a synecdoche meant to stand for the whole of Ireland. Thus, Yeats is very much a poet in the Irish bardic tradition.

Conclusion

Thus, while Yeats and Boland are both poets who see themselves as part of an ongoing and fluid Irish bardic tradition, Boland differs in that she also gives voice to her obligations as a mother and admits that those obligations may be in conflict with her traditional poetic duties to remain constant to Irish culture. In this way, Boland both honors and transforms the tradition she inherits from Yeats, expanding the definition of who the Irish poet is and whose experiences that poet is called upon to sing.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Michael. The Tale of the Tribe: Ezra Pound and the Remaking of American Poetic Tradition. Berkeley: U. of California P, 1992.

Boland, Eavan. "Interview." Caffeine Destiny. Apr. 23, 2003.

Boland, Eavan. "The Pomegranate." The Academy of American Poets Web Site. Apr. 22, 2003.

Boland, Eavan, and Alice Quinn. "The Stoicisms of Love." The New Yorker Online. Apr. 23, 2003.

Boland, Eavan, and Elizabeth Schmidt. "Where Poetry Begins: An Interview with Eavan Boland." Academy of American Poets Web Site. Apr. 23, 2003.

Yeats, William Butler. "The Irish Dramatic Movement." Nobel Lecture, December 15, 1923. Apr. 23, 2003.

Yeats, William Butler. "To Ireland in Coming Times." Selected Poems and Two Plays of William Butler Yeats. M. L. Rosenthal, ed. New York: Collier Books, 1962.