OK, so I've stared at this poem for a while, and I might have some sense of
what he's on about.
I.
Here's Yeats the famous poet, shortly after getting his Nobel Prize, taking
a tour of a school. He asks a question, and we don't know what it is, but
the nun's reply indicates it must be something like, "what do they learn
here?" Or maybe "what do they do here?" Like Jay, I don't think he's
particularly moved by the answer, the studying of reading-books, the
neatness in everything in the best modern way. But the kids look at him,
and he becomes self-conscious, feels his age in their eyes. And he starts
looking at them.
II.
And he must think they're beautiful, because he's reminded of a woman's
body. (Biographically, it's probably Maud Gonne, who in Yeats mythology is
always Leda or Helen or Clytemnestra [another daughter of Leda]. Yeats and
Gonne were both married to other people, but were passionately in love - at
least he was - though, according to him, only in the most spiritual way.
They had sex only by astral projection, he said. This could all be helpful
because of a body/spirit thing throughout the poem.) The moment he thinks
of with this woman is one where she tells about something bad that happened
in her childhood. This story makes him feel sympatico with her, like they
are twins. There's something about identity going on - the child becomes
the woman who's just like him. He identifies with the child via the woman.
The invocation of Leda also brings up ideas about causality or etiology.
Zeus's rape of Leda resulted in two sets of twins; Helen came from one set,
Clytemnestra from the other. The Illiad, the Odyssey, and the fall of the
house of Atreus all are caused by this god/human, spirit/flesh violence.
Also, if I try to picture the scene in which Maud tells him the childhood
story, it seems like it might be a "how I got this way" kind of story, or
else "when you talk to me like that, it reminds me of this day my father
yelled at me" or something like that. Something has caused a timebend. And
maybe, it was something Yeats also felt from his own childhood. So the past
doesn't go away - what happens in T1 is still rippling at T25.
III.
Looking at the children - one in particular, though he doesn't quite admit
that - he sees Maud/Helen/Leda as a child, right there standing in front of
him. He's blown away by this - time collapses. The past is still here,
even bodily, it seems. Heavy-duty prolepsis, at least in the speaker's
eyes.
IV.
He thinks of Maud and what she looks like now, physically, like something
out of a 14th century work of art -- still not of the "present." And he
thinks he wasn't so bad looking as a kid either. But he won't even complete
this thought and interrupts himself. He decides it's better to play - and
even to limit his self-consciousness - to his present role of old scarecrow
contented to be that here and now. He's brought back to his maleness and
his advanced adulthood, which of course (doesn't it just, for us all?)
brings up classical philosophers.
V.
He thinks about a young mother. He's old enough to be her father or even
grandfather. She's got a baby on her lap that causes her no end of trouble
and worry and pain. There's no way, he thinks, that knowing her son would
grow up to be venerable would mitigate her present pain. There's nothing in
the future that helps us transcend our present. The minutes are just too
hard. But even as he says that, he's both the child and the old man.
VI.
Then he takes up the philosophers. Plato was all essential froth. But
Aristotle, there was a guy who bounced his marbles on the bottom of
Alexander the Great. He had a body. And Pythagoras - he was not only
"golden-thighed" but also really famous - just like Yeats! But what he
found out in his pursuit of truth was not so great - not only that he got
old but that he was only matter, and matter with a pretty trivial purpose.
VII.
Mothers idolize their children. Nuns, though they teach children, do not
idolize them, but only saints and gods. You don't have to think about what
saints are doing though (unlike kids), they just stand there in their
marble. Children, gods, and saints break hearts. They do this by not
responding to us, and especially by forcing us to realize that our work just
flows downriver as we get older and die. This stanza, unlike the others,
ends not with an end punctuation, but with a semi-colon;
VIII.
it picks up the work idea from the previous stanza. Our work (both the
writing of poems and just being) is dancing - is transcendent of useless
striving and is intrinsically worth doing - only under certain negative
conditions - when it does not hurt, when it does not come out of
hopelessness, and when it is not hard work. The chestnut tree is its
dancing self not in any one point in its development - either its
sustenance, it's reproduction, or its initiating potential (present, future,
or past). It's the whole temporal process that brings body and spirit and
time together.
So maybe, even though he didn't have anything nice to say about Aristotle,
it's really a very Aristotelian poem - that form or spirit really is process
and just actualizes matter. And looking properly at any material moment
requires taking time into account. And once you look into this process,
time also seems to disappear. Also, we shouldn't ignore completely the
"brightening glance" - you glance and brighten because you recognize or
realize something - there is a movement (dance) of coming to know. The
realization is you, yes, but it's you in motion, in a process of becoming,
just as he constructed this awareness on this school visit.
Randy
----------------------------
Randy Bomer
Language Education
Indiana University
201 N. Rose Ave.
Bloomington, IN 47405
(812) 856-8293
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