The world of Literature is filled with sayings, mantras, and rules, one of the most common being ‘there are two sides to every story’. Similar to the idea that a single coin has two faces, I will argue in this paper that violence and creativity are the flip sides to the same literary coin. By using the popular Irish writers William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney, this paper will explore how each poet manipulated the idea and reality of violence to create beautiful and often evocative poems (Wood). Not only will this paper discuss the contrasting relationship between violence and creativity, it will also look at how intertwined the two ideals are, and how Yeats and Heaney used this complex relationship to create world-renowned poetry. Although the concepts of violence and creativity are generally thought of as opposites, they often stem from each other, and can be seen intertwined throughout history in well-known literary works.
Violence is defined as “the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy” (Merriam-Webster). Society often gives violence a negative connotation, only seeing the destruction and pain that often follows acts of violence, such as war and murder. Conversely, creativity is viewed positively, and is often encouraged. Creativity is primarily defined as “the ability to create”, or to bring [something] into existence (Merriam-Webster). For the purposes of this paper, we will also use the secondary definition of create, meaning “to produce or bring about by a course of action or behavior” (Merriam-Webster). The action or behavior of violence often leads to creativity, whether in the form of real life solutions, or in literary works that are based on violent themes or characters. So, although violence is perceived as a negative thing, and creativity a positive one, if one influences the other, the two ideals, and their subsequent consequences, cannot simply be good or bad, but a combination. It is this combination of the two ideals that is so evident in both Yeats’s and Heaney’s work, as they both wrote of the beauty and horror that violence left in its wake (Wood).
W.B. Yeats is known as one of the most prolific and popular writers in Irish literary history, with his work spanning many decades, many genres, and including accolades such as winning the Nobel Prize in 1923 (Yeats Society). Much of Yeats’s middle and late works focused on violence and war, so much so that most people associate his poetry with violence (Wood). It is easy to understand why he wrote so much about violence, seeing as though Yeats was in the middle of some of Ireland’s most tumultuous years, seeing WWI from 1914-1918, Easter Rising in 1916, followed by the subsequent executions and unrest, and the Irish War for Independence from 1919-1921 (Holdeman 64). All of this violence played a huge part in Yeats’s writing, where he was able to process all of his different feelings on the violence through his creative outlet, poetry. After all, like many things in Yeats’s life, his feelings toward violence changed over time, demonstrated by the variety of poetry written before, during, and after each violent event (Masel).
Early on in his career, he and Lady Gregory glorified the 1978 Irish rebellion by writing the play, Cathleen ni Houlihan. However, later in life, Yeats would reflect on how glorifying violence, even in a creative setting, can incite more violence (Gee). This was never more apparent than in his poem The Man and the Echo with the lines, “Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the English shot?” (Yeats). The two lines famously refer to the fact that Yeats felt a sense of regret that his glorification of violence could have played a part in the rebellion of the Easter Rising in 1916 (Gee). Violence frequently puzzled Yeats, writing poems that both questioned the meaning behind violence and yet still recognized the heroism shown by Ireland’s freedom fighters. Both emotions can be seen in Yeats’s poem Easter, 1916, published in 1921 (Magill). At the beginning of the poem, he talks about some of the men who lost their lives because of the part they played in the Easter Rising. But read through and see how Yeats only talks of them as how he knew them before, when they were simply men in town that he knew from society.
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born (“Easter, 1916 Lines 1-40).
To prove his point, Yeats even goes on to mention how one of the men had “done bitter wrong / to some who are near my heart”, going further to explain to the reader that before being executed as martyrs, they were typical men. However, a shift begins in line 39, calling the rebellion a “casual comedy”, pointing to the fact that though he believed the men were heroic, he also felt like the violence was meaningless and even comedic. Nonetheless, Yeats recognizes that these normal men were “transformed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born” into martyrs after the English had the leaders executed (Yeats 182-4). As simple and reminiscent as the first half of the poem is, regarding the leaders of Easter Rising as the men they were before that fated day, the last section is dark and realistic.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born (“Easter, 1916” Lines 57-80).
Notice how this section has taken a more realistic, melancholy approach to the loss of life. Previously the tone was laughable and reminiscent of simpler times, before the violence. Here, the sadness felt about the loss of life is more apparent, although still spun in Yeats’s creative web of words. Talk of sacrifice, a mother losing her child, and the sleep of death all bring the poem back to reality, grounding the men, no longer shown as common men, nor as martyrs, but simply as a mother’s child. Yeats questions the very rebellion itself, asking if the deaths of these mothers’ children was “needless” –was there meaning to this violence (Yeats 182-4)? He, in Yeats fashion, begins to try and answer his own question in a way, although shrouded somewhat with his poetic prowess. It is important to note that as beautiful and mysterious as Yeats often made his work, he was always very specific about the words he used and did not use. His use of ‘England’ here is very direct for him, and was surely meant to make sure there was no question as to whom he placed the blame of men’s deaths. In yet another move to make the deaths more of a reality than just a story in the headlines, or even a subject used to create works of art like his own poem, Yeats makes sure to name each of the four main leaders of the rebellion. Before they were rebels, they were common men in society, men with families and dreams. They were just a few men who dared to dream of a free Ireland, to love their homeland so much that they laid down their lives for the cause. From the violence of that day, and the subsequent days after as the consequences fell, “a terrible beauty is born” (Yeats 182-4). From the ashes of violence arose a change not only in Irish politics, but also the terrible beauty and creativity shown in poetry and art born out of the suppression felt by the Irish after the Easter Rising (Kendall).
Yeats’s later works continued to show how torn he was about walking the fine line between the beauty and horror that the violence present in Ireland and Europe saw in the coming decade. There is no denying that Yeats often used violence and death to create poetry that awed the masses. In addition to the renowned Easter, 1916, he wrote In Memory of Major Robert Gregory that brought the pain and loss of violence back to the forefront and shifted his opinion on violence more, as he felt the death of Lady Gregory’s son on a personal level. Writing with familial or almost parental emotions, Yeats notes the young man’s abilities as a soldier, scholar, and horseman. He almost laughs at himself and society for ever assuming that Major Robert Gregory would get to grow older and that “he could comb grey hair” (Yeats). He also continued for some time to question the meaninglessness of the violence in Ireland in the 1910s with the 1919 poem The Second Coming (Masel). Here he still refers to violence as “Mere anarchy” (Yeats 189). However, in the beautiful and lyrical poem The Rose Tree, Yeats finally answers his question of if the deaths of the Easter Rising leaders were necessary (Masel). In the poem Pearse and Connolly, two of the main leaders of the rebellion, are talking to each other about what can save the Rose Tree, which represents Ireland. The two leaders wanted water, but with the wells “parched away” there was “nothing but our own red blood” to make the Rose Tree right again (Yeats 185). This poem in effect says that yes, the deaths of Easter Rising where necessary to save Ireland as only blood could create the change needed in the country. As always, the poem is a beautiful creation out of the depths of violence, lyrical and song-like in its almost ballad structure (Masel).
Do not think that W.B. Yeats monopolized the market for creating beautiful works of literature from violence; there have been many Irish writers would have turned terrible horrors into beauty. Possibly none so intertwined with violence and beauty and intrigue as the bog poems written by Seamus Heaney. Where Yeats used the violence that was all around him in the early 1900s, Heaney used the violence of the past to write the beautiful and detailed poems about the bodies of people discovered in the bogs of Europe by archeologist P.V. Glob. Heaney used this past violence shown in the bodies of the bog people to draw parallels to the violence he was seeing in Northern Ireland (McCulloch). Heaney brought these bodies back to life, giving them a with a story, bringing some small meaning to their deaths. In Bog Queen, by allowing the body itself to be the narrator of the poem, Heaney breathes life and womanhood back into the body of female found in Northern Ireland (Mishler). The woman is made quite feminine, talking of her pelvis, breasts, and hair (Heaney 26-28). The Bog Queen body is different from the others used in Heaney’s bog poems, as she was not a sacrificial murder, and she was found in South Belfast, whereas much of the bog bodies Heaney wrote about were found in mainland Europe (Mishler). Heaney writes Bog Queen to represent Ireland, once a beautiful and grand country (Stewart). However, both Ireland and the bog queen were betrayed and stripped of their belongings by men; the bog queen by the turfcutter digging her out of the bog, and Ireland by the English cutting Ireland in two with the Republic and Northern Ireland (Heaney 26-28). Heaney created a beautiful poem by linking the violence of the past to the present troubles felt in Ireland in the late 20th century (Stewart).
Another one of Heaney’s poems about the bog bodies published in North was Punishment, written about a body found in Germany. Like Heaney’s other bog body stories, he creates a narrative for this girl, giving her both a life and death (Abella). The girl is somewhat eroticized in the poem with lines like “it blows her nipples / to amber beads” (Heaney 31). Heaney wanted readers to understand the reason the girl was killed, while also proving why the girl was a target for adultery with lines such as:
her noose a ring
to store
the memories of love,
Little adulteress,
before they punished you
you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat (“Punishment” lines 20-28).
The once beautiful girl is now only a scapegoat, an example of what would happen to adulteresses during that time (Heaney 32). But, in typical Heaney fashion, the girl is also representing the current Catholic girls who were taking off with British soldiers in the late 20th century during the violence in Northern Ireland. If the girls were caught, they would be tarred and feathered and paraded through town to show the punishment for such acts (Mishler).
With the last two stanzas, Heaney calls out all those in Ireland who were witnessing the violence and terror that was present, but doing nothing to stop it (Mishler).
I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,
who would connive
in civilized outrage
wet understood the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge (“Punishment” 37-44)
Heaney condemns the witnesses of violence who cast only “the stones of silence” at watching the horror that unfolded both in the past and in the violence in Ireland in the 1970s, even criticizing his own lack of action (Heaney 32). By using “intimate revenge”, Heaney points out his personal understanding of what the people of Northern Ireland were feeling about the violence, because after all, he was one of them. Heaney was able to take both an outsider’s and an insider’s position to take not only the violence of the past, but also the violence he was experiencing for himself, and create works of poetry that would both condemn and inspire the citizens of Northern Ireland to stand against the terrors that were going on (Mishler).
Heaney’s fourth bog poem in a row in North takes a new turn, veering away from talks of the violence being needless. Strange Fruit shows Heaney’s attempt to make sense, and possibly even justify, the violence of both the past and present in the 1970s. Heaney hints that perhaps lying and falsifying events in an attempt to make them more moving or important makes them deserving of the violence (McCulloch). Written about a bodiless head, believed to be female, found in a bog in Denmark, Heaney focuses on the appearance of the skull, noting the violence evident in the features (Fawbert). Referring to the girl’s head as looking “like an exhumed gourd”, her “broken nose is dark as a turf clod”, and “eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings” shows the reader just how violent this girl’s death must have been, not to mention that they only found it as a bodiless head (Heaney 33). Yet, Heaney uses the poetic form to bring the point that this violence was not the only horror, or even the worst. Separating the line “Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible” by a colon brings these four horrors to the forefront, and makes them all equal in the amount pain brought by each act (Fawbert). By writing the bog poems in North, Heaney took the archeology of the past and combined it with the anthropology of the present to create poetry that would move readers for decades (Mishler).
Both Yeats and Heaney prove through their renowned writing that violence a and creativity often go hand in hand. Without the violence that they were both surrounded by and witnessed firsthand, they would not have been able to write some of their most famous poems. Whether it was poems written in reflection of violence like Yeats’s Easter, 1916 and The Rose Tree, or poems like Heaney’s Bog Queen and Punishment that were reflecting on the past, but were used to bring light to the present violence, they all show the complicated relationship between violence and creativity. Both Yeats and Heaney created beauty from the terribleness, solidifying the fact that violence and creativity truly are each a different side of the same coin. After all, there is no light without darkness, no happiness without sadness.
Originally published 15.10.2019