Venera Kameri

“In Memory of W. B. Yeats”

“In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden was written in 1939, following the death of the Irish Poet W.
B. Yeats in January of that year as well as being an elegy for the dead poet. “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” is
in three parts, each of which has its own form and style. In 'In Memory of W.B. Yeats' Auden explores
themes of life after death, the power of poetry, and the human condition. The symbols Auden uses in his
poem are: water, frozenness an immobility, impending doom. The poetic devices used are:
enjambment, allusion, alliteration, metaphor, imagery. In this essay I will provide a detailed explanation
of the first part, the second and the third.

PART I: The first line of the poem with the usage of alliteration and imagery “He disappeared in the dead
of winter:” introduces a strong image of Yeats walking out alone into the darkness of winter. The
desolation of the scene becomes stronger with each successive image. Not only nature, but the cold and
mechanical works of man felt the passing of Yeats, and thrust the reader step by step into the cold shock
of the described day. Auden expresses doubts about the adequacy of human tools to measure or reflect
upon the actual death of a man. If recording the death of the body is hard, it is much more difficult to
commemorate the life of the mind and soul. Auden deliberately chooses to refer to Yeats symbolically as
"the poet," making him an anonymous figure rather than a specific man. Even the mourners are
abstracted into "mourning tongues," not specific people. In the absence of specific people in these lines,
Yeats' poems themselves seem to take on a life of their own. Auden emphasizes Yeats’ humanness by
comparing him with hospitals and nurses and all the mundane things that we generally don’t tend to
think about when mourning a national figure. The usage of alliteration and metaphor in “The provinces
of his body revolted/The squares of his mind were empty/Silence invaded the suburbs,” Auden turns to
geographic and architectural language to describe human conditions. Yeats’ body is described
metaphorically as a city at war with itself – a war it eventually loses. In death even Yeats’ poems change;
they can no longer emerge from the poet’s own mouth. Instead they get “modified in the guts of the
living.” The human world goes on as usual. We wonder whether Yeats’ death really outlives the evening
news. The last two lines of the first stanza are repeated as the final two lines of the first section. This
repetition underscores the fact that we hardly have adequate tools to tackle something as strange and
complicated as death.

Part ll: The second section suddenly the speaker directs his words towards a ‘you’ who seems to be
Yeats. Instead of showing us the honorable and good side of the dead poet, he makes sure we
understand that Yeats’ ‘gift’ emerges in spite of, or perhaps because of, all the complexities of his
personality. He says, “...Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry/Now Ireland has her madness and her weather
still/For poetry makes nothing happen: ...” These lines show how deeply involved Yeats was in the Irish
independence movement of his time. Some of his most remembered poems like, ‘Easter 1916’ emerge
from his engagement with struggles for independence. He cared passionately about Ireland but his
political positions were often complicated. Yeats wrote poetry to cure his country but his country
remains sick. The speaker says that Ireland hasn’t changed one bit because of Yeats’ poetry. However,
he isn’t saying that poetry is worthless. After all, he is speaking in a poem himself. While poetry can’t be
or do specific things, it allows us to think about things that we may not ordinarily think about. This
subtle distinction indicates the delicate opposition between Yeats and Auden. Yeats considered poetry
to be a tool whereas Auden believes that it is nothing in itself but its value lies only in how its readers
respond to it. Yeats’ fault was that he expected too much out of poetry. Auden clarifies that, poetry is
not a force in itself but made dynamic by its interpreters and each one’s “foreign code of conscience.”
Poetry presents a world that’s both real and far removed from our own, and it does so on its own terms.
When you are done reading a poem you don’t have anything tangible to keep from the experience.
Poetry is “a way of happening.” Auden seems to insist on the mobility and vitality of poetry. Amidst all
the freezing isolation of the world, poetry is an active instrument.

Part lll: The third section for the first time Yeats is referred to by name. Conventionally an elegy explains
right at the beginning just who it is that the poet is mourning. Here Auden reverses this practice by
mentioning it in the final section. Here Yeats metaphorically is referred to as an “Irish vessel,” a body
meant to carry only poetry and not the problems the speaker brought up at the beginning of Section II.
Auden also gives some of the specifics of Yeats’ death, particularly the time of his death. Yeats died in
1939, just as the world was gearing up for World War II. Yeats and Auden shared the sentiments of
many of their fellow artists and intellectuals, who were dismayed at the thought of another world war.
The speaker paints the impending war as a sort of nightmarish unreality. The third stanza of the Section
doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Yeats, the man. Auden perhaps believes that a good way to
pay homage to someone is to spend some time thinking about his views and concerns. He goes on to
admire how Yeats combines realism with rejoicing. The poet is a figure that lives on through Yeats’
poetry and isn’t necessarily attached to Yeats, the man. Poetry is now channeled into a single image of a
healing fountain. The poem holds out hope for the possibility of life and growth. The usage of
alliteration and metaphor “In the deserts of the heart/Let the healing fountain start,” The way Auden
crafts these lines are an invocation of Yeats’ poetic powers. The last lines of the poem sound depressing
because life is described as a prison. However, there is hope for the future because the ‘free man’ can
learn ‘how to praise.’ Auden’s final approach to this elegy is interesting and thought-provoking. He
doesn’t want Yeats to live forever or his poems to be immortalized. He wants people to read and think
and possibly become better by reading Yeats’ poems.

In conclusion ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ is, a powerful poem not just about Yeats but about all poets
whose work can teach us ‘how to praise’. These final words of Auden’s poem are, fittingly enough,
inscribed on the poet’s own memorial stone in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. In my opinion the
poem is not just technically accomplished but also a semantically profound to the tension between
these differing views of what poetry is and should be. It also marks Auden out as a modern poet, and not
only Yeats.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353846661_Deconstructive_Reading_of_WH_Auden
%27s_In_Memory_of_W_B_Yeats