and chiasmus echoes deliberate choice• England postponed Irish Home Rule until
after the war
‘AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH’I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love;
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First personHigh modal personal subjective perspectivespondee - dum + dum- reinforces high modal- certainty
idiom reinforces intimate personal perspecitveprescience occultic connotations suggests doomed anyayenjambment forces attention from the personal to the divine/ cosmic/ heavenly
syntactical parallelism highlights dilemma of military combatants anywhere, any time even if the enemies are different- distributed in AfghanistanCircular torsion = word puzzle(matches chastic structure or inversion of sentiment/ideas) reinforces sneering tone of one young man ironic- speaker is post-mortemBitter indictment of futility of war in any context anaphoraImpersonal "Those" - of little importance to personanegative diction ambivalence of Irish people towards external conflict of WWI with Germanyirony: my enemy's enemy = my friendGermany vs England= Irish can't win whatever they choose
Julie 1
political connotations: Irish national ismwider perspective that art transcends human politics and nationalismPersonal choice prevails but 'an' implies an unknown airman - every aviator's choiceBarbaric cost of lives
Julie 1
Four quatrains 4x4 -balanced, structured, calculatedTwo sentences!soliloquy controvertial - Airman's private thoughts are treasonous to both England and Ireland Iambic tetrameter- regular marching beat, military
My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan's
poor, No likely end could bring them
loss Or leave them happier than
before.
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Parallelism again reflects rationality of airmananaphora personal pronoun 'my' connotes ownership/identification for first timeIrony: Gregory's were affluenct English Protestant landowners Why 'poor'?Gregory's regiment Local loyalty, not to IrelandRepetitions creates musicality hard plosive 'c' 'k' sounds reinforce his personal loyalty
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Negative diction accentuates the no win dilemma of his people 'them' suggests distanceenjambment forces parallelism / juxtaposition regular beat
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'poor' because this unit of men with their own tartan had no country of their own- all was under British rule
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Would England grant freedom?
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering
crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the
clouds;
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third quatrain and new sentenceanaphora, negative diction exposes this as a personal choicejuxtaposition with other men who have been seduced by rhetorical appeals to high ABSTRACT ideals LIKE 'DUTY', AUTHORITY OR EMOTIONLists reasons for war- all futilecold tonecalculating process of eliminationcdcd rhyme maintains regular predictable rhythmcaseura reflects dismissive repetitive confessionlisting accentuates calculated choice
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loud, thundering, chaoticExotic divine auditory imagery- mythologises the extraordinary divine experience of the Airman'schoice evokes eternal, transpersonal, immutability
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'O' assonance reinforces his solitary pursuitLife is worth one joyous act of impulsive freedomThis moment represents his life achievement
Julie 1
juxtaposes past with presentrapture/ ecstasy/ transcendence- metaphysical realmconsonance 'l' lyricaljuxtaposes crowds with solitary voicejustaposes earth below with 'tumult in the clouds'**** JUXTAPOSES RATIONAL against HIS SOLITARY 'IMPULSE OF DELIGHT' - Romantic heroic ideal, emotional and spiritual raptureenjambment evokes a divine but calculated choice of sacrifice to the Romantic ideal
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed
waste of breath, A waste of breath the years
behind In balance with this life, this
death.
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'e' assonance reinforces the futility of the equivocal nature of the Irish dilemmalife before seems bland , devoid of action, romantic herosim(many Irish were exectuted as trators) past tense of 'seemed' appears to be post- mortum posthumus
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past tensetranscends past and presenteternality of flight juxtaposed with the futility of life below
Julie 1
syntactical chiasmus reinforces his emotional and spiritual equalibrium in this celestial realmrepetition of the idiom - monotonyantimetaboleassonance 'ea' reinforces contempt for the human institution of war
Inevitability of immanent death, 'this' pronoun and repetition creates intimacy binary opposites: Creates impression of order- but removed from the human worldAccounting: considers and rejects: Nothing he can do will help his people's plight so he chooses freedom's' sibilance reinforces intimacyMost vivid moment of life is impending death- pardoxDoes order fail? Sense of call to a higher purpose (not duty) Moves from private chioce to transpersonal reconcilitation with what others value as duty
CONNECTIONS: OTHER POEMS ARGUMENTS‘When You are Old’- compare contrast
personal choices and consequences, transcendence, celestial focus
‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ – one man encounters nature, flight, symbolic of transpersonal struggle, immutability of nature, will never grow old, harmony/ balance, sharing of temporal/eternal moment, dialogue with himself many others…
2.Documents human emotion/experience:calculated choice, indifference, passion and aesthetics- ART’S SEARCH FOR BEAUTY, spontaneity – like wild swans
3. Impact of historical events on individual lives- WWI, UprisingYeats on Robert Gregory: “painter, classical scholar, scholar in painting and modern literature, boxer, horseman, airman”, “his very accomplishments hid from many his genius”
ARGUMENTS9. Search for truth in reason and imagination; eternal rests in human interactions with environment; beauty is a shared temporal nd eternal moment, harmony, balance
10. Multiple visions of Ireland: dilemma, nationalism, aesthetics
11. Explores sweeping social change: liberty, moral decline, disillusionment, conflict, ‘waste of breath’
12. Beauty resides in the shared temporal and eternal moment created by the poet/persona
13. Poet creates beauty in capturing nature despite human remaining alienated from it
14. Poet brings harmony to mutable nature yet still sees the reflected light of the sublime
WebsitesFor rhetoric: drmardy.com virtualsalt.comFor Yeats: shmoop.com online.literature.com Most sites with …edu
