Yeats Poetry Comparison: Comparing The Stolen Child and The Fisherman
The Stolen Child is known to be one of Yeats’ earlier poems and was first published in 1895 when Yeats was 30 years old,at a time recognised as the ‘Celtic Twilight’ phase of his poetry. This narrative poem has a heavy emphasis on Irish mythology and folklore, and is based on a story told by his mother from a collection of ghost and fairy stories. The poem’s use of natural imagery and imagination gives it a very romantic style, which could reflect a possible influence Yeats had felt from early Romantic literature. In 1916, when Yeats had reached the age of 51 and at a time when Ireland was becoming ever-more turbulent, his poem The Fisherman was published. When reading this poem, the reader gets a real sense of Yeats’ scorn for the Irish public and their contempt for ‘great Art’. The line ‘And great Art beaten down’ can be directly linked to the riotous behaviour surrounding the play Playboy of the Western World writtenby Yeats’ friend, Synge.InThe Fisherman Yeats goes back and forth from his ideal and the reality, using ‘The Fisherman’ not as a single person, but as a way of symbolising his perfect audience. Ideal and reality or the sense of escapismis a major theme for both The Stolen Child and The Fisherman; as well as Yeats’ sense of escape by creating the perfect audience in The Fisherman, The Stolen Childtells the story of a child being lured into another world by the fairies, and in turn away from reality.
In both The Stolen Child and The Fisherman, the theme of ideal versus reality runs throughout, which could perhaps reflect Yeats’ feeling of detachment from Ireland at this time. This is particularly the case in The Fisherman, where Yeats expresses his bitterness for the state of political Ireland and in turn creates his own, perfect audience – ‘The Fisherman’. ‘The Fisherman’ is described as being a ‘wise and simple man', which is also reflected in the simplistic style of the ABAB rhyme scheme of the section in which he is described. When Yeats discusses ‘The Fisherman’ in more detail towards the end of the poem, he recognises the distinction between his ideal and reality by saying ‘A man who does not exist, A man who is but a dream’. By doing this, Yeats strengthens our attention to the fact that this man is not real, but a figment of his imagination. In-between the two descriptions of ‘The Fisherman’, Yeats expresses his disdain of those who donot share the same visions as he does and of those who donot appreciate and therefore diminish ‘great Art’, which includes poetry. When comparing this poem to The Stolen Child, you instantly realise that as his life progressed Yeats had become further and further disillusioned from how Ireland wanted to be seen by the outside world. Similarly to The Fisherman, when reading The Stolen Child you get a sense of Yeats being absorbed by the vision of another world and the idea of being able to escape from reality. At the time that The Stolen Child was published, Yeats was involved with Maud Gonne and other Irish nationalists who all wanted to raise the importance and significance of Celtic mythology to the public. Yeats certainly does this with The Stolen Child; throughout the poem his use of language creates an almost ‘other-worldly’ effect. For example, the use of the landscape and water imagery such as ‘the wave of moonlight glosses’makes it feel as though the moonlight has become part of the water, which gives a very ethereal and magical feel to it.
As mentioned briefly above, Yeats uses natural imagery throughout The Stolen Child, which quite often links with the magical world of the fairies and adds to the romanticised style of the poem. Location in The Stolen Child seems to be very important to the poem; the very first word of the poem is ‘Where’, an adverb, which instantly tells us that the setting is of great significance.The ornate description of the first line of the poem, ‘Where dips the rocky highland’, again links to natural imagery and the rhythm of this line feels almost hypnotic, which could perhaps reflect the effect that the fairies are having on ‘The Stolen Child’.As well as in The Stolen Child, Yeats also uses natural imagery in The Fishermanto describe ‘The Fisherman’ and create a link between his ‘ideal audience’and a rural setting, whereas Yeats seems to create the men whom he disdains into a much more urban figure. ‘The Fisherman’ himself is seen to be in isolation, in a very rural, natural environment; he is stood on ‘a grey place on a hill’ ‘in grey Connemara clothes’. The way in which both the landscape and ‘The Fisherman’s’ clothes are grey could represent and symbolise the idea of ‘The Fisherman’ blending in with the surrounding environment, which again links to the simplicity and balance of this section of the poem. He is also seen ‘At dawn to cast his flies’, which again makes the reader picture him in a very natural surrounding. In contrast to this, ‘The living men’ that Yeats had such contempt for are said to have ‘won a drunken cheer’ and to be telling jokes ‘Aimed at the commonest ear’ which not only makes it seem as though Yeats is describing a more urban figure, but the way in which he describes them as being ‘common’ again just highlights the scorn Yeats feels towards them.
In The Fisherman Yeats expresses his recognition of the political state of Ireland and where he stood within this debate, howeverThe Stolen Child is very much centred around the desire to escape ‘from a world more full of weeping that he can understand’ and to go to ‘The waters and the wild’. Although the world of The Stolen Child seems to have elements of hope and happiness, for example being able to leave the child’s current world that ‘is full of troubles’, the very title of the poem, The Stolen Child,suggests a much more sinister side to this narrative. The title The Stolen Child makes us realise that this child wasn’t simply just interested in the fairies and therefore lulled in by them, but was actually taken away against their will. The way in which the child and a ‘faery’ walk away ‘hand in hand’ also makes you realise that the fairies are physically as well as mentally controlling the child. In contrast to this, Yeats’ ideal audience symbolised in The Fisherman is very much in isolation and seems to be at peace with this way of life. Most people would assume that being in isolation would equate to loneliness or unhappiness, but here it is quite the opposite and is actually put forward as a positive.
In conclusion, both The Stolen Child and The Fisherman reflect W. B. Yeats’ feeling of detachment from his home country and express how he used his imagination to create an ideal in order to escape from reality. However, I feel as those these two poems are slightly different, as The Stolen Child seems to focus more on the feeling of total escape from the reality of life, whereas in The Fisherman both the ideal and the reality are explored, which could perhaps suggest that Yeats was coming to terms with the state of Ireland, even if he didn’t agree with it.