Among School Children - Lecture notes 1-5 PDF

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Summary

Among School Children is a moderns poem by WB Yeats. This used to be taught in department of English, AMU by Prof. Rahatullah Khan. Its a reflective poem by Yeats relating his own childhood....

Description

Among School Children: WB Yeats The Poem. Eight eight-line stanzas are used in "Among School Children" by William Butler Yeats. The poem is written in a precise

rhyme

straightforward

scheme. language,

With

its

stanza

simple I

title

and

establishes

the

immediate setting of the action. During a visit to a schoolroom, "a kind old nun," his guide for the day or perhaps

the

classroom

teacher,

is

answering

his

straightforward questions in a matter-of-fact and rapid manner. "In momentary wonder stare upon” A sixty-year-old smiling public man," the speaker says in a couplet ending the first stanza; suddenly, he sees himself through the children's eyes. In his capacity as a senator in the Irish Senate, poet W.B. Yeats, who had recently turned sixty, was required to visit schools as part of his official duties. When one sees himself through the eyes of children, one is taken back to another time. It brings back memories of a young girl or child he remembers from his own childhood or adolescence. We don't know for sure what's going on, but we're told about a "childish day" and

"youthful sympathy." Maud Gonne, who was in her late teens when the poet first met and fell in love with her, is generally regarded as the young woman in question. "She stands before me as a living child," he says, referring to one of the children, a resemblance to Maud at that age. In the nearly forty years since they last saw each other, he can't help but be reminded of how she looked back then. As if she had "drank the wind and eaten a mess of shadows for [her] meat," "her current image" portrays a woman who has "drunk the wind and eaten a mess of shadows for [her] meat." There are parallels between his thoughts of her at that time and his current thoughts of her. The years have not been kind to him either, but he decides to keep a brave face and "smile on all that smile" in the classroom. Despite this, he can't shake the notion that human life appears to be a gradual decline, if not outright defeat. What would a mother, perhaps his own, think if she were to see that baby after "sixty or more winters" of life? He wonders if she'll be happy with the end result, given the pain she'll have to endure and the worries she'll have about her baby's well-being.

To find some solace for the tragic unravelling of dreams and hopes in human life, the speaker shifts from the personal tone that has permeated this poem to a more general one, examining the thoughts and ideas of everyone from Plato to Aristotle to Pythagoreans, from nuns to mothers to young lovers. A burst of rage, the speaker blasts all those images that people use to motivate themselves and others into only succeeding at failing, and instead tries to see human life as it really is.

Forms and Devices "Among School Children" is one of the most complex works of poetry in Yeats's body of work, and it contains numerous personal and public symbols and allusions. Examining

the

source

of

something

as

seemingly

superficial as a rhyme scheme provides an example of this level of complexity. Ottava rima was first used in English prosody by George Gordon, Lord Byron, in his satirical masterpiece Don Juan in the early nineteenth century (1819-1824). Only in the broadest sense of the term can one describe the Yeats poem as satirical, as one does when discussing

Dante's The Divine Comedy (c. 1320). For example, like Dante, Yeats uses an otherwise unremarkable event—a public official visiting a classroom while touring a school— to explore the larger meaning and purpose of human life in general. Making such connections is not as far-fetched as one might think because of Yeats's complex technique. Symbols, like references to other texts and sources of information, can point in any direction, but they will always establish some sort of relationship with the subject matter. Symbols and allusions from both the private and the public spheres must be carefully arranged and linked to a larger theme. The myth of Leda and the swan by Yeats serves as a good example. Zeus, disguised as a swan, raped the mortal Leda, and from that union, Helen of Troy was born. The "Ledaean body" of Yeats, on the other hand, is more than a mere knowledge of the myth. His poem "Leda and the Swan" is an allegory about the perils of mixing divine elements with something as frail as human nature. In other poems, Yeats compares Maud Gonne to Helen of

Troy as a symbol of the destructive beauty of the human form. A poem about children, childhood, labour, and birth featuring the character Leda also makes me think of childbearing and raising children, which opens up even more meanings for the character and shows how the poem's apparent obscurity is actually the result of drawing from a wide literary heritage while also drawing on

a

compelling

depth

and

interconnectedness

of

thought, feeling, and experience. Themes and Meanings As depicted in the climax, "Among School Childrencentral "'s themes are best demonstrated. Elementary school students are being visited by a 60-year-old official. Poetic themes like youth versus experience, innocence versus wisdom, and youth against experience recur throughout the poem's many stanzas. As he grew older, Yeats became almost obsessed with the themes of death and loss, which he had previously dealt with in his youth, as he began to face his own mortality in more concrete terms. This period in Yeats' career saw him examine the consequences and effects of time's passage, both for

individuals and for humanity as a whole, based on his own personal experiences, invariably drawing from his own life experiences. While Yeats sees human life as tragic, his vision is not nihilistic. These timeless themes take on a profound significance in Yeats's hands. He doesn't go into specifics, but he does believe that there is a reason for our existence. It shows how a person can thwart his or her own purpose by believing that he or she is in control of their own destiny or that there is no such thing as destiny. Maud Gonne is a perfect example of this dissatisfaction with one's life's work. She must live with the meaningless fruits of her actions now that the pain and frustrations of her commitment to revolutionary Irish political causes have affected her and others. The poet is condemned to remember the brightness and promise of her youth. By snubbing her own happiness, she has snubbed the entire human race. And Yeats will not be the only one to suffer the same fate. Flesh ages, spirits wane, and human dreams fade. All fail in

their

choices

and

actions

to

face

the

one

insurmountable reality. His accusation against himself is

that he's "a comfortable kind of old scarecrow" now because he's given up or given in ("Ihad pretty plumage once"), and he accuses everyone, including the Helens and Mauds of the world, of betraying the innocent, childlike spirit that fosters dreams and compels human choices. False hopes and expectations are created when people unintentionally create false images of what it means to be human. If you can't avoid moving forward, you should imagine the fullness of each moment as having an inextricable harmony with the rest. While a dance can exist without a performer, it lacks shape and form without the presence of a performer in the mix....