The Twenties of the Twentieth century. English Literature in the 1930s and 1940s William Butler Yeats

2. English Literature in the 1930s and 1940s
A new generation of realist writers, among them Richard Aldington, John Boynton Priestley and Archibald Joseph Cronin appeared on the literary scene between 1930 and World War II.
The world economic depression that began in the late 1920s had catastrophic effects in highly industrialized and heavily populated Britain. In two years exports and imports declined 35 percent, and unemployment reached three million. The Second World War, which began in September,1939, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, was disastrous for Britain and her allies. During 1939 and 1940 Nazi Germany mastered Europe. Only Britain under the leadership of Winston Churchill remained to oppose Hitler. But Britons heroically withstood the bombardment of their cities. With the entry of the United States into the war, and the failure of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the tide began to turn. Although Britain and her allies were eventually victorious, the postwar years were extremely hard. The country was nearly bankrupt, and recovery was slow. Of the new poets writing during this period, the most important and influencial was W.H.Auden. During the 1930s, which he characterized as a “low, dishonest decade,” Auden was the acknowledged leader of a circle of writers who aligned themselves with the political left and attempted to expose the social and economic ills of their country. Although they considered themselves the creators of a new poetic tradition, the influence of Hopkins, Yeats, and Eliot on these young writers is great. Especially, it may be observed in their use of precise and suggestive images, ironic understatement, and plain speech.
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
William Butler Yeats is considered by many critics to be the greatest poet writing in English in the XX century. He provides a bridge from the Victorian Age into the twentieth century. His early Romantic work, produced before the century turned, gradually became more realistic.
W. B. Yeats, an Irish poet and dramatist, was born in Sandymount, Ireland. His father was a painter. Yeats attended school in Dublin. Beginning as an art student, he soon gave up art for literature. At twenty-one, he published his first work “Mosada”, a drama written in verse. During the 1890s and 1900s he published many volumes of poems, which were symbolic in manner, drawing his imagery from Irish myth and folklore. The most important collections of that period were: “The Wandering of Oisis” (1891), “The Wind Among the Reeds” (1899), “The Rose” (1903), “Green Helmet and Other Poems” (1912).
For centuries Ireland had been an English colony, its economy exploited and its native culture suppressed. Yeats’s early poems and his book on Irish folk tales, “The Celtic Twilight” (1893), were in part political acts.
W.B.Yeats contributed a great deal to the Irish national theatre. Writing for the stage impressed Yeats with the importance of precise, spare language. His best known plays are “The Countess Cathleen” (1892), “Deirdre” (1907). The latter derived from Celtic mythology.
During the 1920s Yeats became more prominent in both policy and literature. He became a senator in the Irish Free state in 1922 and in 1923 received the Noble Prize for Literature. In 1925 Yeats published his major philosophical and historical prose work “A Vision”.
While many poets produce their finest work during their early years, Yeats was one of those rare poets who created their greatest poems after the age of fifty. He began his poetic career as a Romantic and finished it as a poet of the modern world. His early work was strongly influenced by Blake and Shelley, by the French Symbolists, and Irish mythology. These early poems were often simple, romantic, musical, and dreamlike. In the middle of his career, his poetry became less dreamlike and more realistic. His tone became more conversational and his imagery more economical. In the last stages of his poetic career, his interest in historical cycles became dominant. Thus, the evolution of Yeats’s art never ceased. The poems written when he was an old man (“The Tower”, 1928, “The Winding Stair”, 1920) are the most audacious.
Below, you will read one of William Butler Yeats’ poems. It is believed that Yeats wrote this poem for Major Robert Gregory, the son of his friend Lady Augusta Gregory. Major Gregory, an artist and aviator, was killed in action over Italy during World War I while flying for England’s Royal Flying Corps.