Writing out chaos: Constructions of history in Yeats's "nineteen hundred and nineteen" and "meditations in time of civil war" - of

Twentieth Century Literature, Summer, 2001 by Rob Doggett

At the time of the election, 1916 was marked by most Republican leaders as the conclusion of violent resistance, a past that would in itself serve to invigorate a political struggle in the present, but that position changed during the years of the Anglo-Irish War, as increased violence and revolutionary resistance in what came to be known in IRA discourse as the "four glorious years" of 1918 to 1921 readily provided for, indeed demanded the articulation of, a living history of heroic struggle. Responding to this crisis, Sinn Fein obliged by again offering a narrative of the present, readily grafted upon earlier nationalist constructions, through which acts of violence--the burning of homes, the killing of "informers," the deaths of fellow insurrectionists--might be read within the context of a larger revolutionary mythology. (13) While certainly understandable during a period of armed resistance, the continuous elaboration of a unified national history centered on a tradition of heroic sacrifice served to sup port the normalization of violence and helped, we can say with admitted hindsight, to lay the groundwork for a reactionary and an oppressive politics after liberation occurred.The hasty execution by the IRA of accused spies and the killing of innocent civilians during surprise attacks were forgotten, while the deeds of men like Tom Barry readily became the stuff of folklore, significantly altering the landscape of nationalism for years to come and giving, in the opinion of historian D. George Boyce, "political violence a new lease of life in Ireland ..." (323).

The Yeats of this period must be understood against this backdrop of nationalist sentiment. Conor Cruise O'Brien has written that

the conception of history as a series of blood sacrifices enacted in every generation...is most essentially a literary invention. The great propagandist of this notion, as far as Ireland is concerned, was the poet Yeats.

(qtd. in Cullingford, Gender and History 57)

But as early as l9l8 Yeats seems to have been acutely aware of the practical impact of inflaming "the old historical passion" (Letters 649), and during the debates that followed the passage of a British bill (March 1918) authorizing conscription of Irish soldiers for service in the Great War, Yeats, though publicly opposed, carefully tempered his opposition. (14) Writing to Clement Shorter concerning an upcoming lecture on Irish poetry Yeats explains:

[T]imes are too dangerous for me to encourage men to risks I am not prepared to share or approve. If the Government go on with conscription there may be soon disastrous outbreaks....

[T]he old historical passion is at its greatest intensity (Letters 649)

As a letter to the British Lord Haldane written later that year reveals, Yeats's primary concern was not simply violence in itself but what that violence might become in both imperial and national historiography:

If conscription is imposed ... [t]here will be incidents that will become anecdotes and legends.... Each side will have its wrongs to tell of and these will keep England and Ireland apart during your lifetime and mine. (qtd. in Cullingford, Yeats 104).