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

In "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" Yeats offers a response to such potential constructions of history by articulating a vision of the present that steadfastly refuses to conform to the contours of Republican historiography. This is not to say that Yeats peers through the haze of Republican nationalism to discover or articulate a "ture" history of the Anglo-Irish War, nor, as Deane would argue, does he attempt to replace one idealized history with another. Rather, as so often happens with Yeats, he begins anew. He fundamentally questions those positivistic histories developed by most forms of Irish nationalism. He indicts himself for having blindly participated in the construction of previous national histories and, in an attempt to lay the foundation for a new history of Ireland rendered in art, plunges into the "foul rag and bone shop" of war, exploding the gap, to borrow Enda Duffy's remarks on Ulysses, "between the horror of actual violence and the explanations of overtly political discourse" (10), between the actual community and imagined community, between a history waiting to be written and a history that has been written.

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"Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen," as Curtis Bradford's compilation of Yeats's manuscripts indicates, underwent numerous revisions, two of which, central to our reading, occurred after its original publication in The Dial (1921) and The London Mercury (1921): the title was changed from "Thoughts upon the Present State of the World" and the postscriptum date "1919" was added, though, as a letter to Olivia Shakespear reveals, Yeats was still working on the poem in April 1921 (Letters 668). These changes nicely highlight the issue of historiographic desire that I see at the core of the poem, as Yeats, in a move designed to heighten the poem's ultimate irony, initially seems to present a poem that will give order and meaning to history as it unfolds. The original title serves to indicate the subjective position of the author, an artist simply reflecting on a series of events passing before his eyes. In sharp contrast, both the formal title "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" and the postscriptum date resonate with a se nse of objective truth and the weight of history/historiography. It is as if Yeats, in the manner of the prophetic romantic artist, perceives the historical importance of that year as it happens. Furthermore, by seeming to announce the centrality of that year in his title, Yeats asks the reader to view the poem as a representation of history, a point in time that must then be considered within the context of other significant historical moments. This is true of Yeats's whole canon, as the title inevitably brings to mind other key dates such as 1913 and 1916, demanding the contextualization of the poem within, at the very least, his individual literary history and potentially suggesting an evolutionary trajectory in which the sacrifices of 1916 would be (re)validated by the revolutionary heroes of 1919. Historical contextualization is also demanded on a broader level, for, as numerous critics have noted, "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" signals the beginning of a new era after the Great War and, in terms of the Irish situation, clearly sets the poem within the context of the Anglo-Irish War, marking the first year of that struggle when, in January, the Dail formally declared succession from the United Kingdom. Indeed, during the 1921 treaty debates, 1919 was, according to nationalist leaders such as Eamon De Valera, the year when the Republic envisioned in 1916 actually came into being (Cronin 140).