I had the pleasure of writing about Yeats at university, and I chose to examine his occult interest and how he chose his art to project into the world a spiritual energy. As I hear him read this poem, I feel that his rythym and incantation style uses that energy to his creative purpose. I love his poetry and he was a fascinating man.
Yeats interest in spiritualism came much later in life. He was a very young man when he wrote this. I know some think that his wife did all that automatic writing because it made him happy but that she faked it. Have you read A Vision?
The Lake Isle of Innisfree W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939 I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
His method of recicitation is very specific, and he employed it for the purpose of rhythmic emphasis and to give the effect of conjuring the poem's theme. I find it breathtaking.
Your cabin is in the deep hearts core ...yeats had to keep it with him in his heart when he too worked in the city. that is the gift he wants to give you.
I used to wonder why noon would be "a purple glow", until I learned that the Gaelic word for heather is "fraoch", which is generally pronounced as "free", and "Inis" means "island", so Inisfree just means "The Island of Heather". Suddenly it all made sense.
I first heard this recording decades ago. My great age gives me not only more appreciation of the sentiments expressed in the poem, but also, how he read it. I want to go to Innisfree and have tried to make my own Innisfree.
For anyone wondering why Yeats is reading so strangely, here is a quote from him to explain: "I am going to read my poems with great emphasis upon their rhythm, and that may seem strange if you are not used to it. I remember the great English poet, William Morris, coming in a rage out of some lecture hall where somebody had recited a passage out of his Sigurd the Volsung, ‘It gave me a devil of a lot of trouble’, said Morris, ‘to get that thing into verse’. It gave me a devil of a lot of trouble to get into verse the poems that I am going to read, and that is why I will not read them as if they were prose."
At first his reading struck me as over-theatrical but now I understand. I've noticed in my own attempts at poetry, when I read it back to myself, after some distance from the original writing, the rhythm I felt it had just isn't there. So I sympathize with Yeats' concern. To hear the poet's actual voice is like discovering a recording of Homer reciting "The Iliad". Truly mind-boggling!
THANK YOU! I love this recording so much; I cried the first time I heard it. I've just finished quoting this exact same passage on another video of it where uninformed people were mocking it for not sounding like - what? I can only think they wanted it to sound incidental, casual, trivial, and that's exactly what Yeats didn't want.
Wonderful poem. About escape from the bustle of life: maybe a young Yeats wanting to escape for awhile from his family's summer home, or an older Yeats wishing to get away the bustle of London. It always brings to my mind the peace I hope to achieve when I retire, or the "rest in peace" we all must eventually share. Yeats' reading sounds like parody to me. Wikipedia says he was a bit annoyed at how ridiculously popular the poem became -- popular to the point where thousands of Boy Scouts recited it in his honor.
Thousands of Boy Scouts recited the poem in his honor?? Given Yeats' theme with this one, that DOES seem a bit bizarre, lol. Perhaps he was having a bit of fun with his public while reciting it!
@@aclark903 The wonderful glorious thing about a good poem is that it speaks to us differently, often deeply. Perhaps it's best not to judge and lecture another when they express their respect for a poem and the sublime joy it delivers. I think Wordswoth, Keats, Miltoin and Shakespeare would agree with me.
Now that you know how he intends his work to be read, chanted even, now revisit his Song of Wandering Aenghus.......and bathe in the long oo's.......and the dreaming word repetitions........and the childlike " And-s" ......which tell a dreamstory as a five year old might tell it. Irish poets learn your trade, ....and work, and work!..... towards what's well made.
Yeats was an anti-modernist, and he recited his poetry this way for the specific reason of emphasizing the poetry's rhythm. He believed that if he spoke it without the incantatory emphasis it would reduce the poem to prose, which would defeat the massive amount of time and effort it had taken to create the verse.
If you are wondering about his reading voice... listen to Vachel Lindsey's Congo or Verlaine's tone poems. In these instances, the poet is making his delivery to enhance the poem.
The cadence is instructive, but I wasn't expecting such a growling, threatening tone in reading this poem of wistful longing. I'm left to conclude that this is the voice of the aging poet somehow angry at this work of his youth.
I think it's just his aging voice. Yeats himself said that this poem remains his favorite, wrote it in his early 20's, as he matured as a poet, nd with perseverance and skill, he was able to reach this final outcome.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core.
wow! wut the hell? I studied poetry and have a masters in English, so get what's happening in WBY recitation. But hearing it! I'm on my way to Inverness now. Can't wait to lay this on my friends.
A beautiful, wonderful poem...very much a favourite...however the dirge like old fashioned delivery by the poet is wonderfully modernised and musically updated by the Waterboys version on youtube. [for some reason YT doesn't allow me to post it as a link]
His way of reciting it is, I think, quite usual for the time. Just listen to T.S. Eliot reciting The Waste Land. Or really any actor from that period reciting one of Shakespeare's soliloquies.
I dig his alliteration in clay and wattles made: His like his line, I hear water lapping with low sounds by the shore: He is such a sonorous reader, maybe he wants to enchant his listener, and surprisingly , although I had not read it, but looked for this poem, from the youtube, it resembles my poetry in my poem, "SEA OTTER" I see I did write a poem, :"Yeats Hitting in a Sand Lot, a song for radicals" But I am deprived of a visit to Ireland.
+Jake Scott Pound was Yeats's secretary for a year or so - so what you say makes sense. Are you thinking, in particular, of Mouers Contemporaines? I think he sounds exactly like Yeats in that reading. Also, incidentally, he had written a parody of Innisfree. So there's that too.
@@josephobrien2084 I thought so as well, especially in the rhythm he reads with in his recording of Hugh Selwyn Muberley ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--d7-yvs8-JE.html
I was surprised too, but I do like it actually. It fits his style of work - chanting, almost liturgical. It’s how I imagine the Odyssey might have been performed, all those years ago.
Classically educated, upper class Victorian, Anglo-Irish, reciting his poem in an expected cadence that is used to recite non-prose, present until this day. A work of sublime art.
My teacher seems to love depressing poems. She had us memorize "The Charge of the Light Brigade", by Alfred Lord Tennyson. And now we need to memorize this.
The thing to do is... Teach an AI program to speak exactly like this... Then feed in Doors lyrics: "The minister's daughter in love with the snake, that lives in the well by the side of the road..." etc. etc.
I couldn't hear poem at some points because of Yeats' thick Irish accent...but still there's nothing more amazing than hearing a famous poet read his or her own work ;)
Why dosen't he have a Irish accent Like, why the hell is he rolling his r's? 😂 Although, I think I heard that he was living in London at the time, so maybe he's just trying to do a posh accent 🧐
Yourlocallordandsavior In short, Medieval English sounded mother nothing like this. It is almost indecipherable to a modern English speaker. If you want to listen to it go listen to the prologue of the Canterbury tales in Middle English ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GihrWuysnrc.html and that is the way English sounded. Also, being from Ireland his accent is quite neutral and not very accented.
interestingly, medieval English, up through the Elizabethan age, likely sounded a good deal more like American English, with a fairly nasal quality to it. The "shakespearian" English one hears in modern renditions of his plays is the sad accident of British actors being educated to speak Received British Pronunciation English.
English is a Germanic language, so no, nothing like medieval Celtic Irish. It's easy to find videos of people reading in Anglo Saxon or Middle English - this one starts in the late Middle Ages and goes up to the present, and it's brilliant. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3lXv3Tt4x20.html&ab_channel=SimonRoper
I am sorry Ray, but that is absolutely not true! I did my senior recital and thesis on Yeats when I was in college in the 60s, and I have loved this ever since I heard it! What an honor to hear Yeats read his own poem! No matter what you think he sounds like, it is his way ~ Let it be & appreciate it, without negatives! 🎉
