Photograph of William Butler Yeats taken in 1923
"The Circus Animal's Desertion" is a poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats, published in Last Poems in 1939.
The Circus Animal's Desertion[]
I
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
Jonny J. Jones show moving three of its circus animals from its winter quarters at the Volusia County fairgrounds, 1942. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
II
What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride.
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
"The Circus Animals' Desertion" by W B Yeats (read by Tom O'Bedlam)
III
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart
Overview[]
While the original composition date of the poem is unknown, it was probably written between November 1937 and September 1938.[1] In the preface, Yeats suggests that he intended the poem to combine his personal views and impressions with the customs and beliefs of Christian Ireland.[2] The poem was the last work published in Yeats's final collection, with "Politics" following as an envoi.[3] In the poem, the poet uses the desertion of circus animals as an analogy to describe his failure to find inspiration for poetic creation, and as he seeks a new inspiration, he uses aspects of Modernist and Postmodern literature in the poem that arises from the search.[4][5]
Form[]
The poem is an ottava rima (eight-line stanzas with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c) in 3 parts, the first and the last with 8 lines each and the second containing 3 stanzas of 8 lines. The meter begins as iambic pentameter, but gets looser as the poem progresses.
The poem's opening lines suggest that the poet is searching for a theme, but in the process, he finds the "masterful images" of his earlier works. The reflection upon previous poetic creations appears again as the second part begins and the poet voices his frustration by stating "What can I but enumerate old themes".[6]
The final lines of the poem conclude that the poet must "lie down where all ladders start", which leads Michael O'Neil to suggest that the use of the word "start" indicates a new beginning taking place as the poem ends. The "foul rag and bone shop of the heart", O'Neil contends, is the paper upon which the poem is written, and he argues that Yeats gives "grandeur" to the gutter items of the poem, as the reimagining of "old kettles, old bottles, a broken can" as well as the "rag and bone shop of the heart", become "as masterful a set of images as any Yeats has created".[4]
Critical reception[]
Kurt Koenigsberger describes "The Circus Animal's Desertion"" as the poet's attempt to "concede life's deritus," as the "beasts", which represent poetic imagination, disappear in his old age. He argues that Yeats uses the analogy of the circus animal to take the place of poetic work and becomes a spectator of his own imagination as he finds himself unable to conjure up a new theme for his poetry.[6] In "Yeats and Postmodernism," Earl Ingersol describes the poem as being one of the early pieces of Postmodern literature suggesting that "The Circus Animals' Desertion" is a poem about writing poems. He claims that the subject portrays a withdrawal from Modernist literature and the themes of Yeats' earlier works.[5]
Michael O'Neil argues that the poem attempts to fill the gaps between Yeats's emotions and the poetry they had inspired over his lifetime, as he was in his 70's when it was composed. O'Neil suggests that the poet is tired at the time the poem is written and is searching for a "new source of creativity", only in "The Circus Animals' Desertion", that inspiration comes from a critical analysis of his previous works.[4]
In Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, critic Helen Vendler suggests that the poem is a recognition of Yeats changing from one position in society to another as he moves from the prominent poet who plays the role of the ringmaster in a circus to an elderly man with writers block who must recycle the themes of his past works. Vendler analyzes the references of The Countess Cathleen and Oisin throughout the poem and puts particular emphasis on the narrator's critique of his previous works, arguing that the tone of the poem is highly retrospective.[7]
See also[]
References[]
- Jeffares, Alexander Norman. A commentary on the collected poems of W.B. Yeats.Stanford University Press (1968)
- Koenigsberger, Kurt. The novel and the Menagerie: Totality, Englishness, and Empire.Ohio State University Press (2007)
- Ingersol, Earl. "Yeats and Postmodernism". Notes on Modern Irish Literature. Edward A. Kopper, Jr. (2001)/University of Michigan (2008)
- O'Neil, Michael. "The Circus Animals' Desertion". Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem. Clarendon Press (1997)
- Finneran, Richard.Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies 1995.University of Michigan Press (1998)p. 202
- Vendler, Helen. Our Secret Discipline:Yeats and the Lyric Form.Belnap 2007