When readers look at the early poem by William Butler Yeats entitled “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”, at first glance what is seen us a poem about a retreat. Inissfree is painted as a spot where he can go back to the land and take in the simple nature that makes up the island. It is a stark contrast to the busy London surroundings that are mentioned in the headnote to the piece (Yeats 94). What few realize however is as to why Yeats wanted to use this island as an escape.
The popular view maintains that Yeats was writing “ The Lake Isle of Innisfree” as a reaction to the modern world, a love letter of sorts to the pastoral Ireland of old, as well as a call to reclaim the ways of Celtic Ireland. Henry Merritt in his article for the Oxford English Journal takes a different stance. His article “Rising and Going: The ‘Nature’ of Yeats’s ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’” argues that “the retreat to it is escape, a flight from the threat if sexuality” (Merritt 103). This may come to a surprise to many, but Merritt backs up his argument with a wealth of information that makes a decent case. He looks at Yeats’s desire to separate himself from the constraints of the modern world, as a way to distance himself from the conventions of being a male in modern society (Merritt 105). Merritt shows this fear by citing an excerpt from The Autobiographies in which a young Yeats nervously shies away from a group of women at the British Museum, quickly seeking salvation within the museum walls (105). That very same salvation that a shy young man sought out in his day to day life can be imagined when reading the reading the words in his now famous work. The small island where he longs to go in his mind, as he says in line five of the poem will bring him peace (Yeats ll. 5); something his young heart was eager to know.
Merritt, Henry. “Rising And Going: The ‘Nature’ Of Yeats’s ‘The Lake Isle Of Innisfree’.” English: The Journal Of The English Association 47.188 (1998): 103-109. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.
Yeats, William Butler. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”. The Norton Anthology of Modern andContemporary Poetry. 3. Vol. 1. Ramazani, Jahan, Rchard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair. New York: W.W. Norton and Co, 2003 94. Print
I don’t remember quite clearly, but I’m pretty sure I read in the Yeats’ author headnotes that he revered William Blake. If that’s true, then I can see where Merritt is coming from. Blake was notorious about imbuing his literature with the advocation for the freedom of sexuality. We see this particularly in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and it is possible that Yeats’ little Isle of Innisfree is a representation of this marriage between the supposed conflicting energies of good and sin. The isle becomes a haven and a complex where the bad and the sinful become a positive force to elicit poetic inspiration.
Yes, Katherine, but whereas Blake advocated for that freedom, I think Merritt is casting Yeats as an almost Prufrock like character, inventing an un-peopled pastoral landscape where he can escape from those “human voices” that threaten him. I actually don’t agree with that reading at all, though I’ll have to defer to Merritt as the Yeats scholar. I view this more as a poem that captures the power of poetry not simply to describe an illusory escape from the urban present, but to itself create the poetic space in whose rhythms and sounds exist the reality of that escape. Okay, that might not make sense.
But Connor offers an excellent summary of Merritt’s very interesting article in any case–well done!