Irish Catholic Memory in “Easter, 1916”

Jocelyn Pettway
ENG 342
Spring 08

Irish Catholic Memory in “Easter, 1916”

In her essay, “The Rising, the Somme and Irish Memory” Edna Longley examines the central forces of apathy, myth, revisionism, and martyrdom and their impact on Irish memory. Yeats’ exposes each of these forces in his commemorative poem “Easter, 1916” in order to trouble the inconsistencies of Irish memory. While considering the memory of the Irish Catholics as a whole, Yeats conveys suspicions over the selective memory of the public and the way our memories change.
According to Longley, the Catholics portray apathy in their refusal to participate in the “insistent rhetorical display” (Longley 76) of the Protestants. The apathy that the Catholics are accused of is demonstrative silence, which was born out of frustration, and only serves to reinforce their exclusivity. Yeats examines apathy within the Catholic community. The repetition of “polite meaningless words” highlights the hollowness of socially acceptable apathy and indifference in this time of action. The “Polite meaningless words” also highlight a disdain for the rhetoric employed by the Protestants.
In her essay Longley reveals that Irish culture is largely based in myth. In Yeats’ poem, following the description of several mythical characters, “A drunken, vainglorious lout” (Yeats 32), is added those remembered. The mythical figures of the Uprising are based on optimistic exaggerations of the individual’s characteristics. Yeats sharply contrasts the last man with the overwhelming goodness of the characters before him to expose the myths as selective. Yeats’ careful choice of the word “dreamed,” in his introduction of the man, reveals uncertainty in this character’s negative characteristics because they are not included in the myths about the characters.
Longley uses this poem as an example for revisionism and grasps on to the symbol in the third stanza to illustrate her point: “Stone, for Yeats, signifies monistic fixity, opinion” (Longley 83). Yeats subverts the Davisite ballad that Longley describes in order to revise the way we commemorate and further illustrate the impact of emotion in remembrance.
Longley explains that the idea of martyrdom is key in a culture of “Sado-masochism…[which] ends with the victim becoming authoritarian in his turn” (Longley 82). Through the repetition of the word “name,” Yeats shows how remembrance empowers and awards the dead with a second birth. He forces his reader to accept that, even as a martyr, to be remembered means to be changed.

Works Cited
Longley, Edna. Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Bloodaxe Books, 1994.

Yeats, W.B., The Poems: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1983.