William Butler Yeats

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to fund a gallery for the Hugh Lane collection of Art, and on the other hand, they rioted in outrage at Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.
The tension between Yeats’ ideal, and the reality is developed in the Fisherman and September 1913. Both these poems deal with Yeats attempts to bring Art to the people of Ireland, and the negative response of Irish society.
September 1913.

Here, Yeats directs his passionate rage against the Irish Catholic middle class. He perceives them as Philistines, whose values are monetary and religious, not artistic. His scorn for their petty money grubbing -
dry the marrow from the bone
and their narrow selfish piety
Prayer to shivering prayer
is set in contrast to his admiration for the heroes of old.
Yet they were of a different kind.
These patriots had loved Ireland with a passion which consumed them, and for which no sacrifice was too great.
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun.
But the present materialistic age ...

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I can see him still
introducing us to the Fisherman, a
wise and simple man
who is the symbol of the Irish nation he had hoped to write for.
Yeats has long since accepted that such a man does not exist, but nonetheless he holds on to him as an inspiration to protect himself against the reality.
The reality is depicted in a litany of powerful, clever men, who misuse their abilities for their own personal ends - which are chiefly, the acquisition and maintenance of power. Their goal is public acclaim, cynically acquired through a popularity based on the
Catch cries of the clown
or jokes
aimed at the commonest ear .
Integrity and honour are sacrificed to materialism and self ...

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