"Politics" is a poem by Irish

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

 poet William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

 written on May 24, 1938. It was composed during the time of the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

 as well as during the pre-war period of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

's Third Reich in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 .The poem hints at the political situations of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 (or Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

), Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, and Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, but ultimately discusses topics more relevant to private human interaction rather than public, or political situations. The poem never mentions Germany or Hitler, despite the fact that the "war and war's alarms" surrounding the poem's creation arose from fears of Germany's aggression rather than Italy's, Russia's, or Spain's. Many versions of the text exist: the original typescript of May 1938, the first typescript with hand-written corrections dated August 12, 1938, as well as a final "Coole Edition" of the poem dated June 29, 1939, which was not published until it was included in Last Poems in 1939. Yeats intended for the poem to be printed last in the collection, as an envoi

Envoi

In poetry, an envoi is a short stanza at the end of a poem used either to address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.-Form:...

 to "The Circus Animals' Desertion

The Circus Animals' Desertion

"The Circus Animal's Desertion" is a poem by William Butler Yeats published in Last Poems in 1939. While the original composition date of the poem is unknown, it was probably written between November 1937 and September 1938. In the preface, Yeats suggests that he intended the poem to combine his...

", and while a debate as to the true order of the poems has continued since 1939, "Politics" was the last lyric poem Yeats wrote and remains the final work printed in all posthumous editions.

Background

The epigraph at the top of the poem is taken from Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

, "In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms". The phrase had been quoted in a copy of the Yale Review

Yale Review

The Yale Review is the self-proclaimed oldest literary quarterly in the United States. It is published by Yale University.It was founded originally in 1819 as The Christian Spectator. At its origin it was published to support Evangelicalism, but over time began to publish more on history and...

and Yeats wrote notes on that edition and attached them to the first typescript draft of the "Politics". The last two lines of the poem, "But oh that I were young again/ And held her in my arms", is likely taken from a quatrain cited by American writer Archibald MacLeish in a 1938 article in the Yale Review intended to exemplify the use of "living tongue" by the anonymous author of the 16th Century song "The Western Wynde

The western wynde

Westron Wynde is an early 16th century song whose tune was used as the basis of Masses by English composers John Taverner, Christopher Tye and John Sheppard. The tune first appears with words in a partbook of around 1530, which contains mainly keyboard music...

":

O Western wind when wilt thou blow

That small rain down can rain:--

Christ, that my love were in my arms

And I in my bed again

MacLeish, in the article, compliments Yeats for his "public" language, but the poem's response to that compliment appears, to Yeats historian Brenda Maddox, to be tempered by Yeats' refusal to believe that war would actually break out. In May 1938, British forces in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 were recruiting air raid wardens in preparation for possible war with Germany, and Yeats wrote in a letter that he was not expecting that war should break out, but in the letter he suggested that if war were to arise in Europe, he might move to Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

 to escape the violence .

Themes

In the poem, there are many opposites that appear to challenge each other: age and youth, intellect and emotion, and male and female. The implication that the young are in each others arms, to Nicholas Meihuizen, highlights the poet's age and its adverse relationship to the youth of the poem's lovers. As the poet speaks of turning his inability to turn his "attention" from "that girls standing there" to "politics", the poet presents the battle of intellect and emotion, a battle which emotion wins in the poem. Likewise, Meihuizen argues that the poem presents sexual longing in the final line as the poem ends with the combination of the male and female in sexual union.

The conflict between the girl and the political surroundings mentioned in the text is, according to critic Charles Ferrall, an extension of a correspondence Yeats had with Olivia Shakespeare in which Yeats suggests that there is a relationship between Fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 and aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

. While Yeats never embraces Fascism the way that Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

 did, the theme of the relationship between art and politics appears to focus heavily on that particular form of government as it was the prevailing political force in two of the three countries mentioned in the poem. However, Yeats was consistently elusive on political matters throughout his literary career and carefully avoids taking a position in "Politics". Michael Bell, in his essay "W.B. Yeats:'In Dreams Begin Responsibilities'" suggests that in "Politics", Yeats "treads a dubious line between honesty to mood and a would-be seductive fecklessness".

The retreat from the political world suggested by the poem's title and carried out throughout the text of the poem also implies that the poet is inclined to create what Glenn Willmott calls a "narcissistic paradise". According to Willmott, Yeats's poems often move from the world of social interaction to a place where the individual finds seclusion, as is also the case in the pastoral

Pastoral

The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...

 Yeats's earlier poems "The Lake Isle of Innisfree, "The Song of the Happy Shepherd

The Song of the Happy Shepherd

The Song of the Happy Shepherd is a poem by William Butler Yeats.It was first published under this title in his first book, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, but in fact the same poem had appeared twice before: as an epilogue to Yeats' poem The Isle of Statues, and again as an epilogue to...

", and "The Sad Shepherd". All of the poems create a "utopia" in which the poet finds relief from public life by withdrawing from social spheres and entering into a mythical setting, yet "Politics" is unique in that it lacks the pastoral qualities of the earlier works and finds solitude in a different time rather than a different place.

Critical response

To Lewis McAdams, the presentation of "Politics" was Yeats's attempt to counter Mann's argument that meaning are presented in political terms. McAdams argues that "Politics" suggests that the pull of "nostalgia and love" appears to Yeats to be stronger than the call of "war and war's alarms" presented in line 10. In La poétique de W. B. Yeats, Jacqueline Genet suggests that the opposing forces in the poem are the public life and the private life, which she equates to a battle between the self and the anti-self. To Genet, contradictions are at the center of "Yeatsian politics", and she suggests that "Politics" represents the poet's inner struggle to remain disengaged from the world around him and remain focused on the private life. For Yeats, Genet suggests that the struggle to remain objective is cyclical, citing "Easter 1916" as an example of Yeats allowing political forces to dictate poetical, or personal reflection.

Philip L. Marcus, in Yeats and Aesthetic Power argues that "Politics" clearly represents a different view on art that many of Yeats's earlier works in that the politics are no longer limited to Ireland and the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 but have grown to encompass all of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. Marcus argues that Yeats's paradigms resembled less of Thoor Balylee and London, as they did in his earlier poems, and more of a broader scope that included other countries. While Yeats had sought a larger audience for his poetry and achieves success beyond Ireland, he fails to create a political voice to speak to the new audience and sinks back into the seclusion of personal interest. Marcus suggests that Yeats, while attracted to the idea of Fascism because of its "respect for both sides of social and political dichotomies", chooses instead to honor a "cultural nationalism" that is independent of politics.