William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) – An Irish Airman Foresees his death
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Ruwanthika Welarathna Senior Lecturer in English Literature Nawaloka College of Higher Studies / Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, BA (Hons) in English, French and Translation Methods, MA in English Language and Literature, Diploma in English, Diploma in French, Certificate in Spanish
Considered by many to be the greatest English poet in the twentieth century and the 1923 Nobel Prize laureate for Literature, Yeats began his poetic career as a romantic and finished it as a poet of the modern world.
The best of his poems touched universal concerns and demonstrate a brilliant balance between emotion and intellect. Yeats wrote the poem “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” in honor of Major Gregory, who fought and died in the air war against Germany in World War One.
The first two lines of the poem prepare the reader for what lies ahead; “I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above.” The pilot will die but he did not decide to fight because of a law or sense of duty. The pilot flew for one reason only; the sheer joy of flying; “a lonely impulse of delight” drove him to “this tumult in the clouds”.
With the line, “I balanced all, brought all to mind,” Yeats begins to tell the reader what Major Gregory has to tell us about life and death. It is a waste of time and energy to live in the past, as well as to live always for what might be – the future. The airman sees the war as merely a “tumult” – a commotion. He is utterly dismissive of it. In reality, and especially at that moment before death, all that matters is the present. Perhaps that moment before death is the only moment when one can truly realize and wholeheartedly believe that.
The poem “An Irish Airman foresees His Death” is, I believe, an account of the banality of a mere existence; the worthlessness of a life without ups and downs, without tears from happiness or sadness – in brief, a wasted life and someone’s effort to redress this once hopeless situation and enjoy at least one truly emotive experience. The speaker of this poem feels and experiences calmness in the face of grave danger. Though it stands mystic and mysterious, I feel that Yeats’s poem is of a psychological value which depicts that when people accept the inevitable, the death – they experience a mystic, unexplainable and inexpressible pleasure. The feeling of mystic pleasure in the face of danger is a universal human feeling. Hence this poem is food for thought which nourishes our attitudes towards the mission of life and widens our vision of death; “this life, this death”. Yeats’s extraordinary ability to capture the very essence of the reality of human nature is very appealing.
Through this philosophical poem, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, Yeats throws light on the existentialism where you live in the very moment of the moment which reminds me of the famous Indian dramatist Kalidasa’s eternal poem Salutation to the Dawn in which he says; “Look to this day! For it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course, lie all the verities and realities of your existence.”
If “The world’s a bubble, and the life of man, less than a span” as Francis Bacon stated and if life is a moment’s monument, the sheer joy of living can only be achieved by living in every moment, living life to the fullest in every moment as the famous Canadian writer Stephan Leacock brings out; “Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.”