William Butler Yeats’ “The Fisherman”

William Butler Yeats’ “The Fisherman”

The speaker in William Butler Yeats’ “The Fisherman” is dramatically promoting a style of poetry that will become and remain meaningful to and beloved by the common folk.

Introduction with Text of “The Fisherman”

William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Fisherman” appears in the poet’s The Wild Swans at Coole, which was brought out in 1919. The poet’s collection features many of his most widely anthologized poems.

In “The Fisherman,” Yeats has created a speaker who is voicing a call for a genuine school of art for the common folk, an art that dramatizes the beauty and truth inherent in all great art.

The speaker is also decrying the cultural suicide being perpetrated by charlatans in art as well as their cohorts who are power-hungry politicians. He thus reveals contempt for fakes and frauds, while promoting an ideal that he strongly believes should be steering art and the cultural life of the nation.

Every nation throughout history has suffered from these same issues, as toppling governments and bloody wars testify. The poets have often spoken up, calling out names and insisting on reforms.

Despite the fact that poetry’s first function arises from personal experience, political controversy often intrudes into the realm of the personal and that is when poets are compelled to use their platform for activism.

Care must be taken, however, that the poet not become a brazen tool for propaganda. As an accomplished world poet and former Irish senator [1], Yeats possessed the acumen to broach issues of art, poetry, culture, and politics.

The former politician and literary Nobel Laureate [2] boasts numerous works that address culture and politics: “The Fisherman” remains one of the most colorful and culturally significant poems of the era.

The Fisherman

Although I can see him still,
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It’s long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I’d looked in the face
What I had hoped ’twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream:
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, “Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.”

Reading of “The Fisherman”

Commentary on “The Fisherman”

The speaker in William Butler Yeats’ poem is heralding a style of poetry that will be beloved by the common folk. He makes his contempt for charlatans known. He encourages the ideals that he believes must guide culture and art. Yeats was a promoter of the style of art that he thought was closest to the hearts and minds of the Irish.

First Movement: Recalling an Admired Man

The speaker appears to be remembering a special man whom he has respected: “[t]he freckled man” wearing “Connemara clothes.” This man has been in the habit of fishing at a “gray place on a hill.”

The speaker implies that in his mind’s eye, he can still perceive the man. And it may also be that the speaker literally meets the man occasionally in the village. However, the speaker has not as of late mused upon the man.

The speaker admires the man’s simple ways. He assumes that the man is “wise and simple.” The speaker then continues to cogitate upon those very same qualities as he continues his message.

The speaker entertains a deep desire to praise the virtues of simplicity and wisdom. He has observed those qualities in the folks who are doing ordinary, simple everyday tasks.

Second Movement: Researching History

All day I’d looked in the face
What I had hoped ’twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,

The speaker has determined that he will make a plan to write for his own people, including the real experiences they all undergo. With the plan in mind, he has begun to research the history of his nation and its people. The speaker asserts that he hopes to reveal the reality of the lived experience of his fellow citizens.

Such a reality should well acquit itself and at the same time demonstrate and dramatize the exact truths that future generations will be likely to undergo.The speaker offers a catalogue of qualities that the men who make up the current political landscape have put on display.

Some of those men will be the recipients of his ire. He brazenly states that there are living men whom he hates. He then contrasts that negative emotion with its opposite by emphasizing that there is as well the “dead man that [he] loved.”

The speaker continues in his enflamed hatred by asserting that the “craven” exist while the “insolent” remain unrestricted in their perfidy. The speaker believes that by contrasting good and evil, he can demonstrate the efficacy of the arrival of a steady virtue upon which to build a better art and poetry that can represent Irish culture more faithfully and honestly.

Third Movement: The Guilty Avoiding Justice

And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

The speaker continues referring to the rogues and knaves, who have thus far evaded justice though guilty. The speaker loathes those frauds who have “won a drunken cheer,” even as they have remained undeserving of celebrity and honor.

The speaker makes it clear that there is a sector of despicable characters who damage, cheapen, and pile shame on the culture. The speaker accuses such unscrupulous scoundrels of attempting to destroy the art of the nation.

They, in effect, denigrate “the wise” as they dismantle the “great Art” that they have inherited. The speaker grieves that these killers of culture have succeeded in their perfidy. Thus, he is calling attention to their misdeeds. He is proposing a change in focus in order to improve values. He is not suggesting censorship of the charlatans.

Fourth Movement: Cultural Assassins

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,

The speaker then reports that for a while he has been incubating the idea of creating an uncomplicated, “sun-freckled face”—the man in “Connemara cloth.” For his effort, he has thus far received only “scorn” from the ilk of those culture killers and unscrupulous reprobates.

Nevertheless, the speaker has been pressing on, striving to envision a simple fisherman, who “climb[s] up to a place / Where stone is dark with froth,” a natural place that continues to be pristine and still remains alluring.

The speaker is crafting a symbolic being whom he can describe and on whom he can bestow the qualities that he deems must become and remain an important part of the natural art, belonging to the people of his environs.

Fifth Movement: The Importance of Simplicity

And the down turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream:
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, “Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn.”

The speaker visualizes the fisherman’s wrist movement as the man casts his line into the water. He admits that this man does not yet exist, because he is still “but a dream.” The speaker’s keen sensibility is strong enough to bring to life such a simple, rustic character. He is urged then to take all pains to bring such a character to life.

Thus, while the poet is still young enough to use his God-given imagination, he vows to take on the task of writing this fisherman into existence and to compose for the man a poem “as cold / And passionate as the dawn.” The speaker continues to muse on simplicity. He passionately desires to create a new ideal that will produce meaningful, original, dramatic poetry.

He insists that that new poetry must be able to speak with genuine originality and that it thus should become a harbinger of the beginning of a new era in art of poetry. The speaker hopes to accomplish all of this despite the wrong-headedness and power-grabbing of too many of the political phonies—and despite the fraudulent deceivers whose selfishness is spreading the destruction of their own culture.

Sources

[1] Editors. “William Butler Yeats.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed October 3, 2023.

[2] Daniel Mulhall. “W.B. Yeats and the Ireland of his time.” Embassy of Ireland. Accessed October 3, 2023.

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