THE FISHERMAN
‘The Fisherman’ was wrote by Yeats in 1914 but published in the collection ‘The wild swans at Coole’ in 1916. According to Edward Said “the central figure is an anonymous man of the people’. This implies that Yeats is creating his own audience as he believes that they cannot fully appreciate his work. Yeats hoped he could “write for [his] own race” but in reality it is the “living men [he] hates”. These lines represent how Yeats sees the people that he writes for, the people that he is supposed to support in the nationalist movement, he pretends to care but he does not. The phrase “cold and passionate as the dawn” links to ‘the second coming’ where the “best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity”. This represents how Yeats believes that his audience are considered the best but they have no passion unlike the ‘Fisherman’. The poetry cannot be aimed at the fisherman but “at the commonest ear”.
A common theme throughout Yeats’s work is the role of the poet. According to C.K Stead there is a “tragic quality which springs from a full realisation by Yeats of his position of the poet”. This is reflected throughout the language used. In stanza one the man is in “grey Connemara clothes” but in stanza three it has been upgraded to “Connemara cloth” which represents how Yeats is turning something simple into something that appears to be luxurious to those who feel it. The fisherman is also described to have a “ freckled face” but then later on in the poem appears to have a “ sun freckled face” this could represent how light is being brought in from his imagination, that he is truly beginning to realise that he has to make the best out of what he has got. He realised his role.
Lady Gregory had a nephew, Sir Huck love; he had paintings that were taken from kiltartan’s cross to the Tate in London. Where Yeats believed that “great Art [was] beaten down.” This represents how