Drama, sacred
Dec. 1st, 2005 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonI'd intended to pull this information, a small exerpt from a post written by a colleague on a mailing list a short while back, into something I've been writing up on ritual, drama and politics. However, that's been pushed on the back burner, so I'll just post this bit now, because it's nifty, and I've always been a big Yeats fan.
Incidentally, the island where Yeats had intended to build his "Castle of Heros" is for sale, if you have a big fat wad of Euros...
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The Irish Literary Revival, in a large part impelled by the artistry of Yeats and the Abbey Theatre, found a concrete political form in the Easter Rising of 1916.
This was a very strange political insurrection. In my opinion, it is the first political rebellion openly fueled by occult and poetic metaphors.
This quote by Robert O'Driscoll sums up the theatrical, ritual strangeness:
"The Rising itself was concieved and enacted as a theatrical event, and the theatrical aspects of the occasion are clear in the time and setting chosen for the event, and in the dress, actions, and theatrical concerns of the major participants. Many of the leaders--Pearse, Plunkett, and MacDonagh--were as we know poets, playwrites, and perhaps more importantly they had directed plays. F. X. Martin directs our attention to the conspicuous theatrical elements in their dress and public gestures: MacDonagh with his sword-stick and cloak; Eamonn Ceannt with his kilt and bagpipes; Plunkett with his immense Celtic rings and bracelets and marrying in a midnight ceremony the night before his execution at dawn; the dying Connolly tied to a stretcher to be shot; Countess Markiewicz "concluding her activities in Easter Week at the time of surrender by ostentaciously kissing her revolver and Sam Browne belt as she handed them over to the British Officer"; and Pearse himself reading the Proclamation of the Irish Republic with the "classical front" of the General Post Office and its 'Ionic pillars and porticos" serving as a background, and the night before his execution writing his last moving poem to his mother."
And of course, it was obvious to nearly everyone at Dublin's General Post Office during the Rising (Dramatic Rebel HQ) that they were doomed militarily--it was a sacrificial, magical ritual. Yeats's Castle of Heroes had finally been "earthed".
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Incidentally, the island where Yeats had intended to build his "Castle of Heros" is for sale, if you have a big fat wad of Euros...
-------
The Irish Literary Revival, in a large part impelled by the artistry of Yeats and the Abbey Theatre, found a concrete political form in the Easter Rising of 1916.
This was a very strange political insurrection. In my opinion, it is the first political rebellion openly fueled by occult and poetic metaphors.
This quote by Robert O'Driscoll sums up the theatrical, ritual strangeness:
"The Rising itself was concieved and enacted as a theatrical event, and the theatrical aspects of the occasion are clear in the time and setting chosen for the event, and in the dress, actions, and theatrical concerns of the major participants. Many of the leaders--Pearse, Plunkett, and MacDonagh--were as we know poets, playwrites, and perhaps more importantly they had directed plays. F. X. Martin directs our attention to the conspicuous theatrical elements in their dress and public gestures: MacDonagh with his sword-stick and cloak; Eamonn Ceannt with his kilt and bagpipes; Plunkett with his immense Celtic rings and bracelets and marrying in a midnight ceremony the night before his execution at dawn; the dying Connolly tied to a stretcher to be shot; Countess Markiewicz "concluding her activities in Easter Week at the time of surrender by ostentaciously kissing her revolver and Sam Browne belt as she handed them over to the British Officer"; and Pearse himself reading the Proclamation of the Irish Republic with the "classical front" of the General Post Office and its 'Ionic pillars and porticos" serving as a background, and the night before his execution writing his last moving poem to his mother."
And of course, it was obvious to nearly everyone at Dublin's General Post Office during the Rising (Dramatic Rebel HQ) that they were doomed militarily--it was a sacrificial, magical ritual. Yeats's Castle of Heroes had finally been "earthed".
-------
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
