Poetry Analysis: Yeats’ “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”

“The Circus Animals’ Desertion” is one of the last poems of Yeats, and is in iambic pentameter. It first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and London Mercury. Yeats refers to the stagnation of his creative faculties and the loss of sustenance of his poetic output as he contemplates over his past works. He utilizes the metaphor of the circus animals to refer to his poetic themes, characters and sources of inspiration. The circus animal is a source of amusement, and it gets deserted with the onset of age as it loses its luster and utility value.

The poet laments over his vain attempts to discover a poetic theme. Being a broken man, he can no longer hold his thoughts in coherence .He must be satisfied with the emotional coherence that he still has intact. He refers to the elements of circus:

Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

The stilted boys refer to the circus boys, yet at the same time refer to the companions of the poet’s youth. The ‘burnished chariot’ alludes to the classical references in his poems. The phrase ‘lion and woman’ refers to the lion and lion–tamer. It may point to Maud Gonne whom the poet regarded as the epitome of classical beauty. It may also stand for the sphinx that was a recurring motif in the poems of Yeats.

Yeats brings to mind various themes he had utilized in his poems. He recalls his writings about a “sea-rider” namely Oisin, who traveled through “three enchanted islands”. The poet asserts that as he penned about Oisin, he was secretly “starved for the bosom of his fairy bride.” Oisin is the hero of an old Irish myth, who was carried off to a fairyland across the ocean by the fairy Niamh. As he returned to Ireland a hundred and fifty years later, he found his friends dead and his country men converted to Christianity. The phrase ‘led by the nose” implies how one is induced to do things unconsciously, as if in hypnosis.”Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose” were the recurring themes of his poetry. It was a reflection of his embittered experiences. These references may intend to mimic old songs or put on an air of affectation as in courtly shows. And he longs for the woman who Oisin longed for and led Oisin on in his life. The poet refers to creative inspiration when he alludes to this woman.

The poet yet again recalls the play The Countess Cathleen. The lady had traded her soul solely for the purpose of serving the starving peasants. Maud gone had played the role of Cathleen in the play, and he recounts her on this account. He expresses his fears how Maud Gonne has made a mess of her life indulging in Irish politics, she had been addicted to fanaticism and hatred. Just as Cathleen had traded her soul for serving servants, Maud Gonne had sold her soul to dedicate herself to power-politics. It was perhaps the poet’s dream to divorce Maud Gonne from all these evil aspects. This dream was coupled with his thoughts and love for her.

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

The Fool and the Blind Man are characters in Yeats’ play On Baile’s Strand. Cuchulain is the legendary hero of Irish myth who died fighting the waves. In the same play dealing with the Fool and the Blind Man, Cuchulain stole bread from the houses nearby. Yeats’ memory embarks on the times when he was actively involved with the Theatre. Since the formation of the Irish National Dramatic Soceity, he was its President. He was also the producer and manager of the Abbey Theatre. Yeats was so engrossed with the Cuchulain characters, that he forgot his social and moral responsibilities as part of the Irish National Movement. Theatre was an emblem of the reality of the day, and he should have been a pointer to intellectually stimulate the audiences to the problems of the day. On the other hand, he drew them to a cloud-cuckoo land, when he should not have.

What ultimately remains is “a mound of refuse”, a heap of waste:

Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags,

It holds all mass and material in the form of ‘broken images” without any coherence of its own. He now terms himself as “a raving slut” who just wildly goes on and on without reason or rationality or rhetoric. As he states that “his ladder is gone”, he implies that his poetic faculty has ceased to exhibit anymore progress. He asserts that he must now lie down patiently “where all the ladders start.” He must look out for the slightest source of poetic inspiration to soar in his poetic flight.

Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion