The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

SECTION:

The Mountain and Cultural Aesthetic

Charles I. Armstrong (University of Bergen)
"Under Ben Bulben": The Mountain of Myth over Yeats' Dead Body

This paper will scrutinise W. B. Yeats' poem "Under Ben Bulben," and the how it inscribes the poet's memory in a mythical, Irish landscape. Particular attention will be given to the sexual and political backdrop of this testamentary performance - how it enlists the Sligo mountain in the construction of detached, yet passionate images of self and nation. This act of idealisation will be brought into relief by his critical depictions of Countess Markiewicz, who grew up on "that old Georgian mansion" of Lissadell within walking distance of Yeats' chosen graveyard, and who in "On a Political Prisoner" is depicted as having once been a beauty riding "Under Ben Bulben to the meet." Finally, the poet's appropriation of the mountain as a figure for natural and local embeddedness will be placed in question - not only by competing narratives supplied by Pound, Auden and Yeats himself, but also by the ironies of fate unearthed in Brenda Maddox's recent biography.

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES