William Butler Yeats "Ribh at the Tomb of Baile" Poem animation

Heres a virtual movie of William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939) Reading his supernatural poem "Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn" . Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn. The first of seven supernatural songs (expanded to twelve in 37), in which the monk Ribh prays over the grave of the legendary Irish lovers Baile and Aillinn, who had died of broken hearts, each having been falsely informed of the death of the other. In Yeatss introduction to Certain Noble Plays of Japan he explicitly allies the legends of Ireland with the dramas of Japan from which this supernatural poem draws jointly from both traditions. Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats explored many themes, including Irish folklore, spirituality, unrequited love, and Irelands struggle for independence. Yeats helped lead the Irish Renaissance, a movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that sought to restore the influence of Gaelic language and culture on Irish literature. Long-Legged Fly, which appeared in The Nation almost three months after the poet died in 1939, is included in Yeatss Last Poems and Two Plays (1939). William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter. Yeats was educated in London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers in the west of Ireland in the family's summer house at Connaught. The young Yeats was very much part of the fin de siècle in London; at the same time he was active in societies that attempted an Irish literary revival. His first volume of verse appeared in 1887, but in his earlier period his dramatic production outweighed his poetry both in bulk and in import. Together with Lady Gregory he founded the Irish Theatre, which was to become the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief playwright until the movement was joined by John Synge. His plays usually treat Irish legends; they also reflect his fascination with mysticism and spiritualism. The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The King's Threshold (1904), and Deirdre (1907) are among the best known. After 1910, Yeats's dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical, static, and esoteric style. His later plays were written for small audiences; they experiment with masks, dance, and music, and were profoundly influenced by the Japanese Noh plays. Although a convinced patriot, Yeats deplored the hatred and the bigotry of the Nationalist movement, and his poetry is full of moving protests against it. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life.

Kind Regards

Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2011

Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn

Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night With open book you ask me what I do. Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar To those that never saw this tonsured head Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked. Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak, All know their tale, all know what leaf and twig, What juncture of the apple and the yew, Surmount their bones; but speak what none have heard. The miracle that gave them such a death Transfigured to pure substance what had once Been bone and sinew; when such bodies join There is no touching here, nor touching there, Nor straining joy, but whole is joined to whole; For the intercourse of angels is a light Where for its moment both seem lost, consumed. Here in the pitch-dark atmosphere above The trembling of the apple and the yew, Here on the anniversary of their death, The anniversary of their first embrace, Those lovers, purified by tragedy, Hurry into each other's arms; these eyes, By water, herb and solitary prayer Made aquiline, are open to that light. Though somewhat broken by the leaves, that light Lies in a circle on the grass; therein I turn the pages of my holy book

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