The Coming of Wisdom with Time: A journey through Irish literature, to Yeats
Until relatively recently I felt somewhat disconnected from the cultural roots and traditions of my homeland, Ireland. It wasn’t from a lack of pride or disinterest, but I looked around me growing up and felt others had a clearer idea of their nationhood and how they connected to it, through sport, music, dance, history, and all the rest. I admired and often envied that quality, even though sometimes the connection was ill-defined, and seemed to manifest through a queer kind of rhetorical belligerence I attribute to a colonial hangover. It follows logic somewhere along the lines of: “I’m Irish because don’t you dare tell me I’m not.”
I never quite had that nationalistic obstinance or a particular passion for a singular aspect of Irish nationhood, so, although I grew up amongst it all, it wasn’t until I moved abroad for spells as a young man that I realised — against the backdrop of ‘elsewhere’ — just how shaped I have been by the place of my upbringing, both as an Irishman and otherwise.
So I gradually resolved to find the bits and pieces of Ireland I could connect with and make peace with what I couldn’t. I naturally turned to literature, where I found a connection with authors as a child and where I felt (rightly, as it is turning out) there was an affinity with much of what the good and great of Irish literature are all about.
For my sins, I attempted to begin that journey with Beckett. On audiobook. I love Beckett; he’s mad, challenging and relentlessly existential and formless. But you try wrapping your head around a narration from the point of view of a man who isn’t sure if he exists, while navigating rush hour traffic. A longer term project. I needed something to ease me in.
Doyle. A Star Called Henry was a good choice, covering as it did the events of 1916 — a momentous national event that until last year I felt ashamed to know too little about — and coming along for me just prior to its centenary anniversary. Say what you like about Doyle, he certainly writes with a uniquely Irish turn of phrase.
And I will say what I like about him. Every character in that book came across as a ridiculously over-egged caricature of foul-mouthed Irish spunk and moxie. The dirt, grime and blood felt voyeuristic. It reminded me of our desperate national tendency to over-accentuate what makes us us, something I regard as directly related to the number of Irish lives devoted, proudly, to alcoholism.
The right thing was out there somewhere. I kept on keeping an eye out for Irish names last year in the little second-hand bookshelves in charity shops in London, where I now live. At home, my eyes often rested on Marita Conlon-McKenna’s Under the Hawthorn Tree in the apartment I shared with my girlfriend. I had adopted that and the rest of the Children of the Famine trilogy from my childhood bedroom for her. But I wanted something new, not to re-hash childhood nostalgia.
Then, in a small bookshop near London Bridge, I spied a small, thin compendium of poetry by William Butler Yeats. Number 98 of Penguin’s ‘Classics’ collection.
I became hooked on reading one poem each morning, going so far as to memorise one for the first time in my life. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven is the obvious star, Yeats’ most widely republished work. Politics is at once funny and wistful, The Fascination of What’s Difficult seethes with resentment at modern professional demands and Easter 1916 deals with the transformative violence of rebellion, repeating the exceedingly poignant phrase:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
But the most personal poem to me in the little black book is The Coming of Wisdom with Time:
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may whither into truth.
Just four lines long, the message of the poem is easy to guess. Perhaps that’s why I like it (I’m no poetry expert and have consulted no other analysis).
There is a core to us that remains true throughout our lives. It’s the foundation of our being, the root that endures behind the transitory. In our youth we reach out and show ourselves to the world, experimenting with who we are, putting our faith in many places and, perhaps, a little vain. We are many leaves, many versions of our self, all connected by one core, ‘true’ self. This reaching, public flamboyance, though entirely natural and to be expected, runs it’s course. A step removed from the essential central being from which they emerge, these youthful displays are, by their nature, dishonest, representing something that is transient, and will pass on soon on a changing whim. Inevitably so.
The pacing of the poem is important. The first line encapsulates the message in two parts, establishing a two-act form for the drama to come. The poem elaborates on youth over two lines that run fluidly together, hinting at languidness and complacency, timelessness and pace. The imagery is of sunshine and vibrancy. Leaves are referred to as ‘leaves and flowers’, boastfully expanding on the opening line. One gets a sense of pride and growth.
The dire image of withering is introduced with an abruptness and phrasing that suggests a recent revelation on the part of the writer, of the inexorability of mortality and decay. One isn’t sure if the reference ‘into truth’ is made with relief, or with the same sarcasm as ‘the lying days of my youth’. It’s probably a mixture of both. On the cusp of post-youth, amid talk of lying days and withering, there is a pang of regret.
This sense of revelation is compounded by the rhyming structure. The first line ends on a beat to match the third. The fourth line matches the second. But the second line flows so easily into the third that its rhyme appears less significant, somehow, and more easily lost on the tongue. The sounds of the first and third seem to have drowned it out. But the full piece ends on the rhyme of the second line. The realisation comes to the reader that the conclusion was discovered halfway through the two-line parable on youth. The poem is brought to an end by the rediscovery of something already familiar, something already known in the depths of youth but hidden in the bluster.
It is in the withering that we find truth, and in that truth, wisdom. Our true selves are not the selves that we build through life by branching out. These efforts, though central to youthful vibrancy, can be reversed in life, and so are inherently ‘un-true’. Truth and wisdom become apparent not when reached or journeyed to, but when reaching and journeying ceases, and you see what’s left behind, what’s always been there. It is knowledge of that truth that is the essence of wisdom.
Now I may wither…
The poem ends abruptly, the result inconclusive. Ultimately, withering leads to death. But for how long will the decay last? When will death come? What use is wisdom to the withered?
But there is nothing to be discussed now that the posturing of youth is falling away and wisdom is dawning. With that, a singular path forward appears with the sense of calmness and contentment that goes with it, tinged with regret that the revelation didn’t come sooner.
