When he was young, Ye Zhi was one of the leaders of the Irish Renaissance. Most of his early poems were based on Irish legends and ballads. Ye Zhi is a participant in the Irish nationalist movement, so politics is a theme of his poems. Ye Zhi's passion for nationalism is closely related to his love for Maud Gunn, an outstanding actress devoted to Irish cultural revival, so love is also the theme of Ye Zhi's life. His cooperation with Mrs. Gregory also had a great influence on the development of Irish drama. Ye Zhi's life experience is closely related to his poems. Ye Zhi used his imagination to create myths to turn many ordinary events in his life into wonderful poems, and then created symbolism with Ye Zhi style in his poems. In addition, the relationship between art and nature is also expressed in many of Ye Zhi's poems. While creating his art and symbolism, Ye Zhi seems eager to paint a portrait of history. Perhaps influenced by mysticism (including Black's mysticism), this mysterious historical portrait is quite tragic. People's fate is controlled by external forces, and the wheel of history keeps turning, and what has happened will surely reappear. Rita and the swan and the second coming of Christ describe this theme. The diversity of life, theme, style and skill, and the flickering historical shadow constitute the greatness of Ye Zhi's poetry. It is precisely because of this diversity that later critics generally divided Ye Zhi's poems into three periods.
Ye Zhi's early poetry creation includes the poems published from Dublin University Review 1883 to The Wind among the Reed 1899. When Ye Zhi first entered the poetic world, he accepted the romantic tradition in the later period. The pre-Raphael poets and their successors have far-reaching influence on him, among which william morris can be said to be the most important influence of Ye Zhi. Morris is a friend of Ye Zhi, and his most obvious influence on Ye Zhi is wandering in Ois in and Other Poems (1889). Blake and Shelley also influenced Ye Zhi's early poems, because Ye Zhi edited Blake's poems (1893). Ye Zhi was deeply moved by the beliefs and feelings expressed by these poets in their works.
However, although Ye Zhi's early poems belong to the English romantic tradition developed from19th century, due to his Irish background, his early poems are different from English romantic poems and have unique Irish themes. The combination of the two has produced Ye Zhi's unique early style: strong sense of rhythm, full of femininity and mysterious and dreamy colors; The characters described in the poems are mostly heroes, wise men, poets and magicians in Irish myths and legends. At the same time, these poems show a melancholy and lyrical atmosphere, and their brushwork is quite similar to Shelley's. For young and sensitive Ye Zhi, poetry is a kind of dream, which can protect poets in the secular world, and Irish myths and folk stories that he has been immersed in since childhood are the distant places for him to find his dreams. Most of the themes in this period are memories and dreams, and perhaps the peak is "Inniss Foley Island". This poem is a masterpiece of Ye Zhi's daydream, which actually reflects the poet's homesickness for his native Ireland. Perhaps its popularity is partly due to its thorough romantic theme and unique language style.
Ye Zhi's mid-term poems mainly include In Seven Woods (1904), Green Helmet and Others (19 10), Responsibility (19 14) and Wild Swan in Kuer (. Michael Rowe Bartz and the Dancer (Michael Rob's time span is about 1899 after the publication of The Wind in the Reed and1926 before the publication of Vision). There is no clear boundary about the division of Ye Zhi's poetry period, which mainly refers to the change of the theme and style of his poetry. Just when Ye Zhi felt that the early style had reached its peak and the new development direction was still unclear, Ezra Pound entered the life circle of Ye Zhi and had a great influence on the formation of his new style. This influence directly leads to a new subtle concreteness in Ye Zhi's mid-term poems, which has something in common with Pound's imagist poems. This change is not only reflected in the content, but also in the wording, and the result is a new simple and concrete style. It pays more attention to spiritual images and details, and its emotions are clearer.
During this period, Ye Zhi began to measure Irish nationalist revolutionaries and the Irish public with lofty ideals, and the result could only be disappointment. In Ye Zhi's view, violence and civil war are not patriotism, but "fighting in the weasel's hole". He felt that the leader of the Irish nationalist movement lacked the noble and ancient heroic temperament in Irish legends embodied in John O'Leary. Disappointed with Irish politics, Ye Zhi changed his poetic style. His early fable dream was abandoned, and his poems became more realistic, complicated and secular, so he didn't have to flee to "Freeland, Inniss". His early symbolism is weak, so it must be infused with new vitality. And his new symbolism is actually a pursuit of order in mystery. Therefore, Ye Zhi developed a mysterious theory of historical cycle, which was concentrated in the book Illusion (1926). Ye Zhi believes that the development of history is cyclical. One cycle is completed, the next cycle is entered, and so on. Many of his poems are direct interpretations of this historical theory.
The style of Ye Zhi's later poems is more concise and accurate, with strong oral color. Most of them are based on the details of the poet's personal life and social life at that time, and most of them are about death and love to express some clear feelings and thoughts. His later poems include Tower (1928), Spiral Ladder (1929), Full Moon in March (1935) and The Last Poem and Two Plays (the last bell tower collected some of Ye Zhi's poems with the richest connotations, such as For Ye Zhi, life and art are a kind of conflict. With the growth of age, age and desire have become a pair of contradictions. In the poem "Sailing to Byzantium", the poet constructs the yearning for freedom of the aging body and the yearning for freedom of the soul. In the poem, an old man rejects the young man's sensory world, which shows that he is eager to get rid of the bondage of the body and pursue an eternal artistic world. In the poem Among Schoolchildren, he also talked about the problems of time and life. Rita and Swan brought him back to the theme of historical reincarnation in illusion.
The Spiral Ladder (1933) contains some excellent philosophical poems, such as Dialogue between Self and Soul, but some poems are about recalling the past, including memories of friends. Among them, the poem Kule Park and Balili (193 1) tells the friendship between the poet and Mrs. Gregory and their literary achievements. Poetry cloud:
We are the last romantics.
The traditional theme is sacredness and beauty.
This "last" means the end of a historical period, and Ye Zhi has found his place in the history of literature. The full moon in March (1935) included a group of literary poems named Lingge. These poems condensed Ye Zhi's thoughts, and the language was simple. Among them, the poem "Four Age Stages of Man" embodies the thought in fantasy and also reflects the thinking of human civilization.
Ye Zhi's theoretical achievements are mainly reflected in the article Symbol of Poetry, but he is not a theorist. The thought in illusion is not a complete theory, but a value concept with strong personal color. Ye Zhi is a poet, and his achievements lie in his diverse poetry forms, rich themes and rich imagination. In addition, skillful skills are also an important reason why he attracts readers. If Wordsworth dominated English poetry in the last century, then Ye Zhi dominated English and Irish poetry in the transitional period of 19 and the 20th century.