W.B. Yeats had, unsurprisingly, a complex attitude to the
Easter Rising and Irish Nationalism in general. He loved Ireland, but like so
many lovers thought that gave him the right to mould her to his heart’s desire.
Of his many poems around the subject, ‘Easter 1916’, whose
refrain I quote above, is the best-known and is being bandied about this
centenary Easter. Less well-known, except for its final line, is this one:
Incidentally the horrors of over-specialization are nicely illustrated
by a woman I met who was doing a degree in ‘Colonial Literature’ or some such,
with special reference to Chinua Achebe’s novel ‘Things Fall Apart’. She had no
idea where Achebe had got his title, and seemed indeed to be rather vague about
who Yeats was. (By the way, I have no degree in any kind of literature, and
having met people who do have one, I think I prefer to do without.)
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