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THIS IS ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE POEMS!!! I think this poem exemplifies a simple beauty while still portraying the poignancy of the moment. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
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An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
I know that I shall meet my fate
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My interpretation: I have been rather surprised by the relative number of inquiries I have gotten regarding this poem. Before I give my interpretation of the poem, let me state the facts about the poem (as I know them). Yeats wrote the poem in honor of Major Gregory, who fought and died in the air war against Germany in World War One. Major Gregory was the son of Lady Gregory, an Irish aristocrat who was a strong supporter of the arts (especially Irish arts) and a very close friend of Yeats. Kiltartan, mentioned in lines 5 and 6 of the poem refers to the region that Lady Gregory lived in. Yeats writes the poem as though he is the aviator, about to meet his demise. The first two lines prepare the reader for what lies ahead. The pilot will die. Yeats doesn't dally with that point because he has more important thoughts to convey. He moves on to establish the pilot's motives. The pilot chose to fly and fight in the war, not because he hated the Imperial Germans, nor because he loved his country; and he didn't do it for fame or fortune. The pilot flew for one reason only; the sheer joy of flying. Yeats does not try to portray Major Gregory as an heroic character, sacrificing live and limb for the greater good of mankind. Again, for Yeats to emphasize this would defeat the purpose of the poem. With the line, "I balanced all, brought all to mind," Yeats begins to tell the reader what Major Gregory has to tell us about life and death. But let us linger at this line a moment. In it, Yeats is not merely saying that Major Gregory saw his life pass before his eyes. He balanced ALL, brought ALL to mind. Important news is at hand! Indeed! It is a waste of time and energy to live in the past, as well as to live always for what might be (the future). In reality, and especially at that moment before death, all that matters is the present. Perhaps that moment before death is the only moment when one can truly realize and wholeheartedly believe that. For it is exceptionally difficult to look at one's own life without hoping it will be better in the future or thinking about "how nice it was when . . ." Indeed, I don't believe that one should live wholly in the present. Both the knowledge of the past and the extrapolation to future events are extremely important guides through life. But what Yeats is trying to convey, is that any moment may be your last, so live it to it's fullest. Live like you mean it!
OTHERS' INTERPRETATIONS Since I added my interpretation of 'An Irish Airman . . .', several people have written me with their comments. I would like to thank them for sharing their knowledge and point of view with me. I have learned a lot from them. One of those people, Kate Harper, has given me permission to quote her comments, which follow:
Roger Baltimore writes: I was still in the secondary school that I happened to listen to the poem. All that I remember back then was the line ‘those that I fight I do not hate’ and ‘those that I guard I do not love’ and the word ‘Irishmen’. It was though one of the BBC program. The radio reception was poor during that time making my effort of try to fully listen to the program fruitless. It was when I come to the city to further my education that for the first time I have access to the internet as there were no reference books or the internet concerning the poem from the place where I came from. The line ‘those that I fight I do not hate’ and ‘those that I guard I do not love’ lingers in my mind for years. What was most striking to me about the poem was the fact that, to me at least, the two lines were and is powerful enough to convey the weight of the day to day struggle of many a man. Forget about the plane, forget about the war, just concentrate on the neutrality of the person. I can’t help to wonder, how many people on earth have to do things that they don’t like everyday. The yield they acquired for their reluctant efforts comes only as side effects. They don’t want it. The same dilemma has happened to me. It is only to please other people. The poem therefore has deep impact in me. To me, Yeats has achieved something greater than he hoped to achieve in the little poem. Instead of explaining the mind of an airman, he has explained the mind of many a man beautifully, and impeccably than men like me could ever have done.
Anonymous writes: For a view of one prose writer's attitude toward dying during World War I, read the early chapters of Neville Shute's autobiographic "Slide Rule". He writes of his feeling of utter surprise at the end of The War. He was still alive! He had already written himself off as lost, and he was still alive. He had not been despairing, seemingly not angry, he had simply written himself off. While my copy is lent away, so I cannot quote, he refers to the Kamikaze pilots of WW2 with complete understanding. Japan was lost already, with no hope of survival, no future, so these men may as well die in a manner somewhat of their own choosing and a time of their own knowing (though perhaps, as in Yeats, not at a precisely known time.) Considering Shute's words, the Palestinian girl who finishes her school exams with exemplary grades then goes out and blows herself up in an Israeli public place is hardly brainwashed or deluded or mad: she is simply making her best choice at that moment of history. So, in the same sense, Yeats's airman need not have hated Germany nor loved the UK or its allies, but may simply have been responding to the moment.. Doubtless many people who had never heard of Yeat's "gyres" or his view of 2000-year cycles went away like this. Surely by 1917 all notion of romanticism was gone. I drove recently through an English village and stopped to read my map. Just across the street was a monument to their dead of the Great War and I wandered over to take a look. Quite a list, it was. Around to one side was their list from WW2. We in the US think of WW2 as the big one, and get so excited over 2000 deaths on 9/11 that we go berserk and shred our Constitution, but for this village, the hard losses for WW2 were 1/6 those of WWI. That village must have been empty of young men! And in France and Germany the pattern must have repeated. So it becomes easier to imagine, though not entirely understand, the feelings of an Irishman who joins the English, his enemies of the moment. No romantic view of the war or the combat. No notion of glory. Ho hope of changing the history of his own Ireland. But just for one moment he might take command of His Aeroplane and Himself as, 5,000 feet below, the world marched on with its endless and meaningless slaughter.
I too have always been facinated by this poem, but of late I have put a different interpretation on it. You suggest that the "lonely impulse of delight" is flying. I would suggest that it is fighting - or fighting and flying combined. There is a high that comes to some in battle - I don't think it's a healthy high, but I think it is what really drove my own youthful fantasies about being a fighter pilot. I never was one, but for years I loved war movies and the roar of the engines of a jet fighter at an air show touched a primal chord in me. I'm afraid there is a part of our nature in which we really want to kill. War gives us a license to do so. In war we can kill and instead of being declared a murderer, we are declared a hero. I don't think Yeats cares about being a hero, but his airman seems to welcome the opportunity of guilt-free killing. I haven't a clue if this is what Yeats had in mind. But for me it is the most logical interpretation of those lines, dark as it is. I have read Chris Hedges new book "War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning." Hedges is a veteran New York Times war reporter who has been on the front lines of many conflicts. In this book he explores in depth the theme I barely touch on here. John Heresy explored it long ago in his novel "The War Lover." I might also add that awareness of my own feelings in this respect has helped confirm and maintain my pacifism.
Michael Bennett, Ph.D. writes: Well, the one thing you have not considered is Yeats' concept of the cycle (that 2000 rise and fall of civilizations/appearance of the christ-antichrist, etc.) as it relates to the balancing of life and death---there is a kind of resignation in the airman's attitude---everything is a waste of breath, past/present/future, because the cycle is inexorable. As a result, your assessment that "a lonely impulse of delight" as the motivating force is absolutely correct. Whether this is Gregory is irrelevant. Much of Yeats' non-mythical poetry is simply what it is, no matter how much we would like to connect it to Maude Gonne, Lady Gregory, the Fienians, or whatever---"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone" Yeats wrote---this poem is not a romantic paean---it is just what it says it is: a lonely impulse of delight----if you want a better idea of how the irish sided with the germans (i keep them both in lower case because generally i have little use for either of them politically), see David Lean's wonderful film "Ryan's Daughter"------Michael Bennett, Ph.D., Professor of English, DeVry Institute of Technology, Alpharetta, GA
WEB MASTERS DISCLAIMER: It is my understanding that Yeats was NOT a soldier in WWI.
Another person writes: I have not heard from the other two people who wrote me, so I will paraphrase their comments anonymously. Keep in mind that I have made no attempt to verify any facts presented to me by these people, but nor do I have any reason to question their reliability. Due to the less than corgial relationship between the Irish and the British throughout history, the Irish were apparently less than entirely willing compatriots of the British in their fight against Germany. The Irish were actually rather friendly towards Germany. So when Yeats says "Those that I fight I do not hate" (the Germans) there is a deep irony. And when he says "those that I guard I do not love", he is talking about the British, not the Irish. The Irish were fighting for a country that had subjugated them. They fought not out of love for that country, but out of a sense of opportunity. In particular, Major Gregory fought not for God, King and Country, but for something more personal, the joy and personal achievement of flying. Someone else had this to say: The last four lines to me are the most beautiful and sad. To me the pilot is saying that he looked back at his life and into his future and what he saw seemed empty, hopeless, "a waste of breath." So why not do something dangerous, Romantic? Why not live a little and then go in a blaze of Glory? Why not indeed? I balanced all, brought all to mind,
Maggie Secara writes: I've just been looking at the last section of Meditations in Time of civil War (V. The Road at My Door) and the last stanza is very telling, I think. The poet, having condemned the soldier's love of death, expresses an unwilling envy before returning to the "cold snows of a dream". I don't think any man who has ever survived a war envies those who do it after him. Yeats in that poem wishes he had a more overt way than poetry, to fight for his country I guess. On the other hand, I'll stand with the notion that while the poem may be inspired by someone in particular, the poet's expression is always of his own internal state. What you've heard about the Irish attude towards the Germans during the war is true. The IRA particularly couldn't deal with fighting FOR England, their old enemy, which caused some people to get positively cozy with the Germans in both world wars. It had nothing to do with ideology, just in being anti-British. For a good (fictionalized) expression of this, there's a movie called Eye of the Needle you might find at the video store.
Colin Gallagher writes: I thought that perhaps an alternate take on its meaning (however far from Yeats' intention!) might be of interest to you or others. Whilst I have never formally studied this particular poem, it has always been one that fascinated me and something that I regularly come back to pore over. "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" is, I believe, an account of the banality of a mere existence; the worthlessness of a life without ups or downs, without tears from happiness or sadness - in short, a wasted life - and someone's brave effort to redress this once hopeless situation and enjoy at least one truly emotive experience. From the very onset, Yeats identifies the airman as someone with no doubt that this venture will be his last ("I know that I shall meet my fate/Somewhere among the clouds above"). Interestingly, however, the individual accepts his impending demise not because he hates an enemy or even because he loves those his actions will protect ( "Those that I fight I do not hate/Those that I guard I do not love"). Indeed, this sentiment is reiterated in the following lines when he declares his nation is not Ireland, but that his "country is Kiltartan Cross", and his countrymen are not the Irish, but "Kiltartan's poor". This is a simple man whose whole world is his small, insignificant town. He has no interest or business outside of it; this is where he was born, lives and otherwise expected to die. More than this, we know that this man is not someone of any renown or even infamy, he is nondescript and of no importance to his neighbours; "No likely end could bring them loss/ Or leave them happier than before". Lest we assume that this man with no political or moral convictions, and without any local hostilities with his townsmen ("Or leave them happier than before"), should knowingly throw his life away as he was bound by conscription or by the pursuit of fame, Yeats tells us that "Nor law, nor duty bade me fight/Nor public men, nor cheering crowds". The close of the poem throws light on the motive for this ostensible recklessness; it is the prospect of a single thrill in his otherwise banal existence. It is the promise of a "lonely feeling of delight" – lonely because it's been such a rarity throughout his life, this feeling of delight or exhilaration has nothing to keep it company – "that drove to this tumult in the clouds". The airman sees the Great War as merely a "tumult"… a commotion. He is utterly dismissive of it. In his town of Kiltartan Cross he has lived undisturbed by the struggle – it doesn't hold the same gravitas for him as it does from someone in say, London or mainland Europe. It was simply a distant affair or inconvenience – something frivolous. When the narrator recounts his life, his experiences and his future ("I balanced all, brought all to mind") he realizes that he has no prospects any more attractive than his barren and worthless experiences of the past. Indeed, even to recount them he feels is a "waste of breath". Whilst Ireland at this time was a devoutly Catholic country, this man doesn't even enjoy a faith that may eventually lead to happiness. He sees death not as a passageway to Heaven's bliss but something as cold, sterile and bland as what he's already lived through – it is "in balance with this life". Indeed, the atheistic idea of a lack of anything after life is actually for him the same as life itself. As aforesaid, I don't attach any great academic importance to this reading of the poem but I do feel that it's a reasonable interpretation - indeed, one that I certainly enjoy! Again, I would like to thank everyone who has written me with their comments, and would like to encourage anyone else to share their views on this, or any other poem presented here.
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Try THIS PAGE for more information about Yeats and about An Irish Airman. This is a neat site!
| go to "The Stolen Child" | go to "The Folly of Being Comforted" | go to "Adam's Curse" |
| go to "The Second Coming" | go to "Never Give All the Heart" | go to "When You Are Old" |
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