He was raised in London in his painter father’s bohemianAn unconventional person, often involved with the arts. circle, but he gained a love of Irish literature and mythologyThe collected 'myths' of a group of people. Myths are ancient fables or tales that have been handed down through generations. through summers spent at his mother’s home in County Sligo. His early poems reflect this passion.
Yeats lived during a period of great change in his native country as it fought to achieve full independence from Britain.
In the poem Easter 1916 he wrote of the Easter Rising, 1916An armed rebellion centred in Dublin during Easter 1916 by Irish republicans who wanted to end British rule in Ireland. in Dublin. He knew men executed by firing squad after the failed rebellion. At the end of the poem he names all those who were shot and concludes with the line, “A terrible beauty is born.”
At this time, many Irishmen were fighting for Britain in World War One.
In An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, Yeats tries to show how they struggled with their identity as Irishmen risking their lives for a country they did not feel was their own.
He believed passionately in a brand of Irish Nationalism where art and literature revived myth and legend, and where courageous political figures would give Ireland a sense of what it was to be Irish.
The question of national identity was never far from the poet’s mind.
The airman in the poem may well be based on Major Robert Gregory. Robert was the son of Yeats’ patronA wealthy and powerful individual who protected others by giving them money or jobs., Lady Augusta Gregory. His plane was shot down in 1918.
