Our Proper Dark - An Analysis of Yeats’ ‘The Statues’

Pearse was deeply versed in this Platonic, mythopoetic mode of thinking. When he invoked the mythical hero Cuchulain as a symbol of Irish resistance, he made that ancient Gaelic champion a dynamic, live-action reality again. Cuchulain stalked indeed ‘through the Post Office’ and gave an extra, mythic edge to what otherwise might just have been another routine political uprising.