W.B YEATS : LEDA & THE SWAN and THE SECOND COMING

 W.B YEATS:

Yeats was born on 13^th June 1865 in Dublin. His father J.B Yeats was a lawyer and his mother Susan Pollexfen was the daughter of a rich shipping family in Sligo.

Yeats father decided to become an artist and the family moved to London in 1867

However Yeats spent his vacation with the pollexfen in sligo where his consciousness developed. He loved landscape, delighted in the family lore of his grand-fathers servants and the neighbouring cottagers. Yeats was attracted by the sea and the super natural element associated with it.

Yeats was not a good student academically. He was not good at spellings, he was conscious of the fact that he could not go to university because his classic nor his mathematics was good enough for any examination. But the greatest irony is he grew to be one of the most learned among English or Irish poets. There was an inner yearning for wisdom. Yeats visited many literary societies. In 1887 Yeats joined the Hermetic Students in London. By this time Yeats had also developed a habit of composing his poems and reciting them. Yeats also started reading manuals published by the Theosophical society which he joined in 1888. This society was presided over by Madam Blavatsky. About her Yeats said “Her imagination contained all the folklore of the world.” Here Yeats also met a visiting Indian Brahmin –Mohini Chatterjee .

Yeats attended her lectures on theosophy and Indian philosophy in London and Dublin. Yeats was much impressed and later acknowledged the debt in poems titled “Mohini Chatterjee”

Yeats also met – John O’ Leary, the once exiled Fenian Leader who had returned to Ireland and presided over the meetings of young Ireland society. Leary’s patriotism and lofty idealism impressed Yeats. Leary also found many subscribers who helped Yeats publish his first book of poems about an Irish legendry hero titled –‘The Wonderings of Oisin’ (1889). Yeats now began harbouring his ambition in terms of Keats’s phrase about a poet who left “Great Verse Unto A Little Clan.”

It was about this time that Yeats also met Maud Gonne a young women who dropped in at their house to meet his father and spoke of revolution so that Ireland could win its independence from Britain. Yeats was fascinated less by her philosophy but by her great beauty. She was the women whom he wanted to marry. She was the personality who exercised most overwhelming influence upon his life and imagination. She assumed the legendary proportion in her own life time. In the coming year Yeats was to participate in countless political meetings conducted by her, write poems after poems celebrating her personality, his love , both when she was young and beautiful and after when she grew old and gaunt and seemed as if she “ look a bliss of shadows for its meat.” (Among School children)

Yeats proposed her three times over the decade and was turned down each time. Yeats mean while left the theosophical society, and was initiated into the order of the Golden Dawn;[ A Society conducting occult practices under the guidance of Mac Gegor Mathers]

Out of what he learned – Yeats concluded that the visions often repeat to him his own thoughts.

In one such vision he evoked the “lunar power”,

“I saw first a centaur and then a marvelous naked woman shooting an arrow at a star…like the centaur she moved amid brilliant light.”

Another vision – Yeats saw “a descart and black Titan raising himself up by his two hands from the middle of a hip of ancient ruins”: this image is very similar to the one Yeats describes in “The Second Coming.”

In the mean time Yeats met Lady Gregory and formed a deep and lasting friendship with her. She encouraged not only Yeats in his interest in folklore but also joined hands with him and Synage to found the Abbey Theatre. His important works include:

‘The Green Helmet’ (1910)

‘Responsibilities’ (1914)

He became less ornate and more colloquial. In 1912 Yeats met Tagore and read “GITANJALI”, he was deeply moved by the lyrics of Gitanjali and always carried an English translation.

 He with Shree Purohit Swami together translated the “UPANISHAD” into English. This work was called “The Ten Principle Upanishad” (1937)

In 1923 Yeats owned the Nobel Prize for literature.

He published the first version of “A Vision” in 1925.

Yeats’s Philosophy of History

An important section in A VISION deals with yeats’s philosophy of history that forms the background of many of his poem, including “Leda and the Swan” and “The Second Coming”.

According to Yeats each era lasts for 2000 years. At the beginning of each era there is a magical union of the divine with the human, and the nature of this union determines the quality of ensuing civilization.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        The middle period of a civilization or roughly about 1000 yrs, he believed was the peak or the golden period of a particular civilization; and for this he used the symbol of full moon, with its beauty and completeness. Thereafter the achievements of the period begin to dwindle and fade out gradually, the last few decades signifying the break-up or scattering on an era. Each era is followed by another having completely opposite qualities. An “objective” era has the outward- looking mind and a “subjective” has a inward looking mind as its dominant characteristic, although there are degrees of objectivity and subjectivity, and of-course exceptions in each case.

            From 2000 B.C to A.D 1

The Graeco-Roman civilization began with Zeus (divine) attacking and raping lead (human); Helen was born. At the peak of this civilization is the great art ‘in Phidias Ionic and Doric influence unite- one remembers Titian – and all is transformed by the full moon, and all abounds an flows’

Gradually, even the great achievements of plato and Aristotle ,begin to be less influential-the era is drawing to its close.There is the start of the union of Mary (Human) and the Dove (the Holy spirit). This is referred to as ‘the immaculate conception’ and is therefore the gentlest of unions; Christ is born and his characteristics determine the Christian era that is to follow. Christ was moved by the following: ‘primary pity ,that for the common lot, man’s death, seeing that he raised Lazarus, sickness, seeing that he healed many sin, seeing that He died .Yeats regarded the Byzantine period as the peak period of the Christian civilization. The end of an era is a cataclysmic period, all its achievements, its values being on the decline. In the last few decades there may be wars, conflicts, a general weakening of those forces that had held the civilization together.

In his poem, “The Second Coming”. It is precisely this decadence of the Christian civilization that Yeats speak of, philosophy of alternating features every 2000 years, it is the figure of anti-Christ whose coming is foretold.

Leda and the Swan

Like "The Second Coming," "Leda and the Swan" describes a moment that represented a change of era in Yeats historical model of gyres, which he offers in A Vision, his mystical theory of the universe. But where "The second Coming" represents (in Yeats conception) the end of modern history, "Leda and the Swan" represents something like its beginning; as Yeats understands it, the "history" of Leda is that, raped by the god Zeus in the form of a swan, she laid eggs, which hatched into Clytemnestra and Helen and the war-gods Castor and Polydeuces--and thereby brought about the Trojan War ("The broken wall, the burning roof and tower, / And Agamemnon dead"). The details of the story of the Trojan War are quite elaborate: briefly, the Greek Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, was kidnapped by the Trojans, so the Greeks besieged the city of Troy; after the war, Clytemnestra, the wife of the Greek leader Agamemnon, had her husband murdered. Here, however, it is important to know only the war's lasting impact: it brought about the end of the ancient mythological era and the birth of modern history.
Also like "The Second Coming," "Leda and the Swan" is valuable more for its powerful and evocative language--which manages to imagine vividly such a bizarre phenomenon as a girl's rape by a massive swan--than for its place in Yeats's occult history of the world. As an aesthetic experience, the sonnet is remarkable; Yeats combines words indicating powerful action (sudden blow, beating, staggering, beating, shudder, mastered, burning, mastered) with adjectives and descriptive words that indicate Leda's weakness and helplessness (caressed, helpless, terrified, vague, loosening) thus increasing the sensory impact of the poem.

William Butler Yeats’s daring sonnet describing the details of a story from Greek mythology—the rape of Leda by the god Zeus in the form of a swan—was written at the height of the poet’s career, the same year he received the Nobel Prize for literature. “Leda and the Swan” is a violent, sexually explicit poem that has all of the lyricism and complexity of Yeats later work, with its plain diction, rhythmic vigor, and allusions to mystical ideas about the universe, the relationship of human and divine, and the cycles of history. It can be seen as a poem about the way a single event is to be understood as part of a larger scheme; the result of the god’s assault on Leda is the birth of Helen of Troy, the subsequent destruction of early Greek civilization, and the beginning of the modern era. It has also been suggested that the poem, which was first written (and later revised in this present form) during the Irish Civil War of 1922–1923, is intended to draw attention to the violence that beset Yeats homeland during that time.
“Leda and the Swan” has been considered one of the most technically masterful poems ever written in English. In the work, Yeats uses the fourteen lines of the traditional sonnet form in a radical, modernist style. He calls up a series of unforgettable, bizarre images of an immediate physical event using abstract descriptions in terse language, while at the same time offering a distanced view of that occurrence in the sweep of time. Yeats himself considered the poem one of his major accomplishments, and in addition to praising its economy of language and skillful use of rhythm, critics have seen it as a fine example of how ideas that were central to the poet’s life found expression in his poetry.
SYMBOLISM IN THE POEM:

In Leda and the Swan, swan can be taken as the invading English occupier and the girl as ravished Ireland. The girl is more expert in “feeling”, the swan in “knowledge”. She is a mere mortal whereas he comes from an imperial eternity. This can be taken with effect that the Irish were colonizable because they secretly wished others to take command of their lives. The poem might then be read as a study of the calamitous effects of the original rape of Ireland and of equally precipitate British withdrawal. The final question would then be asking; when the Irish  took over power from the departing occupier, did they also assume the centuries-honed skills of self-government and control. The “indifferent beak” might be then Yeats judgement on the callous and irresponsible suddenness of an unplanned and ill-prepared British withdrawal. The anglo side of Yeats must have felt the precipitate nature of withdrawal a hard betrayal. The Irish side of Yeats was just angry an anger palpable in the bitter, bleak monosyllables of the close.
The Second Coming
INTRODUCTION:
Some of Yeats' poetry was not acceptable to people, because of his idiosyncratic beliefs. People found his interest in mysticism and the occult to be peculiar behavioral characteristics, and when he wrote The Second Coming, many people feared the poem, because of its controversial topic: the second coming of Christ, and the end of civilization right along with Him.
The poem is in two stanzas: the first one describes the world in chaos, and the second describes what the speaker thinks is the reason. In the first stanza, things are not what they ought to be. For example, "things fall apart," and "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." No one is innocent anymore, because "the ceremony of innocence is drowned."

 Line 2 hints at technology progressing beyond mankind's ability to control it. The problem was evident to Yeats 80 years ago, and the problem has worsened since then. Yeats shows his concern that technology has advanced to the point where mankind can do a great deal of harm with relative ease. The world had never seen destruction of the likes of World War I, and most people were shocked at the extensive loss of human life during the war.

In the time that Yeats speaks of, the rulers of the world were caught up in imperialism and expanding circles of power to the point where they would do almost anything to accomplish their goals. The ruthless power mongers were outspoken and numerous, and there seemed to be few who dared to speak out against them in the name of peace.

In the second stanza, the speaker believes something is revealed to the world, and it must be the second coming of Christ, or Judgment Day. The speaker sees a sight "out of Spiritus Mundi," or out of the Christian beliefs. He sees a sphinx, the "shape with lion body and head of a man" awake from 2000 years of "stony sleep" while the human race lived with their wars and technology and evolution. Yeats uses imagery to show the sphinx slowly coming to bring the end of the world, while "desert birds" or people who try to stop the sphinx fail. The first line, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre" tells of Yeats' belief that the world is set in a circular pattern of ways, and the gyre widening means it is time for the next phase: the coming of Christ. The very last line, "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" leaves readers with the image of the sphinx heading towards the birthplace of Jesus, and the fear of the end of the world.
Although the poem is very powerful in its literal meaning of the world coming to an end after a 2000 year cycle, it can also be read to depict the progression of human life. Chaos may still be in the world's future, but the reason could be because of the first stanza's metaphorical meaning of technology evolving faster than human life. "The falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" may mean that humans can no longer control what they created.
In the second stanza, the speaker tells of the second coming, perhaps to warn humans to prepare themselves, but he is troubled by the sight of the end of the world, and at the end of the poem, he does not believe there is any help for the human race to save themselves.

CONCLUSION: In the “Second Coming” the self is exemplified in the falcon, that can no longer “ hear the falconer”; no revelation is forthcoming except that of anarchy unbound. In poets view the absence of either the inward sense of destiny and purpose (the falcon’s instincts) or the outward witness of history and civilization (the falconer’s call) unleashes a “blood-dimmed tide” of human misery that waits deposit exploitation. At this symbolic BETHLEHEM, westerners thus wait a new incarnation whose interest will not be humankind’s salvation but rather its subjugation.

CONCLUSION

W.B Yeats was like one of the canonical modernist  writer who has been longing for a past and a vision for future.

Like Walcott, Yeats is also poisoned between the two; the Irish and the British

Yeats literary career hangs between the span of Irish war of independence to Second World War (1939-1945). Yeats works were not much influenced by the war scenario.

 Although the major events of his life did had the influence of war. His meeting with Maud Gonne ; the love of his life was somewhere in connection to the Irish war of independence, which further resulted in coming of the love poems.

His work like

·         “The Second Coming”

·         “Easter” (1916)

·         “Leda and the Swan” [as the metaphor of swan being as the invading English occupier and the girl as ravished Ireland]

·         “The Tower”

·         “Meditation in time of civil war”

·         The Tower

Are unavoidably political poetry.

Yeats could not escape the radical changes that his country under went in 1920s.The years following 1923 were spent healing wounds and mounting the framework for a welfare state.

Yeats himself served as a Senator in a new Irish free state and presided over the decision to make the Irish language mandatory in schools. Yeats was ambivalent about the independence movement because he supported its aim but not its means and he was aghast at the Civil War.