Throughout
his life, Yeats united the people of Ireland through a sense of nationalism, the only thing he believed was more pervasive than religion.
None of his accomplishments in art or the history of Ireland discount his
insanity. I definitely think Yeats was insane. It probably helped him. I mean,
if you don’t believe in visions, you’re not going to believe you’ve had a
vision when you actually have a vision, are you? No, you’re not. You need to be insane.
Ireland
was an imagined nation held together by thinkers and writers. Yeats worked with
Lady Gregory at the turn of the 20th century to found the Irish
Theatre, and in turn, created an outlet for representations of Irishness that
provided the Irish a source of cultural relevance and significance as a
people. To
do this, Yeats used myth as a vehicle for the cause. He returned to tradition, the Irish language, and stories of Irish myth - spirits claiming children and returning changelings in their place. He wrote lots of essays
on nationality, Irishness, and what should or should not be included as part of Irish Theatre. Cathleen Ni Houlihan was early 1900, and whatever success it had made Yeats fear that
maybe he influenced the people of Ireland to fight for a cause that was only
doomed from the start.
I’m
not summarizing well. But it doesn’t need to be. What needs to be understood is
that Ireland was unstable for hundreds of years, and Yeats cared about Ireland. Yeats grew up amidst national frustration, as part of a people whose identity had been taken from them, shucked of casing, and returned a shameful reduction of the whole.
Ireland wasn’t a free state until 1922. WWI ended in November 1918. The Second Coming was written in January 1919. This context is important. More important than what I rambled off as an introduction, really. For centuries, the people of Ireland wanted independence from England, and from 1797 to 1921, they were denied, berated, persecuted, and murdered.
The Second Coming isn’t really about any of that. Though you could argue that a people's frustration building and building over centuries waiting for change is somehow echoed here, and that a central point (falconer) losing control of a secondary entity (falcon) relates heavily to England losing control of Ireland.
The Second Coming
speaks to the coming of an unknown thing. Perhaps it’s the revolution Ireland always wanted; perhaps
it’s the arrival of the apocalypse. Whatever it is, it appears to be the culmination
of a cycle, and the narrator only knows about it because he had a vision.
In the first stanza, the gyre is widening. Don’t get
confused with the language. The first stanza is pretty vague and symbolic. Think
of a coil expanding upwards and outwards creating the shape of a cone, the cone
getting wider and wider as it rises. Now imagine a falcon taking flight from a
central point, winding upwards. The falcon leaving the falconer’s hand from a
central point, and the falcon slowly flying higher and farther from the
falconers’ command. When command is unheard, the controlling center is more or
less nonexistent to the falcon: ”Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”
This disintegration triggers a succession of images: a tide of blood, the
drowning of innocence, the best lacking conviction, the worst having passion.
The second stanza is incredibly foreboding. “The Second
Coming” is repeated three times as a positive/exciting force, potentially
indicative of a revelation, but this is quickly extinguished by the
identification of some vague terror in the narrator’s mind.
It’s a vision of a pitiless form rising from the sand, a
human head atop an animal form, Sphinx-like but unspecified. Birds circle the
form. Their shadows are dark and indignant - annoyed or as if having been
treated unfairly. These birds are vultures, and instead of spiraling up as the
falcon does at the outset of the poem, they would spiral down around the rough
beast, acting as scavengers, subsisting on the remains, or the destruction of
something else. The darkness returns, and the vision is over. But the narrator
KNOWS something now. Even though the line ends ambiguously with a question mark,
the narrator is certain from the vision that something is about to occur. A
rough beast has been waiting, and its time is now. In its wake there will be
destruction and death, as indicated by the vultures. But what is the rough
beast? And why is there so much vague religious imagery? Why does Yeats leave
so much uncertain? What happened to the poet as prophet? Don’t leave us with
more questions WB!
Well, I’m not sure of anything, but what I do know is that
Yeats was witnessing the world destroying itself. He did not feel good about
where things were headed in light of WWI, but he didn’t know whatever was about
to occur was good or bad.
I don’t think “The Second Coming” has everything to do with
the Irish gaining independence. I think it’s too vague for that, and I think
it’s lack of specificity was intended. I think it’s a generalized view of the
destruction, of things falling apart as a perhaps necessary thing that eventually occurs - something more universally affecting. But a
cool view is of the vultures being indignant, representing the Irish, having
been wronged by England for centuries, circling above while the beast exacts
revenge.
I really like your view on this poem, and I definitely agree. While reading, I could not help to notice how vague it was.. but I think that was intended as well. Yeats captured the way society was functioning during this time. Facts about the war were vague in itself as they were trying to hid the disaster of war from citizens. Instead, the media was flooded with propaganda with intention to boost war efforts. Join the war for a good cause was the slogans, but the bad was kept hidden. In this piece, I felt like Yeats was modeling the war campaign in the opposite way. He mentioned all the destruction with amazing detail, but he also left a lot to be questioned.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, Cathleen Ni Houlihan was a play Yeats published in early 1900's that functioned as a call to action in a sense. In the play, there's this old lady recruiting young men for the cause. Throughout the play, there is mention of a siren song, and from what I can remember, this was the song of the old lady used to recruit/lure men to enlist for the cause. The struggle of the protagonist remains between enlisting, following the call of the old lady (who is a personification of Ireland) and listening to the pleas of his wife to stay home, in that she does not want to be another widowed woman.
DeleteWhen we read Easter 1916, we encounter similar understandings of the Irish, as a people who are caught between living now for their families, or living for the future of Ireland. The idea of a terrible beauty is interesting as an oxymoronic representation of the uprising - juxtaposing the idea that the uprising was beautiful, but the loss of life was an undeniably terrible occurrence.
"Too long a sacrifice/can make a stone of the heart."
For me, this line is most important, as it encapsulates so much of the Irish experience. Their sacrifice and their struggle - the young men losing their lives in going to fight - had no end in sight. Initially they are the stone against the stream, revolutionaries breaking up the natural flow of things, but now their hearts are stone. Perhaps hardened through martyrdom, or hardened because their fate, dying for their country, was unavoidable, in their eyes. I like this line so much, because its not simply about the revolutionaries for me. A heart of stone was required of the Irish as a people, withstanding the loss and desperation of years fighting for a cause with no guarantee. The martyrs were not the only people who needed hearts of stone. The mothers losing their sons, the wives losing their husbands, the daughters losing their fathers. When someone died, the death affected the community as a whole, as everyone knew someone who had gone to fight and died.
I totally agree that Yeats left a lot to be questioned on purpose. Maybe, as Ashlee said, he truly just didn't know. But what he did know were the volatile circumstances surrounding the fight, and how this tipping point was indicative of an enormous change on the horizon. Sometimes I read this poem and think the apocalyptic tone simply mirrors "A terrible beauty is born" - some horrific event needed to bring about independence.
Completely forgot about the importance of birds...I like your comment on that! I like how you kind of zoomed out and looked at the big picture too. In the poem when he says how "The ceremony of innocence is drowned", the innocent are basically defeated at this point, and picturing a tide coming loose and wreaking havoc on the world, there's really no way to tell where it will go and when. I'm kind of rambling but I connected that to the how you said there is definitely an unknown event coming, but no one can really pinpoint it. Whether that be this war being a prelude to a bigger war, an apocalypse, a good change, no one can know, just like no one can predict where a loosened tide will go. You did a great job explaining this poem, because it definitely came off a little vague to me.
ReplyDeleteI really like what you have done and how you have interpreted the falcon and the falconer. To use the Falconer as the symbol of Britain is really quite perfect. But if you are saying that this poem isn't truly about the Irish Revolution, then why allude to that symbolism at the opening lines of the poem? As to the commentary on why Yeats ends his poem in this way is because, well the truth is, Yeats didnt know how it was all going to turn out. He could no say for sure where his beloved nation would end up when all the dust and smoke settled.
ReplyDeleteI thought the falconer as a symbol of England was an interesting tangent. I think in the ways that this poem lacks specificity, it gains a universal component, and in turn, is able to speak to many instances of change/destruction in humanity, as opposed to a single occurrence, such as the effort for Irish independence. I think this claim is possible, and makes sense, and you could totally argue it, but its not what I saw as the bigger picture of the poem. For me, this is simply about the lose of control, and the arrival of an unknown thing, with potential positive/negative connotations.
DeleteThis poem really confused me when I first read it so I enjoyed some of the back history you provided in this post. I particularly thought that your breakdown of the first stanza was helpful. When you created the image of an expanding coil into the shape of the cone, I immediately started thinking of spirals - almost like a tornado. This circular motion made me rethink the cyclic theme running throughout the poem, along with the idea of deconstruction (which is what I thought of when I imagined damage created by a tornado). In a very depressing and cryptic way, Yeats seems to suggest that this apocalyptic end is coming - but its not the first time. The image of the falcon flying farther and farther away from the falconer also made me think of mankind continually separating himself from the ideals of God, leading to this apocalyptic like state of the world, but that's just me.
ReplyDeleteThe image of the falcon flying away from the falconer is interesting in context of mankind separating himself from the ideals of God. I would counter, being that this is from the early 20th century, if having anything to do with God, the distance between the falcon and the falconer represents mankind separating himself from the idea of God.
DeleteBut I don't feel as though this deals with the idea of God either. Perhaps this entire poem could be a meditation on the understanding of God in the Renaissance, and in that case, I could see your logic playing out, or at least seeming arguable.
Mainly, I just don't think - looking at the poem contextually and what was on people's minds, and how Yeats was writing about the bigger picture - this time period would birth a poem about the effects of separating ourselves from the ideals of God.