William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Irish poet, dramatist and prose writer, one of the greatest
English-language poets of the 20th century. He received
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
Yeats studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, hi
s first collection of poetry being published in 1889. The W
anderings of Oisin and other poems already showed con
cerns that were to remain central to his writing - Ireland, s
piritualism and love.
His earliest books draw on the romantics and pre-Rapha
elite ideals and mythologise a 'Celtic Twilight'.
However, increased involvement with nationalist politics
was to have a significant impact on his poetic style: his
diction grew plainer, the syntax tighter and the verse str
uctures, whilst retaining their traditional form, more mus
cular.

To this middle period belongs his failed courtship of the

beautiful nationalist, Maud Gonne and his founding in 1
899 of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin which became a foc
us for many of the writers of the Irish Revival of which Y
eats was a key figure.
Yeats wrote prolifically for the stage but also continued
with his poetry. Another important influence at this time
was Modernism, Ezra Pound in particular, who introduced
Yeats to the principles of Japanese Noh theatre.

As events in Ireland began to take a bloody turn, Yeats'

poems increasingly addressed public themes as in
'Easter 1916', his troubled commemoration of the Easter
uprising.

He entered official political life when he was elected to the

Senate, the upper house of the new Free State, in 1922.
His personal life was also changing: after a final rejection
from Maud Gonne and then from her daughter, Yeats ma
rried Georgie Hyde Lees with whom he was very happy.
Her interest in spiritualism echoed Yeats' and his explorat
ions in this area informed some of his powerful visionary
poems. Yeats' was now entering his poetic maturity in wh
ich he developed a symbolism to mediate between the de
mands of art and life.
Later collections The Tower and The Winding Stair are of
ten considered his best. His reputation by this time was s
ecure - he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1923. He died in France in 1939.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) stands at the turning
point between the Victorian period and Modernism, the
conflicting currents of which affected his poetry.
His work after 1910 was strongly influenced by Pound,
becoming more modern in its concision and imagery,
but Yeats never abandoned his strict adherence to
traditional verse forms.
He had a life-long interest in mysticism and the occult,
which was off-putting to some readers, but he remained
uninhibited in advancing his idiosyncratic philosophy,
and his poetry continued to grow stronger as he grew
older.
The Second Coming
Yeats was attracted to the spiritual and occult world and
fashioned for himself an elaborate mythology to explain
human experience.

Written after the catastrophe of WWI and with

communism and fascism rising, it is a compelling glimpse
of an inhuman world about to be born. And with its
imagery of swirling chaos and terror, it prophesies the
cataclysmic end of an era.

Yeats believed that history was cyclical and in part moved

in two thousand-year cycles. The Christian era, which
followed that of the ancient world, was about to give way
to an ominous period represented by the rough, pitiless
beast in the poem.
 The Second Coming
This poem is a two-stanza poem in blank verse. The 1st
stanza tolls the death of civilization, describing the world as
a place of anarchy and disaster.
In the 2nd stanza, the narrator surmises that this chaos
must signal the Second Coming, because 20 centuries have
passed since the birth of Jesus Christ.
Yet this Second Coming does not herald the return of Christ
but the arrival of a fearsome, grotesque creature who will
rule the next historical era.
Yeats concludes with the terrifying question.
http://www.eaglesweb.com/realaudio/yeats_the_second_co
ming.ram
The Second Coming
Yeats came to believe in a cyclical theory of history as he
studied comparative history and religion. Indeed, circles are
a repeated motif in this poem and in his other publications.
The title suggests that the poem will depict the Apocalypse,
described in Revelation.
But biblical history is linear, not cyclical: it has a beginning
(Genesis), a turning point (the birth and crucifixion of
Christ), and an ending prophesied by the Revelation of St
John the Divine.
Thus, although the title and much of the poem's language
and imagery echo biblical descriptions, its connection to the
vision of St John remains obscure.
 TheYeats
Second 在向外扩张的旋体上旋转呀旋转，
called each 猎鹰再也听不见主人的呼唤。
cycle of history a "gyre"--literally a
Coming
circular or spiral turn. He had a complicated system
一切都四散了，再也保不住中心，
detailed in his book A Vision that proposed history as
Yeats
This may
phrase have intended this
世界上到处弥漫着一片混乱，
reflects Yeats' and the description
appreciation
in the lines that follow as a referenceoftowhich
a series of 2,000 year eras,
血色迷糊的潮流奔腾汹涌，each the begins and
of ritual as the basis of civilized
到处把纯真的礼仪淹没其中；
Russian Revolution of 1917. Alternately,which
ends with some apocalyptic event living.
in the divine
he may
inserts itself into 优秀的人们信心尽失，
human history
have been thinking of World War I.resulting in
cataclysmic historical 坏蛋们则充满了炽烈的狂热。
and mythological
consequences.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
a commentary on the
The falcon times.hear
cannot Thisthealso suggests a dissociation
falconer;
betweenThings
the best,fallwhich
apart;Yeats identifies
the centre cannot as hold;
head people, the
intellectuals,
Mereand the worst,
anarchy whom
is loosed Yeats
upon theassociates
world, with the
mob whoThe areblood-dimmed
those who react tidewith passionate
is loosed, and intensity,
everywherenot
with careful
Theintellectual
ceremony study and expression.
of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The Gyre
The gyre is one of Yeats' favorite motifs, the idea that
history occurs in cycles, specifically cycles "twenty
centuries" in length (l. 19).
In this poem, Yeats predicts that the Christian era will
soon give way apocalyptically to an era ruled by a
godlike desert beast with the body of a lion and the head
of a man (l. 14).
Critics have argued about the exact meaning of this
image, but it’s clear that Yeats saw the new order as a
reign of terror haunted by war.
The poem in its entirety is an astounding encapsulation
of Yeats' idea of the gyre and his fears about the future of
mankind; it is expertly woven with threads of prophetic
literary reference and impressive poetic techniques.
The Gyre
Repetitious or paired images give the same effect, as Y
eats seems to cycle through his "falcon" (l. 2) to the "de
sert birds" (l. 17), "the best lack[ing] all conviction" (l. 7) t
o "the worst/...full of passionate intensity" (l. 7-8), and hi
s central images, the "rocking cradle" of Christ (l. 20) to
the "rough beast" (l. 21).

The tool of Yeats' prophecy, crystallized in the "widenin

g gyre" traced by the falcon, is a concept Yeats detailed
at some length in a note to the poem in the first printing
(l. 1).
The Gyre
To summarize, Yeats described an idea he claimed cam
e from Michael Robartes that described the mind's evoluti
on as a process of circling toward the wide end of an ide
alistic cone until, as he put it in the third line "the center c
annot hold" (Ellmann, A Commentary 239-40).

At that point a revelation occurs, and the mind shifts to a

new center, the narrow end of a cone of opposing idealis
m, inverted and superimposed on the first, with its narrow
end at the center of the wide end of the first (240).
This model, explained Yeats in his note, could also be us
ed to describe human history; the world's gyre is shifted b
y a revelation every two thousand years (241).
The Image of Falcon & Falconer
Yeats starts out with the image of a falcon wheeling about
in the sky, far away from the falconer who released it. The
bird continues to wheel and gyre further and further away
from the falconer.

This metaphor stands for the young people who have

given up the standards of their parents and grandparents
for the new art, the new literature, the new music, and the
other novelties of Yeats' time.

There is another interpretation of the falcon-falconer

image, and that is the image of the head or intellect as
the falcon and the rest of the body and the body
sensations and feelings (heart) as the falconer.
 The Second 无疑基督就将重临。
Latin, meaning "spirit" or 无疑神的启示就要显灵，
"soul of the world." According to the
Norton Anthology of English Literature, the phrase refers to
Coming 基督重临！这几个字还未出口，
"the spirit or soul of the universe, with which all individual souls
刺眼的是从大记忆来的巨兽：
are connected through the荒漠中，人首狮身的形体，
'Great Memory,' which Yeats held
to be a universal subconscious in which the human race
如太阳般漠然而无情地相觑，
preserves its past memories. 慢慢挪动腿，它的四周一圈圈，
It is thus a source of symbolic
images for the poet." 沙漠上愤怒的鸟群阴影飞旋。
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The image of the Sphinx
In the image of the Sphinx, the head-intellect is
connected to the body. That is the Sphinx isn't broken
apart. The giant sculpture is still intact.
“Indignant desert birds" appear to have been roosting
on the Sphinx, but when the massive beast began to
move its "slow thighs" the birds became agitated and
took off. The poet shows us the image a little later. The
birds are flying around above the slowly moving Sphinx.
Yeats uses the word falcon and the image of lions in the
desert — like the deserts in war-torn Iraq being bombed
by American hawks in their own second coming.
Sphinx and Christ
At the start of the 2nd stanza Yeats calls for a
revelation, saying "Surely a revelation is at hand." And
Yeats himself becomes the revelator.

Yeats is a revelator because he gives us a powerful

image for The Second Coming. This is the image of a
"rough beast" which has the head-intellect of a man and
the fierce emotions and body intelligence of a beast.

Yeats suggests that the body movement of the beast,

the "slouching" movement is what is moving the Christ
closer and closer to its "Bethlehem" or birthplace.
Sphinx and Christ
Yeats adds the image of the head-intellect connected to
the body-mind of a beast to the image Isaiah gave as a
little child for The Messiah. This makes Yeats a modern
revelator or prophet.

It's significant that Yeats describes the Sphinx as "A

gaze blank and pitiless as the sun," because spiritual
masters are known to gaze blankly as they transmit "the
message" to their disciples. Yeats equates this gaze
and this transmission with the Sphinx, which he also
uses to denote the Second Coming of Christ.
 The Second
2,000 His vision
yearsThe
of cradle
ends
the
Coming
and
of Jesus
he starts
Christian in inthinking
era, Yeats'again.
scheme.
Bethlehem.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
This is a puzzling
Slouches line,Bethlehem
towards because the rocking
to be born?cradle
suggests the manger where Jesus was laid. But a
manger doesn't rock unless some animals are jostling
黑暗又下降了，如今我明白
it about in their movements.
二十个世纪的沉沉昏睡， And this again suggests
that animal body 在转动的摇篮里做起了恼人的恶梦，
movement figures strongly into this
何种狂兽，终于等到了时辰，
idea of Christ which Yeats presents in this poem.
懒洋洋地倒向圣地来投生？
（袁可嘉译）
The speaker seems, at best, doubtful of what he sees: he
is a visionary who is unable to understand his vision.
The reader shares this confusion in part because the poe
m begins in medias res: we are plunged into the speake
r's vision without any preparation.
We do not learn, for example, that the poem describes a
vision until line 18, when we learn that the vision itself ha
s vanished.
Yeats gives the readers freedom of interpretation. The po
em ends with a question mark. Yeats seems to ask who
will win the battle in the end? Evil, which is represented a
s the beast or Good, which is about to be born in Bethleh
em?
Images
Yeats uses the image of a cat (the Sphinx) in juxtaposition
with the two images of birds. First Yeats presents the
broken image of the falcon dissociating from its trainer and
master the falconer. Then Yeats presents the broken image
of many birds flying around the Sphinx.
But the cat itself is a single whole image. Furthermore, the
cat eats birds. The cat is mightier than the birds. The idea
of being mighty is amplified by the very size of the Sphinx.
This suggests the power of the process which integrates
the human intellect with the animal power of the bodily
intelligence of the animal beast.
However this idea rather conflicts with the conventional
Christian idea that Christ overcomes the Beast of
Revelation. So Yeats is challenging certain images in
conventional Christianity.
In this poem, we see Yeats' interest in synthesizing
several different world views into one global theory of
human history.
Towards this end, Yeats studied Hinduism, Celtic history,
Christianity, Buddhism, and the occult. Like many of his
contemporaries – e.g., E. Pound, T. S. Eliot, and J. Joyce
-- Yeats sought to discover and create a unified theory of
world history.
We can understand this goal if we consider the historical
context: in the wake of World War I, most Europeans and
Americans found their world views badly shaken.
Yeats sought to put the pieces of European culture back
together by discovering their origins in world literature and
religions.
In his poem "The Second Coming," William Butler Yeats
indicates that the continued destructive actions of
humankind will result in the birth of a new age that is dark,
foreboding, and ruled by anarchy. The poem serves as a
warning of what might lie ahead if we do not change the
direction society continues to take.
From the title of W.B. Yeats poem, "The Second Coming",
one might expect to read about the glorious return of
Christ to save his followers. However, Yeats portrays a
dismal world where anarchy reigns over the innocence of
man. The passage portrays a dark and foreboding
atmosphere that serves as a warning to what may lie
ahead for humankind if we continue on our current path.
Many critics remark that this poem is deeply concerned w
ith the grim drama of modern war, including WWI as well
as the Russian Revolution and the War in Ireland, and Ye
ats himself described his poem as a reaction to "'the gro
wing murderousness of the world'" to which these wars w
ere alerting him (Jeffares, A Commentary 242); this conc
ern with war marks "The Second Coming" as a modernist
work (Abrams 119).
The poem appears to be written in free verse which adds
to the poems references to "things falling apart" and "ana
rchy loosed upon the world." This lack of structure within
the poem helps the reader feel as if they are a part of Ye
ats' condemned world.