YEATS

LEDA AND THE SWAN

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

(1923-1928)

http://www.uv.es/fores/poesia/ledaswan.html

My work is about Yeats’ poem “Leda and the Swan”. As we can see in the title, the author in this poem talks about a woman and an animal, a swan. This is a Greek myth which is the topic of the poem.

The myth tells that one day, when Leda was taking a walk, she was raped by Zeus. As a result of this relationship, Leda had four children. There are different versions of the same myth: in one version, Helena was born from an egg and Clytemnestra, Castor and Polydeuces from an other egg. But in other versions, Helena and Polydeuces were Zeus’ children, and were born from an egg, and the other children were born through a natural form and maybe their father wasn’t Zeus. Leda and her husband Tyndareus, King of Sparta, raised the children. (Jamie Cisco)

On the other hand, the author in the poem mentions Agamemnon. He was in Troy’s war and, when he come back from the war, his wife Clytemnestra (Leda’s daughter) drove a knife into his back and became an ally of her husband’s enemy, who made him left his country to Sparta before he married her: Aegisthus. (Francisco Álvarez Hidalgo)

The author in the poem talks about this rape between Zeus (changed into a swan, and feigning to be chased by an eagle so he could get nearer the lady [http://www.wikipedia.org/]) and Leda.

In the fist stanza, it describes how the rape began: the great wings above the girl, how he immobilizes her catching her neck with his bill and pressing her thighs with the legs. Breast upon breast. The author is describing how the god is holding the girl to be raped.

In the second stanza, the author expresses that the girl can do nothing to defend herself of the rapist. She is terrified, and has human fingers, vague fingers, and he is a glory, a white rush. She can’t do anything more than feel his heart beating upon her breast.

In the third stanza, we read about the rape when it is done, a shudder in the woman, the broken wall, the burning tower...the woman mastered by the god.

The poem is divided into two parts: in the first one there are the two first stanzas, which are each one made with four verses with rhyme a-b-a-b. Here, the author talks about the myth of Leda, how Zeus loved Leda, but she couldn’t defend herself. In the second part, we found an enormous stanza of seven verses. Here, the author talks about the rape when it is made (“the broken wall” can represent the broken virginity, and the “blood of the air” can represent the same).

In the first part of the poem, the author tells us the story of Leda’s rape. We can compare that with his life, because he fell in love with Maud, he wanted her love like the swan, Zeus, wanted Leda’s love. But the woman in both cases does not respond to the man’s love. In the myth, the god obtains this love by means of force, but the author in his life, didn’t have this love. (Conchi Sarmiento Vázquez).

In the second part, the author mentions the name of Agamemnon, who was betrayed by his wife. This could mean that the author felt betrayed by this woman, Maud, when she married another man: John MacBride. He maybe felt like Agamemnon, when he was stabbed by his love, like Yeats...

When Yeats wrote this poem in 1923-1928, he was married to Georgie Hyde-Lees, a medium, since 1917. But in my opinion, there are wounds that we will never be able to close...

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